Pursuit of Honor

chapter 60
CIA, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

AFTER they had managed to collect themselves and stop laughing at their friend's misery, Harris asked Rapp, "Did you get the photos?"

Rapp had forgotten all about them. He pulled out his BlackBerry and found the email Harris had sent him several hours earlier. He waited for the photos to come up on the screen and then scrolled down. The first man he didn't recognize, but the second one looked an awful lot like a certain Moroccan he'd seen in a photograph provided by Catherine Cheval. Rapp scrolled back up to the first photo and wondered if it was possible. Could this be the Lion of al Qaeda? He felt as if he were holding the winning lottery ticket.

Harris saw the change in Rapp's expression and asked, "What is it?"

Rapp lowered his BlackBerry and tried to figure out how much he could reveal. There was no way he could sit on this information. Iowa, he thought to himself. The bastards had gone to the middle of the country to hide out.

"What do you know?" Harris asked impatiently.

"Let me check with a few of my sources."

Harris studied him with the eyes of a career lawman. "You're holding back."

Rapp hesitated. That he was holding back was obvious. Here they were at the tangled and mangled intersection of politics, law enforcement, and international espionage. He could trust Harris, but the FBI did everything with one eye on a possible prosecution and court date and right behind them were all the lawyers over at Justice. They would be obsessed with following the trail of evidence, knowing that any defense attorney would do the same in an attempt to punch holes in the government's case.

This was exactly what the president and Dickerson were afraid of. He was screwed both ways. If he brought them in and told them everything, it would eventually blow up in the face of the French and further damage their cooperation. Rapp would lie through his teeth before he'd let that happen. But he needed the FBI's help. He simply didn't have the manpower to do what needed to be done. At some point they were going to need a lucky break, or they would have to go public with these photos. Rapp suddenly thought of something else and it turned his mood foul. If it came out after the fact that he had sat on this information, even if it was just for a day or two, he and the CIA would be crucified.

Rapp eyed Harris and thought of the FBI's rapid deployment teams. He couldn't remember how many they had, but he thought there were at least six. "You still have that rapid deployment team in Chicago on standby?"

"Yeah."

Rapp wavered for a minute. "I think you should deploy them."

"I need a reason to deploy them," Harris said, pushing for information.

"Twenty-plus years of experience. You're not a janitor. Tell everyone to snap to and make it happen."

Harris resisted. "New development since we last talked. The director sent out an edict this morning. We've been getting false leads for a week, Mitch. These teams have been flying all over the country. They're at their breaking point. The director told us no more chasing ghosts. Keep the teams home until we have some hard evidence."

"I'd say two dead bodies, a bunch of military-grade C-4, and two sets of fake IDs with photos of two men of possible Middle Eastern persuasion is a decent start."

"What aren't you telling me, Mitch?" Harris asked.

"Art, you know how this works. I can't tell you what I know right now, because you guys are going to make me sit down in front of a bunch of lawyers and put me under oath and ask me how I know what I know." Rapp shook his head. "That can't happen."

"But, Mitch..."

"But nothing. Leave me out of this. Get your team there, put these photos up on the wire, and list them as possible suspects in a double homicide and let your guys piece it all together."

"Are you trying to tell me you think these are two of the three terrorists we're looking for?"

"I'm not telling you anything, Art." Rapp winked. "The only thing I'm saying is that my brain tells me these two guys are Middle Eastern, not Mexican as their names would suggest." Rapp looked at his BlackBerry and said, "My gut tells me there's a chance these might be two of the three guys we're looking for and your gut should be telling you the same thing."

"That's all you're going to give me... your gut?"

"For now... yes. I gotta run, Art. Deploy the team and see what they dig up." Rapp turned to look for Kennedy.

"Where are you going?" Harris asked.

Rapp ignored him and threaded his way through the crowd toward Kennedy. She was surrounded by too many people Rapp didn't want to talk to, so he maneuvered into a position where he could catch her eye. It took a few seconds, but Kennedy eventually saw him.

He pointed his finger straight up and mouthed the word Now.

Rapp left the room and pulled up Marcus Dumond's phone number. He listened to it ring in the hallway across from the gift shop while he waited for Kennedy. The computer genius answered on the fourth ring.

"What's up?"

"Are you in the building?" Rapp asked. "Which building?"

"Old HQ."

"Yeah. I'm down in the basement working on-"

Rapp cut him off. "Drop whatever it is and get your butt up to Irene's office on the pronto."

