Consent To Kill_ A Thriller Part 4

"MAD."

"Exactly." Rapp pressed a few b.u.t.tons and began replaying the conversation that had taken place in the Congressional Library. After a few seconds he stopped the recording and smiled. "I hope you're not disappointed?"

"I would have been disappointed in you if you hadn't."

Rapp snapped the BlackBerry back onto his belt clip. "And I don't want any armchair quarterbacking."

"I already explained that to them."

"And how did they take it?"

"Listen, Mitch, you have a certain reputation in this town that has grown beyond even your own remarkable achievements. The secrecy regarding your past, the untimely death of two politicians who were involved in blowing your cover...it has all added up to an almost mythical reputation. When people mention your name they do so in whispers, and then only after they've looked over both shoulders. You get credit for things I know for a fact you had nothing to do with."

"How can you be so sure?" Rapp gave her a devious look.

"Because I know you weren't even on the same continent let alone in the same city when some of this stuff happened. But nonetheless people like a good conspiracy and you play into that perfectly." Kennedy rolled her eyes. "Rugged good looks, a beautiful wife who works for NBC, and none other than the president of the United States as your biggest champion. Add to that the aforementioned deceased politicians and what they leaked to the press, the press referring to you as an a.s.sa.s.sin...our first line of defense...and there isn't a person on Capitol Hill who doesn't get a little nervous around you."

"Good." Rapp far preferred his old anonymity, but if some of the less-than-savory politicians in this town were afraid of him, that wasn't such a bad thing. "Here's the bottom line. I'll do this, but I'm going to do it my way. I'm going to pick the targets of opportunity, and I'll take suggestions from you and only you. If they have any suggestions of their own they can give them to you and I'll take them under advis.e.m.e.nt, but I will hold veto power. If I think something is too risky or not important enough...I'll pull the plug."

"I can make them live with that. What else?"

"I'm going to handpick all my people."

Kennedy nodded. She had a.s.sumed he would make both requests.

"And we're going to do more than just take out known terrorists."

"How so?" Kennedy asked curiously.

Rapp smiled. "I've been working on something, but I'm not ready to show you yet."

"Would you like to give me a hint?"

"Let's just say that I'm planning on fighting this war on more than one front, and I don't plan on playing by anyone's rules."

"Like your little operation you just ran north of the border?"

Rapp nodded.

Kennedy knew him better than anyone, and that included his wife. She gave him a concerned look and said, "Let me give you some advice. Be very careful about what you do when it involves our allies. Nothing short of getting caught here in America by the FBI will get you in trouble quicker than raising the ire of one of their foreign intelligence services."

Rapp grinned. "I don't plan on getting caught."

"No one ever does, Mitch." She shook her head. "No one ever does."

"I know...I know. But I've managed to get by all these years...I don't plan on s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up now."

"Just be careful and move slowly."

Rapp shook his head. "Time is a luxury we don't have. Senator Hartsburg is a hack, but he's right about one thing."

"What's that?"

"We have to hit them before they hit us."

8.

LONDON, ENGLAND.

T he identification in his wallet said his name was Harry Smith. It was not his given name, simply a standard precaution. He'd watched the target for the last forty-eight hours, day and night. He slept after the man went to sleep and woke up before the target got out of bed. He was younger, in far better shape, and had the element of surprise on his side. He'd trained himself to last days on end with little or no sleep. He was acutely aware of his physiological needs, and this job wasn't even close to taxing them. The job, in fact, was beginning to bore him. he identification in his wallet said his name was Harry Smith. It was not his given name, simply a standard precaution. He'd watched the target for the last forty-eight hours, day and night. He slept after the man went to sleep and woke up before the target got out of bed. He was younger, in far better shape, and had the element of surprise on his side. He'd trained himself to last days on end with little or no sleep. He was acutely aware of his physiological needs, and this job wasn't even close to taxing them. The job, in fact, was beginning to bore him.

