Another CIA thriller, as we follow the exploits of CIA's quiet assassin, Matt Rapp. This is my third Matt Rapp novel and he's just as independent, precise, and passionless when it comes to liquidating bad guys, as ever. No guilt, no second guessing when Matt makes up his mind. This time Matt is in Paris, prepared to take out a Libyan terrorist. He's been 'out' for almost a year, doing business. No one knows who is cleansing the world of these bad guys except for Matt, his handler, Kennedy, and her higher ups, Hurley and Stanley. He enters the Libyan's room through the balcony, puts three bullets in his head when the hotel door flies open and four guys start blazing away with machine guns. Matt, of course, is able to hunker down and when he senses they are reloading, he stands up and shoots all four. As he flees towards the balcony, he realizes there's one more guy, but he's already jumping down from the balcony. As he runs across the grounds, the guy wounds Matt but not enough to take him down.
It's clear, to Matt, that this was a set up; someone used the Libyan as bait, knew he was next on Matt's hit list and waited for him to show up. Needless, to say, four dead guys, a Libyan and his whore creates quite a stir in Paris. The French get involved, a female chief of police and the head of France's counterpart to the CIA.
Matt's superiors have no idea what happened and are afraid he's gone off the wall. They send a team over to find him, perhaps liquidate him if they deem it necessary because he won't come in to headquarters. After recovering from his wounds, Matt finally calls Kennedy, explains to her what happened but she's the only one who believes him. Finally, all three of the Chiefs decide to go to Paris to untangle the mess, find out if Matt is being honest. In the mean time, Matt is determined to find out who set him up, finds an innocent guy to check out his apartment, which ends in another blood bath, as a rogue CIA guy is waiting. He ends up shooting the innocent, thinking it's Matt, flees and in so doing, kills two Parisian police and two of his CIA buddies.
To make a long story short, CIA assistant director Cooke, has been setting up Matt's boss, Stansfield, so he could have his job. He leaked the info about Matt's next assignment, hoping that when Matt was killed, Stansfield would take the blame and resign, allowing Cooke to take his place. Matt, however, discovers a clandestine meeting between Cooke, the French CIA head, and the Arabs who had attempted to assassinate him. He breaks into their hotel room, where they are planning their next step, and shoots all three of them. Thus, Stansfield keeps his job, Kennedy hers, and Matt and Hurley, former enemies, make up. All's well that ends well, sort of, because Matt's girl friend, Greta, the daughter of a well know industrialist, is escorted away from Matt by Stansfied because the industrialist would never countenance his daughter living with a terrorist. Matt understand this, takes it like the man and moves on, to Flynn's next book.
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