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“I have been trying to call you for the past sixteen hours.”
Shit, Wilson said to himself. Hargrave was the last person he wanted to talk to. “Ah . . . sorry, but I’ve been a little preoccupied.” Wilson rolled onto his side and looked at his watch. “What do you need?”
“I need you to follow through on your promises. Remember a few days ago when you woke me up in the middle of the night to get permission to go on this little excursion of yours? Do you remember what you promised me?”
“Not really,” Wilson yawned. “You’re going to have to cut me some slack. This time change has me a little off. You woke me up.”
“Have you been asleep for sixteen hours? Because that’s how long I’ve been trying to get hold of you.”
“No, it’s just that things have been kind of complicated since we landed. Listen, why don’t I call you back in thirty minutes and give you a briefing.”
“You’ll do no such thing. Before you left, we agreed that you would call me every day and give me a progress report. You have not called me once. I received a call from Director Kennedy. She wanted to know why, in the midst of the extremely serious problems she’s trying to deal with, you decide to show up and start questioning her people.”
“Sir, there’s a reason for that.”
“Stop talking. I get the feeling every time I hear your voice you’re lying to me. I need you to listen and listen carefully. Because you decided not to return my calls I was not able to return Director Kennedy’s calls. She is so incensed by your poor timing and self-important behavior that she decided to go over my head and call our boss. The director of the FBI, remember him? As the old saying in this town goes, shit rolls downhill. I was attempting to enjoy a nice evening with my wife when the director called me and asked me if I’d lost my mind. I had a sneaky suspicion it involved you and your asinine behavior and the director confirmed those suspicions. Director Kennedy told him about some stunt you pulled at the base hospital . . . trying to bully your way onto the ICU so you could interrogate one of her people who had barely escaped an assassination attempt.”
Wilson was standing now. “I did not try to bully my way—”
“Don’t speak. I’m not done talking. Before you left I told you how I expected you to behave. I explained to the director the scope of your investigation. That you told me that you were going to be there to offer assistance in finding Rickman, and if along the way you saw that any laws had been broken you would consult me before moving the investigation in a new direction. You lied to me.”
“I did not.”
“You sure as hell did, and that’s how the director sees it as well. What I can’t figure out is how you thought you were going to get away with this. You already have a reputation as a duplicitous bastard. People are watching you. And your timing is awful, by the way. The CIA is in the middle of a shitstorm and you show up and start poking them with a stick. Do you have any idea the respect that Irene Kennedy garners in this town?”
“I think a better word is fear.”
“You’re a fool, and I’m wasting my time trying to help you. The director wants you back here immediately, and just so you have something to think about on your long flight, it looks like he’s going to order an official inquiry into just what in the hell you’ve been up to.”
Wilson had already been through one of those and it had almost killed his career. He doubted he would survive a second one. “Sir, you’re making a big mistake.”
“The only mistake I made was letting you go in the first place.”
“That’s not true, sir. There are some things you don’t know.”
“By all means, please enlighten me, and keep in mind, I’ve learned my lesson with you. This call is being recorded, so don’t think you can sell me another pile of lies and then feign ignorance later.”
Wilson was thinking as fast as he could, trying to find a way to give Hargrave as little information as possible and still convince him that he should be allowed to not only stay in Afghanistan, but also increase the scope of the investigation. “I have reason to believe that Joe Rickman and Mitch Rapp have been stealing millions of dollars from the U.S. government.”
Hargrave laughed at him. “Reason to believe . . . that’s the best you can do, Joel?”
“Sir, you’re going to have to trust me on this.”
“I am going to have to do no such thing. You have burned your way through all the trust I have. You have precisely one minute to convince me that you deserve the latitude to go digging around one of our country’s most secretive institutions.”
Wilson saw no other choice. “I have the account numbers, the amounts, when the transfers were made, and a sworn affidavit from the banker who says Mitch Rapp came into his bank and set up the account.”
“Where’s the bank?”
“Zurich.”
“And how long have you had this information?”
In truth Wilson had possessed the information for eighteen days, but telling Hargrave that in his present state of mind would do him no good. “About two weeks.”
There was a long silence and then, “You’ve had this information for two weeks and you didn’t bring it to me.”
“I wanted to make sure it was real first.”
