Chapter 15
RAPP punched the final number into the phone’s keypad and hoped for the best.
This was the third call he’d placed in the last thirty seconds.
The first two had connected him with automated answering services, which had played a series of prerecorded messages.
Taken in sum, these innocuous-sounding statements had provided him with the digits necessary to make what he was hoping was his final call.
The call that would connect him with a human being.
Hurley had drilled into him the importance of a good memory from the beginning of his training.
Sometimes this training took the form of committing random license plates to memory.
Other times, he’d been required to dump a bag full of objects onto the table, view them for an instant, put the items back in the bag, and then write the bag’s contents on a sheet of paper.
Once, Hurley had given him a lottery ticket full of potential numbers and then required him to recite them in order as he was engaging targets on the shooting range.
Rapp had found this exercise to be the most vexing, so it was only fitting that he was now duplicating that training evolution after a fashion.
No paper targets were swinging from metal holders for him to engage, but Rapp was required to memorize strings of numbers dictated to him via emotionless automated voices while dodging rats the size of house cats.
As if summoned by his thoughts, a particularly vile-looking specimen popped his whiskered head above a box to Rapp’s right.
Brown with matted fur and eyes that looked far too intelligent for his taste.
It was the rodent’s jaws that really gave him pause.
The rat had an overbite, underbite, or perhaps both, as the front and rear teeth bypassed each other.
It resembled a small warthog and looked hungry.
Rapp considered reaching for his Beretta, but didn’t.
Though the outbuilding he was occupying was set off from the main warehouse, a steady flow of trucks lumbered past the dirty glass window.
Shooting the rat wasn’t worth the possibility of being discovered.
Besides, he’d apparently correctly entered the string of ciphers designed to connect what appeared to be an unused handset in an equally unused building to a secure American network.
The call had gone through.
The phone rang once.
Twice.
Someone answered.
“Hello?”
“Irene, it’s me.”
“Are you injured?”
He was not.
Though if the rat had its way, the situation might prove temporary. The rodent grated its malformed teeth against each other, producing a sound akin to fingernails dragging across a chalkboard.
“No,” Rapp said, stretching the telephone cord to its maximum as he paced to the center of the small room. If that rat was going to mount a sneak attack, he wanted to see it coming. “But I had to talk with you securely and the office wasn’t an option.”
Even embassies or consulates that were not large enough to hold a separate CIA annex had some form of secure communication.
Unfortunately, they were also known to foreign intelligence services and were often under surveillance.
Rapp was not an acknowledged CIA officer, or even an agency employee.
He was what was known as an illegal, meaning that he had none of the diplomatic protections typically extended to spies operating under official cover.
His anonymity was his only defense against imprisonment or worse should his nefarious activities be discovered.
As such, waltzing into a diplomatic mission could very well be a career-ending move.
Instead, Rapp had made use of a bolt-hole—one of the communication outposts maintained for nonofficial cover, or NOC, officers.
Bolt-holes were the modern equivalent of the old onetime-use pads in which ciphers transformed a written message passed between asset and handler into something unreadable by an adversarial counterintelligence agency.
Bolt-holes consisted of telephones located within American overseas companies that could be linked into a greater secure network for onetime calls.
In Rapp’s case, the bolt-hole was part of an export-import company located in Verona’s commercial district.
The host company was paid a fee, in the form of a lucrative government shipping contract, to maintain the handset.
In return, the bolt-hole was situated on a section of property accessible to an agent with the correct combination for the cipher lock, but out of the way of prying eyes.
Unfortunately, the terms of the agreement did not specify that the host building would be free of rats.
A rustling to his right confirmed his worst fears—his four-legged adversary appeared to be engaging in a flanking maneuver.
Rapp fingered the knife hidden in his belt as he prepared to meet the attack.
“Understood,” Irene said. “Before you get started, please remember that this connection is better than an open line, but it should not be considered secure.”
“Got it,” Rapp said. Another rustling, this time from his left. Apparently, buckteeth had found reinforcements. “I’m at a bit of a crossroads and could use some assistance.”
“What kind of assistance?”
Rapp paused, considering how he wanted to phrase his request. He knew that the line wasn’t completely secure, but he also wanted to ensure any vagaries he employed in the name of operational security wouldn’t result in misunderstandings on Irene’s part.
After thinking about several cutesy terms, he decided to just roll the dice.