The target was a Turkish financier with a penchant for high-risk ventures-especially those involving illegal arms sales. He owned several banks in his native country and held minority interests in another half dozen banks around Europe. Lately the man had been spending a lot of time in London, and the a.s.sa.s.sin had a pretty good idea why. There was barely a street corner left in the increasingly Orwellian city that wasn't monitored by a camera. In the world of contract killers, a business where your anonymity was your currency, London was a town that was bad for business.

This particular part of London had an unusually high concentration of surveillance cameras. The Hamps.h.i.+re Hotel was situated on Leicester Square just a short hop from a cl.u.s.ter of government buildings with serious security needs. They included the National Gallery, the Ministry of Defense, Parliament, and Westminster Abbey. He reasoned the Turk had picked this hotel for that very reason. The area was saturated with police and other security types. The a.s.sa.s.sin, however, was not deterred for even a second. The men and women charged with securing these sites were worried about terrorists, not businessmen. All he had to do was look the part, don the urban camouflage, and he could come and go unnoticed.

His partner didn't quite see things his way. She wanted to turn down the job, but he had been insistent. Virtually every city of note in the world was adding security cameras by the droves. To survive in the industry they had to adapt. She preferred retirement to adaptation, but they were too young for that. Harry was thirty-two and Amanda was just thirty. Amanda was not her real name, but for the sake of operational security it was the only name he'd used for the last week. The key to longevity in their line of work was the details, little things like high-quality forgeries, dummy credit card accounts, and the discipline to stay in character whether you were alone or not.

At the current pace of business it would take another five years before they reached the financial level he deemed appropriate for retirement. They already had several million, but he was not interested in merely getting by. He got into this line of work because he was drawn to it, because he could be his own boss, and because, if he played it smart, he would make a lot of money. He had the talent, but talent alone was never enough. When the stakes were this high, skill had to be accompanied by an ardent drive-a need for perfection.

He was not only drawn to this work, he enjoyed it. Yes, he enjoyed it, and he had never admitted that to anyone, not even her. When talk turned to getting out of the business, he always stressed that they needed to make more money first, but he knew a big part of it was that he wasn't willing to let go. His greatest fear was not of getting caught. He was too confident in his talents for that. His greatest fear was of losing her because he wouldn't be able to walk away. Like a gambler drawn to the c.r.a.ps table, he had become a slave to the thrill of the hunt.

Excluding the current job there was normally an exhilaration to stalking a man that was unmatched. The sheer level of training and expertise it took to even enter the arena at this level was mind-boggling. He was an expert marksman with both the short and long barrel. He knew exactly where to stick the blade of a knife to obtain the desired result, which was usually death, but occasionally his contract called for maiming the person and nothing more. He knew how to use his fists, elbows, knees, feet, and even forehead to incapacitate or kill. He could fly both fixed-wing and rotary aircraft, and he was a predatory genius when it came to surveillance and countersurveillance.

Now here he was standing across the square from the Hamps.h.i.+re Hotel, bored out of his mind. A $200,000 contract was on the table that he was an hour or less from fulfilling and he was yawning. He looked at the front entrance of the opulent hotel, stifled yet another yawn, and said, "Come on, f.u.c.ker. Let's get this over with."

He spoke with a British accent, even though he wasn't a subject. The "f.u.c.ker" he was referring to traveled extensively, and he appeared to have no problem spending money. He did, however, have a problem paying his bills, which the a.s.sa.s.sin reasoned was why a price had been placed on his head. For a man who had p.i.s.sed off the wrong people, he was acting unusually calm. Especially when the people he had offended were Russian Mafiosi. The a.s.sa.s.sin had been working on his Russian over the last several years, and found the language by far the most difficult of the five he spoke fluently. He did not prefer to operate in the former Soviet Union, but the old communist country and its satellites were the largest growth market in his line of work. They were ruthless b.a.s.t.a.r.ds willing to kill anyone who screwed them on a deal no matter how illegal or legitimate it may have been. They wanted a guaranteed return on their investments, and when a deal didn't perform, the paranoid thugs immediately jumped to the conclusion that they'd been double-crossed. He guessed that was what had happened with the Turk. He didn't know for sure. To find that out would have involved asking a few questions, and as a general rule, he asked only what he absolutely needed to know.

