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“I think you’re being a bit paranoid.”

“I think you’re naïve.” Rapp looked at his watch. “We don’t have a lot of time, so here’s what we’re going to do. Our Russian friend here.” Rapp pointed over his shoulder at the slumbering oaf in the corner. “Have any of you told anyone else that he exists?”

Coleman, Stroble, and Brooks all shook their heads.

“Good. He doesn’t exist.”

“What are you going to do with him?” Brooks asked.

Rapp’s patience was wearing thin. “This would be a good time for you to watch and learn.”

“Are you going to kill him?”

“Brooks, look me in the eye, so there’s no doubt between any of us that you understand what I’m about to tell you.”

Brooks guardedly folded her arms across her chest and looked at him with her greener than brown hazel eyes.

“Stop asking questions. This isn’t a fucking debate club. It’s a benevolent dictatorship, and I’m not feeling very benevolent right now, so unless you want to find your ass transferred out of the Clandestine Service and into some secretarial pool at one of the offsite locations, you’re going to do everything I tell you to do for the next two hours. Can you do that?”

She took a moment to decide and then reluctantly said, “Yes.”

21

Rapp yanked open the light aluminum door and looked down at Gazich. It was obvious by the prisoner’s pasty skin that the morphine had worn off. His forehead and upper lip were covered with beads of sweat, and his entire body quivered beneath the drab gray blanket. Rapp knew from firsthand experience that simply going from darkness to light in such an agonizing state could be painful. He watched the Bosnian shut his eyes and winced with understanding. Rapp did not like Gazich, but he took no joy in his discomfort.

Rapp had just spent the last five minutes on the phone with Marcus Dumond learning more about Gazich. There were passports, financial information, a key to a safety deposit box, cash, weapons, computers, backup disks, and hard files all found by Hacket and Wicker at Gazich’s office and home. All of it was scanned or photographed and sent to Dumond back in DC. At first glance the information gave them a pretty good idea of what Alexander Deckas had been up to for the past seven years. Dumond had already taken to referring to the prisoner as two separate people. Gavrilo Gazich was the man wanted by The Hague for war crimes in Bosnia, and Alexander Deckas was a seemingly legitimate businessman who had run a company called Aid Logistics Inc based out of Limassol, Cyprus.

Hacket and Wicker had taken the hard drives from both the office and home computers of Gazich and uploaded them via satellite to Dumond. So far the encryption programs had frustrated the MIT genius, but he expected to have them decrypted by later in the day. Rapp told him to make sure no one at Langley knew what he was up to, including DCI Kennedy. Dumond was used to working on a need-to-know basis, but DCI Kennedy was pretty much always in the need-to-know loop. Rapp told Dumond he was short on time and would explain everything when he saw him later today. The more pressing issue at the moment was to get Gazich to talk before he had to turn him over to the FBI.

Moving one step to his left, Rapp managed to block out the light that was hitting Gazich in his face. The CIA operative held out a syringe and said, “Here’s how we play this game. I’m going to ask you a series of questions. If you answer them truthfully, you get your shot of morphine. If you lie to me, just once, no shot.”

Gazich nodded eagerly.

“I want to be really clear about this…I know more about you than you can possibly imagine. I’ve talked to the big Russian,” Rapp lied. “The one whose face you were in process of carving up. He had some very interesting things to say about you.”

“Russians are professional liars,” Gazich growled.

Rapp help up a cautionary finger. “We’ve gone through your office and your house and have run your photo through our facial recognition system. We have you on tape buying coffee at the Starbucks on Wisconsin Avenue the morning that the bomb went off. If you lie, even once, I shut the door and we start over again in thirty minutes.”

“I’ll tell you whatever you want. Hurry up and give me the shot.”

“Oh no.” Rapp laughed. “We talk first, and then you get the shot.”

“Then hurry up with your questions.”

Rapp had a theory, and he was going to test it after he started with a few easy questions. “Who hired you?”

“I don’t know,” Gazich moaned in frustration.

“Fine.” Rapp took a step back and started closing the door.

“I swear!” Gazich yelled in a panic. “Everything was handled over the Internet.”

Rapp stood there with the door half closed. This was the answer he expected. If Gazich had given him a name he would have been suspicious. Big money contracts like these were rarely handled face to face.

“You didn’t know them, but they knew you?” Rapp asked.

“By reputation only.”

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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