Page 53 of Denied Access (Mitch Rapp #24)

V IENNA , A USTRIA

S TAN Hurley swallowed a mouthful of black, bitter coffee.

Though the java was plenty hot and freshly made, it somehow still tasted stale.

Or maybe that was just him. Though he wanted to pour the mug down the drain and brew a fresh pot, he didn’t.

He was expecting company any minute and they were on the clock.

As the shabby safe house’s bare-bones accoutrements attested, this was not about five-star accommodations or gourmet beverages.

This was the spy’s equivalent of roughing it, and while the coffee was not good, it served its purpose.

After half a mug, Stan could already feel his mental fog lifting, though if he were being honest, the coffee served another purpose beyond just as a source of caffeine.

Penance.

A hard knock rattled the flimsy door against its frame.

The sound followed a specific rhythm—a sharp staccato of three quick raps followed by two slow ones.

After a pause, the pattern repeated with a slight variation.

Instead of two slow ones, the knocking ended with three.

Stan set his cup on the grimy table and scooped up the second tool that was integral to this morning’s activities.

A pistol.

Taking a centering breath, Stan got up from the table and covered the short distance to the door with his rolling stride.

The pistol was in his right hand and angled at the floor.

A Glock wasn’t his preferred carry, but it was the best he was going to do while engaged in a spontaneous operation conducted without the logistical benefits provided by Rob Ridley and his CIA advance team.

Besides, it beat the alternative.

Sliding up to the door, Stan kicked the rubber stopper free from where it was wedged beneath the doorjamb.

Positioning his torso behind the wall, he reached up to unhook the chain lock before disengaging the dead bolt.

Then he turned the doorknob and yanked, allowing the door to open away from him.

The knock pattern confirmed that his visitors were not random guests who’d wandered to the wrong apartment, but the sequence did nothing to validate that the knock was not done under duress, or worse still, been extracted from its intended recipient.

He could have used the filmy peephole to validate who was standing on the stoop, but that would have required positioning his entire body behind the door.

Stan had learned many hard-won lessons, but the most basic remained the most important—never do what your adversary expects.

Stan brought his pistol up to the high ready position, but kept his left hand free.

In an engagement this close, it was better to have a hand ready to deal with a potential physical altercation.

Yet another lesson learned the hard way.

The door swung past the halfway point and Stan waited for the unexpected. Best case, he’d get to assess how his mentee entered an unfamiliar safe house.

Worst case, things were about to get interesting.

The Russian came through the doorway first, not quite a tactical entry, but not a simple stroll either. Dmitri Volkov passed beneath the doorjamb and stepped deep into the apartment, squinting in the darkness. Stan tracked the former KGB officer with his pistol for no more than an instant.

It was an instant too long.

An expertly delivered blow to Stan’s bicep knocked his gun arm offline at the same moment the point of something sharp jabbed against his shirt just under the lowest rib.

“Not bad, kid,” Stan said, feeling a twinge of pride at Rapp’s performance. “Now put the knife away before someone gets hurt.”

A pair of eyes so dark as to be black stared back at him. “You’re the only one in danger of getting hurt.”

“I don’t think so,” Stan said. With a not-so-gentle prod, he pressed the point of the tiny push dagger he’d drawn from his belt into Rapp’s liver.

“You’re good, but not ready for a shot at the title just yet.

Now, join your Russian friend and pull up a chair at the table.

We’ve got a lot of ground to cover and not much time. ”

Rapp’s gaze drifted down to the dagger before refocusing on Stan’s face.

That he had gotten the drop on Rapp was true, but the outcome of their fight was far from certain.

At best, he and his apprentice might have given each other dueling terminal wounds.

At worst, Rapp could have slid his longer blade into Stan’s vitals before he would have been able to reciprocate with the push dagger.

Even if the attack didn’t kill him outright, the shock of a blade entering his heart or lung cavity might have prevented him from pressing home his attack.

The most charitable analysis would be to label the engagement a draw with the advantage going to Rapp.

A more accurate assessment was that Rapp had gotten the drop on him.

But that wasn’t what Stan saw in the kid’s face.

Instead, the assassin seemed to be replaying everything that had just happened and internalized the lessons learned as if he were watching film from one of his college lacrosse games.

Then, with a nod, Rapp squirreled away the knife and stepped past Stan into the apartment.

Hurley had no idea what was going through the young man’s mind, but he was fairly certain of one thing—Rapp would never fall for that trick again.

“You did what?” Hurley said, trying to keep his voice even.

The debrief was being held in front of the Russian which was unavoidable but not ideal. Still, it would not do to give the former KGB officer the impression that he thought Rapp had lost his mind.

Even if that was true.

“I took out the Russian direct-action team.”

Rapp delivered his response in the deadpan tone one might use to tell a supervisor that you’d correctly filled out your time card. Stan couldn’t detect even the slightest hint of bravado. Just a clinical statement of the facts.

Perhaps he’d misunderstood Rapp’s update.

“By ‘take out,’?” Stan said, “you mean—”

“They’re dead.”

Nope. No misunderstanding.

Hurley stared at his assassin, coming to several realizations in rapid succession.

One, Rapp really was his assassin. Stan had trained Rapp, pushed him to his limits, tried his damnedest to drum him out of the Orion program, and then provided tacit approval and assistance for Rapp’s decision to kill Cooke, a French DGSE operative, and several others in a Paris hotel room.

