Chapter 52
WHAT’S your name, my American friend?”
The Italian woman asked the question as calmly as if she were discussing the weather.
If she was at all bothered by the fact that her backless dress bore splatter marks from a dead man’s blood, she didn’t show it.
Instead, her ire seemed to be mostly reserved for her fellow motorists.
After Rapp had fastened his seat belt, she’d slammed the transmission into reverse and deftly maneuvered her Coupe past the Ford that had smashed into her rear bumper.
Then she’d shot into the traffic circle without a backward look for the dead gunmen, who moments before had been set on kidnapping her.
She slid past her fellow motorists without fear or favor, her headlong flight buffered only by the liberal use of the Fiat’s horn.
Had he not experienced Italian motorists firsthand, Rapp would have thought she was driving like she was fleeing a crime scene.
She wasn’t.
She was driving like an Italian.
“Mitch. Mitch Rapp.”
He gave his true name instinctively. Not because the woman had somehow tricked him into revealing his actual identity, but because it felt right. Necessary. Though he was quite certain his companion had no trouble charming information from the male species when needed.
The woman radiated sexuality.
That was the only way he could think to describe it. In the cramped coupe’s confines, he could smell the hint of her perfume, hear her breathing, almost feel the heat radiating from the length of thigh showcased by the long slit in her evening gown.
“Mitch,” the woman said, drawing his name out as if she could taste its veracity. “I believe you. My name is Donatella Rahn. But you may call me Donny.”
She glanced his way as she added emphasis to the word you. Her eyes traveled across him, and her lips curved into a smile. A moment later, she looked back to the road as she downshifted and edged around a slower-moving car with a grace that would have made a Formula 1 driver proud.
Rapp was glad Donny was looking elsewhere.
Maybe she hadn’t seen him shiver.
“Why were you following me, Mitch?”
Donny followed up the question with an uncharacteristically jerky lane change. One that threw him against his seat belt. Rapp grunted and peered through the windshield, searching for the cause of Donny’s sudden lack of finesse.
He couldn’t find it.
Looking over, he realized why.
She was now steering with one hand and pointing a pistol at him with the other.
“Is that necessary?” Rapp said, gesturing at the gun.
“Very. I’ve been surprised twice today. I don’t intend to let it happen a third time. Why were you following me?”
Her flirty tone from earlier was gone.
In its place was the flat, no-nonsense voice of a woman who moments before had sliced through a man’s jugular as easily as if she’d been quartering an apple.
Rapp thought the three dead bodies back at the parking lot had more than demonstrated his honorable intentions, but he reconsidered, trying to see the matter from Donny’s perspective.
Whatever was happening in Italy seemed to involve multiple parties.
Just because he’d killed a trio of bad guys did not automatically make him a good guy.
A thousand possible responses that would keep his fraying legend intact flashed through his mind, but as with his name, he decided to answer honestly. For better or worse, he’d begun this conversation by telling her the truth.
He wouldn’t stop now.
“I followed you because I thought you could help me understand what’s happening. You were at Romano’s apartment and now you’re here. That can’t be a coincidence.”
Donny cut the wheel to the left, sending the little car skidding through a ninety-degree turn as if she were dogfighting rather than driving. The abrupt maneuver caused her to shift closer to Rapp. More importantly, it caused her pistol to shift closer to Rapp.
Close enough for him to grab it if he were so inclined.
He was not.
While his proclivity for dealing harshly with people who pointed weapons at him hadn’t abated, Rapp was willing to overrule his instincts.
Temporarily.
For reasons he still didn’t understand, he felt the need to build rapport with the woman. Taking away her pistol wouldn’t advance that goal. Besides, wrestling for a gun inside a moving car was a risky proposition, especially if both parties knew what they were doing.
Donny knew what she was doing.
“It wasn’t a coincidence,” Donny said. “I was sent to both places. Were you?”
Rapp considered his answer and decided that his newfound willingness to share secrets still had limitations. He wouldn’t lie, but neither would he reveal everything.
“Yes.”
“By the CIA?”
The question floated between them like a bright red line.
Donny was not stupid, but there was more than just the truth about his affiliation that hung on his answer.
Revealing what he did for the Agency was just a short step from admitting that he worked for the CIA.
The Orion team and its aims were among the agency’s most closely guarded secrets.
He wasn’t prepared to talk about his actual role in the agency with anyone, let alone an Italian woman who kept a blade in her evening gown and a pistol in her sports car.
Perhaps there was middle ground to be found.
Rapp had been speaking in American-accented English, but as the Hezbollah commander and his brother had both so astutely observed, he could pass for many nationalities. Maybe he should admit to working for an intelligence service, but hedge on the specifics?
Rapp glanced at Donny. The Italian woman was studying him. The spark that had animated her eyes at Romano’s apartment was no more. She’d just escaped a kidnapping that in all likelihood would have ended with her torture and death.
He either trusted her or he didn’t.
“Yes. I was in Verona because of a Pakistani scientist. Romano was our source.”
Donny exhaled a shuddering breath. “I was hoping you would say that.” She placed the pistol into a compartment built into her door and gripped the wheel with both hands. “My service was also interested in the scientist.”
“Your service?”
“The Mossad.”
He should have been surprised by that revelation.
