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He wasn’t bothered about anyone finding a match for his DNA because he wasn’t in any system anywhere in the world. The identities of CIA Non-Official Cover—NOC—Operatives were extraordinarily well-protected. And Rhett also had the advantage of being somewhat of an old-timer, his tenure with the Agency beginning back when things weren’t so computerized, when it was easy as pie to wipe out all traces of a man’s former identity, erase his real name from history, make him disappear and reappear as someone else, transform and transmute, become the man he truly was inside.
Benson was right about that part, Rhett thought as a hint of anxiety slithered through him at the memory of that wily bastard’s unannounced visit that morning at Langley. Yeah, Benson was right—thirty years of manipulation and murder for the CIA only made Rhett more of the man he already was inside.
He glanced sharply at Blondie, his gaze running past that red bite-mark on her nipple. There were no dental records for Rhett Rodgers either. Not that anyone was going to find Blondie’s body before the Chesapeake Bay crabs got to her. Those insects of the ocean would pick her clean, starting with the eyeballs so they could get to her admittedly brilliant brain.
Brilliant but still so dumb, Rhett thought as Blondie sat there waiting for his orders, his commands, his demands. He considered asking her to get on her knees and suck him off, but there wasn’t enough time. O’Donnell and her Darkwater protector wouldn’t stay long in one place, not with Benson pulling the strings. If Rhett wanted another crack at O’Donnell, he had maybe a couple of hours to get another wet-team to the hotel.
“What does DOD have on the Darkwater guy?” he said after thinking through it quickly.
“Michael Wagner. Nickname Ice. Former Delta. Military Police before that. West Point instructor before he and his brother Jack quit together, presumably to join Darkwater.” Blondie didn’t need to glance at her computer screen again. She had a photographic memory. “We need to move fast to mobilize a new wet-team. It’ll take a couple of hours, especially if we need to do it without leaving a trace in the system.”
Rhett exhaled, shook his head. “No more subcontracted wet teams. Clearly O’Donnell and Wagner made it past the last one at the safe-house, and this time they’ll be watching for it. It would be a mess at a hotel like the Raj Palace.”
“Thought we wanted it to get messy.”
Rhett bristled at the wordweeven though he’d played it that way. When working Blondie he’d chosen to use a psychological manipulation tactic he liked to callradical honesty, where he told his target the absolute truth, thereby pulling her completely under his influence because she believed he trusted her.
Believed he loved her.
“There is such a thing astoomessy.” Rhett stretched his arms out over the sofa’s backrest and exhaled. “The point of sending the wet-team to the safe-house was to make it so that Kaiser couldn’t put O’Donnell down quietly. I wanted enough of a mess for Senator Robinson to plausibly believe Kaiser called in the hit on his own analyst to cover up the embarrassing fact that he’s got a traitor in the ranks. In fact I’d hoped Kaiser would do exactly that himself—send in a wet-team and take O’Donnell out. Hell, that’s what I’d have done as CIA Director. But instead he sent in Benson and Darkwater, which complicates things. Benson’s probably convinced Kaiser that O’Donnell is being set up as a patsy, so now this Darkwater guy Ice Wagner is protecting her.” He shook his head again, this time with more vigor. “Which means we need to change tactics. We've already planted electronic evidence that O’Donnell passed on classified information. Now all we have to do is make it look like Kaiser sent Benson’s guy in to clean up the O’Donnell thing.”
Blondie cocked her head and frowned. “You mean make it look like Wagner killed her?” She blinked rapidly, those blue eyes dancing in her head, her fingertips tapping on the armrests. “So we need a wet-team that takes them both captive? Then . . . then they kill O’Donnell with Ice Wagner’s weapon? Something like that?”
Rhett arched his head back, looked at the ceiling, wondered if he should break Blondie’s neck now and get it over with. She was outliving her usefulness, and with Benson already sniffing around, Rhett didn’t want any loose ends.
Three long breaths and Rhett stepped back from the edge. He still needed her for one last task. Which meant he still had to play his game of radical honesty.
