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Geoffrey nodded one last time, and Rapp placed a gag over his mouth. With Geoffrey safely tucked away, Rapp stripped nude and took out his blue contacts. His eyes screamed relief as soon as the foreign objects were removed. In the shower, he washed and rinsed his hair five times to get all of the brown out. He tried not to irritate the cut on the back of his head, but it was impossible. When he got out of the shower, he left the water running and cleaned as much of the blood off the back collar of his dress shirt as he could.
After dressing, he went back into the bathroom, turned off the water in the shower, and cleaned the drain trap of hair. He threw all of the towels into a white plastic laundry bag that the inn provided and checked the room one more time. As he left the room, Rapp placed the Do Not Disturb sign on the door and closed it.
It was 6:45 by the time he left the inn by a side door. Rapp walked two miles across town to the area by the Albert Ludwig University. On the way, he dropped the plas
tic bag containing the towels in a Dumpster behind a restaurant and stopped at two separate drugstores and a hotel gift shop. When he reached the university, it was after 7:30, and the temperature was in the sixties. Rapp found the student commons and scouted it out until he found a bathroom that was private enough. It was unisex and on the third floor. He locked the door and went to work. Taking the clippers he had bought at the first drugstore, he put an inch and a half guard on the end, plugged it into the outlet, leaned over the sink, and started buzzing his thick black hair. Then he put a half-inch guard on and buzzed the sides and back of his head. Again, he cleaned up the hair and then put on a blue T-shirt that had a picture of Freiburg’s most famous landmark, the Munster Cathedral. Over that Rapp put on a plain gray sweatshirt. He also wore a pair of tan shorts, white sweat socks, and blue shoes. His clothes and shoes from the night before were bundled up and shoved into a canvas shopping bag. Everything else went into a large green backpack that he had bought at the second drugstore, with the exception of the Glock pistol, which he shoved into the waistband of his shorts and covered with the bulky sweatshirt.
It was a huge relief to get out of the clothes. He had wanted to do it much earlier, but he didn’t want Geoffrey to see his transformation. Rapp left the university and found a bakery just blocks away. He was famished and devoured several pastries, a croissant, and a bottle of orange juice. Next he found a coffee shop and killed another twenty minutes sipping a piping-hot blend. At five minutes to nine, he started out for his next destination.
The bike shop was almost exactly as Rapp remembered it. The enthusiasts and club members were already milling about in front of the small shop in their brightly colored, tight-fitting lycra outfits waiting for the order to mount their bikes. Rapp picked his way through the crowd and into the shop. Bicycles hung from virtually every inch of the ceiling and lined the walls. Rapp approached the counter and asked for help in French. A man behind the counter directed him to a young woman with long black hair. The woman was French. He quickly found out that she was from Metz and was spending the school year studying abroad at the University of Freiburg.
As they looked at bikes, Rapp asked her if they still ran the loop on Saturdays. The woman said it had grown more popular than ever. Freiburg was in Tour de France country. The loop was a route that went northwest to the ancient fortress city of Breissach and then across the Rhine into France. From there, the cyclists would race down the French side of the river and cross back over at Mullheim, Ottmarsheim, or Basel, Switzerland. On a good Saturday, hundreds of brightly clad Swiss, French, and German cyclists raced the loop. Rapp was looking forward to the fact that the border guards let the packs of riders cross over without checking their passports. He remembered this part of Europe being very open, even during the Cold War. From Freiburg, France lay just fifteen miles to the east, and Basel was less than fifty miles to the southwest. The border crossings were low-key because of the heavy volume of people who lived in one country and worked in another. But, as Rapp had seen in other countries, there was no doubt that the security at crossings could be ratcheted up at a moment’s notice.
After reviewing the selection of bikes, he chose a classic mint green used Bianchi. He also purchased saddlebags, a fanny pack, and a riding outfit complete with shoes, a small white cap, and a pair of Oakley racing glasses. Using the backpack that he had already purchased would not work. He would stick out like a sore thumb. Rapp paid for everything in cash. He wanted to hold off on using the credit card as long as possible. The woman showed him to a tiny bathroom in the basement of the shop, and Rapp put on his new outfit. Into the innermost pocket of the fanny pack he put the gun, one extra clip of ammunition, a silencer, and his stash of francs, deutsch marks, and pounds. In the outer pocket he put his French passport and several hundred francs. Everything that was to be discarded was put back into the backpack. He kept his new clothes.
