Consent to Kill (9 page)

The assassin never broke stride. Never looked back. The Turk was already in sight coming toward him from a little more than two hundred meters away. Harry reached the main path that ran east-west and turned to the left. The Turk was now less than two hundred meters away and he was stopping to buy some warm pistachios from a street vendor. Harry watched him take a stale bag of crackers to feed the ducks just like he’d done the two previous mornings.
Good,
he thought to himself.
Keep your routine and everything will turn out just fine.
Sure enough, the Turk continued on for a bit and then left the path for the lake. He stood near a willow tree and began spreading the stale crackers about, popping pistachios into his mouth and talking on his phone.

Harry reached up and tapped his Motorola earpiece once, which re-dialed the last call he’d made. A second later his partner answered.

“Amanda Poole speaking.”

“Amanda, it’s Harry. How is everything?”

“Everything is just fine. Your party favors came in and they work perfectly.”

That meant the balloons had stayed in position. “Good.” He stole a peek over his left shoulder. “Is anyone else coming to our gathering?”

“Everyone who was invited has replied.”

The distance was now just under a hundred meters. He turned off the path and started walking toward the lake. “What about crashers?”

“Not a one on the horizon, but if I hear anything I’ll let you know immediately.”

“Good.” As he ducked around a hedgerow his left hand slid between the folds of his coat and retrieved a silenced Walther PPK 9mm pistol. The weapon was quickly placed inside the folded newspaper. He clutched the paper and covered gun to his chest and with his right hand slid one rubber band and then another over the outside of the paper. The assassin started his turn before he reached the water’s edge and brought the newspaper up as if he were reading it. “Any other calls this morning?”

The woman responded, “None that I can remember. The rest of the morning is wide open.”

“Let’s hope it stays that way.” He looked over the top of the newspaper and sighted the Turk a short distance ahead.

His heart was not racing, his gloved hands were dry, and his senses were highly alert. He heard every noise, saw everything ninety degrees in each direction, and had a complete mental picture of what was going on behind him. The distance was now less than twenty meters and no one else was near the target. His pace quickened slightly to take advantage of the man’s isolation. At ten meters, he could hear the Turk clearly. He had decided on this angle because he wanted the Turk to see him coming. This would seem normal, whereas if he sneaked up behind him he could end up alerting his quarry.

He glanced over the top of the paper and made brief eye contact with the man he was about to kill. Casually, he pretended to return his attention to the paper. He glanced across the lake and then to the left. There were a few people about. None of them were close and he doubted they were paying attention. He was now only steps away, and he could see from his peripheral vision that the target was turning away from him. Humans, the only animals in all of nature who willingly turned their back to a potential predator. Harry was almost disgusted with how easy this was going to be.

Stepping toward the target, he followed him quietly for a few steps as the man walked toward the weeping willow. This was turning into a joke. The tree with its drooping wispy branches was the closest thing the park had to a dark alley, and the Turk was headed right for it. He stopped just short of the outer ring of branches and started to look toward the lake, undoubtedly expecting to see the pedestrian who had interrupted his privacy continuing on his way.

The assassin did not extend the newspaper-encased weapon. He was too practiced for anything so obvious. He merely tilted the paper forward until the angle matched the trajectory that he wanted the bullet to travel. He squeezed the trigger once, and stepped quickly forward. The hollow-tipped bullet struck the Turk directly in the back of the head, flattening on impact, doubling in circumference, and tearing through vital brain matter until it stopped, lodged between the shredded left frontal lobe and the inner wall of the skull. The impact propelled the financier forward. The assassin had his right hand around the man’s chest a split second later. He glanced down at the small coin-size entry wound as he went with the momentum of the Turk’s dying body. The newspaper-laden hand cut a swath through the dense branches of the weeping willow, and two steps later he laid the dead man to rest at the foot of the tree. Harry quickly checked himself for blood even though he was almost positive there would be none. The bullet was designed to stay in the body and cause only a small entry wound.

With everything in order, he left the dead body and the shelter of the tree and began retracing his steps. A hundred meters back down the footpath he asked his partner, “Are you free for an early lunch?”

“I am, as a matter of fact.”

“Good. I’m done with things here. I’ll meet you at the usual spot in a quarter of an hour.”

“I’ll see you there.”

On the way out of the park Harry walked past two of London’s finest. They were standing under his bouquet of balloons staring up in consternation and talking with some higher-up back at the station house via their shoulder-mounted radios. When the taller one of the two tried to jump up and grab the strings, Harry had to stifle a laugh. It was the most amusing thing he’d seen all morning.

