American Assassin (19 page)

“This is not helping,” Shvets said in a paternal voice. “I am tied to you whether I like it or not, and if we are going to avoid being interrogated by our colleagues in the Federal Security Service, we need to clear your head and get you thinking straight.”

Ivanov’s entire body shuddered at the thought of the FSS goons dragging him into the basement of Lubyanka, the once-feared grand headquarters of the KGB. He knew all too well what went on in those prison cells in the basement, and he would kill himself before he ever allowed that to happen.

CHAPTER
34
SOUTHERN GERMANY

T
HE
trip was uneventful, in the sense that they pointed the hood of the big Mercedes south and stopped only twice before reaching the Swiss-German border. For eight hours they cruised at an average speed of 120 kilometers an hour down the smooth, twisting autobahn. Near some of the larger towns they had to slow, and when they neared the mountains to the south the winding, rising road slowed their progress only slightly. They were thankful that there was no snow.

They skirted Hannover, Kassel, Frankfurt, Strasbourg, and a blur of other towns, while Hurley pored over the treasure trove of information he’d retrieved from the banker’s safe. Richards fired up the laptop and used the decoding software to uplink the information on Dorfman’s disks via the satellite phone. Kennedy had a team assembled in D.C. who were translating and filtering the information. Richards was done sending the information by the time they reached Kassel. He slept for the next two hours. Rapp listened to the snippets of conversation coming from the backseat and wondered what the next move would be. Hurley liked to operate on a strictly need-to-know basis, and Rapp and Richards rarely needed to know, at least as far as Hurley was concerned.

Halfway through the trip, Hurley ordered Rapp to pull over and switch with Richards. They topped off the gas, used the men’s room, and Hurley bought coffee and some snacks for him and Richards. Rapp didn’t mind driving but Hurley was insistent. An hour or two of downtime was crucial. One never knew when things would get interesting. As was often the case, though, Hurley did not listen to his own advice and continued to work at a feverish pace. Rapp climbed into the backseat, and after a few minutes of silence he asked Hurley, “What are we doing?”

Uncharacteristically, Hurley laughed. “I’ll explain before we cross the border. Right now I need to figure this shit out.”

It occurred to Rapp that the man was punch-drunk, but he didn’t dwell on it. Within minutes the hum of the tires rolling at high speed on the concrete surface of the autobahn sent Rapp into a trance. He rolled up his jacket, wedged it in between the door frame and his head, and fell asleep. For the next few hours he drifted in and out of sleep, the shrill ring of the satellite phone interrupting dreams of poodles, bad comb-over hairdos, and trussed-up, plump German women. At one point he was drifting off to sleep and wondered what Frau Dorfman would do with the dogs now that her husband was not of this world. For some reason that made him think of the expanding pool of blood under Dorfman’s head. How far had it stretched? Would it begin to dry in the arid winter air? How much blood was actually in a human head? One pint? Before he could decide on an amount he drifted off.

Hurley never slowed. He reviewed every document, every file, Post-it note, and receipt. He’d filled close to an entire notepad with the most pertinent information. At 5:00
A.M
., they stopped at a roadside motel outside Freiburg and got two connecting rooms, where they cleaned up and changed into suits and ties for the border crossing. Hurley ordered them to pack their weapons in the hidden compartments inside their suitcases. By six they were back on the road with fresh coffee and rolls. And Hurley was ready to explain what they were doing. Unfortunately, he chose the wrong military campaign to illustrate his point.

“You two familiar with Sherman’s march to the sea?”

Rapp was behind the wheel. Having been raised in northern Virginia, he didn’t really consider himself a southerner, but he was a proud Virginian, and that meant he knew his Civil War history. To a true southerner like Richards, who had been raised in Covington, Georgia, the mere mention of William Tecumseh Sherman was enough to start a fight.

“Total war,” Hurley said. “Just like Sherman. If our enemy won’t come out and meet us on the field of battle, we need to bring the war to their doorstep. We need to destroy their capacity to fight. We need to spook them into maneuvering in the open so we can crush them.”

Rapp could see both men’s faces in the rearview mirror. Hurley was oblivious to the revulsion on Richards’s face.

