Consent to Kill (59 page)

R
app watched them for three days from a house on the hill overlooking the beach, which was probably one day too many. Coleman didn’t say anything. Didn’t make any observations. Didn’t offer any advice. It had been nine months, one week, and three days since Rapp’s wife had been killed. Wicker was with them, as were Hackett and Stroble. Wicker could have ended it more than a dozen times with his rifle. The winds were calm in the morning and the evening. It was just under 800 yards from one terrace to the other, and the trajectory was steep. For most people it would be an impossible shot, but for Wicker it was business as usual. The sniper waited for the word, but it never came.

The hunt had changed Rapp. With each passing day over the past months he had grown quieter and retreated from all but Kennedy, her son, Coleman, and the O’Rourkes. Liz O’Rourke was Anna’s best friend from college. They were the only people other than Kennedy that he really confided in. Even with Coleman it was all about the hunt. He spoke with his brother a few times, and Steven had come to the memorial service in Washington—a service that Mitch ended up skipping. The priest waited for thirty minutes, and then Kennedy and Liz O’Rourke told the priest to start without him. Neither woman held out much hope that he would show. He was too private a man to show his grief in front of so many people whom he barely knew.

The new house sat unfinished and the old house on the Chesapeake, a house that Anna had grown to love, remained a charred ruin. Coleman went to Kennedy. He wanted to bring in an excavator and have the mess cleaned up. She thought about it for a second and told him no. It was Mitch’s decision. When he was ready, he would do it himself. They all waited. Waited for Rapp to come out of his shell and get on with his life, but it didn’t happen. The days ticked by and then the months. Rapp rented a house in Galesville on the bay, just up the road from where Anna had died. He didn’t want to leave the water. He was afraid to lose that connection.

Almost every day he drove to the charred wreckage on the bay that had been their home. Sometimes he stayed in the car. Sometimes he got out and walked around. Every single time he sobbed uncontrollably over the memories that had been and the dreams that would never be. He never got to see his baby, never got to cradle the little infant in his arms. He never got to find out if it was a boy or a girl. He never even got to say good-bye to the woman of his dreams. He’d failed to protect her when she’d needed it most, and it was eating him alive. The unfulfilled dreams and the yearning to hold her one more time, to look into her beautiful, stunning, green eyes and smell her hair, was more painful than anything he’d ever experienced, but even so, it wasn’t as bad as the guilt he felt over causing her death.

When he went in to work, it was only to be updated by Kennedy and Dumond on what they had learned about the assassins. Other than that he stayed away from Langley. What he was doing nobody knew and no one dared ask. The first break came from the Russian named Petrov. Kennedy had been stationed in Moscow earlier in her career and she had many contacts. Through several of Petrov’s old colleagues she talked him into sitting down. Word had reached him about Abel’s demise. It had been reported as an accidental death, but Petrov knew better. Men like Abel didn’t die in chance house fires.

She told him that Abel had been hired by several wealthy Saudis and given a twenty-million-dollar contract to kill Mitch Rapp. Petrov was genuinely surprised by the amount. Kennedy told him what he already knew—that Abel had hired two assassins who were recommended by none other than himself. Then she told him something he didn’t know. The assassins had missed Rapp and killed his wife by mistake. Petrov winced at the news. Families were off limits and a man like Mitch Rapp would stop at nothing until he hunted these people down and killed them.

This was a mess Petrov did not need. He could either tell Kennedy what little he knew, or risk Mitch Rapp paying him a visit in the dead of the night. The decision was easy. He told Kennedy what he knew about the assassins, which wasn’t much, but proved to be crucial. The woman was in fact French and so was the man, Petrov suspected. He also suspected he was former military, and at one point had lived in America, probably during his teens. When Kennedy pressed him on this, he explained that the man’s English was too good. Too colloquial. He had all the idioms and slang down. The type of thing you can pick up only by living in a country. Petrov handed over the phone numbers and e-mail addresses he had used to contact them over the years.

