Page 86 of Denied Access
Without breaking stride, he launched a vicious uppercut with his right elbow while pinning the knife arm against the hood’s chest with his left hand. Elbow connected with jaw in a satisfying crunch.
The mugger crumpled.
Rapp stripped away the blade in one fluid movement. Then he stomped on the prone man’s wrist. The bones crunched. Spinning, he dropped into a knife fighter’s crouch and faced the remaining toughs. “Are we done?”
Again, the question was asked in Arabic.
Again, Rapp’s choice in languages seemed to register.
Or maybe it was the sight of their comrade splayed across the concrete moaning through the blood streaming from his broken jaw while cradling his wrist. Both men raised their hands palms facing upward and backed away. Slowly. Rapp gave each a hard glare. Then he picked up his backpack, slipped it over his shoulders, and continued on his way.
The men did not follow.
A hundred yards and a world apart from the earlier violence, Rapp emerged from the alley and found himself at the park. Forgoing the first two cabs idling at the curb, he opened the back door to the third and climbed inside.
“Aéroport, s’il vous plaît.”
If the cabdriver was at all irritated that his new passenger had broken protocol by ignoring the line of cabs, the wad of schillings Rapp pushed across the divider seemed to do the trick. The Volvo accelerated in a smooth purr as the cabbie studiously ignored the angry gestures and shouts from the drivers lounging outside the first two cars. Rapphad found that a liberal enough application of currency could smooth over most misunderstandings.
“You’re bleeding, monsieur.”
“Merci,” Rapp, said noticing the splotch of crimson on his elbow. “I took a fall back there.”
The cabbie nodded, but his grim expression suggested that Rapp wasn’t the first passenger who had emerged from the Reumannplatz after experiencing a fall. All the better. He preferred to remain unnoticed. The cabbie passed back a stack of napkins, and Rapp padded his elbow dry.
The blood wasn’t his.
This time.
CHAPTER 47
MOSCOW, RUSSIA
WHOare you and where is Duane?”
Irene was no stranger to hostile receptions. CIA officers were thieves charged with stealing another nation’s most closely guarded secrets. On the rare occasions when she traveled without a legend, no one was happy to see her. From the extra attention she received from customs workers, to side glances from police officers, to aggressive surveillance teams manned by counterintelligence operatives, Irene was accustomed to frosty introductions.
She just wasn’t used to receiving them from fellow Americans.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Ambassador,” Irene said. “My name is Dr. Irene Kennedy and I’m with the Central Intelligence Agency.”
“I know who employs you. What I don’t know is what you’ve done with Duane Patterson. Where is he?”
Irene sighed.
Unlike many of her fellow spies, Irene understood the need for diplomats, and she respected their place in the world. Because her father operated under State Department cover, she’d grown up as part of the extended diplomatic family. She knew firsthand the dedication of hernation’s foreign service officers and their tireless efforts, but that did not mean she saw eye to eye with her counterparts. At their core, diplomats wanted to smooth out differences between the US and their foreign hosts, while the activities of CIA officers often incited tensions, especially when espionage operations went south and the American ambassador was left holding the bag.
In Moscow, a good many operations had gone south.
“Mr. Patterson was unexpectedly recalled to Langley.”
“You mean fired. I don’t pretend to understand how you people make decisions, but this is an asinine move if I ever saw one. One of your officer’s wives is still in a Russian jail, the chief of station and his deputy were both PNG’d, and now you show up and fire the third in command? Seems to me this shitstorm calls for a little continuity while we ride out the squall rather than throwing more leaders off the boat.”
And that in the nutshell was the underlying difference between her organization and the ambassador’s. He wanted peace and stability and was willing to compromise operationally in order to get it. She wanted to conduct an intelligence action against her nation’s adversary and intended to make use of the chaos to camouflage her activity. If the ambassador thought the road was bumpy now, wait till he heard what she was here to propose.
“Sir, I appreciate your concern for Miss Henrik. Acting Director Stansfield has asked me to personally relay his thanks for your work lobbying the Russians to release her.” Irene wanted to add that those efforts, while well-intentioned, had proven to be wholly ineffective. Too often diplomats fell into the trap of confusing diplomacy for results. Talk was well and good, but if those feverish meetings didn’t translate into tangible outcomes, the dialogue was just hot air. But out of respect for the ambassador, she didn’t say that. Despite his less-than-welcoming introduction, she was hoping they could still work together. “As for Mr. Patterson, I won’t speak for the acting director, but I’d be happy to set up a call with Thomas Stansfield if you’d like to voice your concerns personally.”
The ambassador smashed his fist down onto his desk, startling Irene and sending a wave of coffee cresting over the lip of his mug. “You don’t get it, do you? I’m trying to prevent the situation with your officer’s wife from becoming an international incident at the same time I’m navigating rising tensions between Russia and one of its former Soviet republics. I’ve got a meeting with the Russian foreign minister in two hours to try to unfuck the damage your blown operation has done, and my phone is ringing off the hook. Apparently, Miss Henrik’s father is a bigwig in Minnesota politics and now every Gopher State elected official from the governor on down has called to offer their thoughts. I’m waiting for the local PTA to get in on the act.”
