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“Those photos could have just as easily backfired, if they had released them.”
“You really are delusional.” Green laughed. “Need I remind you of the frantic phone call I received from you with one month to go in the campaign? Your pit bull of a campaign manager had received the photo of Jillian having the sword put to her by the hired help.”
“He was a Secret Service agent.”
“Exactly…and on the back of that photo someone had written the words, You’ll never win. Do you remember the phone call you made? Do you remember that you were practically in tears? Do you remember saying we should have the bitch killed?”
Green was five inches shorter and he got right up in Ross’s face. “Go right ahead and convince yourself that you had nothing to do with this. It’s probably a good place to be when you’re dealing with other people, but when you’re with me, drop the attitude. You’re a motherfucker just like I am. The only difference
between the two of us is that I’m under no illusion to the contrary.”
“I have devoted the last twelve years of my life to public service, and I most certainly…”
“You’ve devoted your entire life to yourself. You didn’t run for the Senate because you wanted to help people. You ran for the Senate to feed your ego. So don’t stand here and try and sell me a load of crap. I know exactly who you are even if you don’t.”
“You know, Cy, a little gratitude might go a long way.”
“Gratitude for what? For being allowed to stand in your presence? Are you fucking kidding me? The only person who should be showing any gratitude right now is you. I’m the one who got you elected. You haven’t done shit. I’ll show you my gratitude when you get my pardon signed a week from today.”
Ross nodded. “I’m working on it, but we might need more time.”
“You don’t get more time. You assured me you could get President Hayes to sign the pardon, so get him to sign it next Saturday with all the others.”
“I’ll make it happen,” Ross said because he knew it was the only answer Green would accept. Wanting to change the direction of the conversation he asked, “The man you hired…have you taken care of him yet?”
“I’m working on it. Why?”
“The FBI knows he exists.”
“Do they know he was the trigger man?”
“No, but it’s not worth leaving it up to chance. He needs to be taken care of.”
“Don’t worry about him.” Green pointed a finger at Ross. “Just worry about getting me my pardon.”
Ross took a big gulp of wine and smiled. He had no guarantees that he could get Green his pardon. In fact, if he had to guess, it was more likely that President Hayes would turn them down flat, which would mean that Josh Alexander would have to start out his term with an extremely controversial pardon. Either way, this would not be easy. There was one other option that occurred to Ross. He looked into Green’s eyes and held up his glass.
“To your pardon.”
“To my pardon.” Green clanged his glass against Ross’s. “I’ll drink to that.”
Ross smiled and thought to himself, and may you die of some tragic accident before next Saturday.
7
LIMASSOL, CYPRUS
R app was careful to stand back from the window. He looked through the telephoto lens and adjusted the focus. A second man entered the frame. Rapp’s right index finger pressed the trigger halfway down, and the digital camera automatically adjusted the focus. He pressed the button all the way down and snapped off two quick images. With a deep exhale he lowered the camera, but kept his eyes on the street.
A frown creased his brow and he said, “Who the fuck are these guys?”
He’d been asking himself that question since mid-afternoon, and he wasn’t any closer to an answer. The photos had been sent back to Marcus Dumond at Langley so he could run them through the facial recognition system, but so far they’d come up with nothing. The system worked well when you could narrow the parameters a bit, but Rapp didn’t have a clue where these guys came from or for whom they worked. Rapp told Dumond to start with the assumption that they were local cops, so the cyber tech hacked into the Limassol Police Department database. Dumond ran through the personnel files and came up with nothing. Then it was on to the national police, and after that the Hellenic National Intelligence Service. Again they came up with nothing.
Rapp had spent time in Cyprus before. Most of it in Nicosia, the capital of the Greek side of the island. The Northeastern side was controlled by the Turks. Geographically, Cyprus had occupied a position of great strategic importance throughout history. It dominated the eastern end of the Mediterranean. For thousands of years the island had been fought over due to its value in controlling the sea-lanes between Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. The Phoenicians, Assyrians, Greeks, Persians, Egyptians, Romans, Arabs, the Frankish Lusignan dynasty, Venetians, Ottoman Turks, and many lesser-known countries had all controlled the island at one point or another throughout recorded history. Because of its significance to the trade routes, the island had also long been favored by outlaws. Real pirates and slave traders and their modern day cousins; narco traffickers, mafiosi, and now terrorists. After 9/11 it was discovered that Cyprus was one of Osama bin Laden’s favored banking venues. The island was famous for its seedy underbelly, which only deepened the mystery of who these guys might be.
The only thing Rapp did know for sure was that he had spotted three of them. To do really good surveillance you needed bodies and gadgets. Rapp was in short supply of both at the moment. He’d sent Brooks to pick up Coleman and his men from the airport. He could have asked Kennedy to send some bodies from the embassy in Nicosia, but there was a real downside to going that route. It was likely the ambassador would end up catching wind that the CIA was running an operation in his backyard, which would lead to him throwing a shit fit and calling the State Department, and then the whole thing was likely to spin out of control. The key with these operations was to move slow and stay off everyone’s radar screen if at all possible.
On the gadget front, Rapp wished he’d at least brought along a parabolic mike so he could hear what these guys were saying to each other. Since they were flying commercial, Rapp had made the decision not to load himself and Brooks down with surveillance kits. It was hard enough to sneak a gun, a silencer, and two extra clips of ammunition into a country. The electronic listening devices, scopes, cameras, scanners, and parabolic mikes took up a lot of room and raised a lot of eyebrows. It simply wasn’t the type of stuff newlyweds brought on their honeymoon. Coleman and his boys were in charge of transferring that stuff and they were doing it under the guise of a director doing location scouts for a film. They had business cards with the name of a development company, an address in Beverly Hills, and a phone number with a 310 area code that was answered by a woman in Langley, Virginia.
