Chapter 41
EXCELLENT! Now, be a good lad and remove your pistol from my friend’s chin. I agree that he can be quite long-winded, but I can assure you that shooting him isn’t the answer. The tile floor is surprisingly porous. Removing blood from the stone can be quite laborious.”
The speaker was bald, mid-forties, and had appeared from behind the now-open door leading to the bathroom.
Rapp was not often surprised. He was this time.
It wasn’t so much that the man had hidden but that he had a preternatural ability for stillness.
Rapp might have felt a prickling or two from that side of the room, but not enough to clue him in that someone had been watching his audition.
Rapp withdrew the pistol from beneath Arab Gandalf’s jaw.
And pointed the weapon at the speaker.
“Glad you found this entertaining,” Rapp said. “I’m leaving.”
If the speaker was at all concerned that the man who’d just visited violence on three of his companions was now pointing a loaded weapon at him, he didn’t show it.
Instead, he glanced at the two bodies sprawled across the ground and sighed.
“I must admit, you had me worried. Really worried. I had almost reached my limit with these three myself. I couldn’t figure out if you had the patience of Job or if my brother had severely misjudged you. I’m glad to see it was the former.”
Youngster stirred. Rapp stomped on the man’s solar plexus and then pushed Arab Gandalf shot Rapp a death glare as he toward the pile of bodies.
The head Muppet sprawled lengthwise across Youngster and Gordo.
Arab Gandalf shot Rapp a death glare as he pushed himself into a sitting position, but he wisely stayed put.
And silent.
With the pistol still pointed at the speaker, Rapp moved toward the door. “You and your brother can go fuck yourselves. I’m done with this nonsense.”
“An entirely understandable sentiment,” the man said, inclining his head, “but perhaps you can also acknowledge that we needed to vet you before we opened the door to our organization.”
“What organization?”
“Hezbollah.”
Rapp stopped moving.
The man smiled. “Do I have your attention now? Good. Let me introduce myself—my name is—”
A crash sounded from the sink. The woman had dropped a plate. The man’s features twisted in anger as he turned toward her.
“You—get out.”
The man delivered the command in a calm, even voice, but the woman still jerked as if he’d screamed. Bobbing her head, she left the remaining dishes in the sink and scurried toward the apartment’s door. She drifted around the man, giving him as wide a berth as the room allowed.
It wasn’t wide enough.
The man backhanded her as she hurried past. His knuckles connected with a deep thud.
Her head rocked and she staggered. After regaining her balance, she swept past the group, keeping her eyes on the ground.
A single drop of crimson bloomed from her lower lip before dropping on the tile.
She made eye contact with Rapp for a fleeting instant and what he saw in her gaze wasn’t fear or even pain.
It was far worse.
Acceptance.
She opened the door and was gone.
“I apologize for that,” the man said, scowling. “She has yet to learn her place. Where was I? Oh, yes, my name is Abu Hassan and I’m part of Hezbollah.”
For a split second, Rapp considered just aiming the pistol and pulling the trigger.
Hezbollah was an Iranian proxy with a long history of shedding American blood.
He would be doing the world a favor by ridding it of this menace.
But as much as he wanted to splatter the shitbag’s brains across the cinder-block wall, doing so would bring him no closer to learning why an Iranian proxy that specialized in constructing car bombs had gone to such great lengths to abduct a chemical weapons expert.
He didn’t know what the group was planning, but was reasonably sure Hassan was not interested in developing a more-effective crop fertilizer.
Chemical munitions were called weapons of mass destruction for a reason.
There was no way he could allow that kind of expertise to remain in the hands of sadistic killers.
Rapp lowered the pistol.
“Five minutes,” Rapp said. “Your Hezbollah credentials buy you five minutes. If you can’t convince me why it’s worth my while to listen further, I’m walking out that door. I wouldn’t get in my way.”
“How about this—America.”
Rapp stared back at the terrorist.
“What about it?”
“We intend to bring the Great Satan to its knees once and for all.”
Rapp smirked. “You and everyone else in the Middle East. Talk is cheap.”
“Who needs talk when you have the means to kill tens of thousands of Americans at your fingertips?”
Rapp frowned. “I’m listening.”
“Good, because I intend to tell you everything. But not here.”
“No,” Rapp said, shaking his head. “I’m done with your spy games. We talk here or not at all.”
Hassan’s dark eyes flashed. Then his amenable mask slipped back into place.
“Very well, I suppose you’ve earned that much, but I’ll need to clean up your mess first.”
Sliding past Rapp, the Hezbollah operative banged on the door. It swung open, revealing the boy with the soccer ball. “Get two of the brothers. My friends need help.”
The boy looked past Hassan to the pile of bodies on the floor and then to Rapp.
His eyes widened, but he disappeared without a word.
A moment later, two men entered the room.
Rapp kept his pistol angled downward, but he made no move to conceal the weapon.
If the pair were surprised by what they found, they didn’t show it.
Instead, they grabbed the still-unmoving Youngster beneath the armpits and hauled him across the tile.
A moment later, they returned and did the same with Gordo.
Arab Gandalf waved off their efforts, seemingly determined to walk out of the room under his own power.
He crossed the tile without so much as glancing in Rapp’s direction, but once he reached the door, his composure loosened.
“Kol khara,” the elderly man spat before leaving the apartment and pulling the door closed behind him.
“I don’t believe he likes you,” Hassan said.
“Talk,” Rapp said.
Hassan nodded. “We are in the process of producing chemical munitions. The scientist will help us complete our work so that we can construct usable devices.”
“Why?” Rapp said.
Hassan gave a wolfish smile. “To strike a blow for Allah that will sway the balance of power in the Middle East. Permanently. Do you want to be a part of it?”
“No,” Rapp said. “My organization’s plans are not so grand as that. We are focused on reclaiming our ancestral homeland from the Butcher of Baghdad. We want to visit death upon him in the same manner he massacred our people.”
“We can help. I’d hoped to persuade you of the utility of joining forces, but I understand that your organization’s aims are separate from mine.
No matter. As my brother promised, if you assist me with something in Rome, we will give your organization a portion of the munitions we produce and access to the scientist.”
Rapp frowned. “Assist with what?”
“A murder.”