“Are you trying to tell me,” Richards said, “that we’re Sherman?”

“I sure as hell hope so,” said Hurley, in a state of near elation. “He won, didn’t he?”

Rapp couldn’t take it anymore and started laughing.

“What the hell’s so funny?” Hurley asked.

When he got control of himself he said, “You’re sitting next to one of Georgia’s finest. It’s like singing the praises of Andrew Jackson to a bunch of Indians.”

“Oh,” Hurley said as he realized his mistake. “No offense intended. We’ll have to debate that one over beers one night. Sherman was a badass.” Throwing him a bone, he added, “And Lee and Jackson were two battlefield geniuses. Can’t deny that.” Then he changed tactics and asked, “You’ve hunted birds, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Why do you bring a dog into the field?”

“To get the birds up.”

“Exactly,” Hurley said. “These guys have done a damn good job keeping their heads down the past ten years while Langley’s been focused on Central America and avoiding those dickheads up on Capitol Hill. I told you about our operative that got snatched off the streets of Beirut a few months back … well, that’s not the first time that’s happened. We got soft in the eighties and let these assholes get away with way too much shit.” Glancing at Rapp’s face in the mirror, he said, “April of ’83 our embassy gets hit … sixty-three people killed. Langley lost eight of its best people that day, including our Near East director and station chief.” Hurley left out the fact that he had been in the city that day. That he could have easily been one of the victims. He also left out the fact that Kennedy’s dad was one of the men they’d lost. It was not his place to share something so personal. If she wanted to tell them one day, that was her business. “Our response … we send in the Marines. October of ’83 the Marines and French forces get hit by a couple of truck bombs. Two hundred and ninety-nine men wasted, because a bunch of fucking diplomats conned the command element into thinking too much security would send the wrong message. Mind you, not a single one of those dilettante pricks ever spent a day in that godforsaken city. Our response after the barracks bombing … we say we’re not going to leave, we drop a few bombs, and we leave.”

Hurley swore to himself. “And they get it in their heads that they can fuck with us and get away scot-free. March of ’84 they grab my old buddy Bill Buckley, our new station chief, Korean and Vietnam War vet. Amazing guy.” Hurley looked out the window for a moment with sadness in his eyes. “They tortured him for almost a year and a half. Flew him over to Tehran. The bastards taped it. I’ve seen parts.” Hurley shook his head as if trying to get rid of a bad thought. “They sucked every last drop of information out of him, and then they sold it to the Russians and anyone else who was interested. Bill knew a lot of shit. The info they got from him did a boatload of damage. I can’t even begin to tell you how many nights I’ve lain awake wondering how I would have handled it. They brought in a so-called expert. A Hezbollah shrink by the name of Aziz al-Abub. Trained by the Russians at the People’s Friendship University. The names these assholes come up with just boggles the mind. Al-Abub pumped him full of drugs and poked and prodded. The word is he had two assistants who helped him. They turned it into a real science project. Bill’s heart eventually gave out, but not before they extracted some of our most closely held secrets.

“One by one assets started to disappear. Highly placed sources in governments around the region and beyond, and how did we react? We didn’t do jack shit, and the result was they became more emboldened. Qaddafi, that quack, then decides to plant a bomb in a disco in Berlin, and finally we decide to hit back and drop a few bombs on his head. Unfortunately, we missed, and then in July of ’88 that cowboy captain of the
Vincennes
decides he’s going to start racing all over the Strait of Hormuz chasing ten-thousand-dollar fiberglass gunboats with a half-billion-dollar Aegis guided missile cruiser.” Hurley had to stop and close his eyes as if he still couldn’t believe that ugly piece of history.

Rapp finished it for him. “Iran Air Flight 655. Two hundred and ninety civilians.”

“Yep,” Hurley said, realizing that having lost his girlfriend later that same year, Rapp would know the story. “Not our proudest moment. I don’t care what anyone tries to tell you, that one was our fault. Instead of owning up to it, and using it as an opportunity to show the Iranian people that we weren’t out to get them, we denied the entire thing. Went so far as to blame it on them. Now, they weren’t without fault, but that captain had two choppers on board to deal with those gunboats. The strength of the Aegis cruiser is distance. You don’t close with the enemy to use your World War II–era guns. If there’s really a threat, you back off and fire one of your missiles.”