C
HESAPEAKE
B
AY
, M
ARYLAND

R
app sat in a worn leather chair, his mutt, Shirley, at his feet and a pen in his left hand. He’d been writing furiously for the past hour, page after page, idea upon idea. Many were crossed off, others were circled and connected like some strange flow chart. The dry birch in the fireplace crackled and popped as he jotted down his sixth page of notes. At least as many pages had already been torn from the pad and thrown on the pyre. He was not writing down his thoughts for the sake of keeping a record, but rather to help play out the potential pitfalls of the job that lay ahead. The opportunity he had been given was fraught with potential problems, but the prospects were impossible to resist. Like everything else he did, the key was to not get caught. The difference this time, though, was that everything was on a much bigger scale. Instead of targeting individuals, he would be targeting groups. The expanded operation needed to be approached like a battle plan—looked at from every vantage point, and then tested and retested to make sure he hadn’t missed something. And there could be no hard copy of anything. That’s what Thomas Stansfield had taught him.

The deceased former director of the CIA was famous for not carrying a pen, and was known to admonish subordinates who took notes during high-level meetings. He liked to tell his people, “We’re in the business of collecting secrets, not giving them away. If your mind isn’t sharp enough to remember what was said, you’re in the wrong line of work.”

Stansfield didn’t really fear America’s enemies. He respected them for their tenacity and despised them for their ruthlessness, but he always knew capitalism would defeat communism. What Stansfield feared were the opportunists on Capitol Hill, the politicians who eagerly awaited any chance to take the stage and act out another drama. They were the real enemy. The enemy from within. Men who could ruin your career and reputation with one theatrical sound bite. Stansfield had many maxims and one of them was that it was impossible for a man with an inflated hubris not to have an Achilles’ heel.

Rapp had heard a rumor once that Stansfield used a network of retired OSS and CIA people to run surveillance on key senators and colleagues. These were men who had fought alongside Stansfield against the Nazis, and then the Russians during the height of the Cold War. Men who hadn’t lost an ounce of their conviction, and were bored with retirement. Men who were happy to practice their trade on such easy targets. The files that Stansfield had amassed were rumored to be extremely damaging. They were his insurance policies against those who chose to put their own careers ahead of national security. Rapp made a note to talk to Kennedy again about their old boss’s files and a separate note to take out a similar insurance policy.

Stansfield’s other precaution involved eliminating any paper trail. When conducting operations that ran afoul of the American legal system he liked to tell those around him, “Notes are the noose that will be used at your execution. If possible, record nothing, and burn everything.”

Rapp took those words to heart and many others that the WWII vet had handed down. Stansfield had been a member of the famed Jedburgh teams that were infiltrated behind enemy lines in Norway and France in order to collect intelligence and harass the Nazis. That was exactly what Rapp planned on doing. They needed to adopt a more multipronged attack. Direct action, assassination, seizing funds, placing pressure and demands on states that were less than vigilant in the fight, that was all fine, but to truly confuse and harass the enemy would require a full-blown clandestine operation. An operation that only Rapp would know the full extent of.

He tore off another sheet, crumpled it in his hand, and tossed it into the fire. Not even Kennedy would be fully briefed on what he had in mind. It was time to knock the enemy off balance and get them to doubt themselves. Get them to turn on each other. An extension of what they’d just done in Canada. Expose the pious hypocrites for who they were. Undermine the authority of the zealots and get them to think they had spies in their own camp.

Shirley lifted her head from the rug and a second later Rapp heard a noise outside. He checked his watch, as Shirley ran over to get a look at the source of the noise. It was a little before eight in the evening. That would be his wife returning home after one of her marathon workdays. As the NBC White House correspondent, she started her days early with the morning news and ended late with the evening news. As long as nothing dramatic was going on at the White House, the middle of her day tended to be pretty easy. She usually took an hour to work out and was not afraid to take long lunches that usually involved shopping. Rapp didn’t think it possible for one woman to own so many pairs of shoes, handbags, outfits, necklaces, and anything else to do with fashion, but then again he’d never known anyone quite like Anna. She was the most beautiful “bag lady” he’d ever laid eyes on. The closet in the guest room was overflowing with purses designed by people with foreign names that he’d grown to think of as fashion terrorists.

He’d asked her once the price of one of the bags and she replied a bit defensively, “I don’t ask you how much your guns cost, do I?”

Rapp had responded that unlike her, he used his guns more than once, and unlike the purses, the guns tended to stay in style for more than a season. He remembered being very proud of himself right up until she gave him that look. Anna Rielly had the greenest eyes he’d ever seen. They could be as calm and enticing as a mountain lake on a hot summer day and as angry and violent as a rogue wave bearing down on an unsuspecting boat. Her father once told him it was her Irish temper. Whatever it was, Rapp liked receiving the first look and dreaded the second. It didn’t take long for him to figure out that his wife didn’t think him anywhere near as funny as he found himself. He’d also learned that winning these little skirmishes with witty lines inevitably led to him getting his ass kicked in the major battles. This conclusion brought about a new creed: When Anna was happy, he was happy. When Anna was mad, life was less than fun. When Anna was mad at him, life was miserable.