He and his partner had used a medium-range parabolic microphone to listen in on the Turkish man's phone calls as he went for his midmorning walks. The man had told a friend yesterday that the Russians were simpletons, but that they weren't crazy enough to try to kill him in London. The comment struck the a.s.sa.s.sin as pure idiocy, and it caused him to wonder how the Turk had lasted as long as he had. The man was fifty-eight years old and had been involved in this type of stuff for twenty-plus years. Underestimating one's enemy was a cla.s.sic tactical mistake-one that was usually born out of stupidity or arrogance or both.

He leaned against the street lamp and checked his watch, careful to keep his head tilted down. There was a camera pod mounted on the light above him. It was twenty after ten. He was dressed in business attire with a long black trench coat and fedora. His black hair had been lightened to a sandy blond, special contacts made his brown eyes appear hazel and they were further concealed by a pair of black-rimmed gla.s.ses with clear lenses. An umbrella dangled from the crook of his left arm that held a twice-folded copy of the Times. Times. The sky was gray and looked as if it might bring rain at any moment. The sky was gray and looked as if it might bring rain at any moment.

Two days in a row the Turk had appeared at ten in the morning to take his walk to the park. He donned an earpiece and the entire trip, there and back, he talked on his phone and smoked cigarettes. He was oblivious to the fact that he was being watched, which, when one looked at his comments, was not surprising. Like the majority of the men the a.s.sa.s.sin had killed, the Turk was a man of habits. He always stayed at the Hamps.h.i.+re when in London, and, weather permitting, he took daily walks to St. James Park, went back to the hotel for lunch, then to the bank where he kept an office and then afternoon tea at Browns.

Something was throwing him off his normal schedule this morning and the a.s.sa.s.sin was beginning to worry. Yes, it looked like it could rain at any moment, but the weather was no different than the previous two days. There was a fine line between rus.h.i.+ng a job and sitting on it too long. Long surveillance periods could lead to boredom, hesitancy, and sometimes inaction. They also increased the chances that someone would notice you. On the other hand, rus.h.i.+ng a job before you had a complete sense of the overall tactical situation could be even more disastrous. Maps had to be memorized, schedules scrutinized, and multiple modes of transportation put into place. And in London one could never forget about the omnipresent security cameras.

The a.s.sa.s.sin was beginning to doubt that the Turk would show. He would either have to dispatch him when he was coming out of his afternoon tea or wait another day to kill him in the park. As he was weighing his two options the Turk stepped out under the wrought-iron-and-gla.s.s canopy of the hotel and the doorman handed him an umbrella. Pleasantries were exchanged, the Turk lit a cigarette, and he was on his way. The a.s.sa.s.sin had thought about this part very carefully. He was already positioned in front of his subject. If the police ever got around to reviewing the tapes, they would be looking for someone who had followed the Turk to the park and would in all likelihood not bother to see if someone had been in front of him every step of the way.

The a.s.sa.s.sin had also found a hole in the way the security cameras were set up. He would take a slightly different path to the park and avoid having his movements recorded. The park itself was a bit of a problem. There was usually a bobby or two loitering about, a fair amount of state workers, and one particularly pesky camera pod that was in close proximity to the spot where the hit would take place. He was disguised enough that the cameras would never get a clear shot of his face, but they could begin to build a profile. In addition to that he would prefer the act itself not to be recorded. Such footage had a way of galvanizing those who were in charge of solving violent crimes. The a.s.sa.s.sin had been struggling with this problem the day before when a solution popped into his mind.

He reached up and touched the side of a tiny wireless Motorola headset affixed to his right ear. A second later he could hear her phone ringing.

"Amanda Poole speaking." The voice had a crisp British accent.

"Amanda, I'm going to take a walk. Would you swing by and see if our friend is going to join me?"