"Am I in trouble?"

"Only if you're late." Rapp ended the call and put the phone back in his pocket, just as Kennedy joined him in the hall. Two of her bodyguards hovered nearby.

"What's wrong?"

Rapp started walking. "I'll save the good stuff for your office."

They moved quickly down the wide hallway, while Rapp filled her in on the developments in Iowa. They turned a few times until they got to a door that led to Kennedy's private elevator. No one spoke on the ride up to the seventh floor. When the door opened the two bodyguards stepped aside and Rapp followed Kennedy to the left and into her office.

"I asked Marcus to join us," Rapp said. "He should be here any second."

Kennedy leaned against the front of her desk, placed her hands on the edge, and crossed her legs at the ankles. She was dressed to the nines for the cameras. Dark blue skirt and jacket with black nylons, black pumps, and an ivory blouse. "I'm not sure I understand why you're so concerned."

"Yesterday, when you sent me on that little hop to go meet with Catherine and George?"

"Yes."

"Well, I told you last night they gave me some pretty good intel."

Kennedy could tell by his sour expression that there was a catch. "And?"

"Let's just say your friends up on the Hill wouldn't approve of their methods."

Kennedy noticed how he referred to them as her friends. "So you're nervous about sharing the intel with the FBI?"

"Yes... and I promised George up front that I would be really careful with the stuff he gave me. Between the two of us, I'm about 99 percent sure it came from his top source inside the Cuban government."

Kennedy nodded and considered how nervous she would be if she had to share one of her top sources. "Understandable."

"I told you they IDed two of the three, and they have a line on the third."

"I remember."

"Well... you're not going to believe this." Rapp pulled out his phone and showed her the photos. "Art just sent me these. This is why I asked you to come up here. They found these fake IDs at the crime scene in Iowa. One of these-" Rapp checked the small screen. "This one right here, I'm almost certain, is a Moroccan named Ahmed Abdel Lah, who Catherine tells me is one of the three men we are looking for."

"And just how does she know that?"

"Unofficially, and I mean really unofficially, someone Catherine trusts picked up Ahmed's brother and had a long talk with him. I don't know all the details, but it sounded pretty solid to me."

"And?"

"You know Catherine as well as I do. She wouldn't dump something like this on me if it was bullshit."

"What about the other photo?"

"I don't know. When Marcus gets up here I'll have him send it to George and Catherine. I don't want it to come directly from either of us. Better to make it look like it was part of an information dump."

Kennedy thought about it for a second and said, "So Ahmed's brother was more than likely tortured."

Rapp shrugged as if to say of course he was.

"And if we share this information with the FBI, they will want to know where we got it?"

"Exactly."

"And then at some point in the not-so-distant future they'll send a couple dozen agents and attorneys over there to question Ahmed's brother and Catherine's man."

"And we can't let that happen," Rapp said.

"No, we can't." Kennedy stared out the window.

"What I need you to do is come up with a plausible explanation for why we think this double homicide is linked to the attacks of last week, and do it in a way that doesn't compromise George and Catherine or their people."

"We could alter those photos and dump them into the database."

"Not a bad idea, but Art already ran them through TIDE and came up with nothing. This has to come from overseas." Rapp looked toward the door, hoping to see Dumond. "As soon as Marcus gets up here he'll know how to handle it without leaving any fingerprints. I also have him looking into an issue in New York."

"New York?"

Rapp was getting ahead of himself. "The farm in Iowa was purchased through an LLC... I don't know... six... eight months back. The lawyer who handled it was out of New York. I wanted to get a look at his files before all the Dudley Do-Rights show up on Monday."

"Follow the money?"

"You got it. I'm half tempted to fly up there myself and slap the guy around a little bit. Make sure I get the whole story out of him."

Kennedy shook her head. "I don't like that idea."

Rapp knew she wouldn't, but asked anyway. "Why?"

"If this adds up like you say, the FBI will most certainly be all over this attorney on Monday. I know you can be persuasive, but there is no guarantee the attorney won't file a complaint... in fact, once he's surrounded by a bunch of federal agents I can almost guarantee he'll file charges, and then I'll have to explain to a lot of upset people what one of my top operatives was doing beating an American citizen and subject in a major criminal investigation."

