Pursuit Of Honor (5 page)

ADAMS ’S mind was moving at light speed trying to plot the correct course that would allow him to sucker this old codger into thinking Rapp had made a monumental mistake. He couldn’t remember the exact date, but as best he could recall Hurley had been out for at least fifteen years. There was no doubt he kept tabs on certain things, but most of his old sources would have dried up. The key, he decided, was to stay as vague as possible and keep things current.

Adams averted his eyes and seemed to study the dented and scratched surface of the metal desk. “This thing I’m working on… I’m afraid I can’t talk about it.”

Hurley looked at him with his bloodshot but shrewd eyes. “So if I call Director Kennedy right now, she’ll tell me you were on official CIA business?”

Shaking his head, Adams replied, “She wasn’t involved in this.”

“Tell me who to call then. Give me a name.” Hurley folded his arms across his chest as if he were settling in for a long wait.

“Stan, you’re not read in on this.” Adams shifted in his chair. “Hell, you don’t work for Langley anymore. I can’t discuss this with you.”

Hurley snorted. “I know more shit about our black ops than the president, so stop wasting my time and start answering my questions, or we’re going to test that little euphorian theory of yours.”

“And what theory would that be?”

“The one about torture… how you like to tell all your buddies in the press that it doesn’t work. That it’s nothing more than a recruiting tool for al Qaeda.”

Adams looked dumbfounded. “Well, that’s true.”

“And how in the hell would you know?” Hurley leaned over the chair. “Have you ever interrogated someone? Had to get rough with him to save lives?”

“You know the answer to that. I’m the inspector general of the CIA.”

“What about those twenty-three months you spent in the clandestine service that you like to brag about? A whole five of them in the field. And even then the only time you left the embassy compound was to play golf or try to get laid.”

“I’m not going to relive all that with you,” Adams said with a forced smile. “Let’s just agree that there are two sides to every story.”

“Yeah… like the truth and then the stuff that isn’t the truth. Like your little dinner date last night.”

“What about it?”

“According to Mitch you were in the process of committing treason.”

“Mitch Rapp is a professional liar.”

“It might be a good idea if you didn’t try to make this about Mitch. You either start answering me honestly, or I’m going to bring him in here, and you know as well as I do that he cares even less about your feelings than I do.”

“Fine… fine,” Adams said, backpedaling. “But there’s only so much I can say.”

“What were you doing in New York last night?”

“Having dinner with an old college friend.”

“Discussing?”

Adams hesitated. He had to be careful not to catch himself in a lie. “I respect you, Stan. I always have, so I’m going to say this as politely as I can. I don’t answer to you. I don’t answer to Mitch Rapp. I answer to the president and the oversight committees on the Hill. That’s it.”

Hurley exhaled a sigh of frustration. “I don’t seem to be getting through to you.”

“I feel the same way,” Adams said in disappointment. “I understand how difficult this business is, so I’m willing to look the other way this one time, but this offer is not going to last very long. I’m tired and I have a busy day of appointments. I’ll give Rapp one chance to let me walk out of here. And I mean right now. One chance.” Adams held up his index finger.

Hurley started to laugh. “You don’t understand what’s going on, do you?”

“I understand that in about two hours people are going to start wondering where I am, and once that happens it is going to be very hard for me to look the other way on this. So, for the last time, let me go and I’ll forget all this, but I tell you,” Adams’s face flushed with anger, “if Rapp so much as looks at me the wrong way, I will bury him.”

Hurley wouldn’t have believed the man’s arrogance if he hadn’t been here to witness it. “I don’t think you’re going to be going anywhere for quite a while.”

“I’d better,” Adams felt his heart begin to race, “because what little understanding I have is quickly wasting away.”

“You’re an idiot,” Hurley said as if he were telling him his shoes were untied. “I tried my best to help you early in your career, but you really are one dumb son of a bitch.”

Adams acted as if he’d been slapped in the face. “Uncle Stan, I have done nothing wrong. I am the one trying to do the right thing.”

“If you think you’ve done nothing wrong, then I might as well shoot you in the head and get this over with.”