"I'd love to, Harry."

The a.s.sa.s.sin rounded the corner, careful to keep his chin down. There was a tendency in his line of work to overthink things. Much of this stemmed from the fact that most of the people were either former intelligence operatives or military. In Harry's case it was the latter. When you worked for a big government the resources were vast. Field equipment was tested and retested under every conceivable condition, billions of dollars worldwide was put into the development of new ways to communicate and better ways to encrypt. The problem as Harry saw it, though, was that as much-or more-money, was spent on new eavesdropping technology and vastly powerful and complex decryption systems. The National Security Agency of America alone had dozens of satellites circling the planet that were designed to do one thing-record people's conversations. They had the world's most powerful computers ensconced in football-field-size subterranean chambers under their headquarters in Maryland.

These Cray supercomputers churned away day after day, night after night, sifting through e-mails, radio transmissions, and phone intercepts. Highly specialized programs were written so the computers could home in on the key words bomb, gun, kill, bomb, gun, kill, and and a.s.sa.s.sinate a.s.sa.s.sinate in every foreign language of interest. Certain types of transmissions were prioritized. For America, anything coming out of Iran, North Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan, for example, was kicked to the top of the queue. Anything intercepted in those countries via secure and encrypted modes was further kicked up the queue. And so it went, with the programs designed to focus on the methods used by people who were trying to keep secrets. in every foreign language of interest. Certain types of transmissions were prioritized. For America, anything coming out of Iran, North Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan, for example, was kicked to the top of the queue. Anything intercepted in those countries via secure and encrypted modes was further kicked up the queue. And so it went, with the programs designed to focus on the methods used by people who were trying to keep secrets.

All of this left Harry with a simple question. If superpowers, with nearly unlimited financial resources and brainpower, could not keep secrets from each other, what hopes did a two-person operation have to stay up on the technology and out in front of those spending billions? The answer was easy. He couldn't, so the only solution was to go in the opposite direction. The spy agencies around the world didn't care about inane conversations by business a.s.sociates or lovers. The trick was to stay with the herd. Use the same mode of communication everyone else used and stay away from any discussion of the real business at hand. Consequently, upon arriving in London, they had purchased new phones. They signed a yearlong contract even though the phones would be used for a week at the most.

He walked quickly but calmly down St. Martin's Street and then cut over to Whitcomb. A few minutes later he was walking along the north end of the park. The Turk would be a few blocks behind him at this point. They would enter the park from different spots and meet where the older man liked to stop and feed the ducks while chattering on his phone. At Marlborough Road he came upon a small black delivery van, which his partner was driving. He stuffed his folded copy of the Times Times under his armpit and popped the back cargo doors. Reaching in with a gloved hand he grabbed a sash of balloons and closed the door. The delivery van drove off without a word while he crossed the street to the park. under his armpit and popped the back cargo doors. Reaching in with a gloved hand he grabbed a sash of balloons and closed the door. The delivery van drove off without a word while he crossed the street to the park.

This part made him a bit nervous. A man dressed in business attire with a long black coat and hat carrying a cl.u.s.ter of balloons was not your everyday sight. He was sure to catch a few stray glances, but like most things in life it was a trade-off. He kept the collar of his coat turned up, his chin tucked against his chest, and his shoulders hunched. All he had to do was make it one block with the balloons.

His eyes swept the surrounding landscape, looking out from under the brim of his hat for the bulbous cap of a bobby or any other patrolmen that might be about. The light post he was interested in was situated just past a park bench. It offered a commanding view of the park and it was easy to see why the authorities had decided to mount cameras on it. As he neared the device he slowed a bit and then extended his left hand far above his head while letting the helium-filled balloons rise into the air. They were tied off in a concave shape so that the middle balloon was shorter than the other six. They formed a perfect basket, and settled in gently around the tinted s.h.i.+eld of the camera pod.