Kennedy flew from Moscow to Paris and sat down with her counterparts who ran France’s DGSE and DST, the country’s premier security and intelligence organizations. While many of France’s politicians could be considered weak on terrorism, the same could not be said of the DGSE and DST. They were among the world’s best and most effective counterterrorism organizations. Both men were fully aware of what had happened to Rapp and his wife. Rapp had worked closely with the DGSE before and the director said he would do everything in his power to find out who these people were. The head of the DST made the same commitment. Kennedy returned to the States and waited.

The break came three weeks later, nearly five weeks after Anna’s death. The DGSE sent Kennedy two dossiers. The man’s name was Louie Gould, and the woman was Claudia Morrell. Everything about the dossiers made sense. Gould was a former French paratrooper and the son of a French diplomat who had done two tours in Washington. Morrell’s father was a general in the French Foreign Legion. He and his daughter had had a falling-out over Gould, and the two had disappeared off the map a little more than five years ago. Both French intelligence services promised Kennedy that they would join in the hunt.

The big break came nine months and one week after Anna’s death. Kennedy had come up with the plan. They knew the woman was pregnant. She had asked Kennedy to let her live long enough to give birth and hold her baby. Kennedy had the FBI put out a worldwide bulletin on the couple and they got the allied intelligence services involved. They focused on hospitals. Specifically, doctors who delivered babies. Every month they sent out a new wave of e-mails and faxes as a reminder. They contained actual photos of Gould and Morrell and then computer-generated renderings of how they might have changed their appearances. The couple was wanted for questioning in a capital murder case, and a toll-free number was included, along with a reward for $100,000. They received hundreds of phone calls, none of which panned out. Many of the early ones were ruled out because the delivery dates didn’t match the timetable. As they got to the seventh month, though, each lead had to be run down. When the phone call came in from the hospital in Tahiti, a French overseas territory, they all held their breath. An agent for the French DST rushed over to the hospital in Papeete and donned a pair of surgical scrubs. Within an hour the agent called and said he was almost positive the woman was Claudia Morrell.

Rapp looked down at the house. It was early in the morning, their third sunrise on the island. He’d been standing like a statue for nearly ten minutes, staring at the house. He glanced down at his watch. It was almost 7:00. Less than a minute later Gould appeared on the terrace below. He was in shorts and running shoes. He stretched for several minutes, and then bounded down the steps and started running up the beach in the opposite direction.

Rapp watched Gould for a long moment and then said, “I’m going in by myself.”

“I don’t think that’s very smart.”

Rapp ignored him. “If anything happens to me, finish the job.”

He was dressed in a pair of khaki cargo shorts and a loose-fitting, faded blue T-shirt. Rapp walked to the front entry of the rental home. Coleman, Wicker, Hackett, and Stroble watched him. Rapp slid into a pair of flip-flops and grabbed his sunglasses. He stepped outside and fired up the Vespa scooter that came with the place and took off down the hill. He didn’t want to think about this any more than he already had. The scooter was quiet, especially when it was going downhill. Rapp coasted his way down the lush hillside. The road was very narrow. After several hundred yards it emptied onto a slightly wider road that could accommodate two-way traffic. The beach house was up on the right a short distance. The closest neighbor was about five hundred feet away.

Rapp turned off the scooter and stashed it in the bushes near the end of the driveway. He checked his watch. The man had returned between 7:25 and 7:30 each of the two previous mornings. Rapp picked his way through the jungle until he was even with the house. He then entered the side yard, which was some type of broad-bladed grass. He continued around to the beach side and drew his silenced Glock from his back waistband. The weapon felt light in his hand.

The house was stucco with a red Spanish style roof. The patio that overlooked the beach had a thick three-foot wall that ran along the perimeter with steps in the middle and on the side where he was. Rapp grabbed the digital radio from his cargo pocket and pressed the transmit button.

