Pursuit Of Honor (7 page)

THE report of the big.45 Kimber was deafening. Rapp didn’t have time to cover his ears. He’d barely had enough time to grab Hurley’s wrist and deflect the shot. Just barely, as was evidenced by the red powder burn that was now painted in a cone shape across the top of Adams’s forehead. The slug was now lodged in the concrete wall beyond Adams’s head. A crater the size of a fist marked the spot.

Rapp couldn’t hear a thing but he could see just fine. Hurley was screaming at him and Adams was sobbing-his eyes closed, his head down, his chin bouncing off his chest every few seconds as he gasped for air, snot pouring out of his nose. Hurley pointed his Kimber at Rapp and began to use it to punctuate whatever point he was trying to make. Rapp, none too fond of having a gun pointed at him, almost snapped the older man’s wrist, but caught himself in time. He slowly brought his hand up and gently moved the muzzle of the gun to a less threatening direction.

After pointing at his left ear, Rapp mouthed that he couldn’t hear what Hurley was saying. He walked over to the door and gestured for Hurley to follow him. Rapp hit the intercom button and asked for the door to be opened. As he stepped into the outer room, he found Nash, Lewis, and Maslick all standing there with shocked expressions on their faces. Rapp placed both palms over his ears and pressed down for a good five seconds while he swallowed several times and flexed his jaw. The first words he began to recognize belonged to Hurley. He was still cursing up a storm.

Rapp looked at him still waving his gun around and yelled, “Put that damn thing away before you shoot someone.”

Hurley pointed the gun at Rapp again and barked, “Someone! You’re the only one I’m thinking about shooting!”

Rapp’s entire posture was instantly transformed. Like a big black panther who had been stirred from a lazy nap, his muscles flexed and his weight was transferred onto the balls of his feet. His eyes narrowed and his brow furrowed and he half shouted, “Stan, put that gun away right now, or I’ll break your wrist.”

Hurley, having trained Rapp, knew not only that he meant it, but that there was a good chance that at this close distance, Rapp could do it before he got off a shot. Slowly, and with a not-too-happy look, he shouldered his pistol and asked, “Why in the hell did you stop me?”

The answer was complicated, although there was one really good reason and several decent ones. Rapp decided to go with the big one- the one they all should have thought of to begin with. “Where in the hell is he getting his information?”

“We’ve already gone over that,” Hurley said in an irritated voice. “He’s filling in the gaps. If he had anything real, he would have taken it to the Justice Department.”

Rapp shook his head. “He still had to start somewhere. Someone is talking to him.”

“He’s the Gestapo. We’ve already found dozens of bugs. He has half the offices on the seventh floor wired.”

The inspector general’s office at Langley was often called the Gestapo by the front-line troops at Langley. This was exactly what Rapp had feared-that they would let their dislike of Adams cloud their judgment. He took a deep breath and asked, “What’s our rush?”

“You know as well as I do, you can’t let shit like this fester. The best can lose their courage, and besides, we have bigger fish to fry.”

“And we also have one shot at finding out what he knows.”

“We’ve gone over this,” Hurley snarled. “We have what we need. We kill him and whoever he was talking to won’t know if he’s dead or if he’s disappeared. Either way the effect is the same. We send a clear signal that we’re done fucking around.”

“By we,” Nash jumped in, “I assume you mean the royal we, because no one knows you’re involved in this. Mitch and I are the two guys with the targets on our backs.”

“Why you little…” Hurley reached for his gun.

Rapp stepped forward and grabbed Hurley’s wrist. He looked at Nash and his bloodshot, tired eyes and instantly knew he was strung out. Hell, they were all strung out. Sleep was a luxury they had experienced far too little of in the past week. “Head up to the house,” Rapp said to Nash, “and get cleaned up. We need to be on the road in less than thirty minutes.”

“But, I don’t-”

“I don’t give a shit what you think!” Rapp barked. “It’s an order. Stan’s right… this isn’t a frickin’ book club. Now get your ass up to the house and get cleaned up.”

It was obvious by the constipated look on his face that Nash wanted to say something, but he managed to keep his mouth shut and head for the door. After he left, Rapp turned his attention back to the group and said, “Something Doc said earlier got me thinking.” Rapp looked at Lewis. “You said he’d never commit suicide.”

“I said it was highly unlikely.”

“Good enough. So his desire for self-preservation is pretty high?”

“Absolutely.”

Looking back at Hurley, Rapp said, “I think we can turn him.”

“And I think you’re nuts. Doc, tell him why we can’t?”

“Once we turn him loose,” Lewis said, “and he feels safe, he will turn on you.”