The a.s.sa.s.sin never broke stride. Never looked back. The Turk was already in sight coming toward him from a little more than two hundred meters away. Harry reached the main path that ran east-west and turned to the left. The Turk was now less than two hundred meters away and he was stopping to buy some warm pistachios from a street vendor. Harry watched him take a stale bag of crackers to feed the ducks just like he'd done the two previous mornings. Good, Good, he thought to himself. he thought to himself. Keep your routine and everything will turn out just fine. Keep your routine and everything will turn out just fine. Sure enough, the Turk continued on for a bit and then left the path for the lake. He stood near a willow tree and began spreading the stale crackers about, popping pistachios into his mouth and talking on his phone. Sure enough, the Turk continued on for a bit and then left the path for the lake. He stood near a willow tree and began spreading the stale crackers about, popping pistachios into his mouth and talking on his phone.

Harry reached up and tapped his Motorola earpiece once, which re-dialed the last call he'd made. A second later his partner answered.

"Amanda Poole speaking."

"Amanda, it's Harry. How is everything?"

"Everything is just fine. Your party favors came in and they work perfectly."

That meant the balloons had stayed in position. "Good." He stole a peek over his left shoulder. "Is anyone else coming to our gathering?"

"Everyone who was invited has replied."

The distance was now just under a hundred meters. He turned off the path and started walking toward the lake. "What about crashers?"

"Not a one on the horizon, but if I hear anything I'll let you know immediately."

"Good." As he ducked around a hedgerow his left hand slid between the folds of his coat and retrieved a silenced Walther PPK 9mm pistol. The weapon was quickly placed inside the folded newspaper. He clutched the paper and covered gun to his chest and with his right hand slid one rubber band and then another over the outside of the paper. The a.s.sa.s.sin started his turn before he reached the water's edge and brought the newspaper up as if he were reading it. "Any other calls this morning?"

The woman responded, "None that I can remember. The rest of the morning is wide open."

"Let's hope it stays that way." He looked over the top of the newspaper and sighted the Turk a short distance ahead.

His heart was not racing, his gloved hands were dry, and his senses were highly alert. He heard every noise, saw everything ninety degrees in each direction, and had a complete mental picture of what was going on behind him. The distance was now less than twenty meters and no one else was near the target. His pace quickened slightly to take advantage of the man's isolation. At ten meters, he could hear the Turk clearly. He had decided on this angle because he wanted the Turk to see him coming. This would seem normal, whereas if he sneaked up behind him he could end up alerting his quarry.

He glanced over the top of the paper and made brief eye contact with the man he was about to kill. Casually, he pretended to return his attention to the paper. He glanced across the lake and then to the left. There were a few people about. None of them were close and he doubted they were paying attention. He was now only steps away, and he could see from his peripheral vision that the target was turning away from him. Humans, the only animals in all of nature who willingly turned their back to a potential predator. Harry was almost disgusted with how easy this was going to be.

Stepping toward the target, he followed him quietly for a few steps as the man walked toward the weeping willow. This was turning into a joke. The tree with its drooping wispy branches was the closest thing the park had to a dark alley, and the Turk was headed right for it. He stopped just short of the outer ring of branches and started to look toward the lake, undoubtedly expecting to see the pedestrian who had interrupted his privacy continuing on his way.

The a.s.sa.s.sin did not extend the newspaper-encased weapon. He was too practiced for anything so obvious. He merely tilted the paper forward until the angle matched the trajectory that he wanted the bullet to travel. He squeezed the trigger once, and stepped quickly forward. The hollow-tipped bullet struck the Turk directly in the back of the head, flattening on impact, doubling in circ.u.mference, and tearing through vital brain matter until it stopped, lodged between the shredded left frontal lobe and the inner wall of the skull. The impact propelled the financier forward. The a.s.sa.s.sin had his right hand around the man's chest a split second later. He glanced down at the small coin-size entry wound as he went with the momentum of the Turk's dying body. The newspaper-laden hand cut a swath through the dense branches of the weeping willow, and two steps later he laid the dead man to rest at the foot of the tree. Harry quickly checked himself for blood even though he was almost positive there would be none. The bullet was designed to stay in the body and cause only a small entry wound.

