Vince Flynn - Act of Treason

Kennedy shook her head. “They’ll say you rehearsed the story with him.”

“Let them say what they want, because there’s more. The guy isn’t even Greek.”

“Excuse me?”

“He’s Bosnian. His real name is Gavrilo Gazich, and here’s the best part.” Rapp grinned and added, “He’s wanted by the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague for atrocities committed against civilians during the civil war.”

“You’re sure?”

“One hundred percent.”

Now it was Kennedy’s turn to smile. “Anything else?”

“A list of people he is suspected of killing. Most of them in Africa over the past five years or so. One U.N. official, a couple of relief workers, and a bunch of politicians, warlords, and generals.”

“All of it’s ironclad?”

“As solid as it gets. The FBI is going to have a field day. The U.N. might even thank us.”

The director of the CIA turned the gray stick over in her fingers and thought of the photos that Cap Baker had given her. “Any idea who hired him to take out the candidates?”

“No, but I know who tried to kill him after he screwed up.”

“Excuse me?”

Rapp folded his hands across his lap and explained to her what had happened on Cyprus. How he had spotted the other team keeping an eye on Gazich’s office. How Rapp watched Gazich casually stroll down the street, shoot the one lookout in the car and then lure the other two up to his office, where he killed one and began torturing the other. Having watched Gazich operate, Rapp explained that he’d decided the man was too dangerous to do anything other than cripple him. Telling a man like that to drop his gun and lie down on the ground would have ended with one or both of them dead.

“Who were these people trying to kill him?” Kennedy asked.

“At first I thought they were Russians. One of them maintained that he was KGB.”

Kennedy gave him a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me look and said, “You’re not serious?”

“As it turns out they were Belarusian, and at least one of them was former BKGB. I brought the leader of the group back.”

Kennedy was surprised yet again. “On Sunday?”

“Yes.”

“And why am I hearing about it now for the first time?”

“I needed to check some things out.”

“Where is this man?”

“I handed him over to Dr. Hornig this evening.”

“You were having a hard time getting him to talk?”

“No. He talked all right. We just couldn’t separate the truth from all of his bullshit.”

“So what does the Belarusian mafia have to do with all of this?”

“That’s a good question. The guy we have in custody, his name is Milinkavich. He claims he was sent to Cyprus to kill Gazich for screwing up some contract he’d been hired for. I asked him if they did a lot of work with the Saudis and I got an interesting reaction out of him.”

“What was that?”

“He says his boss, Aleksandr Gordievsky, who runs the Belarusian mafia, hates Muslims. Says the man is Eastern Orthodox and, I quote, ‘thinks Islam is the creation of Satan.’ He claims they would never work for the Saudis.”

Kennedy’s thoughts returned to the photos. “Anything else?”

“There’s some stuff that’s not adding up.”

“Such as?”

“Gazich, not that you can trust the guy, claims that he did exactly as he was told. That he didn’t screw anything up. It was the people on the other end of the operation who gave him bad intel.”

“How so?”

“Gazich says a half a minute or so before the explosion he received a phone call that told him the target was the second limo. So I figure that the Secret Service must have shuffled the limos after they left the conference. Someone is standing on the street, they watch the candidates get in the second limo and they make the call to Gazich. Then the motorcade starts to roll, and a block later the Secret Service has the second limo move up to the lead position. They do that stuff all the time. You can easily see where the terrorists screwed up.”

“It sounds like it all adds up, though.”

Rapp shook his head. “I talked to Rivera. She says they didn’t shuffle the limos.”

“They didn’t shuffle the limos?” Kennedy repeated, her surprise obvious.

“Nope, which leads me to believe that Gazich is lying.”

The sick feeling in Kennedy’s stomach grew. After a moment she said, “Or he’s telling the truth.”

“Why would you say that?”

Kennedy looked across the room, out the window and into the darkness, and sighed. “I think it’s time I showed you something.”

Kennedy opened her safe, retrieved the oversized envelope, and walked over to the sitting area across from her desk. Rapp followed and came to a stop at her left as she laid out the photos in a slow, deliberate manner. At first Rapp had no idea what he was looking at, other than the fact that they were surveillance photographs of two people, who if he had to guess probably weren’t married. There was something vaguely familiar about the woman. Rapp ignored her naked body and focused on the face. She was rather animated in the first six shots but in the seventh, the camera had caught her with her mouth closed, her face relaxed, and her eyes looking off in the distance. She had a detached vacant look on her face that was definitely familiar. Rapp finished looking at all the photos and then went back to the seventh one. He almost picked it up for closer examination, but his professional instincts stopped him. No sense leaving his fingerprints on something that obviously had Kennedy spooked.

Again, Rapp focused on the face, and ignored the beautiful body. The high cheekbones, the thin nose, the long, wavy, chestnut hair tangled and partially obscuring the right side of her face. There was something definitely familiar about the woman. Rapp blocked out every feature except the eyes, nose, and mouth. Suddenly everything clicked. He pictured the woman with her hair up in a kind of loose ponytail, dressed stylishly yet conservative, playing the role of a candidate’s wife. It was Jillian Rautbort. The president-elect’s wife. Rapp’s focus intensified as he remembered the sorrow he’d felt for the political couple after the attack. Jillian Rautbort wasn’t much older than Anna had been when an explosion had taken her life. Rapp felt Alexander’s pain. He’d seen some of the footage of the funeral and the public statements Alexander had made in the immediate aftermath. He’d watched the man on election night when his opponent had conceded the race. Even in victory the man seemed irreparably wounded. It appeared that the greatest achievement of his career was tempered by a loss that could never be repaired.

These photos now forced Rapp to call those painful memories into question. Was it an act? Rapp had a hard time believing it. His job depended on being able to judge people in a split second. Picking friend from foe in a foreign land where the wrong decision could mean his life. Alexander’s pain seemed so genuine. If he’d been faking it, the man was an absolute monster.

Rapp’s eye settled on the man in the photos for the first time. The collage started with the two standing and then with Jillian riding the man on a lounge chair next to the pool. The guy was big. Jillian Rautbort looked tiny on top of him. Where Jillian was completely naked, the man still had on most of his clothes. His pants were pulled down to mid-thigh. There was something oddly familiar about him as well. Rapp noticed something coiling from the man’s left ear. His eyes opened a bit wider and he began searching the other photos for the same coil. He found it in two other photos.

“Jesus Christ,” Rapp said softly.

He looked at the photos where the man was on his back. Specifically the right side of his belt line. He expected to find either a radio or a gun. The photo wasn’t clear enough, but something was there.