“And that’s what led us to Pan Am Lockerbie,” Rapp said.

Hurley nodded. “It’s a little more complicated than that, but in a nutshell … yeah.”

“So,” Richards said, “we fit in how?”

“Let’s just say some people in Washington have seen the error of their ways. This terrorism, especially the Islamic radical shit, has some people spooked, and it should. They saw what happened last time when we allowed someone like Buckley to get snatched without lifting a finger. It gives people the wrong idea. Now the Schnoz has been grabbed, and it’s starting all over again. I’m not supposed to tell you guys this, but what the fuck … five of our sources have been killed in just the last few months. We’ve had to recall another dozen-plus. We’re flying blind. And once again, by doing nothing, we’ve reinforced the idea that they can do whatever they want to us, and we won’t lift a finger.”

“And the stuff you’ve been working on all night. How does that fit in?” Rapp asked.

“Let’s suppose for a second that you have five million dollars sitting in a Swiss bank account. That money represents years of extortion, drug and gun running, counterfeiting, and a host of illegal scams. You’ve worked yourself to the bone squirreling away this money. What would you do, if you woke up one morning and found out that account, your account, was empty?”

Rapp looked at the winding road and said, “I’d flip.”

“You think you might pick up the phone and start demanding some answers?”

“Yeah.”

“Damn right you would. Right now these pricks are sleeping soundly in their beds, thinking their money is safe in Switzerland. At some point in the next twenty-four hours they’re going to find out that their ill-gotten gains have vanished, and they are going to pick up the phone and they are going to go absolutely apeshit. And when they do”—Hurley pointed skyward—“we will be listening.”

CHAPTER
35
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND

A
S
promised by Hurley, the border crossing was uneventful: dour, serious Anglos in nice suits, in a nice car, crossing from one efficient European country into an even more efficient European country. They continued to wind their way toward the banking capital of the world as the sun climbed in the sky and Hurley explained in more detail what they were up to. After another forty minutes they arrived on the outskirts of Zurich. Hurley told Rapp which exit to take, and where to turn. A few minutes later they pulled up to the gates of an estate.

“What’s this, an embassy?” Rapp asked.

“No,” Hurley said, smiling. “The home of an old friend.”

The car had barely come to a stop when the heavy black-and-gold gate began to open. Rapp eased the sedan slowly up the crushed-rock drive. The garden beds were bare and the manicured arborvitae wrapped in burlap to protect them from the heavy, wet snows that were common this time of year. The place must have been magnificent in the summer. The house reminded him of some of the abodes of foreign ambassadors that dotted the countryside west of D.C. Hurley had him pull the car around the back, where one of six garage doors was open, the stall empty, anticipating their arrival.

Carl Ohlmeyer was waiting for them in his library. The man was tall, thin, and regal. At first glance, he was more British-looking than German, but his thick accent washed that thought from Rapp’s mind almost as quickly as it had appeared. He was dressed impeccably in a three-piece suit. Hurley had given them the man’s brief history. They had met in their twenties in Berlin. Ohlmeyer had been fortunate enough to survive World War II, but unfortunate in that his family farm was twenty-one miles east of Berlin rather than west. He had received his primary education at the hands of Jesuit priests, who had drilled into him the idea that God expected you to better yourself every day. Luke 12:28 was a big one: “For of those to whom much is given, much is required.” Since Ohlmeyer was a gifted mathematician, much was expected of him. When he was sixteen the Russian tanks came down the same dirt road that the German tanks had gone down only a few years before, but going in the opposite direction, of course. And with them, they brought a cloud of death and destruction.

Two years later he enrolled as a freshman at the prestigious Humboldt University in the Russian-controlled sector of Berlin. Over the next three years he watched in silence as fellow students and professors were arrested by the Russian secret police and shipped off to Siberia to do hard time for daring to speak out against the tenets of communism. The once-grand university, which had educated statesmen like Bismarck, philosophers like Hegel, and physicists like Einstein, had become nothing more than a rotted-out shell.