“We aren’t going to find a subcontracted wet-team on short notice capable of capturing a former Delta guy without creating a holy mess. And that would make it obvious to Senator Robinson that O’Donnell is being set up. Because why the hell would Kaiser send Benson in and thenalsosend in a wet team--not once but twice? Robinson wouldn’t believe that.”
“He might.” Blondie shrugged. “Maybe we convince Robinson that Benson is working alone, going behind Kaiser’s back to protect O’Donnell. After all, Benson recruited O’Donnell. Maybe he’s protecting his own reputation. Maybe he believes she’s innocent—which she is, by the way.”
Rhett rubbed his eyes and swallowed a sudden burst of rage. Another deep breath and a long exhale and he managed to smile and shake his head. “Nobody’s innocent in our world.” He sighed, nodded a quick acknowledgement. “Still, that’s not a bad idea, and it might have worked if that first wet team got in there and killed Ice Wagner along with O’Donnell. It would have created enough of a mess for Senator Robinson to get wind of it, enough of a cluster-fuck that I could get Robinson to believe Benson was going behind Kaiser’s back, that Kaiser was losing his edge, losing control of his own organization, needed to be put out to pasture.” Rhett stood from the sofa now, strolled over to Blondie, stroked her cheek with the back of his hand, making her gasp and gape up at him like the eager-to-please puppy she was. “But although Robinson is distancing himself from Benson and Darkwater, is being noncommittal about his support for Kaiser, he still trusts those two old dogs.”
“But he trusts you too, doesn’t he?”
Rhett winked down at her, patting her cheek, then running his fingertip across her lips before stepping away and strolling to the window. He glanced down at the rear parking lot of the apartment building. There were three cars in the fifteen-spot lot. When he arrived there'd been a fourth—a battered white maintenance van on its way out, bearded Hispanic maintenance guy behind the wheel. All the remaining vehicles were Japanese-made sedans. The black BMW 7-Series that he used for everyday business wasn’t here. He’d driven it home to Rockville, taken a taxi to Dupont Circle, then walked to Blondie’s apartment in Georgetown. He knew she’d be home. She worked nights at the Langley tech bunker, which was busy round the clock, every day of the year, every year until the end of time. Rhett wasn’t worried about anyone tracking him via his CIA cell phone. Nobody at the upper levels of Langley could be tracked unless they specifically enabled it on their CIA devices. Too much of a security risk to have that kind of data available for hackers. Not even the NSA could track him without explicit authorization from the President—and even then the CIA would be informed.
Besides, no way was Martin Kaiser getting the President involved in something like this.
Not the current President, at least.
But maybe the next one.
Rhett didn’t answer Blondie’s question about Senator Robinson’s trust level. Marcus Robinson was smart, savvy, and an excellent judge of character. Of course, Rhett had thirty years of practice running circles around people at all levels of business and politics. Still, women were always the easier targets for Rhett. It allowed him to use his natural talents and inclinations. Sure, he’d used his sexuality on men too when the job called for it, but it wasn’t his preference.
And it sure as hell wasn’t Robinson’s preference. Not with a smoking-hot wife like Princess Delilah. The ass of a goddess. Tits that always looked heavy and full of milk from the five healthy kids she’d popped out and the new one growing in her big belly. Shit, at first Rhett had considered trying to workthatangle, perhaps use Delilah to get to the Senator indirectly. But Delilah was a sharp cookie too, and by all outward appearances seemed to actuallyloveher Senator husband as a person and not just a means to an end.
Something that Rhett was self-aware enough to know he would never understand. He just wasn’t wired that way. He’d known it early on in life, known what kind of man he was.
Hell, in those early days he’d even tried to be honest with the women about the kind of man he was inside. But still so many of those dumb hussies tricked themselves into believing they could change him, turn him, fuckingtraphim.
Trap him with the oldest trick in the book.
Well, no chance of that happening again, Rhett thought with warm relief. He wasn’t going to be knocking up any more women. He’d been taking testosterone injections for almost two decades now, and one of the very useful side-effects of jacking yourself up with synthetic testosterone was that the body shut down its own production in response to the heightened levels of the hormone.
Which meant the body stopped producing sperm.
It didn’t affect arousal or even ejaculate volume, but there were no swimmers in Rhett’s semen.
