Page 26 of Denied Access
“Who else are you asking for help?” Rapp said, gesturing toward the silver tray laden with coffee cups. Ohlmeyer smiled.
“I’m glad thoughts of my granddaughter haven’t completely blunted your instincts. I don’t believe in playing fair. You are my best option tounravel this plot, but I would not trust Greta’s life to a single man. And before you ask, no, I will not tell you anything about the people I’m about to meet any more than I will discuss you with them. Now, I’m afraid the time for choosing is upon you, Mr. Rapp. Will you help my granddaughter?”
In the year or so since Rapp had graduated from Hurley’s version of the Farm and begun to work operationally, he’d learned a great deal about himself and his enemies. He’d also discovered quite a few things about his supposed allies. He trusted Irene Kennedy, and Stan Hurley had begun to grow on him, but the job gone wrong in Paris had only reinforced something he’d instinctively known from the beginning of his clandestine career—there was just one person on whom he could completely rely.
Himself.
Technically, Rapp shouldn’t be agreeing to undertake an operation without permission from Kennedy or Hurley.
Technically.
His final set of instructions from Hurley came to mind. At the time he’d issued them, Hurley had been driving Rapp away from a Paris hotel in which Rapp had just killed four men, one of whom happened to be a French intelligence officer and another the presumptive director of the CIA. That the American, Paul Cooke, was a traitor and had been plotting with the others to kill Rapp made the choice to engage in the unsanctioned assassinations a no-brainer, but Hurley had known that the deaths would hit the international press with the subtlety of a nuclear blast.
Accordingly, Stan’s final instructions had been both simple and unambiguous.
Lie low for a while.
To Rapp’s way of thinking, this meant that he was off the government clock until such time as Hurley, or more likely Kennedy, rescinded those instructions. While Stan had been direct from the standpoint that he expected Rapp to remain off the grid, he hadn’t specified what Mitch should do during his vacation.
Or what heshouldn’tdo.
With this in mind, if he decided to take a sightseeing trip to Moscow and drop in on Alexander Hughes, Rapp couldn’t imagine that Hurley would object.
Actually, he could very much imagine Stan objecting.
Loudly.
But what Hurley, Kennedy, or even Thomas Stansfield would think of his choices didn’t much matter to Rapp. This wasn’t about spies, national secrets, or old grudges. Greta had been there for him when he was at his most vulnerable. If someone was foolish enough to threaten the woman he loved, he intended to help them see the error of their ways.
Permanently.
Rapp turned from the tray of coffee mugs to Ohlmeyer’s expectant blue eyes. “I’m in.”
“Excellent. First-class tickets on Emirates airline to Moscow are waiting for you at the airport. I took the liberty of purchasing them under your French legend. I’m certain you and Mr. Hughes will have a productive conversation and that you’ll be reunited with my granddaughter in no time.”
Rapp wasn’t so sure.
CHAPTER 12
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
IRENEKennedy walked through the hallway at a pace that was just short of a run. Her haste was partially due to the fact that she was late for a meeting with the acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
But only partially.
While she’d become more accustomed to the ebb and flow of the headquarters building, Irene was still a field officer at heart. She purposely avoided the bureaucrats who landed a coveted spot in Virginia with the intention of never venturing back to the real world. Though she wanted to believe that such people made up a far smaller percentage of employees in the nation’s premier intelligence organization as compared with the other sprawling governmental agencies that called the greater Washington, DC, area home, recent events were putting this thesis to the test. The man many had figured as the odds-on favorite to become the next CIA director, Deputy Director Paul Cooke, had been found dead in a hotel room having been in the process of passing classified information to a couple of other equally dead bad guys.
And Rapp had been the one who’d killed him.
Irene wasn’t normally one for office intrigue. Yes, she was a legacy employee who counted the legendary Stan Hurley as a sort of uncle and Thomas Stansfield, deputy director of operations and current acting director, as a surrogate father, but she had zero interest in the political jockeying that went along with moving up the ranks at the agency. Instead, she’d approached her mandatory headquarters rotation with the attitude that she would keep her head down, work hard, and get back to an overseas posting as quickly as possible. Her failure to return to the field in a more timely manner had more to do with Stansfield’s gravitational pull than her hard work, but even after several years, Irene still refused to consider Langley home. But home or not, Irene was a spy and keenly attuned to things normal people didn’t notice. Things like the sense of morale a place projected. And Langley’s current morale could be summed up in one word.
Bad.
“He’s expecting you.”
Irene smiled her thanks at Meg, Stansfield’s assistant, pretending not to notice the implied rebuke. With a force of will cultivated through countless hours of training at the CIA’s school for fledgling spies known as the Farm, Irene kept her expression placid until she was behind the woman. Only then did she stop to nervously tuck her shoulder-length auburn hair behind her ears.
Though she’d yet to celebrate her thirtieth birthday, Irene was already reporting directly to the man who would probably occupy the seventh floor’s corner office. She knew that Stansfield would have never promoted her so quickly had her work as a case officer not justified her rapid accession, but the same couldn’t be said for her coworkers. A CIA case officer’s promotion was tied to successful asset recruitments. Irene agreed with the philosophy of basing promotions on merit rather than time in service, but when peers succeeded at different rates, jealousy was a natural by-product. Irene had to be better than anyone else because Thomas Stansfield had been her surrogatefather after her own was killed when a Hezbollah terrorist detonated an explosive-laden van in front of the US embassy in Beirut, Lebanon.
