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“I’m glad you fucking desk jockeys have it all figured out from four thousand miles away. I can just hear your uncle second-guessing every move I made even though he hasn’t a clue what went down.”
“Listen . . . this thing wouldn’t look any better from ten feet. It’s a mess and it’s your mess.”
“You’re damn right it is. The only problem is none of you have the foggiest idea what happened.”
“It’s hard to know what happened when your subordinate doesn’t bother to pick up the phone and check in.”
“Well . . . while you were sipping on your latte or tea or whatever the fuck it is that you drink, your subordinate was floating down a river with a bullet hole in his shoulder.”
Kennedy stared wide-eyed at the wall for a moment. Two visuals crowded her thoughts. The first was a wounded Rapp submerged in the murky water of the Seine and the second was the massive cavern beneath the National Security Agency in Maryland that housed the Cray Supercomputers, which were more than likely recording and processing this call. Chastened by Rapp’s information, she said, “I didn’t know. I’m sorry. Listen, I can be in the office in twenty minutes. Can you call me there?”
Rapp laughed. “I don’t think you understand the problem. I was set up.”
“Set up?” her face twisted into a frown.
“They were waiting for me. Your advance team missed them, and I missed them. They knew I was coming. I barely made it out of there alive.”
Kennedy was thunderstruck. “I don’t understand how that could have happened.”
“I thought that’s what you’d say. I’ll make this real simple. You’ve been compromised. I don’t know by whom, but either someone has penetrated our little group or we have a traitor among us, and since I’m the one way out on a limb getting shot at, you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t exactly trust any of you until you get it figured out.”
Kennedy was pacing from one end of the kitchen to the other, frantically trying to figure out what in hell was going on. A dozen obvious questions popped into her mind, but they were on her damn home phone, and she couldn’t risk asking what she needed to ask. She glanced at the clock on the microwave and wondered if she could catch the next flight to Paris. “I’ll come to you. I’ll bring you in.”
“And how do I know I can trust you?”
Kennedy scrambled to come up with an answer. She thought of how she had recruited him, how she had been his only advocate from the very beginning. The only one who truly recognized his talent and potential. And then she put herself in his shoes. She’d been in the field many times, but never in a situation as stressful as the one he was in right now. The sense of isolation would be overwhelming. Dr. Lewis’s admonition came back to her forcefully. They had created him, and if he turned on them . . . She shuddered at the thought. “You can trust me, and you know it.”
“I’m not really in the mood to trust anyone at the moment.”
“I’ve had your back every step of the way,” she pleaded. “I went to the mat for you yesterday.” She thought of the argument in Stansfield’s office. “Just as you guessed, my uncle was very critical.”
“That’s a shock.”
Kennedy started to say something and then held back. She really needed to talk to Stansfield and tell him what Rapp had told her. “Listen, we need to get off this line. I am going to come to you. Check the service in an hour and I will have more information for you.”
“And what makes you so sure I want to be brought in? Knowing how your uncle operates I’ll end up in solitary for a month hooked up to a car battery.”
Kennedy cringed. He was right, of course. Taking a big risk, she said, “I want you to be careful. Check the service and . . . one other thing . . . he sent some guys over yesterday to look for you.”
“Who?” Rapp said, the suspicion evident in his voice.
Kennedy hesitated and then said, “Victor, your old friend, was one of them. I argued against it.”
The omission was greeted with silence. Kennedy imagined him on the other end of the line seething—his laserlike focus fe
eding off his hatred for Victor. “They’re keeping an eye on the apartment. Don’t go there,” Kennedy offered. “I will be there as soon as I can to bring you in. All right? Check the service. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“I’ll think about it.” There was a long pause and then Rapp said, “There were five men who crashed the meeting. I took care of four of them. There was one left . . . the one who winged me. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Kennedy’s brow creased with wrinkles, as she tried to decipher what he was saying. “No.”
“I stuck to protocol. I didn’t do anything I wasn’t authorized to do.”
“Okay,” Kennedy said, still trying to figure out what he was hinting at.
“I wasn’t the only one who walked out of there. The fifth man is responsible for the other three. I went out the window.”
“I’m still not sure I understand . . .”