With everything in order, he left the dead body and the shelter of the tree and began retracing his steps. A hundred meters back down the footpath he asked his partner, "Are you free for an early lunch?"

"I am, as a matter of fact."

"Good. I'm done with things here. I'll meet you at the usual spot in a quarter of an hour."

"I'll see you there."

On the way out of the park Harry walked past two of London's finest. They were standing under his bouquet of balloons staring up in consternation and talking with some higher-up back at the station house via their shoulder-mounted radios. When the taller one of the two tried to jump up and grab the strings, Harry had to stifle a laugh. It was the most amusing thing he'd seen all morning.

9.

CHESAPEAKE B BAY, MARYLAND.

R app sat in a worn leather chair, his mutt, s.h.i.+rley, at his feet and a pen in his left hand. He'd been writing furiously for the past hour, page after page, idea upon idea. Many were crossed off, others were circled and connected like some strange flow chart. The dry birch in the fireplace crackled and popped as he jotted down his sixth page of notes. At least as many pages had already been torn from the pad and thrown on the pyre. He was not writing down his thoughts for the sake of keeping a record, but rather to help play out the potential pitfalls of the job that lay ahead. The opportunity he had been given was fraught with potential problems, but the prospects were impossible to resist. Like everything else he did, the key was to not get caught. The difference this time, though, was that everything was on a much bigger scale. Instead of targeting individuals, he would be targeting groups. The expanded operation needed to be approached like a battle plan-looked at from every vantage point, and then tested and retested to make sure he hadn't missed something. And there could be no hard copy of anything. That's what Thomas Stansfield had taught him. app sat in a worn leather chair, his mutt, s.h.i.+rley, at his feet and a pen in his left hand. He'd been writing furiously for the past hour, page after page, idea upon idea. Many were crossed off, others were circled and connected like some strange flow chart. The dry birch in the fireplace crackled and popped as he jotted down his sixth page of notes. At least as many pages had already been torn from the pad and thrown on the pyre. He was not writing down his thoughts for the sake of keeping a record, but rather to help play out the potential pitfalls of the job that lay ahead. The opportunity he had been given was fraught with potential problems, but the prospects were impossible to resist. Like everything else he did, the key was to not get caught. The difference this time, though, was that everything was on a much bigger scale. Instead of targeting individuals, he would be targeting groups. The expanded operation needed to be approached like a battle plan-looked at from every vantage point, and then tested and retested to make sure he hadn't missed something. And there could be no hard copy of anything. That's what Thomas Stansfield had taught him.

The deceased former director of the CIA was famous for not carrying a pen, and was known to admonish subordinates who took notes during high-level meetings. He liked to tell his people, "We're in the business of collecting secrets, not giving them away. If your mind isn't sharp enough to remember what was said, you're in the wrong line of work."

Stansfield didn't really fear America's enemies. He respected them for their tenacity and despised them for their ruthlessness, but he always knew capitalism would defeat communism. What Stansfield feared were the opportunists on Capitol Hill, the politicians who eagerly awaited any chance to take the stage and act out another drama. They were the real enemy. The enemy from within. Men who could ruin your career and reputation with one theatrical sound bite. Stansfield had many maxims and one of them was that it was impossible for a man with an inflated hubris not to have an Achilles' heel.

Rapp had heard a rumor once that Stansfield used a network of retired OSS and CIA people to run surveillance on key senators and colleagues. These were men who had fought alongside Stansfield against the n.a.z.is, and then the Russians during the height of the Cold War. Men who hadn't lost an ounce of their conviction, and were bored with retirement. Men who were happy to practice their trade on such easy targets. The files that Stansfield had ama.s.sed were rumored to be extremely damaging. They were his insurance policies against those who chose to put their own careers ahead of national security. Rapp made a note to talk to Kennedy again about their old boss's files and a separate note to take out a similar insurance policy.

