Chapter 45
ROME, ITALY
INVITATION, please.”
Rapp dutifully handed over the vellum stationery on which the details of this evening’s soiree were engraved in gold ink.
The thick-necked man standing behind the podium took the paper and examined the emblem of Kuwait emblazoned in the right-hand corner.
Then he retrieved a flashlight from the shelf built into the wood, activated it, and played its weak light across the card.
The whole procedure was done on the opposite side of the podium from Rapp, so he couldn’t see what if anything fluoresced.
Instead, he tried not to get irritated with the delay, even as he sized up both the man and the pair of similarly attired gentlemen standing to either side of the ballroom’s ornate double doors and calculated his odds of escaping capture if the invitation didn’t pass muster.
His chances weren’t good.
Though all three were dressed in the hotel’s livery, Rapp wasn’t fooled.
Tendons stood out from the nearest man’s neck like iron cords, and his massive hands looked like they could crack walnuts.
Rapp wasn’t close enough to check the pair flanking the doorway for similar characteristics, but their build and stance suggested that they were also wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing.
He could relate.
“Name?”
Rapp responded with the identity he’d been given, providing emphasis on exactly the right syllables.
He was now a French-Canadian journalist living in Italy who freelanced for the BBC and several other Western news services.
The attendant behind the podium studied him for an instant longer.
Undoubtedly, his instincts had flagged Rapp in the same manner in which Rapp had clocked the man as a bodyguard.
For a moment, the man appeared to be building up the conviction to deny Rapp entry regardless of what the invitation and guest list suggested.
Then his face changed.
“Welcome, Signore Bouchard. The ambassador will be delighted to see you.”
Somehow, Rapp didn’t think so.
After Hassan’s checks into Rapp’s Kurdish cover had passed muster, he’d accepted the Hezbollah commander’s offer to catch up on his sleep in an adjoining apartment.
Though he was tired, Rapp’s seclusion had nothing to do with getting some shut-eye.
True to Victoria’s assurances, his British-provided legend had held, but he had no intention of engaging in small talk for the next several hours.
Instead, he’d been fitted for a tuxedo and then left alone with his thoughts.
His seclusion had been less than restful.
The minutes had crawled by, giving him ample opportunity to consider not just the folly of his current circumstances, but the myriad ways his situation could become worse.
Much, much worse.
For starters, there was the very real possibility that Ridley had not communicated the message he’d been given with the urgency Rapp had requested.
The surveillance expert was a badge-carrying employee of the CIA, and he had been indoctrinated into the agency’s risk-averse culture.
When Stan Hurley had been taken hostage in Beirut by the Hezbollah-offshoot Islamic Jihad during Rapp’s shakeout tour as an assassin, Ridley had advocated for waiting for agency reinforcements.
Rapp had acted.
This dynamic continued to define the terms of their relationship.
Ridley was a perfectly fine advance team member and surveillance expert, but when the operation escalated beyond the original plan, he defaulted to the more traditional approach of waiting for instructions from Langley.
What Rapp was doing was the opposite of that.
This was not to say that Rapp thought Ridley would deliberately sabotage his request, but he also couldn’t be counted on to ram the concept through the bureaucratic pushback that was likely to come.
And then there was Hurley.
While Rapp had immense respect for Kennedy’s capabilities as a handler, what he had in mind required a very particular skill set. He needed a brawler who could think on his feet and who wasn’t afraid to break a few eggs in order to make an omelet.
In simple terms, he needed Hurley.
Rapp had every confidence that Stan would answer his call for assistance if the CIA operative could be reached and if he could get to Rome in time to help.
Those were two very big ifs.
Not to mention the operational considerations.
Rapp did not have an aversion to killing jihadis, regardless of whether they appeared on the sanctioned Orion team list. While he strictly adhered to Hurley’s admonishment that noncombatants were not to be harmed, this did not extend to the lackeys, henchmen, or fellow jihadis who might be sharing the same space with his target.
He didn’t go out of his way to up an operation’s body count, but neither did he shy away from killing his target’s associates if the tactical situation required it.
He could even see the logic of killing a rival jihadi group member on behalf of his current associates if that brought him closer to learning what they intended to do with the weapons scientist.
This was not that.
Like everyone who worked the Islamic terrorist threat, Rapp had an opinion on how well America’s supposed Muslim allies in the Middle East were actually helping to combat the jihadi menace.
To put it mildly, he was a bit skeptical of their efforts, but that didn’t mean it was open season on their diplomats and government officials.
While he hadn’t researched her extensively, Rapp kept abreast of what was happening in the Fertile Crescent.
He knew enough about the ambassador to consider her a force for good.
She wasn’t exactly Margaret Thatcher, but Mariam Al-Hamad was by all accounts an effective diplomat who also happened to be a woman.
A woman in a region in which many of the leading nations had laws mandating that females could not leave their house without a male escort.
