Pursuit of Honor

chapter 17
LAKE ANNA, VIRGINIA

ADAMS pleaded, then cried, and in between the sniffles and tears he began mumbling to himself. The door buzzed and Rapp opened it to find Hurley standing on the other side, looking none too pleased that he was going to have to shoot his best friend's son in the head for the second time.

"I should have never stopped you," Rapp said in an apologetic tone.

"Damn right you shouldn't have." Hurley pushed past him, his cane in one hand and his gun in the other.

Adams snapped out of his mumbling trance and began screaming for Rapp to stop. Upon seeing Hurley and the gun, he tried to stand, and forgetting that his ankles were still tied to the chair, toppled over. He caught the edge of the table and brought it down with him, sending the glass and bottle of vodka crashing to the floor at the same time.

Hurley moved into position over him and took aim.

"Don't shoot!" Adams screamed. "Mitch, wait! I know things! I can help!"

Rapp shared a quick look with Hurley as he walked back to Adams.

He squatted and said, "You get one shot at this, Glen. Tell me something worth knowing, and it better be good."

Adams was lying on his side, the toppled chair still attached to his legs. He looked at the puddle of urine and then at Rapp. "Help me up first."

"F*ck you!" Hurley growled as he jabbed the gun into Adams 's face.

Rapp stood and again started for the door. Adams began screaming frantically for him to stop and Hurley let loose a litany of profanity that described in very colorful terms exactly what he thought of Adams. To further punctuate each word he stabbed his gun closer and closer to Adams 's face until he had it pressed into his temple.

Rapp was halfway out the door when he heard a name. It was repeated three times in quick succession. Rapp stopped, his interest finally piqued, and turned. "What did you say?"

"Kathy O'Brien!" Adams said with his face pressed into the floor.

Rapp's eyes narrowed. He wasn't sure exactly what he had expected to get out of Adams, but the name Kathy O'Brien wasn't anywhere on the horizon. She was the wife of Chuck O'Brien, the director of the CIA's National Clandestine Service. "What about her?" Rapp asked cautiously.

"That's how I knew about the operation you were running."

One of the keys to a successful interrogation, at least early on, was to keep the subject off balance. No matter how shocking or strange a piece of information might be, you never let it show. "Which operation," Rapp asked, "would that be?"

"The mosques."

"Go on," Rapp ordered.

"The undercover guys you sent into the mosques."

Rapp walked back and looked down at Adams. "You mean the operation that was leaked to the Post last week."

"Yeah... Yeah... that's the one."

"The story you leaked, you mean?" Rapp asked.

Adams didn't answer fast enough, so Hurley gave him a little love tap with the tip of the barrel-just hard enough to draw a drop of blood.

"Yes," Adams screamed. "Yes... I was the one who told Barreiro."

"The leak," Rapp said, "that ended up getting one of my agents killed."

"I... I... I," Adams stammered, "wouldn't know anything about that."

Rapp glanced at his watch. He might have to be late for the meeting. "And just what does Kathy O'Brien have to do with this?"

"She's... how I found out."

"You already said that. I want specifics." Rapp saw Adams 's eyes begin to dart around again, which was a sign that his brain was scrambling to find the right lie. "Don't do it."

"Do what?"

"Lie to me."

"I'm not... I mean I wasn't going to."

"Anything you say to me I'll have verified within the hour, and if I find out you've lied to me... well, let's just say I'm going keep you alive as long as it takes to make you feel some real pain."

"She..." Adams's eyes started darting again, until suddenly, a knife tip appeared an inch in front of the left one.

Rapp held the blade perfectly still. "I can tell when a man is lying to me. So one more time, what does Kathy have to do with this?"

Adams closed his eyes and said, "She's been seeing a therapist."

"And?"

"We had the office bugged."

With great effort to conceal his surprise Rapp asked, "The therapist's office?"

"Yes."

Rapp's mind was flooded with a half-dozen questions, but for now he needed to keep Adams focused on the most immediate facts. They could squeeze the rest out of him later. "So if I call my source at Justice, she'll tell me that you had warrants to wiretap the therapist's office?"

Adams took a long time to answer, which in itself was an answer.

Rapp cocked his head to the side. "You didn't have a warrant?"

"Not exactly," Adams admitted.

Rapp pulled the knife back and shared a quick look with Hurley. Things suddenly began to fall into place for Rapp. Why Adams knew the broad brushstrokes of what they had been up to, but could not pass the threshold needed to refer a case to Justice. "You wiretapped the office of a doctor and recorded the private therapy sessions of the wife of the director of the National Clandestine Service. And you did it illegally."

"I was only trying to do my job."

"And you lecture me about breaking the f*cking law," Rapp snapped.

"I was just trying to stop you. You were out of control."

"Out of control... I break those laws to keep people safe. Real people. You break 'em to protect some piece of paper you don't even understand."

"I am trying to protect the world from animals like you."

Rapp stuck the tip of the knife into Adams 's left nostril and said, "I should-"

"Mitch," Dr. Lewis announced from the door, "I'd like to have a word with you and Stan."

Rapp resisted the urge to slice the traitor's nose clean off his face. They had a standard policy during interrogations that whenever Lewis asked anyone for a private word, they were to drop everything and leave the room. Rapp stood and left the cell with Hurley. They closed the door and found Lewis pacing nervously. Nash was back from the house, shaved and in a dark blue suit, while Maslick was sitting behind the desk keeping an eye on the monitors.

Lewis held up a couple of fingers and said, "Two things... the first

... I don't think you can ever allow him to go free. There is a chance that his illegalities were driven by a lack of judgment precipitated by the onset of alcoholism, but I think the odds of it are small. It's more likely that in addition to suffering from narcissistic personality disorder, he is also a sociopath."

"And this changes things... how?"

"He uses rules as a weapon. He gets extremely upset when he thinks anyone has acted inappropriately, or has broken the law, yet he sees nothing wrong when he decides to break those very same laws. I'm not even sure he's aware of it. He's so narcissistic, so in love with himself, that he thinks he's privileged. Rules are for the commoner, not someone like him, who is destined to make a difference in the world."

"I could have told you that," Hurley said, "and I didn't even go to med school."

Lewis ignored Hurley and said, "The narcissistic sociopathic combination is extremely dangerous... almost impossible to treat and never in a situation with this much pressure. He will say and do whatever he needs to stay alive and then after you let him go, the first chance he gets he will bolt. He would turn to anyone who he thought had the power to take you down."

"Your second point?" Rapp asked.

"Normally, I would never admit this, but considering the situation, I think it would be best." Lewis hesitated, wrestling with how best to word his admission.

"Doc," Rapp said, "I don't have all day. Spit it out."

Lewis cleared his throat and nervously announced, "I am Kathy O'Brien's therapist."