Act of Treason

9

A s darkness fell on the old part of town, things seemed to come to life. Music floated up from the cafés below. People were heading in every direction, darting across the street, dodging the scooters, taxis, and cars. Laughter and lively conversation could be heard as couples and groups lined up at the various establishments to wait for a table. Rapp kept the lights off in his room. The window was actually a skinny French door that opened inward. A black ornamental railing ran from waist height to the floor, providing the illusion of a balcony.

To help fight boredom and keep himself alert, Rapp dropped to the floor every fifteen minutes and did either push-ups or sit-ups. The alternative was drinking profuse amounts of coffee, but that also meant frequent trips to the bathroom. He still had five pounds to lose from his six-month binge, so he opted for the exercise. His eyes casually swept the scene from one end of the block to the other. Every vehicle and pedestrian was noted. He paid special attention to those heading in to the café across the street, and of course the man sitting in the car near the café. Earlier in the day he spotted the other two men getting off the elevator in the hotel lobby. Until reinforcements arrived, all Rapp could really do was sit and wait. He’d spoken to Coleman twice since he and his men had landed. He was finally in the van with Brooks and on his way here.
Rapp checked his watch. It was eight minutes past nine. They should be arriving any minute. A car horn sounded at the far end of the street. Rapp shifted from one side of the open window to the other and scanned the scene. A man and a woman were standing in the middle of the one-way street. The man was flipping off the driver of the car and screaming in Greek. From Rapp’s angle, he spotted a lone man enter the picture on the far sidewalk. Something about this guy made Rapp give him a second look. He was dressed in the hip nightclub style of the younger generation, with faded and ripped designer jeans, retro track shoes, a blue warm-up jacket, and a John Deere baseball hat. The baseball hat was pulled down low, the collar on his jacket was turned up, and he had his hands stuffed in the pockets. His head was slowly, almost imperceptibly, sweeping from left to right. Rapp’s mind thought back to those twenty-seven seconds of surveillance footage from the Starbucks in Georgetown. The average person could glean very little from that tape, but for Rapp it was a treasure trove of information—a virtual admission of guilt by the mystery man captured buying an espresso.
At first glance, the man on the tape seemed very casual. Rapp looked at things a little differently, though. Like a magician watching another magician, Rapp knew what to look for because he had been there before. In a foreign land, on an operation, trying to bide time until the hit took place. He had acted in almost the same manner: baseball hat pulled down low to block surveillance cameras, physical demeanor relaxed, yet alert. Eyes always scanning and on guard.
“Is that you, Alexander?” Rapp whispered to himself, while he leaned back slightly.
Without taking his eyes off the man, Rapp brought the camera to his eye and snapped a few photos as the man approached. The moment of truth was fast approaching. Would he turn into the café and go to his office or would he circle the block and check things out? Rapp knew what he would do and was slightly disappointed when the man stopped in front of the café. He started talking to the old man who was standing at the hostess stand. Rapp had a sudden pang of anxiety. He needed this guy alive. With his back to him Rapp could now see the man’s warm-up jacket had a white Adidas logo across the back. Rapp’s eyes slid to the man sitting no more than forty feet away in the parked car. He hadn’t moved a muscle.
The guy in the Adidas jacket lit a cigarette and continued talking to the old man, then kissed him on both cheeks and walked away. Everything about the guy matched the surveillance footage, except the cigarette. But then again, he wouldn’t have been able to smoke a cigarette while waiting in line at a Starbucks in the United States. The man in the John Deere hat threaded his way through a few pedestrians who were waiting to get into the café. Rapp relaxed a bit, but kept an eye on him. He lowered the camera and wondered if this was actually the guy he was after, or if he was reading too far into things. He rubbed his eyes and checked his watch again.
When he looked back down at the street he saw something totally unexpected. The man in the Adidas jacket suddenly veered toward the parked car with the guy sitting in the front seat. Rapp hastily brought the camera up and hit the auto focus button. The image of the pedestrian and the car came into focus. The glow of the street lamps threw off enough light that he could see what was going on, but Rapp worried that there might not be enough light for the camera to capture any clear images. Suddenly, the pedestrian began waving to the guy sitting in the parked car. As he got closer to the vehicle he casually bent over so he could see through the open driver’s side window. It was a one-way street and the car was parked facing the café on the same side of the street. The man in the car was sitting in the front passenger seat, probably so he had more legroom.