Before Rapp could answer, there was a knock on the door. Dumond entered the office and ambled over. He was wearing khaki flat-front pants, a short-sleeved blue button-down shirt, and an old black knit, square-bottom tie. With his afro he looked like a reject from the seventies. "What's up?"

"We need your expertise," Rapp said. He showed Dumond the two photos. "I need you to pull these off here and send them over to Charles and Catherine. Can you make it look like an information dump? Send it to them first and then send the photos to all our allies asking for help in identifying them."

"No problem."

"How's it going with the lawyer in New York?"

"James Gordan," Dumond said.

Rapp could tell by his tone that he wasn't impressed. "Did you find the money trail?"

"The start of it. Chase Manhattan provided the funds for closing here in the States."

"Where'd the money come from before it got to Chase?"

"Nassau, and that's going to take a little longer to crack."

"Why?"

"Royal Bank of Nassau... very good security. I'll crack it eventually, but it's going to take the better part of a day if not the weekend."

"Shit." All this international banking secrecy drove Rapp nuts.

"Give me a few hours. I'll see what I can dig up."

"Good. Get to it. I'll be down to grab the phone in a few." Rapp looked back at Kennedy and said, "I think you should call George and Catherine. Try to explain our predicament."

Kennedy looked at the clocks on the wall behind her desk and then hit the intercom button and asked her assistant to get Butler and Cheval on the phone. "Tell them it's urgent, please."

"Any ideas?" Rapp asked.

"A few. Nothing great, though."

"I think I might be able to thread the needle."

Thirty seconds later Butler and Cheval were on the line. "I've got Mitch here with me," Kennedy said into the speakerphone as Rapp joined her at the edge of the desk.

"Hello, Mitch," Cheval said, "you were going to send me those DNA samples from the six terrorists."

"Sorry, Catherine, but I might have something better." Rapp filled them in on the double homicide in Iowa, the explosives, and the fake IDs. "One of these guys looks vaguely familiar to me. I could swear I've seen a photo of him recently." Rapp shared a look with Kennedy and added, "He looks Moroccan."

There was a prolonged silence and then Cheval asked, "Why don't you send me the photo?"

"On its way shortly. When you get it... maybe you could run it by your people in North Africa and see if they get a hit. Maybe it matches a passport on file."

"I will do that."

Butler cleared his throat and asked, "What about the other photo?"

"He looks Saudi to me," Rapp replied.

"I see," Butler said. "What exactly are you looking for, Irene?"

"Just trying to be careful, George. You know how this works. If we put these guys on our watch list and tip off the FBI, they're going to want to know how we figured out who they were. So far, Mitch is running with the idea that they don't look Hispanic like their names would suggest."

"Yeah," Rapp said, "I'm thinking Moroccan and Saudi."

"I just received the photos," Cheval said. "The one man is definitely Moroccan. I think I can get independent confirmation for you within the hour."

"By independent, do you mean something the FBI could use in court?"

"Yes. I would be careful with this other photo, though. I'm not sure the Saudis will be much help. They might even begin to destroy evidence."

"I'm not sure we need confirmation on both photos at the moment," Kennedy said. "The Moroccan should be good enough to pass the entire thing off to the FBI nice and clean."

"Anything from my end?" Butler asked.

Rapp leaned in. "If you could show the second photo to the right people, George, that would be great."

"Will do."

"And one other thing," Rapp said. "You're not by chance heading to the Bahamas this weekend, are you?"

Butler laughed. "I wasn't planning on it."

"Well, I'm flying over to Nassau in the morning."

"What on earth for?"

"I need to talk to someone about a shipment of stolen drugs. And while I'm there I might visit one of your banks."

"Oh," Butler said, showing a bit of concern.

"If you're interested, meet me at the Graycliff. Say around eleven. If not... send someone you trust. Someone who might help expedite things."

"Let me see what I can do."

"Fair enough. Just shoot me an email and let me know if you can make it."

Kennedy covered a few more things with them, thanked them for their time, and then disconnected the call. She looked up at Rapp with a pensive stare and said, "The Bahamas."

"Yes."

"And when were you going to tell me about this?"

"I thought I'd send you a postcard from the beach."

"Really... and just how do you plan on getting there?"

"Actually, I need to borrow one of your planes. The guy I'm going with is sending his plane to Cuba to pick up the man I need to talk to."

"Cuba..." Kennedy frowned. "Who?"

"I think it would be better for both of us if I spared you the details."

"You're unbelievable," Kennedy said with a shake of her head and a sigh.