Stansfield's other precaution involved eliminating any paper trail. When conducting operations that ran afoul of the American legal system he liked to tell those around him, "Notes are the noose that will be used at your execution. If possible, record nothing, and burn everything."

Rapp took those words to heart and many others that the WWII vet had handed down. Stansfield had been a member of the famed Jedburgh teams that were infiltrated behind enemy lines in Norway and France in order to collect intelligence and hara.s.s the n.a.z.is. That was exactly what Rapp planned on doing. They needed to adopt a more multip.r.o.nged attack. Direct action, a.s.sa.s.sination, seizing funds, placing pressure and demands on states that were less than vigilant in the fight, that was all fine, but to truly confuse and hara.s.s the enemy would require a full-blown clandestine operation. An operation that only Rapp would know the full extent of.

He tore off another sheet, crumpled it in his hand, and tossed it into the fire. Not even Kennedy would be fully briefed on what he had in mind. It was time to knock the enemy off balance and get them to doubt themselves. Get them to turn on each other. An extension of what they'd just done in Canada. Expose the pious hypocrites for who they were. Undermine the authority of the zealots and get them to think they had spies in their own camp.

s.h.i.+rley lifted her head from the rug and a second later Rapp heard a noise outside. He checked his watch, as s.h.i.+rley ran over to get a look at the source of the noise. It was a little before eight in the evening. That would be his wife returning home after one of her marathon workdays. As the NBC White House correspondent, she started her days early with the morning news and ended late with the evening news. As long as nothing dramatic was going on at the White House, the middle of her day tended to be pretty easy. She usually took an hour to work out and was not afraid to take long lunches that usually involved shopping. Rapp didn't think it possible for one woman to own so many pairs of shoes, handbags, outfits, necklaces, and anything else to do with fas.h.i.+on, but then again he'd never known anyone quite like Anna. She was the most beautiful "bag lady" he'd ever laid eyes on. The closet in the guest room was overflowing with purses designed by people with foreign names that he'd grown to think of as fas.h.i.+on terrorists.

He'd asked her once the price of one of the bags and she replied a bit defensively, "I don't ask you how much your guns cost, do I?"

Rapp had responded that unlike her, he used his guns more than once, and unlike the purses, the guns tended to stay in style for more than a season. He remembered being very proud of himself right up until she gave him that look. Anna Rielly had the greenest eyes he'd ever seen. They could be as calm and enticing as a mountain lake on a hot summer day and as angry and violent as a rogue wave bearing down on an unsuspecting boat. Her father once told him it was her Irish temper. Whatever it was, Rapp liked receiving the first look and dreaded the second. It didn't take long for him to figure out that his wife didn't think him anywhere near as funny as he found himself. He'd also learned that winning these little skirmishes with witty lines inevitably led to him getting his a.s.s kicked in the major battles. This conclusion brought about a new creed: When Anna was happy, he was happy. When Anna was mad, life was less than fun. When Anna was mad at him, life was miserable.

Rapp glanced over his most recent page of notes and stabbed his pen at a certain line, tapping it over and over. He heard the key in the door but didn't look up. He could tell by s.h.i.+rley's soft bark and the excited tapping of her paws that it was Anna. Tomorrow morning he had a meeting with Kennedy, and he wanted to get this figured out before she began dissecting his operational plan. He heard the handle turn and looked up in time to see his wife enter with her large, striped Kate Spade shoulder bag. It was the only bag she used on a regular basis, which was a good thing, because it cost more than any handgun he owned-even the custom-built ones. In her other hand was a purse and a shopping bag.

"How was your day, honey?" he asked.

"Fine." She dropped her large bag on the floor and stuffed the shopping bag in the front hall closet.

Rapp shook his head. He could tell by the pastel color of the bag that whatever she had bought wasn't for him. "Got a little shopping in?"

"No." She took off her jacket and gave him a wry smile. "Kill anyone?"

"Not today, honey, but I've got a few hours left. What's in the bag?" He pointed toward the closet. Rapp wasn't going to let her lame attempt at hiding her habit go unnoticed.