Even if the line wasn’t completely secure, the odds that a foreign intelligence service was actively monitoring it and could react to what he was about to say in real time were low.
But not zero.
“I need a surveillance team.”
“In support of your original tasking?”
“Not exactly. The situation has changed. Significantly. I need help developing a new course of action.”
The answering silence wasn’t quite deafening, but it did speak volumes.
Rapp’s request went beyond a simple operational request. Up until now, the CIA’s involvement with the Orion team went in one direction.
Intelligence generated by the agency was channeled to assassins prosecuting targets in the field.
While the agency did provide an advance team and surveillance support for Orion team assassinations, Orion operatives did not task the CIA.
This arrangement ensured that the killings were siloed off from the agency writ large in order to offer deniability to CIA executives should they be forced to testify in front of Congress.
What Rapp was proposing would pierce this carefully constructed veil.
This was not a decision to be made lightly.
“Can you help me understand the nature of this new course of action?”
Rapp gritted his teeth.
While he hadn’t expected Irene to blindly approve his request, he was hoping not to discuss the operation in detail.
The rash part of him wanted to blurt out the specifics in response to his handler’s request for information, but he knew this was a childish impulse.
Tasking official CIA assets would leave a paper trail that probably originated either with Irene or with Stansfield.
She would need to understand what he was trying to accomplish in order to both issue the necessary instructions to the necessary people and shroud her orders through some veneer of legitimacy.
Put more simply, he was the one who needed help cleaning up a mess.
He couldn’t fault her for asking questions.
“The CliffsNotes version is that things haven’t gone according to plan. At least two interested buyers bid on the painting this morning. One acquired it. In the ensuing time, I made the acquaintance of perhaps a third interested party.”
“Perhaps?”
Rapp sighed. “The winning bidder asked if I was interested in viewing the painting separately and suggested we meet tomorrow evening to discuss a co-ownership strategy. Then I encountered the third party. They could have been conducting due diligence on behalf of the winning bidder or might have represented someone else entirely. I’m not sure. ”
Rapp waited, willing Irene to read between the lines.
“I see,” Irene said after a bout of silence. “If I’m understanding correctly, your attempt to anonymously bid was unsuccessful. Perhaps this might be a good time to just walk away.”
Rapp had entertained the same thought numerous times over the last several hours.
The safest course of action was to pack up his things and call it a day.
The Pakistani scientist, while an important target, was not worth burning his ability to prosecute additional targets, or potentially, the entire Orion team.
Besides, walking away today didn’t mean he was giving up on the scientist entirely. The agency analysts who unwittingly helped craft target packages for Rapp and his cohorts had found a way to get to the scientist once. They could do so again. The smart play was to leave Italy and regroup.
But the smart play wasn’t always the correct one.
“Normally, I would agree,” Rapp said, “but the amount of third- party interest in this painting makes me wonder if perhaps we’ve misjudged its worth.
I’d like to talk to the person who tipped us off to its availability.
Maybe they can shed additional light on its provenance or maybe they’ve been selling information to multiple buyers.
Either way, I think it’s a conversation worth having. ”
This time, the ensuing silence extended to the room as if his bucktoothed friend was also considering his request. What Rapp was proposing was the equivalent of poking a hornet’s nest with a stick in the hopes of counting how many wasps were inside. This was the epitome of stupid.
Except.
Except the Mystery Man’s words kept ringing in his ear.
Let’s just say that I have an eye for talent and a belief in the utility of shared purpose.
An organization skilled enough to plan and execute an operation to snatch someone off the streets of Verona moments before the Italian police arrested him now had the talents of an infamous chemical weapons expert at their disposal.
Rapp wasn’t sure who the Mystery Man represented, but it probably wasn’t the Boy Scouts.
If there was a time to go all in, this was it.
“You’re sure?” Irene said. “The person you’d like to speak with has connections throughout the art world. If he takes offense at the conversation, it could affect future auctions.”
Meaning the CIA’s asset was highly placed and could make trouble for the agency if Rapp rubbed him the wrong way. He understood Irene’s concern, but the opportunity to find and neutralize the Pakistani was worth the risk.
“Understood. Please set up the meeting.”
“Okay. Let me see what I can do. Call the office in an hour for instructions. Good luck.”
Irene hung up.
Rapp didn’t usually put much stock in the role good fortune played in operations, but today he found himself appreciating Irene’s well-wishes. If events thus far were any indication, he would take all the luck he could get.