Adams ’s mouth was agape. Here was a man he had known since birth-his father’s best friend, for Christ’s sake. Adams blurted out, “I’ve served my country. I don’t understand… I signed up just like you and Dad.”

“Do yourself a favor and don’t start comparing your clandestine service career to your father’s.”

“I…” Adams stammered, “I wasn’t about to go down with that ship of rats. They were the most corrupt bastards I’d ever met.”

“Corrupt? You talking about our fine boys down in Bogotá back in the eighties?”

“Of course I am. They should have all been thrown in jail.”

Hurley considered slapping him, but he didn’t want to make this any more personal than it already was. “This is all my fault. The other instructors at the Farm wanted to wash your ass out, but I protected you. They knew you didn’t have what it would take, and I knew it, too, but I thought I owed it to your father, so I talked you up and let you graduate.” Shaking his head in self-loathing, he added, “It was one of the biggest mistakes of my life.”

“Didn’t have what it would take?” Adams asked, some anger finally seeping into his voice. “You mean like a frontal lobotomy? You mean the ability to ignore every ethical standard I’d ever learned? Ignore everything Congress says about what I should or shouldn’t be doing?”

“The problem with you, Glen, is that you always thought you were special, and the truth is you’re not. You were a dogshit operative. The only thing you were good for was wining and dining at the embassy parties. Anything that involved getting your hands dirty, you pissed and moaned like a little girl.”

“By getting my hands dirty you mean breaking the law?”

“You’re damn right I do. What in the hell do you think it is that the CIA is supposed to do? You think we’re supposed to obey everyone’s laws? Go ask the International Court and the U.N. and the fucking State Department for permission to find out which Colombian military officers are on the drug cartel’s payroll?”

“Oh… I think you’re simplifying it a bit.”

“You want me to simplify things? Here it is. You were a complete failure as an operative, you were a mediocre prosecutor who kissed all the right asses and managed to land an empty-suit job as the chief watchdog at the CIA where your entire mission is to get in the way of people who are actually trying to keep us safe. Is that simple enough for you?”

“Get in the way!” Adams shouted. “You think things like the rule of law and the Constitution simply get in the way?”

“No, but neither have I deluded myself into thinking that the men who wrote it ever intended for a second that it be used to protect our enemies.”

“So guys like Mitch Rapp should be able to do whatever they’d like without any oversight? Kill whomever they deem a threat without answering to any higher authority?”

“If I have to choose between Mitch and those menstruating partisan hacks on Capitol Hill, I’ll put my money on Mitch.”

Adams, his fists clenched, stood and demanded, “Do you know why they hate us?”

“Who?”

“The terrorists? Who do you think? They hate us because of men like you and my father and Rapp and Nash and rest of you knuckle-dragging goons.”

“Those goons,” Hurley said in a quiet angry voice, “have done more to protect this country than the entire House and Senate put together, and they’ve done it without an ounce of recognition or thanks from all the intellectually arrogant fucks like you.” Hurley stepped back and swung his cane around, smacking Adams in the elbow.

Adams yelped and grabbed himself. “What in the hell is wrong with you?”

“I was your only chance, you dumb ass. All I wanted was the slightest sign of remorse, and instead I got more of your pompous defiance.” He turned for the door.

“Where are you going?” Adams asked in a voice that had suddenly lost its command.

“To get the man you think so little of.”

“Wait!” Adams said in a voice that finally betrayed a bit of fear.

Hurley didn’t bother to turn around. “You blew it. Now you get to find out firsthand if torture works.”

RAPP checked his watch. He had thirty minutes at the most and then he would have to hightail it up to Langley. He wasn’t worried about his alibi. Should the feds come knocking, he’d send them to Hurley, and as long as the tough bastard kept breathing, he’d tell them that Rapp had arrived shortly before seven the previous evening and stayed the night. As to what they’d discussed and done during the roughly twelve hours since, they could confidently tell the feds to pound sand. The agents might not like it, but the men and women of the clandestine service had good reason for being tight-lipped with them and the good ones knew it.

