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“Let me think about it,” Nash said, his eyes narrowing.
“If they’ve met face-to-face, I can look at the cell tower records and find out if they overlapped at all in the last month.”
Nash thought about it for a moment, weighed the pros and cons, and decided he really didn’t give a shit. He needed to unload some of this stuff, and who better to trust than Coleman. In a voice barely above a whisper he said, “Glen Adams.”
Coleman nodded slowly at first and then more enthusiastically. “It figures. The fucking narcissist. He’d hate anyone who was good at your job. He wasn’t worth shit back when he was operations.”
Nash agreed and said, “I need you to move quickly. I need to know how much they know and how they know it.”
“I’ll get on it tonight. You going to be around for Rory’s game on Saturday?”
Coleman was referring to Nash’s fourteen-year-old son. “If I’m not in jail.”
“Come on…don’t be so morose. Your one-year-old son is well on his way to mastering the greatest word in the English language.”
Nash smiled. Thought of Charlie dropping the F-bomb at the breakfast table. The look of absolute horror on his wife’s face. “I’ll tell you the story about it some time over a beer. It’s pretty funny. If you’re in the neighborhood this week, stop by for a drink.”
“I don’t know, things are pretty crazy and now you want me to get on this…”
“Maggie and the kids would love to see you.”
Without missing a beat, Coleman said, “I know Maggie would.”
“Why are all you SEALs such pigs?”
“Oh, and you Marines are such a dignified lot.”
Nash grinned. “We are charming bastards, aren’t we?”
“You look good in your dress blues, but that’s about it.” Coleman turned down the next aisle and over his shoulder said, “Keep your dobber up.”
Great, Nash thought as he stared at Coleman wheeling his cart down the aisle. Just what I need, another reminder about last night.
CHAPTER 36
DULLES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
THE Gulfstream G500 dropped through the clouds at 6,100 feet; the hydraulic landing gear whirled into the down position and then locked with a slight thud that woke Rapp from what had been an unusually deep sleep. He turned his head to the right and lifted the shade on the window. Thousands of lights greeted him. Of all of the airports the world over this one was probably the most familiar to him. It had been built before he was born. They’d stuck it out here where the edge of Fairfax County met up with Loudoun County. Back then it had been nothing more than farmland and horses. Now it was built up with highways, roads, parking lots, malls, businesses, hotels, apartments, and housing developments. Urban s
prawl at its finest.
Rapp watched the cars driving up and down Sully Road past the old plantation, and as he had done so many times before, he felt a tinge of envy. He wondered what it would be like to switch places with them. To lead a life not knowing the things he knew. What it would be like to wake up and kiss his wife and kids good-bye and just go into an office like so many of the friends he’d grown up with. He never dwelled on it for more than a few seconds, and he never felt even remotely sorry for himself. The truth was he loved what he did. It had taken him many years to come to that realization, and more than a few hardships, but it had finally sunk in.
Strangely, it was the murder of his wife and unborn child that had finally got him to admit it. Not at first, of course. They had placed a bomb in his house out on the Chesapeake Bay that had been meant for him. Once again, he had cheated death, but this time paid for it with the loss of the woman he loved and the child he so badly wanted to meet and hold and raise and be a father to. He thought of that blissful, brief time that they’d had together after she’d told him she was pregnant. It was only a week, but he could still taste the emotions as if it were all happening at this very moment.
Lovely Anna, with her emerald green eyes, had taken on a radiance that made her look like something out of a dream. He’d have never thought she could be any more beautiful, but somehow the pregnancy had done it. Her already flawless skin glowed and her eyes sparkled with even more life than normal. She was filled with excitement, and was all the more elated knowing that this was something her rough-and-tumble husband so badly wanted. To give him the ultimate gift of a child, she knew, would be the final piece of leverage to get him to walk away from his dangerous profession. She had said to him once after making love that he’d given enough to his country. He’d been shot, stabbed, hunted, and tortured, and it was time for him to let go. To let someone else step into the breach and fight the battle.
For all of her liberal leanings, Anna was not a head-in-the-sand liberal. She’d seen firsthand what these fanatics were like, and she never for a moment questioned the fact that when you stripped it all away her husband’s job was to hunt them down and kill them before they had the chance to incite more hatred and kill more innocent people. She’d never admitted it to him, but he knew now that she had been secretly proud of what he did. Her brother had confided to him after her death that Anna thought him the most noble man she had ever met.
After she’d been taken unexpectedly from him, his immediate reaction was predictable. He took his pain and anger and devastating anguish and he stuffed it deep down into the furnace of his belly and he used it to fuel his hunt for those who were responsible. He methodically tracked them down and got his vengeance. Two of them he had allowed to live. The reasons were complicated, but he knew ultimately it was what Anna would have wanted. With the retribution taken care of and reality staring him straight in the face, his entire world had then came crashing down around him. His moral compass, his sense of right and wrong, had been demagnetized and he found himself awash in a sea of guilt and self-recrimination.
Having spent his life so sure of himself and his actions he took the only avenue that made any sense to him. He simply walked away. No one knew where he was for more than six months. Not his brother, not even his handlers at Langley. When he reappeared he was a changed man. Broken, but not shattered, he was more aware of his faults. More understanding of his shortcomings and how they would affect his job. In the end he would blame himself forever for thinking he could have a normal life, and he carried with him the guilt of her death every day. A quick prayer to her every morning and every night apologizing for getting her involved in his nasty world. Sometimes he would admit to himself that she was a willing participant. As strong-willed as anyone he had ever met, no one ever talked her into doing anything she didn’t want to do. She came along because she loved him, and in the end that was the one glorious thing that brought him solace, a bit of happiness, and even an occasional smile to his face. She believed in what he did and she loved him.
It had taken him somewhere between a year and half to two years to get to that point, and when he did, it was as if the wound magically began to heal. Not all the way, of course. There was still a scar that ran deep and wide, but at least it wasn’t being torn open every day as he rode a sea of guilt, anger, and self-pity. He would never be entirely whole again, but he had his confidence back. His sense of purpose was restored and he was far wiser than he’d been before the tragedy.
There was also something else. It was an awkward thing for a man who was well into his second decade of living a life of secrecy, most of it operating alone, in foreign countries for months at a time. A life of deceiving everyone around him, even his fellow countrymen. Rapp now felt a massive sense of responsibility for setting things right. He had confided only in Kennedy about the first part. Because of his job and its solitary nature, Rapp had been trained to survive by thinking of himself first and foremost. But now he looked around at people like Mike Nash and his family and he realized what was at stake. In a suddenly immediate sense, Rapp felt the need to protect these people and set things right.
In the waning light of the attacks that had briefly awakened America to the threat of Islamic radical fundamentalism, the politicians had gone back to their old ways. They had turned on the very people they had asked to secure the country from attack. It always amazed Rapp that these were the very same people who in the year following 9/11 repeatedly asked the CIA if their measures of interrogation were tough enough. Now they were denying ever saying such things. They were on the attack. They smelled an opportunity and sooner or later they were going to begin destroying the lives of the men and women who Rapp now felt responsible for. Good men and women who had sacrificed for their country when their country needed them most. And now an ungrateful Senate and House of Representatives were circling like sharks looking for an opportunity to boost their political fortunes into a still higher orbit.
