by Vince Flynn
Rapp raised an eyebrow. “Did you bother to tell those widows that their husbands died because none of you had the balls to order Osama bin Laden’s assassination? Did you tell them that your two parties have spent so much time trying to embarrass each other over the past two decades you’ve turned the CIA into another inefficient, money-sucking Washington bureaucracy?”
Hartsburg glared at the man from the CIA. “That’s a bunch of crap. You clowns out at Langley have squandered billions, and it sure as hell isn’t our fault.”
“You think they died,” Rapp ignored the senator’s attempt to shift, “because we didn’t have a director of National Intelligence?”
“The CIA…”—Hartsburg pointed an accusatory finger at Rapp—“and the rest of the damn alphabet soup is a disaster.”
“And whose fault is that? You two have each been in Washington thirty-plus years. Your job is oversight. You know that little part in the oath you took…to protect and defend? It’s your job to lead and make sure the damn alphabet soup works. Not to criticize them after the fact, especially when all you’ve done is distract them for the last decade and a half by forcing them to implement your politically correct social projects.”
“Your corner of the universe is tiny.” Hartsburg held his thumb and forefinger in front of Rapp like the pincers of a hermit crab. “You have no concept of the big picture.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Senator,” Rapp said with anger creeping into his voice. “There is no bigger picture than National Security. You guys want to legislate social change…go do it over at the Department of Education or Health and Human Services, but don’t fuck around with Langley.”
Hartsburg tapped his finger on the table. “Have you seen Langley’s budget lately? We’re talking billions of dollars, and I’d like to know what in the hell we’re getting in return.”
Rapp threw his arms up in frustration. “You guys amaze me. You bitch about the money that’s being spent, and then your solution to the problem is to add more bureaucracy…more layers…slow things down even more. Spend more money. Stovepipe the shit out of everything, so twenty different supervisors and department heads have to sign off on each bit of intelligence before the president even has a prayer of seeing it. You think that’s going to solve our problems?”
“I think the CIA is a monumental waste of federal tax dollars, and something has to be done to wake them up.”
A sudden calm came over Rapp’s face. He leaned back and said, “Senator, this might surprise you, but I couldn’t agree with you more.”
Rapp’s admission left both men silent. The two politicians shared a brief expression of confusion and then Walsh asked, “What’s your biggest beef with Langley?”
“Three thousand people are killed in one morning and no one loses their job…. Are you fucking kidding me?” Rapp looked at one senator and then the other. “Guilty or not, people should have lost their jobs. And I’m not just talking the CIA. I’m talking FBI, Pentagon, National Security Council, White House, Capitol Hill…across the board. The entire ‘cover your ass’ culture you guys and your politically correct cronies have created needs to be turned on its ear.”
“Well, now it’s my turn to agree with you,” Hartsburg said to Rapp, giving Walsh an accusatory look.
“We made a decision,” said Walsh defensively, “that we weren’t going to scapegoat anyone for what happened. Nine-eleven was a long time in the works and both parties share the blame.”
“I’m not talking about your precious political parties. I’m talking about the dead weight who got in the way of the people trying to do their jobs.”
“I know that, and I know you don’t have any stomach for politics, but that deal had to be made or the two parties would have destroyed each other in the aftermath.”
Rapp frowned. “And that would be a bad thing?”
“Contrary to what you think, Mr. Rapp,” said Hartsburg, “we care about this country. I can assure you that is the only reason I’m sitting in this room with you right now.”
“If you could right the ship,” said Walsh, sounding more eager than when the meeting had started, “how would you do it?”
Rapp studied the senior senator from Idaho with suspicion. “You’re asking me…a person who has absolutely no experience in management, and no desire to join the club?”
“Yes, but you’ve got more practical experience in the field than perhaps anyone else in Washington.”
Rapp considered the question carefully and said, “Well, it’s not very complicated. You’ve got a top-heavy bureaucracy over there. An inverted pyramid. Less than one percent of the people on the payroll do real field work. Hell, before 9/11 you had more people working in the Office of Diversity than you had on the bin Laden Desk.”
“So what’s the solution?”
Rapp shrugged. “You do what IBM or GE or any other well-run corporation does. You get rid of the deadweight. You tell every department head their budget is going to be cut by ten percent. You offer early retirement, you give people severance packages, and you wish them good luck. And then you start to rebuild the Clandestine Service from the ground up.”
“As much as it pains me to admit it…you and I,” Hartsburg said as he pointed at Rapp and then himself, “see more eye to eye than I would have ever liked to admit.”
“So what’s holding you guys up? You run the damn committee…. You hold the purse strings.”