“What if he never truly feels safe? I could check in on him from time to time and remind him that I’m looking over his shoulder.”

“And why take the chance?” Hurley asked.

“Because he might be useful.”

“Doc?” Hurley said as if he wanted him to explain the obvious to Rapp.

“It’s risky, Mitch. With someone like this, there is never any real loyalty.”

“What if we co-opt him,” Maslick suggested.

They all turned, a bit shocked, and looked at the linebacker of a man, who was known for his quiet demeanor. “What exactly do you mean?” Lewis asked.

“What if we get him to take ownership?” Maslick asked in a soft voice. “Get him to help us out.” Looking directly at Hurley, he said, “Like flipping a foreign agent. You’ve said so yourself many times, Stan. All you need is a little money, a little time, and a cause worth fighting for.”

IF the words had come from anyone else, Rapp felt confident that they would have elicited a rather strong response from Hurley, but they’d come from the gentle giant, so the old spymaster stood there and quietly chewed on them. Rapp took the time to figure out his next move. As he did so, he saw the tension leave the old man, and it occurred to him there was a heavy emotional toll attached to this untidy situation. No matter how tough he was, there was no accounting for the burden of almost killing your best friend’s son, a boy you had cradled in your arms as an infant and bounced on your knee as a toddler.

Hurley hobbled over to the closest desk and sat on the edge. Rapp looked at Lewis, who was watching the old man with legitimate concern. Thinking the silence was only making things worse, Rapp said, “Stan, this could work. You may have just scared him straight.”

“That is a valid point,” Lewis added. “He expected you to save him from Mitch… not the other way around. And that was a pretty close call. I doubt you could have faked it any better.”

“I wanna go back in there and throw him a life line,” Rapp said. “Doc?”

Lewis shrugged. “You know the routine. To start, don’t ask him anything you don’t already know the answer to.”

“And don’t try to turn him,” Hurley offered in a detached voice. He’d swiveled the monitor on the desk around so he could look at Adams. Faint sobs could be heard on the small desktop speakers. “That comes later. After he’s proven he really wants it. Go ahead and hold out a glimmer of hope, but that’s it.”

“Understood.” Rapp nodded. He grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and a bottle of vodka and a glass. “Buzz me if anything comes to mind.”

Rapp knew all he had was twenty minutes, but he was probably never going to get another shot at Adams when he’d be this fragile. Rapp punched in the code and opened the door. There Adams sat, with his crimson forehead peppered with a hundred little droplets of blood from the muzzle blast, his eyes closed and his chin down. His pants were damp and there was a puddle of urine at his feet. Hurley was right about one thing-this was a nasty business, and it was easy to lose your nerve if you didn’t operate under tight constraints. Put a bullet in a guy’s head, dispose of the body, and move on. No sense slowing down to peruse the carnage, and don’t bother to look in the rearview mirror either. You start doing stuff like that and you’re inviting trouble.

Even so, Rapp saw an opportunity. It wouldn’t be long before people began to wonder where Adams had gone. The office didn’t expect him back until this afternoon, and unless they’d missed something, he had no breakfast meetings in New York. His staff would probably start to get nervous around midafternoon. They’d try his cell phone and get nothing. Then they’d try the house, and if they got hold of his wife she’d tell them she had not spoken to him and, while that might be strange for some couples, it was not strange for them. The staff would alert the appropriate people at Langley, who would more than likely sit on it overnight. But if he didn’t show up for work the next morning, the feds would be brought in, and not long after that they would discover he had left the country. Rapp had no illusions that he could roll Adams and have him back at the office by tomorrow morning. That simply was not going to happen. But there was another option-one that would buy them more than enough time.

With one hand Rapp dragged the table back over and placed it in front of Adams. He set the water bottle, vodka, and glass down on the table and then withdrew a small tactical knife from his belt. He then walked behind Adams, cut the flex ties from his wrists, and said, “I think you probably need a drink.”

Rapp circled back around the room and stood facing Adams. He wanted to have a good view of what would happen next. Adams slowly lifted his head and looked at the objects sitting on the table. He hesitated and then reached out. His right hand went straight for the bottle of vodka, which Rapp had expected.

Adams clutched the bottle and spun the silver cap off, not caring that it fell to the floor. With a shaky hand he clanged the neck of the bottle against the rim of the glass and let the clear alcohol come splashing out, a good portion missing the glass. Adams set the bottle down and drew the glass to his lips, downing about three ounces of vodka in two gulps. For a moment he looked as if he was going to pour another glass, but instead he started to shake uncontrollably, and then he was sobbing again, his head on the table, cradled in his arms.

