Abel reached in and felt around to make sure, and then placed his hands on his hips. He was certain he had put the small handheld computer in the safe before he’d gone to dinner, but with the way the day had gone, he was already second-guessing himself. Maybe he’d left it in his briefcase. He turned to head back into the living room, and out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw something in the shadows. Abel froze when he zeroed in on a pair of shoes that he immediately knew were not his. He followed the legs up to the dark, barely discernable outline of a man sitting in a chair. For some inexplicable reason his mind jumped to the conclusion that it was Mitch Rapp himself who had broken into his hotel room. It was the second time in a day that Abel had been surprised and overcome with this dreadful portentous feeling.
“C’est ça que tu cherches?” Are you looking for this? asked a low voice.
A gloved hand emerged from the shadows. In it was Abel’s PDA. Abel looked past the hand at the man. His eyes had adjusted just enough that he could see his visitor was wearing something to cover his face. The voice, unfortunately, was familiar and it made Abel think of coffee and warm breath on the back of his neck.
Straining to appear calm, Abel said, “I see you have lowered yourself to thievery.”
The gloved hand reappeared and flicked the PDA across the room. It spun through the air and landed in the center of the king-size bed. “I have stolen nothing. A man in your line of work should know better than to trust hotel safes.”
Abel listened to the man’s words and decided he must be American, but he couldn’t quite place the dialect. “You have a nasty habit of sneaking up on people…maybe I can return the favor someday.”
The man scoffed, “That would be stupid.”
“And why is that?” Abel was proud of himself for not sounding too nervous.
“If I returned to my hotel room and found a man sitting in the dark, I would put a bullet in his head.”
Abel had been around some very unsettling individuals, but this man was in a league of his own. He was beginning to give Abel a feeling of inadequacy. “What if you didn’t have a gun?”
“I always have a gun.”
“But if you didn’t?”
“I would still kill the man. It just might take a split second longer.”
“So what do you think I should do?” asked Abel. “I have just returned to my very expensive hotel and have discovered a burglar in my room. Should I kill him?”
The man laughed in a very low, almost snickering way. “Impossible.”
“Please tell me why.” Abel folded his arms across his chest.
“For starters…you do not have a gun, and I do.”
“How do you know I don’t have a gun?”
“I watched you eat dinner. You looked very lonely, by the way,” the man added. “I watched you put on your coat before you left for your walk. I can tell if a man has a gun on him. You do not.”
Abel conceded the point with a nod. “Continue.”
“I am a trained assassin and you are not, Herr Abel. While I know you are not a stranger to violence, you do not strike me as the type of person who gets his hands dirty.”
“Don’t be so certain.” Abel held his ground. “Any other reasons I might be missing?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact. One very obvious operational detail. You have registered under your real name and put the room on your credit card. If you were to succeed in killing me…which you wouldn’t…you would have a mess to deal with.”
“I have many contacts…” Abel paused in search of a name. “What should I call you?”
“We’ll get to that later.” The man crossed his legs and placed both hands on his knee. “You were saying?”
Abel noticed for the first time that the man was holding a silenced pistol in his other hand. “I have many contacts. I could easily make a phone call and have your body disposed of in a very discreet manner.”
The man did not answer right away. “I suppose you could, but I do not see you as that type of a risk taker. It would be too impulsive. You are a man who must analyze every detail before you are moved to action.”
“And you?” asked Abel.
“I am a killer. That is what I do for a living, and I live in such a way that the decision to kill or not to kill can be made instantaneously, without having to worry about how it will affect my life.”
Abel was starting to enjoy this. With a slight smile he asked, “And how does one live their life in such a way as to be able to make such decisions instantaneously?”
“By any reasonable standard I am a wealthy man, but unlike you I own nothing. I am tied to nothing. You, on the other hand, own significant real estate in both Switzerland and Austria. If you have to run, those assets will be seized…bank accounts will be frozen. You have too many roots to kill a man, where I have none. I am like the wind. Here one moment and gone the next.”
“I have taken certain precautions,” Abel said with a tight voice.
“I have no doubt that you have, but the vast majority of your net worth is tied up in hard assets that are owned under your name. You are also a very meticulous and prudent man. You will not throw away the fruits of your labor so lightly.”
Abel hated being wrong. He conceded the last point with another nod and announced, “I need a drink.” He turned for the other room. Over his shoulder he asked, “May I get you one?”
The man followed him. “No, thank you. I never drink when I’m on the job.”
Abel opened the minibar. “That’s a very American sentiment. Are you American?”
“I am American, I am British, I am Canadian, I am French, I am German, I am Russian…I am whatever I need to be.”
Abel grabbed a bottle of Remy Martin VSOP. “How about German?”
