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“That’s right. But Mr. Losa understands that parties can’t always come to an agreement. That’s why he has me.”
“Let me talk to him.”
“You had your chance for that.”
“Do you have any idea who I am?” the Russian shouted at a volume that belied his condition. “I’m General Aleksandr Semenov! One of the most powerful men in Russia. One of the most powerful in the world! Do you really believe that the SVR won’t discover who’s behind this? You’ve declared war on the Russian Federation!”
Rapp didn’t acknowledge the threat. “I have a script that you’re going to read on camera. After that, we can talk about what your future looks like.”
“What did you say? A script?”
Rapp unfolded a piece of paper and laid it on Semenov’s bare thighs. The Russian scanned the lengthy handwritten message for a few seconds, finally looking up and meeting Rapp’s eye.
“Never.”
It was obvious that his resolve was nothing more than bravado. While breaking a battle-hardened jihadist could be a long, messy chore, breaking a man like Aleksandr Semenov would be more of a minor inconvenience. The man had enjoyed a life of privilege since the day he was born. He wasn’t a patriot. He had no religious beliefs or family he was close to. Semenov was a man who cared only about himself and wielding power over others. Just the kind of prick whowould be utterly incapable of enduring even a few moments of real suffering.
Rapp retrieved a cattle prod that was leaning against the wall and discharged it into the man’s testicles. His earsplitting scream suggested that there was a good chance they could have this thing wrapped up before morning.
It had taken longer to clean Semenov up than it had to break him. But now he was perfectly presentable—carefully arranged hair, a fresh shave, and wearing a flawless reproduction of his uniform courtesy of Irene Kennedy. The smell was gone, too. Washed down the side of the mountain with the hose Coleman had drunkenly accused of attacking him.
Of course, he still looked haggard. The memory of the pain he’d so briefly endured remained etched across his face and the red rims of his eyes stood out even in the soft light. Rapp checked the tripod-mounted iPhone and made sure that it didn’t frame anything that could provide a clue to the Russian’s whereabouts.
“Okay,” Rapp said when he was satisfied. “You ready?”
Semenov seemed to be on the verge of conjuring a little defiance, but then thought better of it. Instead he straightened and folded his hands in front of him.
“Give me a count to test your sound.”
He did, and the mike attached to his collar functioned perfectly. With volume and light set, there was no reason not to get started. Rapp picked up a set of cue cards and took a position next to the camera.
“You’re on, General.”
The man stared at the first card for a moment, his magnificent brain straining to find some other option and coming up empty. The life of power, pleasure, and dominion he’d laid out for himself was gone. The only thing left to do now was focus on survival and minimizing his suffering.
“I am General Aleksandr Semenov, the director of the RussianFederation’s asymmetrical warfare program. I am responsible for developing protocols to interfere in the elections of foreign countries, supporting Islamic terrorist attacks in Europe, undermining democratic institutions, and carrying out cyberattacks. Both I and most of my programs are well known to Western intelligence agencies. What they don’t know is that I’ve been working on a new program. I was using Syria’s pharmaceutical production capability and Russian chemists to engineer a new, highly addictive form of a narcotic called captagon.”
Rapp flipped to the second card. Semenov was actually pretty good at this. He’d probably spent the last decade practicing in the mirror for his inevitable entry into politics.
“More important, the use of it causes irreversible brain damage and psychoses. My plan was to distribute this drug throughout the West, overwhelming the medical and law enforcement capabilities of the US and Europe. Further, I planned to use a Muslim criminal network in the EU and a Latino network in the US in order to fan the flames of xenophobia and cause further divisions between political parties and allies. The eventual goal of Russia’s combined asymmetrical capability is to break up both the EU and the United States.”
Rapp flipped to the third card, starting to harbor hopes that they’d actually get this in the first take.
“The development of this new narcotic demanded hundreds of test subjects, all of whom we took from Syrian refugee camps and prisons. All of them either died as a result of the experiments that were performed on them or were executed when they were no longer useful. This brought us under the scrutiny of a number of Syrian insurgent groups whose family members and comrades had fallen victim to our program. Two days ago, one of them attacked my facility southwest of al-Qadr, Syria, destroying it, and capturing me.”
Rapp moved to the last card.
“I deeply regret my involvement in this program and the suffering it caused. But I had no choice in the matter. I was under the orders of the Kremlin.”
Rapp set the cards on a table and stopped filming. When the edited version was released anonymously on the Internet, it would be like a nuclear bomb going off in Moscow.
Even better, Semenov had already provided more than twenty pages of intel on methods, locations, bank accounts, and even his financing of the recent terrorist attack in Germany. The CIA’s hackers were already using his uncanny memory for passwords to infiltrate sensitive Russian systems, introduce malware, and download classified documents. The opportunities for mischief were apparently endless.
Rapp couldn’t help but smile. Russia was unique in that it was an almost entirely destructive force. The human race would be infinitely better off if the whole country just slid into the ocean. And with the unwitting help of Damian Losa, the skids had just been greased.
CHAPTER 48
PRAGUE