Buildings that had been partially destroyed during the war sat untouched the entire time he was there. All the while in the West, the Americans, British, and French were busy rebuilding. Ohlmeyer saw communism for the sham that it was—a bunch of brutes who seized power in the name of the people, only to repress the very people they claimed to champion. Hurley recited for them Ohlmeyer’s stalwart claim that
any form of government that required the repression, imprisonment, and execution of those who disagreed with it was certainly not a government of the people
.

But in those days following the war, when so many millions had been killed, people were in no mood for another fight. So Ohlmeyer kept quiet and bided his time, and then after he received his degree in economics, he fled to the American sector. A few years later, while he was working at a bank, he ran into a brash young American who hated the communists even more than he did. His name was Stanley Albertus Hurley, and they struck up a friendship that went far beyond a casual contempt for communism.

Ohlmeyer, upon seeing Hurley, dropped any pretense of formality and rushed out from behind his desk. He took Hurley’s hand in both of his and began berating his friend in German. Hurley gave it right back. After a brief exchange, Ohlmeyer looked at the other two men and in English said, “Are these the two you told me about?”

Hurley nodded. “Yep, these are Mike and Pat.”

“Yes … I’m sure you are.” Ohlmeyer smiled and extended his hand, not believing their names were Mike and Pat for a second. “I can’t tell you how exciting it is to meet you. Stan has told me you are two of the best he has seen in years.” Ohlmeyer instantly read the looks of surprise on the faces of the two young men. With mock surprise of his own, he turned to Hurley and said, “Was I not supposed to say anything?”

Hurley looked far from enthused over his friend’s talkativeness.

“You will have to excuse my old confidant,” Ohlmeyer said, putting a hand on Hurley’s shoulder. “He finds it extremely difficult to express feelings of admiration and warmth. That way he doesn’t feel as bad when he beats you over the head.”

Rapp and Richards started laughing. Hurley didn’t.

“Please make yourself comfortable. There is coffee and tea and juice over there on the table and fresh rolls. If you require anything else, do not hesitate to ask. Stan and I have some work to do, but it shouldn’t take too long, then I suggest all of you get some sleep. You will be staying for dinner tonight … no?” Ohlmeyer turned to Hurley for the answer.

“I hope.”

“Nonsense. You are staying.”

Hurley hated to commit to things. “I’d like to, but who knows what might pop up after this morning?”

“True, and I will have my plane ready take you wherever you need to go tomorrow morning. You are staying for dinner. That is final. There is much we need to catch up on, and besides, I need to tell these two young men of our exploits.”

“That might not be such a good idea.”

“Nonsense.” Ohlmeyer dismissed Hurley’s concern as completely inconsequential. He looked down at the briefcase in Hurley’s hand. With a devilish look he asked, “Did you bring the codes?”

“No … I drove all the way from Hamburg just so I could stare at your ugly mug. Of course I brought them.”

Ohlmeyer started laughing heartily before turning to Rapp and Richards. “Have you ever met a grumpier man in your entire life?”

“Nope,” Rapp said without hesitation, while Richards simply shook his head.

While Rapp and Richards retired to the other end of the forty-foot-long study to get some food, Ohlmeyer and Hurley were joined by two men whom Rapp guessed to be in their midforties. They looked like businessmen. Probably bankers. The four of them huddled around Ohlmeyer’s massive desk while the silver-haired German issued explicit instructions in German. Forty minutes later the two men left, each carrying several pages of instructions.

At nine-oh-five they received the anticlimactic call that the seventeen accounts had been drained of all funds, but that was just the beginning. Over the next three hours the computers continued to execute transfers. Each account was divided into three new accounts and then split again by three, until there were 153 new accounts. The money had been flung far and wide, from offshore accounts in Cyprus, Malaysia, and Hong Kong, and across the Caribbean. Each transfer ate away at the balance as the various banks charged their fees, but Hurley didn’t care. He was playing with someone else’s money. The important thing was to leave a trail that would be impossible to untangle. With all the different jurisdictions and separate privacy laws, it would take an army of lawyers a lifetime to slash through the mess. By noon the number of accounts had shrunk to five with a net balance of $38 million.