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“What are you going to do?”
“A little reconnaissance.”
“Where?”
Rapp placed the submachine gun on the ground. “You sure do ask a lot of questions.”
“I’m a reporter. It’s my job.”
Rapp frowned and nodded as if he had just been reminded of a particularly bad thing.
Rielly picked up on the expression and asked, “Is there something wrong with that?”
“Normally”—Rapp shrugged his shoulders—“probably not. But under-the current circumstances, I can see where we might have a problem.”
“And why would that be?”
“Why?” Rapp tilted his head. “Because when this whole thing
is over, you will probably have one hell of a story to tell.”
“I owe you a lot. I wouldn’t report anything that you didn’t agree to.”
Rapp slid his pistol out of his thigh holster and pulled back on the slide. The cylindrical brass round was where it should have been, and Rapp let the slide go forward. “What if I don’t want you to report a single word of this mess? What if I want you to act like we never met, and none of this ever happened?”
“That’s not realistic.”
“Well, then we have a problem.”
Looking at him, she wondered why he would have to be so secretive. “Who do you work for?”
“I can’t tell you that.” Rapp shoved his pistol back in its holster.
“Seriously, I’d like know.”
“And seriously”—Rapp shook his head and opened his eyes wide—“I can’t tell you.”
“It must be the CIA.” Rielly kept her eyes on him, trying to get the slightest hint of a reaction. She got nothing. “It has to be the CIA, otherwise you could tell me.”
“Wrong. Are you a woman of your word?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Then someday, if we both make it out of here alive, I’ll tell you my life story.” Rapp smiled, showing a set of long dimples on both cheeks.
Rielly smiled back and nodded. “So you work for the CIA.”
“I never said that,” replied Rapp.
IRENE KENNEDY STOOD over the secure phone in General Flood’s office and felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. On the other end was Colonel Fine of the Israeli foreign intelligence service, Mossad. Fine had just given Kennedy a brief overview on the three names she had given him the night before. There was no surprising information on the first two terrorists, but the third was an entirely different matter. Mustafa Yassin was the man in question, and Kennedy was curious. The colonel had come up with three matches on the name Mustafa Yassin. The first was a fifty-seven-year-old officer in the Jordanian army, and the second was an eighteen-year-old suspected Palestinian dissident.
When Colonel Fine finished giving the background on the individuals, Kennedy asked, “Could you repeat the info on the last Yassin, please?”
“Sure, but let me caution you, Yassin is a fairly common name over here, so this might not be the same guy. The last Mustafa Yassin is an Iraqi. We don’t have a lot of information on him, but what we do have all revolves around the invasion of Kuwait. Since then there has only been one update added to his file. According to our intelligence, his alias is the Thief of Baghdad. When the Iraqis rolled into Kuwait and started looting, it was this Yassin fellow who they put in charge of breaking into all of the bank vaults.”
“What else do you have on him?” asked Kennedy.
“Not a lot, but this isn’t the guy I would worry about. My bet is Aziz recruited this eighteen-year-old fellow from Gaza as cannon fodder.”
