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“I don’t know . . . running away?”
“No . . . that would be you. You were the one running away.”
Victor leaned over the table. “You would have done the exact same fucking thing.”
“You have no idea what I’d do, so shut your fucking mouth before I break your jaw. Now get back on point. What do you think Rapp was doing when these two guys walked up on him?”
Victor leaned back and folded his arms defiantly. “I don’t know.”
“He was giving first aid to one of the agents. One guy was hit in the face and the second was hit in the chest. These two witnesses I’ve worked with for almost two decades say Rapp was patching up the guy with the chest wound.”
Victor shrugged as if it meant nothing.
“Tell me why in hell Rapp would shoot a guy and then try to save him.”
“I don’t know. He’s a total nut job, and when we can catch him we can ask him all of these questions. But this,” Victor said, throwing his hands out, “is all a bunch of bullshit and you know it.”
One of the phones in the observation room rang and Ridley answered it. He listened for a half minute and then said, “Nice work. Stick with it. I’ll call you as soon as we’re mobile.” Ridley set the phone back in the cradle and looked up at Stansfield with a big grin on his face. “Waldvogel got it done. We’re wired for sound and we have a beacon. Guess who picked Cooke up at the airport?”
Stansfield was too fixated on Victor to change gears so quickly. “I have no idea.”
“Paul Fournier.”
“His name seems to be popping up a lot these days.”
“Waldvogel says they’re stopping for lunch and then they have a meeting. Fournier said, and I quote, ‘They are very excited to meet you, but they expect the rest of the list, and they want to know the name of the assassin.’ ”
“What did Cooke say?”
“He said he didn’t fly all the way to Paris just to have lunch.”
Stansfield turned away from Ridley and looked through the glass. Tapping Talmage on the shoulder, he said, “Tell Stan to take a break. I need to talk with him.”
Rapp walked over to Stansfield, and in a voice that only he could hear, said, “Give me five minutes with him. I’m the last guy he expects to see.”
Stansfield was in the midst of considering it when Hurley came into the room looking as if he wanted to punch someone. He froze in midstride when he saw Rapp standing next to his boss. “What in hell is he doing here?”
“Easy,” Stansfield warned. “His story checks out. He’s not the problem,” Stansfield said, nodding at Rapp. “He is.” Stansfield pointed through the glass at Victor, who was looking rather smug considering the situation he’d landed himself in. “Come here,” Stansfield ordered Hurley. The two of them huddled in the corner, where Stansfield rel
ayed everything he’d learned in the past few hours.
“Greta?” Hurley asked in shock at one point.
Stansfield quieted him down and finished. The two of them came out of the corner. Stansfield looked at Dr. Lewis and said, “Tom, Mitch would like to go in there and ask Victor a few questions. I’m running short on time. It appears our deputy director is in the midst of committing treason, and before I do anything about it, I’d like a little more proof.”
“Can you keep your cool?” Lewis asked Rapp.
Rapp frowned. “I don’t think keeping my cool is going to get us anywhere at this point. I watched that fucker kill four people last night. Not one of them was a terrorist. Two of them you knew pretty well. He’s a piece of shit . . . a sick dog, and you guys should have put him out of his misery a long time ago. Now isn’t the time to get weak in the knees.” The last person Rapp expected to support him was Hurley.
“He’s right. Victor thinks he has us outsmarted. The best way to knock him off his game is to send Rapp in.”
“If Mitch walks into that room,” Lewis said, “there’s going to be violence.”
Rapp drew his silenced Glock and said, “You’re damn right there is.”
Lewis looked pleadingly at Stansfield. “This isn’t the way to do this. What if he kills him before we get the answers we need?”
“I promise I won’t kill him, Doc. At least not before we get the answers we need.” Rapp didn’t want to wait around for permission, so he started for the door.
