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Rapp rubbed his beard for a few seconds but couldn’t come up with an answer. He considered lying but couldn’t bring himself to do it. It wasn’t her fault that she’d been born into this world but it was a reality she couldn’t escape.
“I honestly don’t know.”
“But—”
“Anna,” her mother admonished. “He said he doesn’t know.”
The young girl looked at her feet. “Okay.”
“Guess what?” Rapp said, feeling a bit guilty about not having a better answer for the girl. “I think you should go introduce yourself to the pilots. And tell them I said to let you fly.”
She glanced at her mother, who nodded, and then disappeared up the aisle. Whether it was because she was interested in getting her hands on the plane’s controls or to get away from him, he wasn’t sure. Probably a little of both.
“Sometimes children ask hard questions,” Claudia said.
“Yeah.”
He propped his elbows on his knees and got his first real look at her since he’d arrived in Africa. The tan she’d had when he’d last seen her in Greece had faded and her pale skin accented dark, almond-shaped eyes. She was thirty-six, but the disparity in their ages looked greater. Decades of desert sun, sandstorms, and memories of dead friends and enemies conspired to make him look older than he was.
The plane lurched and Claudia glanced back toward the cockpit. When she looked back at him, it wasn’t with the expression he’d expected. In fact, he couldn’t read her features at all.
“They’re actually letting her fly.”
“Are they?”
“People do what you tell them to, don’t they?”
“Most of them.”
“And the ones who don’t?”
He leaned back, suddenly wanting to put some distance between them. “You were with Louis for a long time. I should be no mystery to you.”
She switched to French, a language she was more comfortable with. “No. You’re nothing like Louis.”
He wasn’t sure how to take that. Did she see him as better? Worse? Her husband was a remorseless sociopath who would kill anyone for the right payday. Rapp was very much not that person. But that wasn’t necessarily evident from the outside. In fact, he’d killed far more men than her husband had. The difference was in the subtleties of motivation.
“Thank you for saving us,” she said finally. “Again.”
He shook his head. “It was my fault, Claudia. It shouldn’t have been possible to find you. I missed something.”
“No one can truly disappear. It’s something I know well from my time in . . .” Her voice faded for a moment. “Your business.”
“Still, I—”
“Some of Louis’s enemies have tremendous resources, Mitch. There’s only so much that can be done.”
He didn’t respond, reluctant to tell her that this was about him, not her dead husband. And while she was wrong about motivation, she was right about the issue of resources. The CIA was the world’s expert at this, and the men who had been assigned to her case were very aware that he was watching. The idea that a Russian organized crime outfit or ISIS had the sophistication to pull this off was incredibly far-fetched. They’d n
eed someone inside the Agency or an organization with enough brute-force capacity to sift through every passport issued, house sold, and bank account opened worldwide.
No, this screamed Russian intelligence. But why? It was a given that they had a keen interest in who controlled Pakistan, but how would exacerbating the lack of security around that country’s nuclear arsenal help their cause? It seemed like too much risk for not enough reward. Even for Maxim Krupin.
“I don’t know what to do, Mitch. I deserve this. I didn’t pull the trigger on Louis’s contracts, but I might as well have. I participated and I benefited. I’m still benefiting. I have tens of millions of dollars in my bank account. All blood money. But Anna is innocent. She has to be protected.”
Rapp let out a long breath. He wasn’t sure why he’d thought he could get around this. Wishful thinking wasn’t normally one of his failings.
“This wasn’t about you, Claudia. Someone wanted to distract me.”