Vince Flynn - Consent To Kill

"What insurance policy?"

"I put everything on an encrypted disk and gave it to an attorney." Abel was lying. "If I fail to call him by a specific date each month he has instructions to send the disk to the FBI. I want my million dollars every six months, Rashid, and if I see any sign of Tayyib or any of his people I will call Mitch Rapp personally."

Abel slammed the phone into its cradle, and spun around. He grabbed his bag and started off down the street. He hadn't made arrangements with an attorney yet, but he would the first chance he got. Rashid's renegotiated deal was hard to argue with. If he'd been in his shoes, he would have done the same thing. Abel still didn't trust him and that was why he was going to have to proceed with plan B. It was a bit risky, but it was better to do it now than wait another day. The Americans were sure to find out about his mountain retreat at some point. He'd left his new Mercedes in a private garage, before he'd left for Venice. He would pick it up, dash across the border to his Alpine house, and empty out his safe, which had over $500,000 in cash, plus a few weapons, several sets of identification, and some very important files.

The two Saudis were on their backs, their ankles and hands bound with white flex cuffs and duct tape stretched tightly over their mouths and eyes. The bigger man's elbow wound had been bandaged, not because they were concerned for his health, but because they didn't want to have to clean up any more blood. It had taken an entire bag of cat litter just to soak up the puddle of blood that had poured out of the third man's head. Milt's team was used to this stuff. Within minutes they were running around town purchasing a vacuum, cleaning solutions, a two-wheeler, cat litter, duct tape, rolls of heavy plastic, and even a fifty-inch projection TV. The TV was left in an alley not far from where it had been purchased, and the box was saved.

Rapp looked on, as the guy he'd shot in the head was wrapped up in plastic, duct-taped, and then placed in the large TV box. None of them were carrying IDs, but Rapp was willing to bet the farm they were Saudis. The big guy with the busted elbow was left on the floor while the other guy was knocked out with a needle full of Xanax to the thigh, and tossed in the box on top of his dead friend. Milt's guys resealed the box with clear packing tape and took it away on the two-wheeler. The dead guy would be chopped up into pieces and dropped into vats of industrial acid. The second guy they weren't sure what they'd do with, but after listening to the woman tell them how she'd been brutally beaten and raped, Rapp was tempted to cut the guy's balls off, shove them down his throat, and let him choke to death.

Coleman and Sarah were in the other room trying to talk to the woman. They'd given her a much smaller dose of Xanax to help calm her down. She was making too much noise. She told them how she had answered her apartment door the previous night and the big man had been standing there. The next thing she remembered was waking up in a basement somewhere and then the beating started. They wanted to know where her boss was. So did Coleman and Sarah, but they didn't push it. After all this woman had been through she was not going to respond well to rough or even assertive behavior. They listened and asked a few gentle questions to help nudge her in the right direction. When was the last time you spoke to your boss? Have you ever seen any of these men before?

She explained that her boss had called her on Thursday of the previous week and told her not to bother coming in for a while. She decided to take the time to travel. She was going to leave this very morning and then these men showed up at her apartment. At this point she had a melt-down, and it took several minutes and a little Xanax to calm her down. One of the men she recognized. The tall one. She was pretty sure he was a Saudi. Her boss did a lot of work with the Saudis and several of the other Arab countries. She explained that Vienna was home to one of the three United Nations headquarters and also OPEC. Coleman pressed her on the type of work they did. Mostly lobbying, and some risk assessment. Coleman asked her if she knew her boss had worked for the East German secret police. She said she did not, and he believed her.

Meanwhile Rapp was going through the contents of the safe. It took one of Milt's guys less than two minutes to open it. They'd found some interesting stuff in there, like a copy of Alice in Wonderland. A leftover from his old days with the Stasi no doubt. Probably given to him by his KGB supervisor. Rapp opened it to the title page and sure enough it was addressed to Abel. The inscription was in Russian and since Rapp didn't understand a word of it he handed it off to one of Milt's people so it could be boxed up and taken back to Langley for deeper analysis. It was an old trick of the KGB to use books as keys to decipher coded messages. There was also a 9mm H amp;K P2000 with a silencer. Rapp inspected the weapon, turning it over in his hand and checking it from several angles. It was spotless, but not from cleaning. Rapp guessed the weapon had been fired fewer than a hundred times. There were a few disks that were coded. They were sent straight over to Milt so he could begin working on them with Marcus Dumond back at Langley. Other than that, there were a few files, 10,000 euros, and a fake passport and matching credit card. All said, there was nothing that was going to tell them where Abel was right now.

Rapp had attempted, briefly, to interrogate the big guy, but he began screaming like all hell and Rapp had been forced to pistol-whip him across the side of the head to shut him up. The guy was just coming out of it and Rapp was anxious to try again. He wanted to find out just who in the hell he worked for.

Coleman came up and tapped him on the shoulder. "You might want to come talk to her."

"What's up?"

"She's talking about some place that didn't show up on any of our checks. Some Alpine house. I guess it's a mountain retreat that her boss uses to get away."

"Has she ever been there?"

Coleman shook his head. "I guess he's pretty private about it, but over the years, she's heard bits and pieces."

"Does she know where it is?"

"Not specifically, but she says it's in the Tyrol Region near a city called Bludenz."

Before Rapp could ask just where in the hell Bludenz was, Milt Johnson's voice came squawking over the secure digital radio. "Mitch, are you there?"

Rapp had taken out his earpiece. The radio was clipped to his belt. He snatched it and thumbed the talk button. "What do you need, Milt?"

"Did I tell you this guy dropped one hundred and twenty-five grand on a brand-new Mercedes a week ago?"

"No."

"Well, I think I just found it."

Rapp stared at the radio for a second and shook his head. "Am I supposed to be impressed?"

"Not yet. You're supposed to ask me how I found it."

"Milt, how did you find it?"

"I'm glad you asked me that. These high-end cars all come with GPS. We hacked into the Mercedes database, entered the vehicle number that we got off the registration, and came up with the car's GPS locater. I kicked it over to the NSA this morning and they just let me know where the car is."

"Let me guess…it's parked at the Vienna International Airport."

"No. It was actually parked in Zurich, but six minutes ago it started moving."

Rapp paused and looked at the little black radio again. "Where is it headed?"

"South is all they said. Out of the city."

Rapp didn't press the transmit button right away. He knew Zurich well and was trying to picture what lay south of the city. The lake was dead south. Everything flowed around it either to the east or west. He hit the button. "Is the car headed southeast or southwest?"