Abel poured the cognac into a snifter while he listened to the man talk about the weather in absolutely perfect German spoken with a slight Rhineland dialect. He picked up his glass and turned around. It was the first time he’d actually gotten a look at the man and unfortunately, there wasn’t much to see. His head was covered in a black hood with slits for his eyes, nose, and mouth. He guessed him to be about five ten, but couldn’t be sure since the man was already sitting on the armrest of the salon’s couch.
“How about Russian?”
This time he broke into a scathing rebuke of Lenin and Stalin. He spoke so rapidly that Abel had a hard time keeping up. He was so pleased, however, that the man shared his hatred for two of the last century’s biggest thugs and mass murderers that he actually flashed an approving smile. Abel held up his snifter. “I will drink to that.”
He went over to the other couch and sat. “I assume I won’t be able to talk you into taking that mask off.”
The man shook his head. “Trust me…it is as much for your safety as mine.”
Fine, Abel thought to himself. I will know what you look like sooner or later. “What should I call you?”
“What would you like to call me?”
Abel was beginning to relax. “Come now, you must have an alias that you use?”
“Never more than once. Pick a name.”
Abel smelled the cognac and tried to come up with something significant. He decided to toy with him. “How about Hector?”
The man thought about it for a second. “Bad name. He was killed by Achilles.”
“How about Achilles, then?” Abel smiled, proud of himself for trapping the man.
The man shook his head. “Nothing Greek. Far too much tragedy with the Greeks. Let’s start over. Who is the target?”
Abel shook his head vigorously. “I need to know more about you before we get to that.”
“Fine. I will be satisfied with his or her nationality, and city or country in which I will be operating.”
Abel set his glass down. “As I said, I need to know more about you before I start getting into details.”
The man hesitated before answering. “I am in the business of killing. Have I ever turned down a job be
fore?” he asked himself. “Yes, but not because I had a moral dilemma over ending an individual’s life. I have turned down jobs because I did not feel the person with whom I was dealing was being honest with me.”
“How long have you been doing this?”
“Long enough.”
“This will not work for me,” Abel said as he shook his head. “I need to know more about you. This is a seven-figure contract we are talking about. I will not simply hire someone without knowing their history.”
The man sighed and said, “Listen, I know this is hard for you to understand. You are a German. You are organized, you are anal-retentive, you worked for the Stasi for ten years, and you like to keep records, but trust me when I tell you…this is as much for your own good as it is for mine.”
Abel made a sour face. “I don’t see how knowing nothing about you benefits me.”
The man raised the silenced pistol and pointed it at Abel. “This interview will conclude shortly, and I must stress one thing above all. If you try to find out who I am, if you try to follow my business associate, I will kill you. This is your first and only warning, and don’t let your thirst for details get the best of you. Think of it as a simple mathematical equation. A plus B equals C. A is your curiosity, B is me, and C is you lying on the ground staring up at the sky, knowing for only the briefest of seconds that I have just ended your life.” He lowered the weapon. “Two plus three equals five, and you trying to find out who I am equals death. They are both mathematical certainties.”
Abel picked up his glass and took a sip of cognac. His hand was shaking slightly, so he lowered the glass and clasped it in both hands hoping his visitor didn’t notice. After clearing his throat, Abel asked, “How am I to trust you if I know nothing about you?”
“You shouldn’t trust me,” he said flatly. “I am a contract killer…an assassin. You act as if you are dealing with someone who should be virtuous.”
“Still, before we come to an agreement on the terms, we must reach some level of trust.”
“Don’t take it personally, but I do not trust you. I never trust the people who hire me, and I never lose sight of the reason why you are hiring me. You want someone killed. I don’t ask why. I just do it. But at the same time, I am very aware of the kind of person who pays for this type of work. A few are practical, but many have serious psychological problems. They are often sociopaths who must have their way in everything they do in life. They like all the loose ends tied up and everything tucked away neatly in a box. And for some of them that means getting rid of the man who pulled the trigger.” He pointed the gun at himself and said, “That would be me.”
Abel could not disagree with a single thing the man had just said. “So there is no trust?”
“None. Just professionalism. You watch your back, and I’ll watch mine.”
He held up his glass. “I can drink to that.”
“Good. Now I will give you my terms. You tell me the target, and I will tell you my fee. If you agree, you will wire half of the money as a deposit and the other half upon completion of the contract.”
“What if you turn down the job after I have given you the name?”
The man waved Abel off. “As long as you agree to my fee, I will not turn down the job.”
“But your associate earlier today told me no heads of state.”
“As a general rule, yes.” He shrugged. “But for the right price I will kill anyone.”
Abel thought that sounded promising. It was the moment to decide. If he had one flaw he knew it was overanalyzing. He had not gotten what he wanted from this man, but it was hard to argue with his logic. Abel thought of the other ten million that was waiting for him, and then thought of starting over and trying to find someone as talented as the unidentified man sitting across from him. It was time to jump in with both feet.
Abel drained the rest of the cognac and bit down hard as the liquid burned his throat. He held up the drained glass, exhaled, and asked, “Have you ever heard of an American named Mitch Rapp?”