Rapp glanced over his most recent page of notes and stabbed his pen at a certain line, tapping it over and over. He heard the key in the door but didn’t look up. He could tell by Shirley’s soft bark and the excited tapping of her paws that it was Anna. Tomorrow morning he had a meeting with Kennedy, and he wanted to get this figured out before she began dissecting his operational plan. He heard the handle turn and looked up in time to see his wife enter with her large, striped Kate Spade shoulder bag. It was the only bag she used on a regular basis, which was a good thing, because it cost more than any handgun he owned—even the custom-built ones. In her other hand was a purse and a shopping bag.

“How was your day, honey?” he asked.

“Fine.” She dropped her large bag on the floor and stuffed the shopping bag in the front hall closet.

Rapp shook his head. He could tell by the pastel color of the bag that whatever she had bought wasn’t for him. “Got a little shopping in?”

“No.” She took off her jacket and gave him a wry smile. “Kill anyone?”

“Not today, honey, but I’ve got a few hours left. What’s in the bag?” He pointed toward the closet. Rapp wasn’t going to let her lame attempt at hiding her habit go unnoticed.

She was already halfway into the living room. She stopped and gestured at the front hall closet. “That bag?” She folded her arms across her chest. “I called you two hours ago. Why didn’t you answer your phone?”

Changing the subject was the first sign of guilt. He knew because he did it all the time. “I’ve been working on something.” Rapp pointed at the legal pad on his knee. “What’s in the bag?”

“Did you forget that we had a meeting tonight with Philip?”

Philip was their interior designer. A confused expression fell across Rapp’s face. “I didn’t know we had a meeting tonight.” Even as he said it he began to have a faint recollection of some such thing.

She put her hands on her hips. “For a spy you’re a terrible liar.”

Rapp felt the table being turned. “Anna, I’m not lying. I didn’t know.”

“Don’t say you didn’t know. It’s on the calendar,” she pointed to the kitchen. “I told you before I left this morning, and I left you a message on your phone an hour before the meeting.”

Now he remembered. “Oh, that meeting.”

She gave him the look.

“I’m sorry,” he said sincerely. They were building a house in Virginia, just outside the beltway on two very private acres, and it had become a full-time job that he didn’t have the time for. “What did I miss?”

“Carpet selections. That’s what’s in the bag, by the way.”

Rapp stood. “Sorry.” His instincts had failed him. He walked over and gave her a kiss. “You know I’m not very good at that stuff. I trust you. Whatever you and Philip think is best, I’ll go along with it.”

She gave him a doubtful look. “Like the tile in the bathroom you hated, and the paint color for the dining room that you said reminded you of vomit.”

Rapp looked up at the ceiling as if the whole thing sounded very unfamiliar to him.

“You don’t need to say anything. As your loving wife I’m going to tell you how we’re going to proceed. You are going to open a bottle of wine for us, because I need a drink something fierce. Then we are going to go through the carpet samples, and you are going to help me make a decision, and then we’re going to sit down in front of the fireplace and you’re going to rub my shoulders.”

Rapp put his hands on her shoulders and said with a mischievous look, “And then we’re going to have wild sex.”

She shook her head. “I am tired … my feet hurt … I feel gross … I have to get up at five, and I’m not so sure I should reward your forgetful behavior.”

“I’ll make it up to you.” He started kissing her neck.

“We’ll see. Now go get my glass of wine.”

Rapp continued to work on her lovely neck until she pushed him away, laughing. He grabbed a bottle of cabernet from the wine rack and began opening it. As he looked up he saw his wife standing in front of the fireplace holding his legal pad. Her expression was intent as she tried to make sense of his notes. He’d have to start writing in Arabic. That would drive her nuts. He calmly walked back into the living room and yanked the notepad from her hands.

“I was reading that,” she said in an indignant voice.

“Really … did you ever think it’s none of your business?”

Anna smiled. “But we’re married, darling. We’re not supposed to keep secrets from each other.”

“You are so full of it.” Rapp tore off the top sheet and threw it in the fire. “When was the last time you let me look at your notes for a story? You’re in the wrong line of work. You should have been a spy.”

“Really,” she said in a hopeful tone. “There’s still time for a career change. I’m young.”

Rapp went back into the kitchen and finished pulling the cork from the bottle. He poured two glasses. “You’d hate it. You’d never be able to handle the scrutiny from those jackals in the press.”

“They’re real bastards, aren’t they?”

“The worst.” Rapp handed her the glass of wine.

Anna swatted him in the butt, and said, “You’re bad. Now go get those carpet samples and get to work.”

“Only if it means I get a little love later.”

“You’re on probation for the evening. Don’t push it.”

Rapp walked to the closet, dreading the mundane task that lay ahead. His thoughts were already returning to his notes. There were a lot of things to consider. In a perfect world it would have been nice to bounce a few things off Anna, but it just wasn’t an option. Especially this stuff. Operations like this were designed to never see the light of day. That’s why they were called black ops. The Freedom of Information Act would have no effect on them. No records would be kept, and the men and women who were involved would go to their graves silent to their very last breath.