Mariam’s mere existence was a not-so-subtle rebuke to the caustic theology that animated many of the Middle East’s jihadi groups.
Which was undoubtedly why he was supposed to kill her.
When it came to Hassan’s motivation, Rapp was perfectly clear. It was what he was supposed to do with this mess that could use a little clarity.
“Can I show you to your seat?”
Rapp smiled at the attendant, but shook his head. “Thank you, but I’m going to visit the water closet first.”
Though not as beefy as the bouncer taking invitations or his friend, the attendant who’d offered his assistance didn’t look like one of the hotel’s employees.
As with the other men, his stance, build, and the way he’d zeroed in on Rapp suggested that he was plainclothes security for the ambassador.
Judging by his grimace, the man didn’t appear to love Rapp’s desire to visit the facilities, but neither could he deny him the chance to empty his bladder before the formal portion of the event began.
“Certainly,” the man said with a forced smile. “Il bagno is over there.”
Rapp smiled his thanks and headed toward the indicated alcove.
The meeting space was what an event planner would call intimate, especially in comparison to the grandiose lobby.
Secreted in the hotel’s lower level, the room was rectangular in shape and dominated by four sequential brick arches that stretched across the ceiling.
Chairs in rows of eight were bisected by a walkway that ran lengthwise down the rectangle’s center.
A table flanked by two more chairs formed the front of the space, while standing room occupied the rear.
The area held probably around sixty people, and while it wasn’t roomy, the arches gave it an airy ambience.
Tasteful decorations and strategic lighting did the rest. The decorum felt welcoming, but Rapp had a feeling that wasn’t why the event was being held here instead of in one of the first-floor meeting spaces.
The event’s organizers undoubtedly had a concern that outweighed mere aesthetics.
Security.
As configured, the space was simple to guard. The audience was packed into a confined area and easily surveilled by the protective detail. The only exits were at the top and bottom of the rectangle, and the alert, roving team of bodyguards could readily manage the crowd.
He prided himself on his ability to blend in.
Rapp wasn’t invisible, but he’d become adept at hiding who he was from the people meant to interdict him.
Those skills were being put to the test tonight..
A series of floor-to-ceiling mirrors flanked the restrooms. He glanced at the reflection long enough to confirm his suspicions.
The helpful usher was whispering into a mic hidden in his shirt cuff as Rapp walked away.
Rapp pulled open the restroom’s door and edged inside.
As with the rest of the hotel, the bathroom was a study in understated elegance.
Though the floors were made of tile worked into a beautiful mosaic, the countertops granite, and the stall doors lengths of metal-banded oak, the decorum wasn’t garish.
Instead, the polished fixtures, scented soaps, and folded hand towels gave the bathroom a welcoming vibe.
If the hotel’s staff devoted this much attention to the basement’s bathroom, Rapp could only imagine what one of the rooms looked like.
But he wasn’t here to soak up the atmosphere, rent a room, or even use the facilities.
A glance in the mirror appeared to confirm what he’d felt upon entering the bathroom—he was alone.
While each of the three stalls was walled off from its neighbor, the fancy doors didn’t stretch all the way to the tile.
If someone really wanted to, they could put their face to the ground and peer through the half inch or so of clearance to see if the stall was occupied.
Someone like Rapp.
After checking to ensure the bathroom’s entrance was still closed, Rapp quickly crouched by each stall and peeked beneath the door.
Though his cheek hovered dangerously close to the tile, he managed to keep a millimeter of space between his skin and the floor.
The bathroom might have been dressed up with fancy features, but at the end of the day, it was still a bathroom.
After verifying that the final stall was empty, Rapp pushed open the door, entered, and secured the latching mechanism.
Before he’d even reached the room where the ambassador’s talk was to be held, Rapp had been made to pass through a magnetometer.
The machine hadn’t uttered so much as a peep, but that hadn’t stopped the attendant on the instrument’s far side from wanding him with a handheld detector.
He’d passed both inspections with flying colors.
This wasn’t because he was carrying a custom pistol designed to slip through the metal detectors unnoticed.
In fact, for what might be the first time since he’d set foot on the European continent, Rapp wasn’t concealing a weapon of any sort.
He opened the top of the toilet’s water tank and extricated the deodorizer glued to the porcelain.
Snapping the plastic in two, he removed the components inside and assembled them.
Then he unhooked the roll of toilet paper, emptied the holder’s contents into his hand, and integrated them.
Standing on the toilet lid, he opened the wooden cubby, pushed past the extra rolls of toilet paper, and located the final piece.
Locking the shiny length of metal into place, Rapp actioned the slide and loaded a round into the chamber.
The Beretta 21 A Bobcat pistol wasn’t particularly sexy, but the palm-sized gun was easily concealable and held eight .25-caliber ACP rounds in its magazine. Nothing Rapp would want in a gunfight, but suitable for up-close work against an unsuspecting target.
Rapp checked his watch.
Five minutes.