What bothered Rapp was the fact that there were more important things for him to be dealing with-like trying to find the three terrorists who had vanished. They had launched a manhunt like nothing he’d witnessed in his nearly twenty years of service. Every law enforcement officer in the country was on high alert, and so far they’d only come up with thousands of false leads. Seven days postattack they finally started looking at different scenarios. At first they’d concentrated on the airports, the borders, and the big ports. The Navy had boarded and searched twenty vessels that were deemed suspicious. Not a single person had been able to explain to Rapp what intelligence had landed those ships in the suspicious category, but he’d learned enough over the years to not try to swim against the current. The Navy was simply doing what they were ordered, and those orders were coming from men and women who would rather look busy and earnest than get thoughtful.

Now they’d moved on to the smaller marinas, airstrips, and remote border crossings. In Rapp’s opinion, and he’d voiced it rather loudly, this should have been the area of focus from the beginning. The men who were behind the attacks had shown a discipline and level of sophistication that he was sure would lead them to be every bit as creative and careful in their escape. Despite all the hard-working and devoted individuals who work for it, the federal government is not a precise instrument. In the post-9/11 world the training was better, the equipment was superior, and the ability to share information in real time had improved dramatically, but the alphabet soup of government agencies had also grown. As only Washington could do, layer after layer of bureaucracy was added, all in the name of streamlining the federal government’s ability to prevent and respond to a terrorist attack.

Rapp, and a handful of others, had predicted how the politicians would react. The very room he was standing in was proof that they had been right, and that they’d managed to stay one step ahead of the lemmings as they continued to do what they thought would be least offensive to the very men they were fighting. And now, on top of trying to find out where the terrorists were, he had to deal with this sideshow-this little drama with Glen Adams. It was adding undue stress to an already difficult situation. Rapp hadn’t liked it when Hurley asked him to bring Adams down to the lake house, but knowing the family history he conceded. Looking back on it now, Rapp wished he’d flown out over the Atlantic and dumped Adams out the rear luggage hatch of the G500 at about five thousand feet. It would have been a lot easier.

Now Rapp and the others had to stand around and watch this painfully slow tragedy unfold in real time. Rapp had been through this enough times to know that once you decided a man had to be killed there was no sense putting it off. The hand-wringing and moral debate had to take place up front. In Adams ’s case, that meant before they even picked him up. Once that was done there was no turning back. You couldn’t undo the fact that they’d already broken a number of laws. Yet here Nash was making waves. No doubt it had something to do with the strain they’d been under lately, but even so, Rapp expected more from him.

Rapp had seen it before, usually in the military, where despite amazing effort, the use of force was not always as precise as they would like. One too many innocent bystanders blown up by a bomb or killed by an errant bullet, and you were likely to have the occasional foot soldier check out. It wasn’t always easy to detect. Everyone acted different in the days immediately following an engagement with the enemy. Especially the first twenty-four hours after combat. It was not unusual, for instance, for one of the men to become quiet. The noncommissioned officers put up with it to a point, but if that brooding turned into questions about the morality of the mission, the noncoms stepped on it quick and hard. If a trooper or Marine couldn’t snap out of it, they were gone. Effective fighting units were not the place to debate the ethics of urban warfare. The integrity and effectiveness of the unit could not tolerate it, so the men either snapped to, or were dumped.

Rapp was beginning to question if he would have to do the same thing with some of his men. He would not have guessed that Nash would be one of the problems. He looked across the room at the retired Marine officer who was giving Lewis an earful, and thought it must be the stress of the past week. None of them had slept much, and Nash knew the men and women who worked at the Counterterrorism Center much better than he did. Watching tough men in full combat gear die on a mountain range was hard enough, but was not incongruous with the mission or the surroundings. Watching civilians blown away at point-blank range in an office setting was an entirely different matter, though. Rapp had begun moving toward Nash and the doctor, when he heard his name called from the overhead speaker.

“Mitch, get in here and bring the file.”

Rapp stopped. It was Hurley. He would have to wait and talk to Nash in the car on their way back to D.C.