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Rapp grabbed Gould’s wrist when the assassin aimed his silenced pistol at the back of her head. While the proliferation of surveillance cameras throughout the world was a serious drawback for men in their profession, the invention of the iPod almost made up for it. Rapp spotted the ubiquitous white earphones and motioned toward the hallway. She never noticed the two armed men slipping out of the room only a few feet behind her, concentrating instead on the sheets she was unfolding and the latest dance track from Madonna.

They were able to pick up their pace on the thick carpet and it took only seconds to reach the second-to-last door on the right. According to Gould, Leo Obrecht’s office was just beyond.

Rapp put an ear to the wall, but it was too thick to hear anything inside. Hopefully, they’d find Obrecht and Hurley having a pleasant conversation over tea. A set of flex cuffs and some duct tape would be all it would take to get their package ready to go back through the tunnel. Next stop, a CIA black site in Bulgaria.

Rapp put a hand on the knob and nodded a silent three count. He didn’t throw open the door like he normally would, instead pushing it gently enough that Obrecht wouldn’t get spooked if he saw it.

Luck was with them. They slipped inside the study unnoticed, the book-lined walls and tapestries absorbing what little sound they made. At the far side, a heavyset man with his back to them was poking at the embers in a massive stone fireplace. A modern steel sculpture partially obscured both him and a portion of the right side of the room, but not enough that Rapp couldn’t immediately determine that Hurley wasn’t there.

The man at the fireplace was the size Rapp expected from the surveillance photos and he had the right expensive suit and short-cropped gray hair, but there was something about him that seemed off. The barely perceptible athleticism in the way he stood. The effortless way he handled the heavy iron poker.

Rapp spun toward Gould, but was just a fraction of a second too slow. The Frenchman swept a foot low, taking Rapp’s legs out from under him. He hit the carpet rolling just as the man near the fireplace spun around to reveal the MP5 in his free hand. The sculpture obscured his head, but Rapp resisted the urge to go for a body shot. He knew instinctively that the man’s bulk was the result of full body armor. It was a perfect way to imitate an overweight banker while making him impervious to small arms fire. There was a weakness in the mercenary’s preparations, though: his expensive Italian shoes.

Rapp fired a round into the left one and used his momentum to swing his Glock toward Gould.

“Don’t do it, Mitch!”

The assassin had his own pistol lined up in a two-handed grip. And while Rapp could no longer see the merc behind him, the silence suggested he hadn’t fallen. If he was tough and disciplined enough to stay upright with the ball of his foot missing, it was likely that the MP5 was also on target.

“Drop the weapon, Mitch. And don’t get your hands anywhere near that throat mike.”

Rapp let the Glock fall to the carpet.

“And Stan’s.”

He reached for Hurley’s Kimber Gold Match as he slowly stood.

“You’ve got two guns trained on you, Mitch. And neither one of us are the illiterate goat herders you’re used to. Understand?”

 

; “There’s no way Obrecht can be paying you enough for this,” Rapp said, retrieving the Kimber and then letting it fall from his hand.

“Fifteen million and a new identity so clean even the CIA won’t be able to track me. But it’s not the money.”

“What then?” Rapp said, though he already knew the answer. The truth was, he always had.

“You’re my only failure, Mitch. I thought I’d forget about it as time went on, but it just got worse.” He eased left to put himself in a position that would allow him to avoid a cross fire if Rapp made a move. “I had you dead to rights in Afghanistan. I can’t believe the idiot who hired me blew it like that.”

“What about your wife and daughter, Louis? How do they fit in with your new identity?”

It took Gould a few seconds to respond. “Seemed like a fair trade. I lose them but I become the man who killed a legend.”

The door opened, but it didn’t even cause a flicker of distraction in Gould. He kept his eyes locked on target as Stan Hurley was pushed through. The old man staggered and nearly fell, holding the back of his head with a blood-soaked hand.

“Stan,” the Frenchman said cheerfully. “You’re just in time to be the icing on my cake.”

CHAPTER 24

ROME

ITALY

KABIR Gadai checked his phone and then laid it back on the table. The screen continued to display Isabella Accorso’s daughter in the crosshairs, as it had for the last forty minutes.

He felt the unaccustomed sensation of nervousness spreading from his stomach to his extremities, producing a barely perceptible tremor in his hands. The life he’d led was one of careful plans rewarded with an uninterrupted string of successes. This situation, though, had been beyond his control from the beginning. It was one thing to trust in God, but another to rely on his intervention. Allah might see this as arrogance and punish those involved.

Bianca Accorso was a young woman with highly predictable habits, and Gadai was confident that she would remain sitting with her friends for precisely another seventeen minutes. Taj was certain that this time wouldn’t expire without her mother bringing the files, but it would be idiocy not to plan for a worst-case scenario.

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