Somehow, he wasn’t.
“Romano was your asset too?” Rapp said.
Donny smiled. “It appears that he was everyone’s asset.”
“Who were those men?” Rapp said, pointing behind them with his thumb. “The ones trying to kidnap you?”
Donny frowned. “I don’t know. I work for the Mossad, but I’m not Israeli. I’m a kidon.”
A kidon.
An assassin.
Rapp was looking at the female version of himself. Someone who executed taskings for an intelligence service but wasn’t a badge-carrying member. Someone who serviced targets that were impossible to reach by normal means.
Someone who would understand him.
His feeling of kinship with Donny hadn’t been imagined.
“So there’s a Mossad team operating in Italy, but you’re only read into your portion of the operation?”
“Correct.”
“Did you kill Romano?”
Donny shook her head. “I was instructed to go to his apartment to see what he knew about the Pakistani scientist’s disappearance. He was already dead.”
“You were his handler?”
“Not exactly. I recruited him, but I didn’t run him.”
Donny gave him another probing look before returning her attention to the road.
He understood.
She was more than just an assassin. He’d half guessed her other function after she’d admitted to working for the Mossad. Her beauty and charm made her an ideal candidate for another role employed by intelligence services since the time of antiquity.
The honey trap.
Donny seduced people on behalf of the nation of Israel.
“Okay,” Rapp said, “what about the Kuwaiti ambassador’s gathering? I didn’t see you. Were you there?”
“You first. What do you know about the men who tried to kill me?”
Rapp suppressed a flash of irritation at Donny’s evasion, but he understood her reasons for obfuscating. The woman wasn’t his asset or even from his intelligence service. She was risking as much with this conversation as he was. Maybe more.
To get, he had to be willing to give.
Even if he didn’t like it.
“I think they’re part of the Hezbollah cell who kidnapped the Pakistani scientist.”
“Or rescued him, depending on how you look at it.”
Rapp studied Donny, his face carefully blank.
Did she know he’d been tasked to kill the scientist?
She stared at him and then shrugged. “I fed information to Romano. Information about the scientist.”
Though he kept his expression neutral, Rapp wanted to laugh with relief. She didn’t know about his tasking. The Orion team’s secrecy hadn’t been penetrated. “The Mossad used you to pass info about the Pakistani to the Italians so that they would arrest him?”
Donny nodded.
“And somehow a Hezbollah cell also got that information?”
“Like I said, my Italian friend appeared to be everyone’s asset. What do you know about the Hezbollah cell?”
“Not enough. I know they have the Pakistani scientist and that they wanted the Kuwaiti ambassador dead.”
“Why?”
“Don’t know,” Rapp said, shaking his head in frustration. “I’ve been one step behind this entire time. I was hoping you could help me catch up.”
“The Mossad encouraged me to go to the Kuwaiti ambassador’s talk. I was there, but hadn’t made it through security yet. I was fashionably late.”
She grinned at him as she said the last part.
Once again, he suspected he was somehow missing the punch line of an inside joke. Rapp shrugged off the feeling and circled back to his earlier question. “You used a Mossad cover to attend the ambassador’s event?”
Donny shook her head. “I used my day job.”
“Which is?”
Donny chuckled. “You’re a smart boy. I’m sure you’ll figure it out. The point is that it looks like your Hezbollah cell is tying off all loose ends associated with the Pakistani. Somehow, I got caught up in the net. Maybe they had the Italian officer’s flat under surveillance and made me.”
“Even if that’s true, how would they have known you’d be at the ambassador’s talk?”
Another smile. “I’d say it was a pretty safe assumption given my vocation.”
Before he could reply, Donny was downshifting and braking.
She’d been navigating Rome’s streets in a large box as they’d been talking and had returned to an intersection just south of the section of street where she’d been walking when he first noticed her.
Angling the Coupe to the right, Donny guided the car to the curb and stopped.
“I think our little get-to-know-you is over. Once you make sense of things, maybe you should pay me a visit.”
Rapp took the hint.
Unbuckling his seat belt, he got out and closed the door behind him. Then he leaned in through the Coupe’s open window. “How do I find you?”
“Just look up.”
The sedan rocketed away, leaving him in a cloud of exhaust.
Rapp watched the taillights disappear for a long moment, wondering about the woman and her cryptic message.
On its surface, the notion that he should even consider a romantic interlude with an Italian Mossad-trained assassin was absurd.
On the other hand, he’d tried normal relationships with normal women and heartbreak was all he had to show for his efforts.
After his parting with Greta, he’d come to realize the truth—life as an assassin was incompatible with normalcy.
Until he was ready to trade his vocation for something more mundane, a serious romantic relationship was not in the cards.
Unless that relationship was with a fellow assassin.
A pair of headlights played across him, saving Rapp from pursuing this line of thinking further. He was reaching for the Bobcat and its remaining round when he recognized Hurley’s Fiat.
The car came to a stop next to him and Rapp climbed in.
“I figured out why your girl looked so familiar,” Hurley said.
“Why?”
“Look up.”
Rapp stopped fiddling with his seat belt, followed Hurley’s pointing finger, and swore. The billboard above the street featured a full-length shot of a stunning Italian woman modeling the latest evening gown from the House of Armani.
Donny.