The man did not answer for several long seconds. “Yes,” he said, finally, in a tone that was anything but enthusiastic.
Abel was overcome with a horrible feeling that the two men knew each other. “Please, tell me you don’t know him?”
“No…only of him.” The man’s voice had taken on a brooding tone.
“Will you take the job?”
The man appeared to be studying Abel through the two openings in his mask. After what seemed like an eternity he said, “That depends on how much you are willing to pay.”
Abel relaxed a bit. “The fee is substantial.”
“I’ll be the judge of that. How much?”
Abel had gone over this a hundred times already. The trick was to start off the negotiations at the low end, but not so low as to insult the other person. “One and a half million U.S. dollars.”
“Don’t insult me.”
Abel looked at his watch. “I do not consider a million and a half dollars an insult.”
“I have no doubt you could find someone who would take the job for a million and a half, and I also have no doubt that Monsieur Rapp would kill that man before he got anywhere near him.”
“There are plenty of good people out there who would jump at this chance.”
The man laughed at him. “You are going to send a good killer to dispatch a man with Mitch Rapp’s skills? Do you know anything about Rapp? Are you a fool?”
Abel felt uncomfortable. “This is a negotiation. A million and a half is a starting point. Tell me what you think the job is worth.”
“Who wants him dead?”
Abel shook his head vigorously. “You know I will not tell you that.”
“Fine,” said the masked man, fully expecting Abel to refuse. “I know how the business end of these things works. I am guessing that you are taking a fee off the top of anywhere between ten and thirty-three percent. Knowing you are a greedy man who likes the finer things in life I will grant you a third of the contract, but not a penny more. Have you already negotiated the contract?”
“No,” Abel lied.
“Have you been given a budget?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.”
The man thought about it for a while. He knew of Abel’s connections and could hazard a pretty good guess at who had hired him. He decided to shoot for the stars. “The price is ten million, and since I like round numbers you will cut your fee to a flat thirty percent.”
The number was at the high end, but within what he thought would be asked. “I will have to check and see if they are willing to pay that much.”
The man got off the couch and started for the small balcony. “E-mail my associate in the morning with your answer.” The man opened the French door.
They were on the eighth floor, and Abel was about to ask him how he was going to leave, but decided not to. The man made him curious, though. He was different. “Tell me…Why did you get into this line of work?”
He looked over his shoulder and said, “Because I am very good at it.”
With that, the man was gone. Abel stared blankly at the closed door for almost a full minute, resisting the urge to go look. During that time he was left in a strange state of limbo wondering if he’d just made the best or worst decision of his life. He decided he needed another drink. Abel refilled his snifter and let the smooth cognac envelop his tongue before swallowing it. The man was talented, he had to grant him that, and he was correct that Abel could not simply send one of his regular people to take care of this. In the end he would just have to take some comfort in the knowledge that he was about to make thirteen million dollars for what would likely be less than a week’s work. Abel smiled and held up his glass in a toast to the man who had just disappeared into the night.
“To the death of Mitch Rapp, and thirteen million dollars.” Abel threw back the rest of the cognac and went to bed.
16
MCLEAN, VIRGINIA
A big Ford
Excursion rolled into the parking lot and parked one spot over from Rapp’s car. Scott Coleman got out. He was wearing a blue polo shirt that was a little on the tight side, a pair of jeans, and black boots. The blond-haired former Navy SEAL looked more like a construction worker than the head of a private security firm that was now billing the federal government more than twenty million dollars a year. Rapp didn’t see a gun on him, but he had no doubt there was one within reach of the driver’s seat and probably an entire arsenal in the back cargo area.
“What’s with all the cloak-and-dagger shit?” Coleman asked. He sounded irritated. “I thought we had friends in high places these days.”
“Yeah, well, we also have enemies in high places.”
“Fuck ’em.”
Rapp scanned the parking lot. “You sure you weren’t followed?”
“No.” He looked at his vehicle. “You think you’d have a hard time putting a tail on this thing?”
Rapp looked at the nine-passenger truck. “You get married and have a bunch of kids I don’t know about?”
“No, I’ve got a lot of shit I have to haul around,” the former SEAL replied a bit defensively.
“The environmentalists must love you. What’s that thing get…about two miles to the gallon?”
“The environmentalists can go fuck themselves,” growled Coleman. “There isn’t a bigger group of brainwashed dipshits on the planet.”
“Come on, Scott, tell me how you really feel about them.”
“The same way you do,” snarled Coleman. “Now, I didn’t drive all the way across town to meet you in some high school parking lot so you could give me shit about my truck.”
Rapp held up his hands. Coleman was normally a pretty cool customer. “Calm down. What in the hell is wrong with you?”
“I haven’t killed anyone in a while. What’s wrong with you?”
“God,” Rapp moaned, “you SEALs are a weird bunch.”