“I’ll have to ask him,” Kennedy said finally. “But I think he’ll agree.”
“Then I’ll do the same with Tony.”
She reached for the bag next to her chair and stood. “Thank you.”
He pulled a file folder from a stack to his left, refusing to further acknowledge her.
CHAPTER 9
NEAR FRANSCHHOEK
SOUTH AFRICA
RAPP glanced at the heart rate monitor on his handlebars and saw a number that was a little concerning. One hundred and eighty-three. The big-screen TV in front of him depicted his avatar surrounded by other cyclists on a dead flat road. The video game allowed him to connect his bike trainer to real-time races that drew competitors from around the globe. This one had started fairly slow, but at the thirty-mile mark, a small group that included a few young pros had broken away. In a moment of temporary insanity, he’d decided to go with them.
His training program—a document that he generally treated as having been delivered on stone tablets—had him scheduled for a hundred miles at a moderate heart rate of one hundred and thirty-five. Going out on the open road where he could be easily taken out by a rifle shot or even a car, though, hadn’t seemed like a great idea. So, while this virtual race wasn’t ideal, it was a lot healthier than numbing his anger and frustration with whatever he could find at the back of the liquor cabinet.
The simulated road steepened, and the trainer increased its resistance in response. Rapp shifted and stood, sweat cascading to the floor despite the outbuilding’s bay doors being thrown open to the sixty-degree air outside.
One hundred and eighty-seven beats per minute.
On-screen, a kid who rode for a Belgian team came around him and went up the road. No one was crazy enough to try to follow. Rapp was still carrying too much weight in his shoulders and chest to even consider it. And then there were the years. Every one of them harder than he cared to remember. Instead, he stayed in the middle of the chase group as the pace took its toll and it began shedding riders.
One hundred and ninety-one beats per minute.
There had been a time when that number wouldn’t have been all that alarming. Now, though, he had to recognize that if the pace got much harder, a sixty-two-kilo kid riding in his basement in Antwerp might do what so many before him had tried: kill Mitch Rapp.
His lungs felt like they were full of battery acid and the pain in his legs had numbed in a way that suggested they were going to shut down pretty soon. Less than half a minute to the top of the climb. He just had to hang on for thirty more seconds.
One hundred and ninety-three beats per minute. His coach was going to read him the riot act when she saw this data file. Maybe he could get Marcus Dumond to hack into it and forge a nice six-hour endurance ride.
The Metallica blaring over his earbuds was suddenly replaced by an old-fashioned ringtone. Irene Kennedy’s number appeared on the phone attached to his bars, but neither that nor the fact that his peripheral vision was starting to go blank was enough to make him give up. Leaning forward and closing his eyes, he sprinted for the summit. Only when the group started down the other side did he pick up.
“Yeah,” he panted as riders flowed around him and disappeared up the road.
“Mitch? Are you all right?”
He rested his arms and forehead on his handlebars. “I will be.”
“Do you have time to talk?”
“Yeah. Go ahead.”
“I spoke with Darren Hargrave about you yesterday and he called back this morning to tell me that the Cooks have agreed to the terms I set out.”
Rapp stumbled off his bike and dropped to the cold stone floor. “What… What terms?”
“That you stay in plain sight and don’t return to the US while they’re in power.”
He used a towel to wipe the sweat from his face. “I can live with that. You never know. Maybe he’ll lose the next election.”
“That’s certainly my hope, but I don’t think it’s something you should count on. There’s a good chance that he’ll serve all eight years. And I think there’s also a reasonable chance that his wife will win the nomination after he’s done.”
“So, potentially sixteen years.”
“Yes. Assuming they don’t find a way to extend.”
“That seems far-fetched.”
“Underestimating them would be a mistake.”
The number sixteen seemed kind of abstract until he realized that Anna could realistically have children of her own before he set foot back in his country. And he’d be nearly eligible for Social Security.