Rapp realized what was going on only a second or two before it happened. He twisted the lens as far as it would go and held the trigger down. The high-speed digital camera began clicking away at the rate of six frames per second. In the faint light, he glimpsed the man in the hat reaching into the car and then there was an ever-so-brief flash. Not the white flash of a camera, but the yellow flash of a muzzle. Rapp took his finger off the camera’s trigger and stood completely still. He didn’t want to miss what would happen next. Three seconds went by and then five. Rapp counted to ten and the man in the hat was still at the car window chatting away, moving his hands like he was telling an involved story.
Rapp lowered the camera and said, “You’re talking to a dead man, aren’t you?” He shook his head and said, “You’re going to stand there and act like nothing happened, and then you’ll slowly put your gun back in your pants and walk away.”
Rapp watched all of this unfold with sincere professional admiration. This guy had a set of balls on him. What he had just witnessed verified his suspicions. The terrorists who paid to have Alexander and Ross killed were not happy with the services Alexander Deckas had provided them and now they wanted him dead. It was not unusual in this line of work. In a sense, the business arrangement was a bit like a man leaving his wife for the woman he’s been having an affair with. The fact that the same man decides to then cheat on the woman he originally cheated with should surprise no one, least of all the woman herself.
Rapp watched as the assassin stood up and stepped away from the car. He then waved at the dead man sitting in it and started back down the street. Rapp quickly glanced back toward the café to see if anyone was following him. The big guy he’d spotted earlier in the day was nowhere to be seen. Only the old man appeared to notice what had just happened. Rapp’s eyes glided back to the man in the John Deere hat. He expected him to turn the corner and vanish, maybe lose the jacket and hat and come back around for a shot at the other two should they appear. The urge to follow was strong, but with so many unknowns it was not wise. This was Deckas’s neighborhood. He would know every crack and crevice, and there was no telling who he might have working for him.
The assassin surprised Rapp by entering the last building on the street. It looked like it was probably an apartment building.
“What the f*ck?” Rapp muttered to himself.
He scanned the apartment building and noted the windows where lights were on. After thirty seconds not a single light had been turned on or off. Something told Rapp it would be a good idea to move further away from the window. He took two steps back. If this guy had a night vision scope, he could be sitting in one of the dark apartments scanning the hotel to see who was watching. If Rapp were in his shoes, that was exactly what he would be doing. Rapp took another step to the side and looked at the screen on the back of the camera. Using his right thumb he spun the wheel and scrolled through the photos. When he got to the right sequence he tightened the frame. The quality wasn’t great, but he could make out what looked like an arm coming through the window of the car and extending across the front seat. He went back one more photo and the screen went bright with a muzzle flash. Suddenly, everything was much clearer. Rapp could now make out a gun with a silencer attached to the end.
This had to be Alexander Deckas, and if he knew about the guy in the car it was likely he knew about the other two men who were looking for him. That was where his focus would be—either trying to avoid them or coming to kill them. Based on what he had just witnessed, Rapp felt it was the latter. But why the apartment building? Rapp thought back to the big guy who earlier in the day he had spied stuffing money in the shirt pocket of the old man who ran the café. The old man did not appear overjoyed to be talking to the goon. It was likely that they had leaned on him. Probably threatened him in some way. The old guy had several choices at that point: play along, go to the authorities, or tip off his tenant. And if the tenant was in fact Alexander Deckas, or whatever his real name was, and the old man knew what he did for a living, why wouldn’t he go to him? Rapp had just watched him dispatch a hired gun in the middle of a busy commercial district without raising even the slightest suspicion.
Rapp’s thoughts were interrupted by the ringing of his phone. He assumed it was Coleman or Brooks so he pressed the button on the earpiece and said, “Where are you guys?”
“It’s Marcus, Mitch.”
Marcus Dumond was a computer expert who worked Counterterrorism for Langley.
“What’s up?” asked Rapp.
“I just spoke to a buddy at the DGSE.” Dumond was referring to the Direction Generale de la Securité Exterieure, France’s top external intelligence organization. “They have a line on this Alexander Deckas. They say his real name is Gavrilo Gazich. He’s a Bosnian who cut his teeth during that nasty little thing they had over there.”
Rapp stepped away from the wall and looked out the window. “Lovely. What else did they tell you?”
“He’s wanted in The Hague.”
“For war crimes?” Rapp asked somewhat surprised. “How old is he?”
“Thirty-five.”
“Well he couldn’t have been more than a grunt when they were killing each other back in the mid-nineties.” Rapp checked the windows on the apartment building across the street. “Why in the hell would they mess with someone so far down the chain of command?”
“He was a sniper. I guess he shot over fifty civilians when they laid siege to Sarajevo.”
Rapp’s entire body went rigid for a split second and then he casually walked away from the window. It took him a few seconds before he even took a breath, and then he swore out loud.
“What’s wrong?” asked Dumond.
