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“One moment. I’m putting you through.”
Rapp glanced in the direction of a distant explosion, but was the only person in the square who seemed to care. Losa came on a moment later.
“It’s good to hear from you. My understanding is that your meeting went poorly.”
“You could say that.”
“My people are dead?”
“Faadin is for sure. I can’t say for sure about the others. At least one switched sides.”
“Difficult to avoid in Syria. Even for me. I was told you were captured.”
“That’s right. By Syrian forces working for the Russians. They took me to a safe house with the idea of turning me over. Three mercs came to pick me up.”
“But you had other plans.”
“Yes.”
“Were you able to question them?”
“It wasn’t practical. And they wouldn’t have known anything. Just muscle.”
“But presumably they would have taken you to someone whodidknow something.”
Rapp smiled at the veiled reprimand. “Probably. But I don’t think that would have gone all that well for me.”
“So, what you’ve managed to accomplish is to get some of my people killed, cause Saraqib to collapse back into open hostilities, and kill a handful of government operatives from two separate countries. A busy day, but not a particularly productive one.”
“I disagree,” Rapp said as the kids stopped singing and entered into negotiations about what their next number would be. “The Russians aren’t people who play to win. They play to make everyone else lose. They don’t do anything useful. They don’t make anything useful. If you gave a Russian a Ferrari, he wouldn’t drive it. He’d use the key toscratch the paint on everybody else’s car. Even under the best circumstances you don’t want to get in bed with these pricks. And they just made it clear that these aren’t the best of circumstances.”
“No?”
“No. They could have negotiated in good faith and heard you out. But they didn’t. They rolled in with the calvary and tried to snatch me. Why? I can’t think of any reason other than to interrogate me about you and your operation.”
There was a lengthy pause before Losa responded. “I agree that the Russians are less than ideal partners. They tend to seek power for the sake of power even when it’s counter to their interests. Having said that, I’ve managed to forge profitable relationships with them in the past. It’s just a matter of convincing them to resist their nature.”
“My gut says walk away,” Rapp said. “And my gut’s usually pretty accurate.”
“I don’t think we’re in a position to make that determination yet and you haven’t fulfilled your obligation to me. I gave you Claudia’s life and you’ve given me nothing in return. If you’re right and one of the most powerful countries in the world wants to destroy my European operation, I need to know how, where, and when. Without that kind of information, I have no way of defending myself.”
“I understand what I agreed to,” Rapp said. “But you’re going to have to give me a little more direction. I can’t just wander around Syria waiting to bump into a Russian who wants to do business with you. That wastes both our time.”
“Point taken. I still have a few reliable people in Syria. Let me retool a bit and see what I can come up with.”
Rapp powered down the phone and stood. When the kids started singing again, he started diagonally across the square.
CHAPTER 22
PARIS
FRANCE
DAMIANLosa put his phone down on the sofa, while Julian remained glued to his chair, staring intently at his laptop and manipulating a detached mouse. Through the glass walls of the atrium, the shadowy outlines of security personnel melted from the carefully tended landscaping and then disappeared again. The dogs were a bit harder to pick out—low and sleek, they seemed to instinctively stay in the shadows.
Even combined with the state-of-the-art electronics that he’d had installed, it suddenly felt insufficient. Particularly while sitting on display in the elegant glass cage he’d come to favor. During the violent years of his rise to power, he’d valued security above all things. Later, his unprecedented success had allowed him to relax those protocols somewhat. He made so much money for so many people, potential threats tended to be exposed and dealt with long before they posed any real danger.
Was that still true?
