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nbsp; “I exaggerate nothing. I’ve worked with him for over twenty years. He’s the fucking Energizer Bunny of covert operatives. He just keeps killing and killing, and if you want to stay alive, you’d better figure out a way to kill him, and you’d better do it quick.”
Rickman was overreacting. “I want you to calm down. There is far too much to celebrate.”
“I can’t calm down as long as that man is above ground.” Rickman started coughing, and it wasn’t long before a trickle of blood began to run down the corner of his swollen mouth.
Durrani couldn’t believe the doctor wasn’t here. “Just one minute,” Durrani said, holding up a finger and retreating from the room. He ignored Rickman’s coughing and moved quickly down the hall and into the living room. “Get Dr. Bhutani here immediately. I am extremely disappointed that you ignored my orders.”
Kassar looked up from his magazine and said, “He refused to let me call a doctor, and he was doing fine until you got here and upset him.”
“One of these days,” Durrani said, shaking his fist, “you are going to push me too far.”
“You may get rid of me any time you like.”
“Just get Dr. Bhutani and get him fast.”
Kassar set down the magazine and stabbed out his cigarette in the large copper ashtray in the middle of the table. He stood and said, “I will get Dr. Bhutani, but as I said, I like the man. If you decide he is a liability at some point you will have to find someone else to do your dirty work.”
“Fine,” Durrani snapped. “Just get him.”
“And I heard what you two were talking about.”
“What?”
“Rapp.”
Durrani was exasperated. He didn’t want to talk right now, he wanted Kassar to get the doctor. “What about him.”
“Put it out of your mind.”
“Put what out of my mind?”
“Killing him, or at least asking me to kill him.”
“I don’t know when you got the idea that we were equals. I give the orders and you follow them.”
Kassar gave a nod of mutual understanding. “You have made that clear. I am a contract employee. You have me on a retainer and if at any point you are not satisfied with my performance, my contract will be terminated. That goes both ways.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“No,” Kassar said tersely. “I’m simply trying to stop you from doing something stupid. Leave Mr. Rapp alone and hope that he never discovers your hand in this.”
“Are you afraid of him?” Durrani asked mockingly.
Kassar pulled out his phone and began searching for Dr. Bhutani’s number. “I respect the man and his abilities and you should as well. If you are foolish enough to try to kill him again, you’re going to have to find someone other than me. Someone who is reckless enough to think he can take him.”
CHAPTER 44
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
KENNEDY reviewed the final edited version for the eighth time. The assault on her conscience was not quite as bad as it had been on the first or second viewing. The impact had lessened a degree or two, which made her wonder how many times she’d have to watch it before she was completely desensitized to the horror. She knew that would never happen, but there was a part of her brain that wished it could be that simple.
The internal drive from the camcorder provided exactly two hours of footage. Two hours of the most brutal, dehumanizing violence Kennedy had ever witnessed, and she was not unaware that things like this happened. She had in fact seen similar tapes before. Saddam Hussein had tapes like this all over his palaces. Those tapes never required more than a minute or two of viewing as analysts sifted through them to see if there was any actionable intelligence. Kennedy was then brought individual snippets to view.
This time she had forced herself to watch the entire two hours. She’d done it on the flight back from Bagram. The morning after Hayek had shown them the video they received word that Hubbard’s body had been discovered in a warehouse of an industrial park on the outskirts of Jalalabad. The cause of death was a single bullet to the head. Mike Nash had approached her midmorning and told her that she needed to get back to headquarters. Kennedy was reluctant, but Nash was forceful, telling her that with Rickman and Hubbard dead, the worst of the crisis had passed. She was needed back in D.C., where there would be a lot of important people asking questions. They all knew it would get ugly, and Kennedy knew Nash was right. She needed to be in Washington, so she left Nash behind to help Schneeman manage the cleanup.
Kennedy had been trained to accept the more difficult aspects of her job, but she was still human. Watching Rickman beg his captors to stop was one of the most heart-wrenching things she’d ever experienced. The ugly specter of the outcome hung over the entire thing. There was no surprise ending, no hope that SEALs or Delta Force commandos would burst into the room and gun down the two interrogators. She’d seen the ending first, which made watching it all that much harder. All the relief she’d felt knowing that her secrets were now safe with the death of Rickman quickly transformed into a crippling guilt that she’d found solace in the death of someone she was responsible for.
Rapp, as always, had been able to look right through her and know what she was thinking. Somewhere over Europe, in the middle of the night, Kennedy looked down the fuselage of the G550 and decided that everyone was either sleeping or trying to sleep. She decided it was time to watch the interrogation in its entirety. She opened her laptop and began watching Rickman’s final two hours of life. She cried for most of it. Somewhere near the end Rapp came up on her left shoulder and closed her laptop. She took off her headphones.
