Page 24 of Denied Access
In spite of himself, Rapp was intrigued.
Whatever Ohlmeyer might be behind the façade of gentleman financier, he was not a blowhard. Stan Hurley did not trust his life to unserious men. That said, what Ohlmeyer was asking of Rapp was not insignificant. The Iron Curtain might have fallen, but the former Soviet Socialist Republics were not exactly bastions of freedom and democracy.
Until now, Rapp’s talents had been directed toward targets more suitable for his appearance and aptitude for Arabic, but that didn’t mean he was ignorant of the seismic shifts upending governments and alliances all across the European continent. While many of the Western-based foreign policy intelligentsia were dancing in the streets and proclaiming the end of history, Rapp viewed the Soviet Union’s demise with a more skeptical eye.
Yes, the collapse of communism was undoubtedly a good thing, but he wasn’t convinced that rainbows and unicorns were about to spring from the ash heap. Based on his own study of history, Rapp didn’t believe in a bias toward good or morality. The United States was an exceptional nation precisely because the values and ideals on which it had been founded were the global exception rather than the norm. More often than not, the collapse of an empire birthed chaos, and the forces that filled the ensuing void were not benevolent. Swirling undercurrents of greed and corruption were already choking Russia’s fledgling attempt at democracy.
“Who are we talking about?” Rapp said.
“Alexander Hughes.”
Despite the fact that he was employed by the agency, Rapp had deliberately limited his exposure to the organization. He was a member of the Orion team. A black program with a singular goal—the elimination of his nation’s enemies.
Rapp was not an intelligence officer.
He was an assassin.
He did not concern himself with agency politics, bureaucracy, or lore. He had no ambition to one day rule an empire from Langley’s seventh floor or serve as a chief of station for one of the CIA’s coveted overseas postings. Rapp neither knew nor cared how the CIA ran its clandestine service because as far as he was concerned, he was not part of the agency. His handler was Irene Kennedy, and his mentor, Stan Hurley, was the senior member of Orion and a fellow contractor.
That said, even Rapp knew the name Ohlmeyer had just rhetorically tossed onto the table. The damage done by Alexander Hughes rivaled the havoc wrought by Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the American husband-and-wife spy team who provided the Soviet Union with the means to construct their first atomic bomb. While Hughes hadn’t upended the world’s nuclear strategic balance, his espionage had hamstrung British and American intelligence efforts for a generation.
Hughes had been a CIA officer assigned to the Berlin Operations Base, the most important intelligence posting during the Cold War. Hughes had used his access to funnel sensitive information to the Stasi and the KGB. Information responsible for decimating American and British espionage efforts in East Germany and the Soviet Union. The total butcher’s bill was difficult to calculate, but even conservative estimates put the number of executed Russian CIA agents at close to a dozen.
To make matters worse, Hughes was able to escape to East Germany before his espionage was discovered. He accepted a job with the Stasi, then thwarted justice a second time by fleeing to Moscow after the Berlin Wall fell. Once in Moscow, he resumed his espionage activities against the United States, this time in the KGB’s employ.
Alexander Hughes was definitely a man who needed killing.
But was Rapp the person to pull the trigger?
“My taskings come from my handler,” Rapp said, “not you or anyone else. Unless you’d care to explain exactly what this has to do with Greta, I’m leaving.”
Rapp got to his feet.
The lone bodyguard moved closer.
Rapp locked gazes with him and the man stutter-stepped. It was apparently not lost on the guard that the same Beretta that had been pointing at him through his sedan’s windshield was still holstered at the small of Rapp’s back. Rapp felt a bit of sympathy for his fellow shooter, but only a bit. To paraphrase another Hurleyism, people who played stupid games won stupid prizes.
“Two days ago, a message arrived at the doorstep of my house in Zurich. An unmistakable message.”
Rapp remained standing, but he changed his focus from the bodyguard to Ohlmeyer. “I’m listening.”
“An intricately wrapped gift box like the sort you might receive from a designer store. My wife, Elsa, is fond of such stores and I am well acquainted with their appearance.”
“Did Elsa open the box?”
Ohlmeyer shook his head. “Thankfully not. I saw it first and something made me pull on the scarlet ribbon tied in a bow across the top. Maybe it was curiosity or the compelling nature of a length of satin just waiting for a tug. Or perhaps it was the dregs of the intuition that kept me alive during my early days in East Germany. You’re too new to know this just yet, but once that instinct has been awakened it never fully goes to sleep.”
Rapp was indeed relatively new at this game, but he was not new to killing. Stan and Irene had kept him busy. Very busy. And while Rapp wasn’t the type to keep notches on his Beretta’s pistol grip, Hurley had once let slip that Rapp was the most successful graduate of the Orion program to date.
Men in Stan’s line of work only measured success one way.
“The box,” Rapp said, not bothering to hide his exasperation. “What was in it?”
Ohlmeyer held eye contact with Rapp for a beat before looking at a point somewhere over his shoulder. The banker’s facial muscles contracted, pulling his still-handsome features into a mask of rage. “Two things. An old friend’s head and a piece of stationery.”
“What was on the paper?”
“A handwritten message and a series of numbers. The message said that the next box I received would hold the head of someone who was even dearer to me.”
