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“Ah, sorry,” David said. “I left out part of the story. The man that was smashed against the van was hemorrhaging pretty heavily. I think he got hit by a piece of shrapnel. Something big. I’m betting that he’ll need a trauma center.”
Joe was preparing to ask what that had to do with anything when he saw a road sign and put two and two together. A road sign for the Soviet air force base that was now a Russian facility. “You want to see where they take him for help?”
“Exactly,” David said, flashing him a smile. “Now that we’re out of Daugavpils, the nearest civilian hospital is in Preili, which is another twenty-five miles to the north. But if you’re a Russian operative—”
“You’ll want to use the level-one trauma center at the former Soviet air base in Lociki. That’s pretty good thinking for a theater major.”
“Like I said, I only got blown up once. Okay, here we go—moment of truth.”
The minivan zoomed up to the turnoff for the air base. Continuing straight on A13 meant the Preili hospital and back to square one. Right meant the air base and a potential validation of David’s theory. For a long moment, the Volkswagen’s silhouette hung motionless.
Then the minivan’s turn signal activated.
The right-turn signal.
CHAPTER 10
BARCELONA, SPAIN
THEHotel Casa Fuster was one of Barcelona’s most luxurious accommodations. Tucked away just off the iconic Passeig de Gràcia, the hotel was a study in stunning architecture, fantastic dining, and a service staff that embodied old-world sensibilities. The hotel was not anywhere near Rapp’s price range, which was why he’d never entertained the idea of staying there let alone renting the grand suite in which he currently found himself.
Then again, money didn’t really factor into the decision-making criteria of the man seated across the coffee table from Rapp. Though he’d been born and raised in East Germany, Herr Carl Ohlmeyer had escaped to West Berlin shortly after receiving his degree in economics from the prestigious Humboldt University. He excelled in the field of finance and found work in one of West Germany’s most important banks, where he eventually made the acquaintance of a brash young American intelligence officer by the name of Stanley Albertus Hurley. Together the two men wreaked financial havoc on the East German banking system and the Soviet patronage that kept the corrupt system afloat.
Now that the Cold War was over, Ohlmeyer ran his own family bank with the help of two of his sons and his favorite granddaughter. Officially, he was out of the intelligence business. Unofficially, he still helped his lifelong friend Stan Hurley obtain the occasional off-the-books passport or financing for operations too sensitive to be traced back to the CIA’s collection of shell companies.
Ohlmeyer was a serious man who’d spent the entirety of his adult life engaged in the serious business of fighting on behalf of freedom-loving people against the ravages of fascism and communism.
He also happened to be Greta’s grandfather.
“What are your intentions toward my granddaughter?”
Rapp resisted the urge to take a swallow from the cup of coffee he held in his left hand. Herr Ohlmeyer was a savvy businessman and had deep connections into the world of espionage. In addition to the support he provided to Hurley’s official capacities, Ohlmeyer ran a retirement service for Stan and several other Orion operatives in the form of numbered Swiss bank accounts and safe-deposit boxes containing cash, passports, and the other assorted credit cards and licenses needed to establish a new identity.
Ohlmeyer was quite literally Hurley’s get-out-of-jail-free card, and he provided these same services to Rapp. In turn, Rapp had repaid the banker’s kindness by fomenting a clandestine romantic relationship with his granddaughter. A relationship that had exposed Greta to the dangers of the covert world he inhabited. Rapp had been dreading this conversation, but it was time to face the music. Squaring his shoulders, he did something extremely difficult for a spy.
He told the truth.
“I love her.”
The words rolled off Rapp’s tongue a little easier than expected, partly because he’d been practicing them on Greta, but also because he really did love Ohlmeyer’s granddaughter.
This had not always been true.
In the beginning, their relationship had mostly been built on lust.He and Greta were young, attractive, and available. Rapp had been taken with Greta’s fierceness as much as her physical beauty. Though he couldn’t read her mind, he believed that part of her initial attraction to him centered on his vocation.
She was bedding an assassin. A wolf among sheep. A member of a select cadre to whom her grandfather afforded a special kind of respect, while making it abundantly clear to her that such men were not appropriate targets for his beloved granddaughter’s affection. Had it not been for Paris, the torrid sex would probably have fizzled out, and Greta would have gone the way of the women who’d preceded her.
But Paris had happened.
Finding himself with a gunshot wound to the shoulder, betrayed by his country, and the target of an international manhunt, Rapp had reluctantly brought Greta into the clandestine side of his existence. He’d fully expected her to bolt after experiencing the bloody reality of an assassin’s life in all its gory detail.
She hadn’t.
Instead, Greta had risen to the occasion and Rapp found himself responding to her sacrificial love in a way he hadn’t since… since his college girlfriend had perished in the wreckage of Pan Am Flight 103 in Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. It had taken Rapp longer to echo Greta’s proclamation of love, but once he’d spoken the words he did so with the single-minded intensity that he applied to all aspects of his life.
Rapp did love Greta.
Whether that love would survive her grandfather’s scrutiny remained to be seen.
