Vince Flynn - Act of Treason

As soon as Gordon was out of earshot, Garret moved within a half foot of Ross and in a hushed voice said, “This is too good to be true.”

“I know. Now I can go out there and really clean house.”

“I don’t give a shit about the CIA. I’m talking about the fact that they got the wrong guy.”

“We don’t know that for sure.”

“Give me one good reason why Rapp would refuse to come in. He knows he fucked up. He’s not going to come back here and face scrutiny. He’s gonna run, or who knows he might even try to frame this guy to save his own ass.”

“So what do we do?”

“Pour gas on this thing.”

“Huh?”

“We light the match and fan the flames. We get you out in front of this thing.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. Even if this is the guy, and that’s looking pretty iffy at the moment, Speyer told me there is absolutely no way he can be traced back to us. You’re a statesman now. You come out hard on this thing. Very law-and-order. What Rapp did was wrong. Excessive force. The U.S. doesn’t condone torture and will not tolerate it. Then you make some statement demanding an inquiry.”

Ross shook his head. “Too strong right now. I think we’d be better off taking a position off the record.”

“With Tom Rich from theTimes.”

“Yep. That way we drive the story and then when the other shoe drops we ask for Rapp’s and Kennedy’s head.”

“I like it.” Garret glanced over each shoulder. “These damn agents make me nervous. You go on without me. I need to make a few calls. I’ll see you back at the hotel for lunch.”

Ross watched Garret leave and then started for the limo. Gordon was standing next to the open rear door replying to an e-mail with both thumbs. Ross could see that he was unhappy with being excluded and a thought occurred to him. It was something he’d been thinking about since Garret had arrived at the airport on Sunday. The vice president-elect climbed into the back seat and waited for Gordon to settle in.

“Jonathan, have you noticed any strange behavior from Stu lately?”

The expression on Gordon’s face seemed to say, “Are you kidding me?” He put his BlackBerry away and took off his reading glasses. “I’ve always found Stu to be a bit strange.”

Ross smiled. “I know. The man is a real pain in the ass, but he’s extremely good at what he does. He’s short-term. You’re long-term. Long-term friend and confidant. Please don’t ever forget that.”

“I won’t. Thank you, sir.”

“You’re welcome.” Ross smiled. The vehicle started to move. He glanced out the window and said, “So back to Stu. Any odd behavior lately?”

“Sir, to put it bluntly the man is an asshole. And I mean twenty-four-seven, so it’s hard to judge, but I at least expected him to relax this week.”

“Me too.”

“This is our time to celebrate. People are lining up to hand him retainers. Hell, I have people calling me to see if I can set up meetings for them.”

“The victory was very good for his business.”

“And I have no problem with that. I’d think, though, that the guy would let his hair down a little bit, but instead he has been an even bigger jerk than usual this week.”

“I agree. It’s almost like he’s preoccupied with something else.”

“How do you mean?”

“I don’t know.” A practiced perplexed expression fell across Ross’s face. “I don’t know how to put my finger on it, but something is bothering him. It seems like he’s worried about something.”

Gordon looked with concern at his boss. “Do you want me to do some checking?”

Ross hesitated like he was thinking long and hard about the question, and then shook his head. “No. I’m sure it’s nothing. We’ve put up with him this long. What’s five more days?”

Facial recognition software was not a precise science. The programs could be tricked, people’s appearances often changed over time, many people shared the same facial features, and in the end the programs were often limited by the quality of the photograph itself. Beyond that you had to actually have a photograph on file that you could compare to the new image. The search for the identity of the mystery man in the converted bomb shelter of Coleman’s warehouse had been complicated by three facts. The first was that the man had easily gained over a hundred pounds since his last official photo, the second was that he had many of the common features associated with the Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe, which dumped him into a large pool of candidates, and the third was that he was not Russian.

Rapp read the dossier thoroughly, as did Coleman and Dumond. An analyst at Langley had made the discovery after talking to his contacts at French intelligence and Interpol. The analyst factored in the weight gain and broadened his search to include intelligence officers in Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Romania. The man, it turned out, was Belarusian. He had never worked for the KGB, but he had worked for the Belarusian KGB or BKGB as it was known among intel types. The BKGB was KGB’s little brother. Where many of the former Soviet Republics had gone on to establish real independence Belarus by far maintained the closest relationship with Mother Russia. The man had worked for the state security service for nearly a decade. During that time it was suspected that he also worked on the side for a former high-ranking communist official who was waging a violent war to become the mob boss in Minsk.

His real name was Yuri Milinkavich. French intelligence had started a file on him back in 1996 when he was running a counterintelligence team in Minsk. Three French business executives had traveled to the Belarusian capital to bid on a contract to build a hydroelectric dam. The bids were to be presented in person over a two-day period. The French executives were arrested on the way to present their bid and detained under suspicion of espionage for three full days and then let go with no explanation. French intelligence suspected, but could not prove, that the German company that won the contract had paid to have the French team taken out of the picture. During his tenure with the Belarusian Security Service four more similar complaints were filed. One more by the French, two by the Italians, and one by the Japanese. Interpol eventually started a file on Milinkavich and they now suspected that he was now working for the Belarusian mafia.

Rapp considered all of this carefully. The information fit, which was a big hurdle to get past. Rapp believed without a shadow of doubt that the man in the bomb shelter was in fact Yuri Milinkavich. Now the question was, why in the hell had he been trying to kill Gazich? Rapp ordered Dumond to begin pulling everything they had on the Belarusian mafia. Russia and its former states were far from Rapp’s area of expertise. His was Europe, and more specifically, the Middle East and Southwest Asia. Rapp had followed Russia ’s demise nonetheless. With the collapse of the centralized government, former regional party officials became crime bosses overnight, stepping in to fill the power vacuum. The ensuing battles that erupted between vying interests made Chicago ’s infamous mob wars of the 1920s look like a schoolyard fight.

Rapp struggled to put it all into context. How brutal was Milinkavich? To some this might seem ancillary at the moment, but for Rapp it was a crucial question. There was no ticking bomb to be dealt with. No lives to be saved by pulling answers out of the large man. The need for torture was not pressing. For the moment Rapp decided he would limit the interrogation to a simple Q amp;A. Give Milinkavich a chance to tell the truth and explain why he was trying to kill Gazich. He had already proven himself a liar by claiming to have worked for the KGB, but the Russians and the other Slavic people were funny when it came to the truth. Absolutes were a rare thing. There were more often than not degrees of honesty. In Milinkavich’s mind, saying he worked for the KGB might not be a lie. He was more likely to see it as a partial admission. He had worked for the BKGB, but not its better-known big brother. But the bigger distinction was that he claimed he still worked for them. Gazich had been right back in his office when he laughed at Milinkavich’s claim that he worked for the KGB. Gazich had known back then that Milinkavich worked for the mob. That was after spending only a few minutes with him. That meant the two possibly knew each other from a previous job.