When he got back upstairs, the riders were getting ready to leave. Rapp rolled up his clothes into tight balls and shoved them into the saddlebags of his new bike. He told the helpful young woman that he would be back in one minute. Holding up his backpack, he said he had to give it to a friend. Waddling in his hard-soled black biking shoes, he disappeared around the corner. A half block away, he found a trash can, lifted the top bag, and shoved the backpack in. There were better ways to do this, but he was short on time.
Back at the bike shop, the pack of thirty-plus cyclists were starting to pull away. Rapp thanked the young French woman for her help and wheeled his Bianchi out onto the cobblestone street. Two blocks later, he caught up to the rear of the group and settled in. Rapp was much more than a cycling enthusiast. He no longer competed professionally, but it wasn’t many years ago that he had been one of the world’s top ranked triathletes. He had won the Ironman in Hawaii and posted three top five finishes in what was the sport’s greatest annual event. Then his work with the CIA had picked up considerably, and the hectic and unpredictable schedule had forced him to give up competition. But he still swam, jogged, and biked at least five days a week.
It was 9:36 when they rolled out of town. Rapp stayed at the back. His legs felt good, but his chest hurt a little. The pain made him think of the previous night’s events, and he began to try to analyze what the hell had happened. Who could have been behind the Hoffmans’ little stunt? The chances that the Hoffmans had acted alone were all but impossible. Rapp had never met them; he could see no motive they would have for killing him. A very select few knew of his relationship with the CIA, and even fewer knew about his recent mission. He knew of one for sure and assumed the other two. The person in the easiest position to arrange for the Hoffmans to take him out was the one person he thought he could always trust. Rapp didn’t like it one bit. It shook his faith to the core, and it ran counter to everything his instincts had ever told him, but the shitty reality was that Irene Kennedy was suspect number one. Rapp didn’t want to believe it. He wanted desperately to believe anything else, but for the moment there wasn’t any other answer. He would have to get back to the States and find out for himself. And he would start with the Hoffmans. He would need help in tracking them down, but he knew just the person to ask.
As they rounded a turn, Rapp got his first glimpse of the Rhine and straight ahead the old Celtic fortress of Breisach. The town was situated on an eighty-meter-high rock plateau that was one of the earth’s most natural military positions. From the ridge the road fell off into the valley. The riders went into full crouches and pumped their legs. The speed of the group topped forty miles per hour. Riding at the back, Rapp drafted off the riders in front of him and searched for the bridge that would take them over the Rhine. He didn’t like what he saw. The row of vehicles backed up at the checkpoint stretched for what looked to be at least a mile. Stay cool, he told himself. You don’t look anything like the person they’re searching for, you have a visa and a European Union identity card that no one knows about, and you’re traveling in a group.
Rapp dropped his bike into the lowest gear and picked up the pace. He easily passed nine cyclists and settled into a spot closer to the middle of the group. Three minutes later, they were on a shoulder passing the cars that were in line to cross the bridge. Rapp took a drink from his water bottle and kept his eyes peeled for anything that might be useful if he had to turn around and head back. The group began to slow, but not much. Rapp used the opportunity to spin his fanny pack around so he could get into it if he needed to. For either the passport or the gun.
A group of French cyclists passed them going the other way. Most of the cyclists waved, but a few shouted taunts back and forth across the roadway. Up ahead, Rapp saw a border patrol officer standing on the shoulder and waving his hands for the cyclists to stop. The lead cyclist began shouting at the man while they were still some fifty yards away. Rapp couldn’t understand what he was saying but noticed that he was pointing back at the pack of French cyclists who were racing off in the other direction. A second officer appeared and intervened. By the time they reached the bridge, the officers were gesturing for them to continue through. As Rapp passed them, he heard the second officer shout encouragement. Thank God for national pride.
When they reached the other side, Rapp breathed a huge sigh of relief. The hard part was behind him. The peleton moved west for a quarter of a mile. Rapp allowed himself to fall to the back of the pack, and when they turned to the south, he peeled off and went straight. A road sign told him that Colmar was twelve kilometers ahead; most of it, he knew, was uphill. Rapp put his head down and picked up the pace. His first priority was to find a computer, and then he had a train to catch.
