Page 80 of Denied Access
“By ‘take out,’?” Stan said, “you mean—”
“They’re dead.”
Nope. No misunderstanding.
Hurley stared at his assassin, coming to several realizations in rapid succession. One, Rapp really was his assassin. Stan had trained Rapp, pushed him to his limits, tried his damnedest to drum him out of the Orion program, and then provided tacit approval and assistance for Rapp’s decision to kill Cooke, a French DGSE operative, and several others in a Paris hotel room.
For better or worse, Rapp was his.
Two, Rapp was more than just good. He was the best the program had ever produced. Probably the best assassin any program like this had ever produced. The kid had nearly bested Hurley in hand-to-hand combat on his first day of training at the Lake Anna facility. But that hadn’t been Rapp’s peak performance.
Far from it.
Much like a newly drafted Michael Jordan, Rapp’s skills had continued to improve the longer he’d plied his craft. Exponentially so. Killing terrorists wasn’t easy. Killing terrorists protected by bodyguards wasstraight-up hard. Single-handedly killing multiple Russian paramilitary operatives on unfamiliar terrain bordered on the mythical.
Three, Hurley had imagined that he was creating the human equivalent of a fire-and-forget missile. Someone who could hunt down and kill terrorists with no oversight and little to no logistical help. In that respect, Hurley had succeeded, but it turned out that he’d been using the wrong analogy.
Fire-and-forget missiles did not select their own targets.
Rapp did.
Hurley had a thousand questions.
He didn’t ask them.
The disconnect he felt with Rapp was profound. No, that wasn’t quite true. The disconnect he felt between himself and the life he’d lived for the past thirty years was a chasm so wide as to be uncrossable. Hurley had been wrong. Wrong about Rapp’s fitness to be an assassin, wrong about his protégée-turned-traitor Victor, wrong about Irene’s ability to lead the Orion program, and most critically, wrong about himself. He’d instructed Rapp to lie low after the Cooke killing on the pretext that the young assassin needed to give him time to smooth things over with Stansfield and Irene, but the rationale he’d provided wasn’t the whole picture.
While it was true that the violent murder of a CIA director in waiting wouldn’t just blow over in a news cycle or two, Hurley needed time as well. Time to take an honest look at his mistakes in order to plot a new path forward. He was stubborn, but he wasn’t stupid. He had some crow to eat if he hoped to earn his way back into Stansfield’s good graces and he owed Irene an apology.
A massive apology.
That shit sandwich wasn’t going to taste better with time, so Stan figured he might as well take the first bite.
“You were the guy on the ground,” Hurley said, forcing the words past his thick tongue. “The Russians were your call.”
“Who are you and what have you done with the man I knew as Stan Hurley?”
Hurley had been bracing himself for a question like this from Rapp, but it was Volkov who’d landed the verbal jab. The exact moment he’d decided that a little humble pie was in order, he found himself saddled with not one but two sons of bitches more than happy to make him grovel. He wanted to cry out to the Almighty at the injustice of it all, but didn’t. There was a reason why he was joined at the hip with these shitbirds.
Penance.
“I’ve grown older and wiser since we last met,” Hurley said, eyeing the Russian. “You’re just fatter.”
Hurley might be on the “making amends” step of a twelve-step program, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t sprinkle in a little truth with his newfound humility. Besides, watching the smile slide off the little fucker’s face almost made up for missing an opportunity to chew Rapp’s ass.
Almost.
“No need to be rude,” Volkov huffed. “I’m here voluntarily and at considerable risk.”
“Wrong,” Hurley growled. “You’re here because that was our deal. Smuggling you out of East Berlin was one of my greatest tactical accomplishments. Persuading the agency’s seventh floor to turn you loose with a bank account full of money and no minders was my biggest political achievement. If you recall, there was a condition to our deal—if I ever came to you for assistance, you would help with no questions asked. Sound familiar?”
“Da.”
“Good. Then let’s stop with the bullshit. You’re here because I bought and paid for you twenty years ago.”
Volkov smiled, revealing a familiar gap between his front two teeth. While there was no telling where the Russian had spent the millions Stan had funneled to his offshore accounts, it had certainly not been on dental work.
“This is the Stan Hurley I remember,” Volkov said. “I will of course aid your efforts in any way I can. There is just the slight issueof compensation. I had a thriving business that took years to build in Bizerte. After the messiness of our exit, I’m afraid I won’t be welcome back anytime soon.”