“Any sign of him?”

“Not yet.”

Rapp peered around the corner. The patio was empty. “Don’t try anything with Wicker.”

“It would be a hell of a lot easier. Not to mention safer.”

“Stand him down. If I need help I’ll let you know.”

Rapp put the radio on silent mode and climbed the stairs in a crouch. There were French doors immediately on his left. Rapp paused and glanced in. It was the living room. The woman would still be sleeping with the infant. Rapp had learned every detail he could about the two. He had been tempted to talk to their parents, but it would have been foolish to tip his hand that way. It was better to let them fall into a false sense of security. Rapp moved onto the next set of doors—the ones off the kitchen and dining room. The ones he suspected Gould used to come and go in the morning. He turned the knob. It moved and the door pushed in quietly.

Rapp stepped carefully over the threshold and closed the door behind him. The fact that the door was unlocked spoke volumes about their state of mind. Not that a lock would have stopped him, but it would have at least slowed him down. Rapp was completely healed. At least physically. His knee felt better than it had in years, and the cast on his right arm was long gone. He glided across the dark stained wood floor and moved to the right, toward the hallway that led to the bedrooms. There were doors on the right and the left and one at the end of the hall. The two on the sides were closed, and the one at the end was slightly cracked. Rapp guessed Gould had left it like that so as to not wake them when he returned.

Rapp placed his right palm on the door and kept his gun up and ready. Slowly, he pushed the door open and stepped into the room. The woman was lying on her side in bed, her dark hair offset against the bright white sheets and pillows. The infant was cradled in her arms and her lips rested softly against the impossibly small child’s head. Rapp wavered for a second and almost lost his nerve. He was struck by how beautiful the woman was and how absolutely peaceful she and her young child appeared.

Rapp shook his head and regained his composure. He stepped silently across the dark wood floor and extended his gun. He placed the tip of his silencer against the woman’s left temple and watched her eyes flutter open. She slowly turned her head until the silencer was pointed at her forehead. Rapp’s right hand slid under her pillow and checked for a weapon. There was none. He checked the drawer in the nightstand, but it was also empty.

She looked up at Rapp almost as if she had been expecting him and said, “Thank you for letting me give birth to my daughter.”

Rapp backed up a step and motioned for her to sit up. She did, and then picked up the sleeping baby and held it in her arms. Rapp checked his watch and grabbed the radio.

“Any sign of Gould?”

“He’s coming back up the beach. ETA two minutes.”

Rapp crossed the room and put the door back to where he’d found it and then checked the nightstand on the other side of the bed. He found a 9mm Beretta, emptied it, and then went back to the woman’s side of the bed where French doors led out onto the patio. They were covered by thick curtains. The morning sun crawled in around the edges and backlit the room. Rapp kept his gun on the woman and then pulled back the curtains enough to get a peek. He stood in the corner with his back to the wall, the door on his left and the woman in front of him, and he waited.

She tried to talk several times, but he shook his head.

“If you want your baby to live … keep your mouth shut and don’t say a thing.”

“You would never kill this baby, or any other baby.”

She said it with such calm conviction that it surprised Rapp. “No, I wouldn’t, but I would kill you, so if you’d like to see your baby grow up, be quiet.” Rapp looked at his watch and added, “There is a sniper outside, and he’s very good. The best I’ve ever seen. If you say a word, he will run, and he will be killed before he reaches the beach.”

She shrugged. “Then why did you come in here? Why didn’t you just have him shot on the beach?”

“Because I’m not a coward. Because I don’t have other people do my work for me. I do it face to face. I don’t blow up houses and kill innocent bystanders.”

Claudia looked away and swallowed hard.

Rapp checked one more time and then turned the radio off. Half a minute later, Rapp felt the door in the other room open. The bedroom door moved slightly with the air that rushed out of the house and then settled. Rapp kept the gun pointed at the mother’s head and whispered, “Don’t say a word or you both die.”