For better or worse, Rapp was his.

Two, Rapp was more than just good. He was the best the program had ever produced.

Probably the best assassin any program like this had ever produced.

The kid had nearly bested Hurley in hand-to-hand combat on his first day of training at the Lake Anna facility.

But that hadn’t been Rapp’s peak performance.

Far from it.

Much like a newly drafted Michael Jordan, Rapp’s skills had continued to improve the longer he’d plied his craft.

Exponentially so. Killing terrorists wasn’t easy.

Killing terrorists protected by bodyguards was straight-up hard.

Single-handedly killing multiple Russian paramilitary operatives on unfamiliar terrain bordered on the mythical.

Three, Hurley had imagined that he was creating the human equivalent of a fire-and-forget missile. Someone who could hunt down and kill terrorists with no oversight and little to no logistical help. In that respect, Hurley had succeeded, but it turned out that he’d been using the wrong analogy.

Fire-and-forget missiles did not select their own targets.

Rapp did.

Hurley had a thousand questions.

He didn’t ask them.

The disconnect he felt with Rapp was profound.

No, that wasn’t quite true. The disconnect he felt between himself and the life he’d lived for the past thirty years was a chasm so wide as to be uncrossable.

Hurley had been wrong. Wrong about Rapp’s fitness to be an assassin, wrong about his protégée-turned-traitor Victor, wrong about Irene’s ability to lead the Orion program, and most critically, wrong about himself.

He’d instructed Rapp to lie low after the Cooke killing on the pretext that the young assassin needed to give him time to smooth things over with Stansfield and Irene, but the rationale he’d provided wasn’t the whole picture.

While it was true that the violent murder of a CIA director in waiting wouldn’t just blow over in a news cycle or two, Hurley needed time as well.

Time to take an honest look at his mistakes in order to plot a new path forward.

He was stubborn, but he wasn’t stupid. He had some crow to eat if he hoped to earn his way back into Stansfield’s good graces and he owed Irene an apology.

A massive apology.

That shit sandwich wasn’t going to taste better with time, so Stan figured he might as well take the first bite.

“You were the guy on the ground,” Hurley said, forcing the words past his thick tongue. “The Russians were your call.”

“Who are you and what have you done with the man I knew as Stan Hurley?”

Hurley had been bracing himself for a question like this from Rapp, but it was Volkov who’d landed the verbal jab.

The exact moment he’d decided that a little humble pie was in order, he found himself saddled with not one but two sons of bitches more than happy to make him grovel.

He wanted to cry out to the Almighty at the injustice of it all, but didn’t.

There was a reason why he was joined at the hip with these shitbirds.

Penance.

“I’ve grown older and wiser since we last met,” Hurley said, eyeing the Russian. “You’re just fatter.”

Hurley might be on the “making amends” step of a twelve-step program, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t sprinkle in a little truth with his newfound humility. Besides, watching the smile slide off the little fucker’s face almost made up for missing an opportunity to chew Rapp’s ass.

Almost.

“No need to be rude,” Volkov huffed. “I’m here voluntarily and at considerable risk.”

“Wrong,” Hurley growled. “You’re here because that was our deal.

Smuggling you out of East Berlin was one of my greatest tactical accomplishments.

Persuading the agency’s seventh floor to turn you loose with a bank account full of money and no minders was my biggest political achievement.

If you recall, there was a condition to our deal—if I ever came to you for assistance, you would help with no questions asked. Sound familiar?”

“Da.”

“Good. Then let’s stop with the bullshit. You’re here because I bought and paid for you twenty years ago.”

Volkov smiled, revealing a familiar gap between his front two teeth. While there was no telling where the Russian had spent the millions Stan had funneled to his offshore accounts, it had certainly not been on dental work.

“This is the Stan Hurley I remember,” Volkov said. “I will of course aid your efforts in any way I can. There is just the slight issue of compensation. I had a thriving business that took years to build in Bizerte. After the messiness of our exit, I’m afraid I won’t be welcome back anytime soon.”

“Messiness?” Stan said.

“Your friend didn’t just kill a Russian team. He slaughtered them in broad daylight and left their bodies for the locals to find on one of the port’s busiest streets. And he used me as his distraction. I’m afraid my time in Tunisia is at an end.”

Hurley wasn’t sure what annoyed him more—the mournful way in which Volkov voiced the last sentence or that when he looked to Rapp for confirmation, the assassin merely shrugged. If this conversation dragged on for too much longer, he was going to have to trade his coffee for something stronger.

Like heroin.

“Three million,” Hurley said, “and two more as a success fee.”

“Very generous, but there’s the matter of my legend. I’m afraid that my emergency clean passport is no longer so clean. If I could trouble you for a half a dozen more aliases, I—”

“Three,” Hurley said. “Two of your country of choice, but the third has to be German.”

“ Ja . That will work nicely.”

“Fan-freaking-tastic,” Hurley said, his words dripping with sarcasm. “Now, if there are no more contractual issues to discuss, how about we get down to—”

An electronic warble interrupted him. Rapp reached into his pocket and withdrew a cell phone. Hurley gave the kid his best scowl, but Rapp ignored him as he answered the call and held the phone to his ear.

“Allo?”

Rapp stared at the table for a beat as he listened. Then his black orbs found Stan.

“It’s Greta.”