Death was coming. It had been, of course, since the day he was born on his parents’ farm outside Stoneville, South Dakota, in 1920, but now it was upon him. Death had its bony fingers wrapped around his small, frail body and wasn’t about to let go. It was the natural progression of things. A beginning and an end. Surprisingly, this didn’t bother him. He had lived a long life. Much longer than most. He had seen and heard things that very few others had. The sacrifices he had made for his country would be remembered by few, and again this didn’t bother him. His life had been lived in the shadows, and as the Information Age exploded, he had grown increasingly comfortable with his relative anonymity.
Thomas Stansfield was a private man, as was fitting for the person who ran the world’s most famous, and infamous, intelligence agency. He had chosen to die at home surrounded by his daughters and grandchildren. The doctors had tried to talk him into surgery and radiation therapy, but Stansfield declined. The best they could give him at his age was another year or two, and that was if he survived having three-quarters of his liver removed. There was a good chance that he would never recover from the surgery. His wife, Sara, had passed away four years ago, and Thomas missed her dearly. Her death, more than anything, probably contributed to his decision not to fight. What was the sense? He had lived seventy-nine good years and was for the most part alone. The other big reason not to fight was his daughters. He did not want them to have to put their lives on hold for two years to watch him gradually wither a
way. If he were younger, things might be different, but he was tired. He wanted to die in privacy, with his mind and dignity intact.
A hospital bed had been moved into the study on the first floor of his home. The modest three-thousand-square-foot colonial sat on two wooded acres overlooking the Potomac River. In the spring, they could sit in the backyard and watch the water rush over Stublefield Falls, but now, in the fall, it was barely a trickle. Stansfield sat in his favorite leather chair, and looked admiringly out the window at the fall colors. How appropriate it was to die this time of the year, he thought. At least, Robert Frost would think so.
Sally, his eldest daughter, was in town from San Diego taking care of him. His other daughter, Sue, was to arrive on Wednesday from Sacramento. Their plan was to stay with him to the end. The five grandkids had been out two weekends before to spend some time with Grandpa before he was too far gone to enjoy it. The oldest was seventeen, and the youngest was five. The weekend had been painful but necessary. There had been a lot of tears.
Today Sally had helped him get dressed for a visitor. He was wearing a pair of tan slacks, a light blue button-down, and a gray cardigan. His white hair was parted to the side and combed back. Iowa was slugging it out with Penn State on the TV, but Stansfield wasn’t paying attention to the game. He was worried about a phone call he had received. He wanted to put everything in order before he passed. The grandkids were taken care of. Trusts had been set up for college and grad school if they chose, but nothing else. There would be no sports cars or boats, no toys to make them weak. The house would easily fetch a million, not bad considering he had bought the land for two thousand dollars back in 1952. And there were other investments, of course. A person would have had to be a fool not to have capitalized on some of the information that had come across Thomas Stansfield’s desk over the years. The daughters would get the bulk of the estate, and he didn’t worry for a moment about whether the money would be used wisely.
What did worry Thomas Stansfield was the CIA. Things were not in order, and they were beginning to show signs of being worse than he had thought. No one outside Stansfield’s family had been allowed to look behind the curtain he had pulled across his life. There was one exception, and that was Irene Kennedy. Stansfield thought of her as his third daughter. She was, he believed, the most talented and crucially important person working for the CIA. This made her a big target for a lot of people, and Stansfield was worried that when he was gone, his enemies would do their best to destroy her.
SALLY ESCORTED DR. Kennedy into the study and then closed the door on her way out. Irene approached Stansfield’s chair and kissed him on the forehead. This was a new thing for them, since the cancer had been discovered. At the time, they had quietly mused over death’s habit of bringing one’s true feelings to the surface. Kennedy took the chair across from her boss and asked him how he felt.
“Pretty good, but let’s not worry about me. There’s nothing we can do about that.” Stansfield studied her for a moment and asked, “What’s wrong?”
Kennedy wasn’t exactly sure where to start, and after a brief hesitation, she said, “The operation we were running in Germany last night…”
“Yes.”
“Things didn’t go exactly as planned.”
“How bad?”
“Mitch hasn’t reported in yet, and the BKA has put out a continent-wide bulletin on three individuals they believe are responsible for the death of Count Hagenmiller.”
“This was expected.”
