Chapter 36
AS hip checks went, the one Rapp applied to the man was gentle enough.
Nothing that would have earned him a nod from Wayne Gretzky and nowhere near what he’d suffered on the lacrosse field. Still, the motion accomplished its intended purpose.
The proprietor tumbled through the open doorway into the steel box.
Rapp hesitated for a split second, and after hearing the comforting sound of silence as opposed to gunfire, followed the man inside.
As befitting of a storage container, illumination came from a single, swaying light bulb that cast a weak, sickly glow across the interior.
But while the light wasn’t exactly operating room quality, it worked well enough for Rapp to determine what he was dealing with.
The space contained a safe in one corner and stacks of rugs piled along the edges.
A table and two chairs dominated the center of the storage container.
One of the chairs was empty.
The other was not.
“Bloody hell!” The woman seated in the chair facing the door shot to her feet. “Are you all right?”
To Rapp’s practiced eye, the proprietor was very much all right. He’d arrested his stumble with the empty chair and avoided a fall. But based on the intensity and rapidity of the stream of Turkish he directed at the woman, Rapp was betting his pride hadn’t escaped injury.
The woman nodded and said something in Turkish before switching back to English. “I can assure you that our guest meant no harm and will allow you to leave unmolested. Isn’t that right, Mr….”
“Johnson,” Rapp said. “And you’re mostly right. I have no intention of hurting your friend so long as he leaves the door open. I’m claustrophobic.”
The woman frowned at Rapp before again engaging the proprietor in Turkish. Whatever she said seemed to do the trick. With a final, exasperated huff, the man stalked out of the container, giving Rapp a wide berth as he passed.
He also declined to shut the container’s door.
Rapp considered both of these wins.
“Hope you’re proud of yourself.”
Rapp chuckled. “I think my mom was the last person to say that to me. I was ten. Nowadays, I’m more concerned with staying alive.”
A thundercloud settled on the woman’s face, and Rapp laughed a second time.
His reaction was probably just further antagonizing her, but he couldn’t help himself.
She was in her forties, stood five-foot-nothing, and weighed maybe one hundred pounds soaking wet.
Her short, dark hair was cut in the pageboy style, and a pair of oversized glasses were perched on the end of her nose.
If pressed, he would have guessed her to be an elementary school librarian or perhaps a junior accountant fresh out of college.
In no world would he have pegged her as an intelligence officer working for the British Secret Service.
Which was exactly the point.
“You Americans—never content to use finesse when brawn will do.”
Rapp felt his smile fade. “How long have you been doing this?”
“Does that matter?”
“From my perspective, quite a bit.”
The woman’s brown eyes flashed behind her glasses. “This is my third operational posting. I have—”
“Have you ever lost an asset?”
The woman’s dark eyes smoldered. “I don’t see what that has to do—”
“It’s a simple question.”
Her lips formed a hard line. “No.”
“That’s what I thought. No disrespect to you or your service, but things change once that happens. You change. I don’t doubt your competency or commitment, but until someone dies on your watch, you won’t understand the stakes of this business. Not truly.”
The woman pointed a slender index finger at Rapp. “Who are you to be lecturing me? I don’t know how your intelligence service works, but in mine, not losing an asset is a sign of success.”
“That’s one way of looking at it. Another might be that you’re playing it safe.”
The air around the woman seemed to shimmer with rage. “You arrogant piece of trash. My government might have agreed to this pairing, but I certainly haven’t. I think it best that we nip this in the bud before this encounter escalates into a rift between our services.”
“You’re going to walk away,” Rapp said, “even though you’ve been tasked to work with me?”
“No. Walk is far too tame. I’m going to run. Sprint as if the devil himself was giving chase. To do otherwise would be to risk tarnishing my reputation for remaining calm in the face of idiocy.”
Rapp grinned. “You’ll do.”
“What? WHAT?!”
“Look—I’m not a typical operative and this isn’t a typical operation. I needed to get a sense of my operational partner. You gave it to me.”
“This was all a joke?” the woman said, waving her hands.
“Absolutely not,” Rapp said. “My life will be in the balance. I have no way of vetting my cover, but I can vet you. There’s a high likelihood this operation will go off the rails at some point.
When that happens, I need a partner willing to do what needs to be done regardless of what her minders back at Century House say. You fit the bill.”
The flush that had colored the woman’s cheeks was slowly draining away, but her chest still heaved like she’d just sprinted the hundred-yard dash.
Rapp’s explanation might have calmed her fight-or-flight response, but his words had done nothing to quench her flashing eyes.
“The bit about losing an asset—was that rubbish?”
“No,” Rapp said. “Losing an asset does change you. It transforms death from an abstract concept into something that slaps you in the face.”
“Have you lost an asset?”
“I’ve seen plenty of death.”
The woman opened her mouth as if she were going to pursue that topic further, but then slowly closed it. Maybe she was tired of arguing or maybe she sensed the veracity of his statement. Either was a point in her column.
“If we’re through arguing, how about you shut the door?” The woman gestured over Rapp’s shoulder.
“Why?”
“Because the bleeding Faraday cage doesn’t work when the door’s open, now does it?”
Rapp took in his surroundings again. Where before he’d seen the makings of a perfect ambush, this time he considered why a trained intelligence officer might want to meet in such a place.
The storage container’s metal walls were a great place to start, but in order for electromagnetic energy to be transmitted around the container instead of through it, any potential breaks in the circuit would have to be mitigated.
Like the open door for instance.
Turning, Rapp looked behind him.
“Now he gets it.”
This time, Rapp was the one who bit his tongue.
He still didn’t like the idea of locking himself in the container, but he also appreciated the woman’s focus on operational security.
Rapp was still of the opinion that what had taken place in Verona was not solely the work of jihadis.
At least one or perhaps multiple foreign intelligence services had been nosing around the city, which meant that his adversaries probably had the ability to electronically eavesdrop with the same level of technical sophistication Ridley’s surveillance team employed.
Rapp closed the door. He was now in a field-expedient sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF. After securing the latch, he returned to his chair, ignoring the Brit’s smug expression.
Or at least he tried to.
“I didn’t think officers in Her Majesty’s Secret Service gloated,” Rapp said.
“Then you must not know very many British spies. What’s your first name, Mr. Johnson?”
“Bill.”
“Of course it is. I’m chuffed to meet you, Bill. My name is Victoria Lyon, and I once dated Stan Hurley.”
Bloody hell.