Rapp could only make out every fifth word or so. It was a complete meltdown. He’d seen it before and knew there was no stopping it, short of smacking him, but that would be a mistake. The die had been cast five minutes earlier, and Rapp was now going to have to play the good cop. After a few minutes the sobs softened and the breathing stabilized. Eventually Adams looked up at him with pleading eyes and spoke.

“Why?”

It was a pretty open-ended question, so Rapp said nothing. He just stood there and stared back at Adams’s puffy, bloodshot eyes. The guy was a mess.

“I don’t understand,” Adams sniffled. “I’ve lived an honorable life. I don’t deserve this.”

Rapp wanted to refute the comment, but managed to stop himself. Playing good cop didn’t come easy to him. His instinct was to smack the fool across the head a few times and make it really clear if he didn’t do everything he was told, he’d get Hurley back in the room and have him finish the job. Instead, he sighed and said, “Glen, a lot of people have lost their bearings during this mess.”

“Not me.”

“I know you think you’ve done the right thing,” Rapp said carefully, “but you haven’t. You’ve been suckered into this partisan game that everyone wants to play in Washington. Republican versus Democrat… liberal versus conservative… none of that matters. At Langley, the only thing we’re supposed to concern ourselves with is national security. That’s our mission, and the day the ACLU starts driving our national security policy is the day America is really fucked.”

“But you guys don’t see what you’re doing,” Adams pleaded. “We are becoming the very monsters we are trying to defeat.”

Rapp had heard this bullshit line too many times. “Give me one example.”

Adams held out his hands and looked around the room. “What would you call this?”

Rapp laughed and said, “If you worked for al Qaeda, and they caught you divulging their secrets to the media, they wouldn’t simply kill you, they’d kill your wife and kids and make you watch, and then if you were lucky they would put you out of your misery quickly, but they probably wouldn’t. They’d toy with you for months and use you as an example to anyone else who was less than resolute in his faith.”

“We’re not them. I was left with no other options. I couldn’t just sit there and watch you guys operate with such reckless disregard for the law.”

“Really.” Rapp looked at the door again. “Maybe I made a mistake.”

“You’re damn right you did. You should have never brought me here.” Adams grabbed the bottle of vodka.

“I’m talking about stopping him from blowing your head all over that wall.”

Adams looked up while he was pouring another drink. “I am not the enemy.”

“Actually you are, Glen, and if you can’t see that you’ve fucked up, there’s no hope of saving you. Stan would just as soon tear your head off and piss down your throat. He despises you. He sees you as the bright shining example of how the baby boomers have fucked up this country.”

“That’s a good one,” Adams sneered, “coming from the most racist, bigoted generation this country has ever seen.” He took another drink.

“You can bring it up with Stan.” Rapp checked his watch. “I have to get back to Langley for a meeting.” He took a step toward the door and stopped. “I thought you might be worth saving, but I guess I was wrong.”

“Wait!” Adams said desperately. “You can’t leave me here with him.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because he’ll kill me!” Adams yelled.

“And how would that affect me?”

“It would.” Adams’s eyes darted around the room as his brain tried to come up with something. “It would make you an accessory to murder.”

“You’re kidding, right? That’s the best you can come up with?”

“I have powerful allies,” Adams warned.

Rapp rubbed his forehead and decided to write off the man’s lame excuses to the vodka. “Glen, I don’t think you’re a bad person. I just think you’re confused. You’ve gotten yourself wrapped up in the legal aspect of this. You’re focused on 2 percent of the issue and you’re ignoring the other 98 percent. You’ve lost all sense of proportion, and if you can’t open your eyes to that, there is nothing I can do to help you.”

“I have done nothing wrong.”

“Last chance, Glen. I’m going to walk out this door and Stan’s going to come back in here and blow your head off. Then they’ll cut you up into six pieces and incinerate you limb by limb. By lunch the only sign that you ever existed will be a pile of ash that’ll fit into a coffee can. By dinner that ash will be spread far and wide. All evidence destroyed. The only thing the feds will have to go on is the fact that you left the country… that and the fact that you’re a drunk. They’ll look for a few weeks and then they’ll write your ass off.”

Adams shook his head defiantly. “They will know something is wrong and they won’t stop until they get to the bottom of it.”

Rapp shrugged as if he’d given it his best shot. “I wish I could say it was nice knowing you, Glen, but I’d be lying. You’re a self-serving prick, and you won’t be missed… not even by your own family.” Rapp hit the intercom button. “I’m done in here. He’s all yours.”