“Next time you might want to get to that part first.”
“What part?”
“Never mind,” Rapp growled. “What else do you have on him?”
“He’s rumored to have operated in Africa, mostly the east side…Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, but they don’t have anything concrete on him.”
“How about a photo?”
“Yeah, but it’s not very good.”
“Good enough to give us a match on the surveillance tape?”
“Not a definite, but it doesn’t exclude him either.”
“All right. Send this stuff over to the Africa Division and see what they have on him.”
“Will do.”
“And see if you can get the evidence The Hague has on him. I want to know how good of a shot he is.”
“I’ll get on it.”
“Good work, Marcus.”
Rapp pressed the button on the earpiece and disconnected the call. Very few things rattled him, but snipers were one of them. Sneaky little bastards. The good ones could kill you from nearly a mile away. That was hardly a fair fight. Rapp sat motionless in the dark hotel room and tried to process the new information. Would this guy have any idea Rapp was looking for him? The answer was probably not. Rapp had been very careful, and other than Coleman’s team and a few select people in Washington, no one knew he was on the case.
Rapp wondered if there was a chance these other guys had worked with Gazich in the past. Maybe, but for some reason Rapp doubted it. These assassins were usually loners out of necessity. They couldn’t afford to trust anyone else. Rapp had met the type before: former soldiers and paramilitary types, who always performed better on their own than they did within a unit. Rapp knew because he was one of them. Then there were also what the CIA euphemistically called thugs, drugs, and outlaws. Guys who came out of the ranks of organized crime and the drug cartels. These guys typically didn’t operate alone. They traveled in packs like hyenas.
It was the old man. He was the key. These goons, whoever they were, had leaned on him, and like a good Greek, the old man played along all the while plotting their demise. He alerted his tenant, who just happened to be an assassin, that these guys were looking for him and now the problem was in the process of going away in a very permanent manner. What would Gazich’s next move be? If he was in fact a trained sniper, his options were plentiful. The specter of this guy sitting on the rooftop of the apartment building with a high-powered rifle and night scope made the hair on the back of Rapp’s neck stand up.
It occurred to Rapp that the other two guys probably were not as disciplined as he was. It was likely that they were sitting around, with the lights on, watching TV and waiting for their guy on the street to let them know the target had showed up. Rapp moved to the edge of the window and looked down at the car. He could barely make out the silhouette of the dead man sitting in the front seat. Nothing had changed. No one had gone down to investigate. With only his left eye peering out from the edge of the curtain, Rapp scanned the roofline of the apartment building that Gazich had entered a few minutes ago. Everything looked normal. At least as far as he could tell, but a good sniper would have no problem concealing his position. The possibility occurred to Rapp that the other two guys might already be dead. If the angle was right, and they had their window opened like Rapp did, it would be an easy shot.
Rapp was scanning the rooftop again when a flash of movement caught his eye. Someone was on the roof next to the apartment building. Rapp’s room was on the fourth floor of the hotel. All of the buildings across the street were three stories high and their flat roofs pretty much matched up to within a few feet of each other. Rapp saw the movement again. Someone was moving from Rapp’s left to right, toward the café. Rapp leaned out to get a better look and saw a shadowy figure make the short hop from the building onto the roof where Gazich’s business was located.
Rapp smiled as he realized his instincts had been correct. When he’d checked out the building earlier in the day he questioned why their guy would set up shop on the third floor of a building that had no side or back alley. The only way out was through the front door. Not exactly code back in the States, but over here where the streets had been laid out thousands of years ago, they had to make do. It was almost unthinkable for a guy like Gazich to back himself into a corner with no avenue of escape. The answer was that he hadn’t. Gazich’s escape route was the roof. From there his options were plentiful.
Rapp’s eyes searched the darkness for more movement, but there was none. The roof was dotted with air-conditioning units as well as some ventilation pipes and a few other things. He assumed Gazich was hiding behind one of them, or that he had crawled over to the edge where there was a lip. Suddenly, the front left window on the third floor lit up. A few seconds later the silhouette of a man appeared on the cream colored shade. Rapp realized the access hatch must be located behind one of the air-conditioning units.
“Why the hell would you turn on that light?” Rapp asked himself.
The silhouette moved about, disappearing and then coming back into view. It looked like he was gathering something. Even so, Gazich had to know these guys were watching him. This made no sense. He could have easily snuck in, used a small penlight to get what he needed, and go back out through the roof without anyone ever knowing he’d been there.
Rapp was stuck on the stupidity of this when he suddenly realized what was going on. There was almost no time to react. Grabbing his phone off the bed, he stuffed his arms into his jacket and rushed for the door.