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“No sense in trying to bully my way, then. I’ll make some easy conversation and then leave them a calling card.” And with that, Hurley was out the door. “Wish me luck.”
Rapp watched him cross the street. No one knew Hurley’s exact age, but Rapp guessed he was in his early to mid seventies, although he knew he could easily be off. The man moved like someone twenty years younger but his face showed the wear of someone who had been through a lot of rough stuff.
“Dammit,” Dumond barked from the backseat.
Rapp looked in the rearview mirror to see what was wrong. Dumond had attended MIT with Rapp’s little brother Steven. The computer genius had run afoul of the Feds for hacking into some of New York’s biggest banks. Rapp had Kennedy intervene on Dumond’s behalf. Rather than go to jail, the whiz kid decided to come to work for Langley. Rapp had rarely if ever seen him so frustrated. “What’s wrong, Marcus?”
“This is bullshit, Mitch.”
“You still can’t get in?”
“I can’t even get close.”
“Why?”
“These guys are using heavy-duty shit. Like the stuff the Chinese use, and our buddies out at Fort Meade—I’m talking cutting-edge stuff.”
Rapp didn’t know a lot about what Dumond did, but he tried to help. “Would it be better if you were back at Langley on a bigger computer . . . faster hookup speed?”
Dumond looked at Rapp’s reflection in the mirror with a “don’t even try to act like you know what you’re talking about” look.
Rapp threw up his hands. “Just trying to help.”
Dumond went back to hammering away on his keyboard. “The point I’m trying to make is that this isn’t normal. The only people that pay for protection like this are people who are really paranoid, and I’m not talking paranoid for the sake of being paranoid. I’m talking paranoid because they need to hide some serious shit.”
Rapp watched Hurley talk to the bodyguards, but was still thinking about Dumond’s frustration. Herr Obrecht was turning out to be a far more interesting person than he had first thought. Rapp watched Hurley hand one of the men a card and jog back to the car.
“How’d it go?”
“Nice chap.” Hurley pushed back in his seat and straightened his jacket.
“British?”
“No . . . he’s one of ours . . . Green Beret. The other two are British, and I think the third one is Polish Special Forces.”
“Who do they work for?”
“Obrecht.”
“Directly . . . not Triple Canopy or someone?”
“Nope . . . Obrecht brought them on board a month ago.”
Rapp thought about the timing. “Anything else?”
“Yeah . . . I wrote down my number on a card and told him to give it to his boss.” Hurley pointed across the street. “Look, he’s calling him right now.” The guard had a handset in one hand and Hurley’s business card in the other. “I told him to tell his boss that I needed to talk to him about Louie Gould.”
Rapp was surprised. “I like that. If Gould was telling us the truth, that should freak him out.”
“You think he’ll call?”
“No.” Rapp shook his head. “A guy like this will have his lawyers call Interpol and ask about you, and if you check out then he might call, but it’s a Saturday, so the earliest we’d hear from him would be Monday.”
“Yeah . . . I bet you’re right.”
They watched the bodyguards for another minute and then Rapp said, “I’ve been thinking. Marcus is having a hell of a time trying to get into the bank’s server. He said they are using high-end stuff.”
“Doesn’t surprise me. These banks are security conscious now.”