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He completed the task without spilling a drop and then poured three flutes. When Hayes was done he handed a glass each to Kennedy and Rapp and then held up his own. “To a job well done, and a crisis avoided.”
They all drank and then the president added, “These are truly momentous times, and the two of you have played a major role in getting these parties to sit down. Who knows,” he added with a hopeful glint in his eye, “by the end of the week we could finally have peace in the Middle East.” The president noticed Rapp’s doubtful expression and asked, “You don’t think that’s possible?”
Rapp hesitated, and then said, “Sir, I think by the end of the week you’ll probably have a document that says there’s going to be peace in the Middle East, but I’m a skeptic as to whether or not that peace will ever become a reality.”
The president frowned. He did not want his good mood spoiled. “Why do you think that?”
“Because there’s an element within the Arab world that will settle for nothing short of the total destruction of Israel.”
“That element hasn’t been invited to the table. Israel and Palestine must coexist side by side. There is no other choice.”
“I agree, sir, but that element doesn’t want to be invited to the peace table. That’s the problem. They only want the destruction of Israel.”
“So what would you advise me to do?” asked a cautious Hayes.
“Exactly what you’re doing, sir. Just make sure you hold no illusions about what it will take to really make peace. Those groups that don’t want peace need to be dealt with, and there’s only one thing they understand.”
“What’s that?”
Rapp reached behind his back with his left hand and drew his gun. He wanted to make his point with the president, bring him back down from the clouds. This part of the peace process was easy, with civilized men and women gathering in a magnificent city like Paris, talking about noble causes while the world press lauded them with accolades. At night they all went to bed secretly dreaming that one day soon they would win the Nobel Peace Prize, while several thousand miles away young Palestinian boys and girls were being trained to blow themselves up in the name of their god. Those so-called martyrs cared little about documents signed in fancy rooms by fancy men. It was not possible to reason with unreasonable people.
Rapp held his gun up in the palm of his hand for the president to see, and said, “This is the only thing the zealots understand, sir. If you want peace in the Middle East they need to be dealt with. Only then will Israelis and Palestinians be able to live side by side.”
ATRIA BOOKS
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Pursuit of Honor
VINCE FLYNN
Available from Atria Books in hardcover
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Pursuit of Honor . . .
1
NEW YORK CITY
It was nearing ten o’clock in the evening when Mitch Rapp decided it was time to move. He stepped from the sedan into the April night, popped his umbrella, clutched the collar of his black trench coat, and set out across a rain-soaked East 20th Street. He navigated the puddles and swollen gutter without complaint. The weather was a blessing. Not only did it clear the streets of potential witnesses, it also gave him a reasonable excuse to hide his face from the city’s ever-increasing array of security cameras.
Rapp had traveled to New York City to decide the fate of a man. He had debated the wisdom of handling it himself. In addition to the inherent risk of getting caught, there was another, more pressing problem. Just six days earlier a series of explosions had torn through Washington, D.C., killing 185 and wounding hundreds. Three of the terrorists were still at large, and Rapp had been unofficially ordered to find them by any means necessary. So far, however, the investigation had been painfully complicated and had yet to yield a single solid lead. The three men had up and disappeared, which suggested a level of sophistication that few of them thought the enemy capable of. The last thing Rapp expected, though, was that he would still be dealing with this other issue. In light of the attacks in Washington, he thought the fool would have come to his senses.
Beyond the significance of deciding if the man should live or die, there was the aftermath to consider. Killing him had the very real potential of causing more problems than it would solve. If the guy failed to show up for work there would be a lot of questions, and the majority of them would be directed at Rapp and his boss, Irene Kennedy, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. One tiny misstep, and the shit storm of all shit storms would be brought down on them.
The man in charge of the surveillance team had tried to talk him out of it, but Rapp wasn’t the kind of man who was going to start pulling the trigger from a climate-controlled office a couple hundred miles away. He needed to see with his own eyes if they were missing something—if there wasn’t some unseen or unpredictable event that had caused the bureaucrat to jump the tracks. Rapp was keenly aware of the universal disdain for the man he had followed to New York. There were plenty of people on the clandestine side of the business who had cause to wish the prick dead, and that was another reason Rapp needed to be absolutely certain he was guilty of what they suspected. His dislike for the man would make it all that much easier to pull the trigger, and Rapp knew he had to fight the urge. He needed to give this idiot every last chance to save himself before they did something that could never be undone.
It would be a mistake to read too deeply into Rapp’s cautious attitude, though. If he found the proof he was looking for, there would be no hand-wringing or queasiness. He’d killed too many people to begin acting like an amateur now, and although the man was a fellow American, he was also very likely a traitor. And not some low-level, paper-pushing traitor. This guy had one of the highest security clearances in the federal government and his hypocrisy had likely gotten one of Rapp’s agents killed.
Rapp moved down the sidewalk toward Park Avenue South at a casual pace. He was dressed in a fashion similar to the thousand-plus executive car drivers who were shuffling their clients around the city on this rain-soaked evening—black shoes, black suit, white shirt, black tie, and a black trench coat. To anyone who happened to notice him, he would look like just another driver out stretching his legs, trying to kill a little time before his client finished his meal and was ready to head someplace else or call it a night.
As Rapp took up a position across the street and one door down from Gramercy Tavern, he reached into his pocket and fished out a pack of Marlboros. Standing in the rain in New York City doing nothing might get you noticed, but throw in a cigarette and you looked like all the other addicts battling the elements to get their fix. Rapp turned away from the street and faced the blank façade of the building behind him. He tilted the
umbrella so it looked like he was trying to block the wind and flicked his lighter. He was not worried about the wind, but he was worried about one of the other drivers catching a glimpse of his face in the glow of the flame.
After a deep pull off the cigarette, Rapp casually looked out from under the rain soaked umbrella and across the street. The target was sitting in one of the restaurant’s big windows sharing a meal, a lot of booze and too much conversation with a man Rapp had never met, and hoped to keep that way. The other man was a concern to be sure, but Rapp was not in the habit of killing private citizens simply because they were witness to the ramblings of a bitter man who was past his prime.
