“Mitch, please. Stop.”
There was something in her tone that made him fall silent. This wasn’t a conversation either one of them wanted to have, but it seemed like more than that. There was something he wasn’t seeing.
“What?”
She turned the laptop toward him. The screen depicted a high-resolution image of the dead man in her entryway. She zoomed in to highlight a tattoo that covered the left side of his neck, rising all the way to his jawline. It consisted of three letters intertwined with skulls and roses.
“Those aren’t your enemies, Mitch. They’re mine.”
CHAPTER 14
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON, DC
USA
“SUBTLE,” Catherine Cook said as soon as Darren Hargrave closed the Oval Office door. “The Cape Town media is already calling it the Franschhoek Bloodbath and saying that the owners of the house are missing. Can I assume that Rapp killed all your people and escaped?”
“They weren’t my people,” Hargrave said, sounding less defensive than she would have guessed. He was becoming increasingly confident in his position. Maybe too confident, but it would be a mistake to count on that.
“This was a hit team sent by Gustavo Marroqui,” Hargrave continued. “A Guatemalan gang leader who Louis and Claudia Gould have a very ugly history with. A similar team showed up at a house they were living in in Bosnia a few years ago but they were tipped off and managed to escape. It’s completely credible that Marroqui could have discovered that she’s alive and it’s absolutely certain that if he did, he’d move against her. Like Mitch Rapp, Gustavo Marroqui isn’t a man to let things go.”
Catherine took a chair in the Oval Office’s seating area while her husband seemed content to spectate from behind his desk.
“So, this is your definition of a success?” she asked.
“One hundred percent,” Hargrave replied. “We always knew that the chances of a bunch of Guatemalan gang members succeeding against Mitch Rapp were low, but it doesn’t matter. We accomplished exactly what we set out to do. It won’t take Rapp long to figure out these were people from Claudia’s past and not his. When he does, he’s going to have no choice but to go after Marroqui—a man who even the CIA can’t locate and who virtually owns the Guatemalan government. That leaves Rapp—and likely his people—consumed with something that has nothing to do with the president.”
“You don’t think that the timing of this is going to seem a little suspicious to Rapp and Kennedy?”
“I’m sure Irene will acknowledge the possibility that we discovered Claudia Gould’s identity and leaked it to Marroqui. But is she going to let Rapp go to war with America over that possibility? With no evidence at all? I seriously doubt it.”
“What about the police investigation? The South Africans—”
“Cathy…” her husband said in a tone that suggested her battle was lost. She fell silent, but Hargrave smelled blood and decided to push.
“The South Africans have probably already figured out where the dead men came from. It’s literally tattooed onto their skin. But, again, that has no downside to us. In fact, it might lead them to think that Rapp’s involved in the Latin American drug trade. If that’s the case, it could motivate them to start looking deeper into his identity or even deport him. Both of those things would just increase the turmoil in his life and make him even less likely to move against us.”
His explanation ended with an arrogant smile that her husband wouldn’t be able to see from his position.
It had been a significant skirmish in the escalating war between them and there was no question that he’d won. While she suspected that his machinations involving Rapp were dangerous and unnecessary, there was no denying that his little plot had worked. In the unlikely event that Rapp didn’t intend to honor his truce, any vendetta he was planning would now have to wait. Gustavo Marroqui wouldn’t stop until Claudia Gould was dead.
“Where is he?” Catherine said, wanting to wipe the smug grin off Hargrave’s face. “One of the benefits of having Rapp in Franschhoek was that we could keep him under surveillance.”
“We believe he’s at Nicholas Ward’s compound in Uganda along with Kennedy and Scott Coleman.”
“You believe?”
“Our people tracked him to a private airstrip where he, Claudia, and her daughter got on a private jet. They landed at the Entebbe airport and then drove into Kampala, where we lost them. Based on satellite images, though, a helicopter landed at Ward’s compound not long after. I think it’s reasonable to believe he was on it.”