“We’re working on it, but trying to change an entrenched Washington bureaucracy is not easy,” Walsh said. “In the meantime we’re more concerned with a short-term solution. A stopgap measure, if you will.”
“Like what?”
Walsh shared an uncomfortable look with Hartsburg, started to speak, stopped, and then made one more effort at it before he looked again to his more blunt colleague for help. Hartsburg retrieved a copy of the Washington Post and laid it down on the table. Beneath the fold on the front page was a story about the brutal murder of an Islamic cleric in Montreal. The senator stabbed his stubby finger at the article and asked, “Did we have anything to do with this?”
Rapp’s face didn’t change a bit. “Not that I know of.”
Hartsburg leaned in and with a look of fire in his eyes said, “That’s too bad.”
Rapp didn’t show it, but he couldn’t have been more shocked by the senator’s words.
7
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
K ennedy was standing by the conference table, her arms folded across her crisp white blouse, one leg in front of the other, her front foot tapping the floor like a Geiger counter. The closer he got the faster the foot tapped. He closed the heavy soundproof door. This was not good. Kennedy was by far the calmest person he knew. She was unflappable. Professional to the core. This was the way his wife greeted him when she was mad.
Rapp decided to start the conversation out cautiously. “I went and met with those two like you asked me.” He stopped well short of where she was dug in. He unbuttoned his suit coat and put his hands on his hips. The black handle of his shoulder-holstered FN pistol was visible.
“We’ll talk about that later.” She gestured to the conference table.
Rapp looked at it. Four newspapers were spread out on the shiny surface of the wood table. The New York Times, the London Times, the Montreal Gazette, and the Washington Post, which he had already seen. The murder of Khalil was on the front page of each newspaper.
“What in the hell happened?”
Rapp read the bold headlines. This was better than he had hoped.
“The Montreal Gazette says he was nearly decapitated.”
Rapp glanced at his boss. “That’s an exaggeration.”
“And how would you know?” Kennedy had ordered Rapp that others were to do the dirty work.
Rapp decided that to say nothing was his best move.
“Left in plain sight for all the world to see,” she continued.
“Well…that’s true.” Rapp nodded.
“I�
��m confused.” Her face twisted into an uncharacteristic frown. “I thought we had come to an agreement. This”—she opened her hand and gestured toward the newspapers—“is exactly what I wanted to avoid.”
“I know that, but let me explain myself.”
She crossed her arms and began tapping her foot with renewed vigor. “I’m waiting.”
Rapp let out a sigh and looked back at the papers. “The only one I’ve read is the Post. It didn’t say anything about us. Made some reference to him being an international terror suspect and serving time in France, but that was it.”
“That was today. Trust me, tomorrow morning, we’ll be mentioned. The phone over in public affairs is ringing off the hook. I’ve already fielded five calls relating to it. This thing is going to mushroom.”
“I don’t think so.”
“And why is that, Mr. Media Expert?”
“Because the press is playing catch-up right now. The Montreal police are keeping their mouths shut, but that won’t last long. In fact I’d be willing to bet the specifics on the scene of the crime are already being leaked. This story is going to end up nowhere near us.”
Her brow furrowed and she studied him for a moment. “What did you do?”
“Let’s just say we made it look like a crime of passion rather than a professional hit.”
“Details.” It was a command, not a request.
“What the press doesn’t know yet was that Khalil was found with a wad of cash stuffed in his mouth and the word munafiq scrawled in his own blood on the wall of the building he was propped up against.”
“Hypocrite,” Kennedy translated the word aloud. “I don’t get it.”
“Coleman found out some interesting stuff last week. Not all of Khalil’s worshipers were happy with him. There was a growing dissent in the community over his call to jihad and his recruiting of young men to go overseas and fight. And there was one other thing. Something Muslims, among other people, find deplorable.”
“What’s that?”
“He was a porn freak.”
“What?”
Rapp pulled the memory stick Coleman had given him out of his pocket. “Scott snuck into his apartment and copied his hard drive. The thing was filled with porn. A lot of bondage, S&M, and some underage stuff that could have got him in major trouble.”
“You’re not serious?”
“Of course I am.” Rapp held out the stick. “Plug it in. Take a look at it.”
Kennedy closed her eyes. “I’ll take your word for it.”
“He also had magazines. A lot of really sick stuff.”
“And you think the police and the press will automatically rule us out because of some porn fetish?” She shook her head. “I don’t know, Mitchell, it sounds pretty thin to me.”
Rapp glanced at the floor and then looked out the window. “There’s one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“His body was, uh…” Rapp let out a sigh, “hacked up a bit.”
Her hands moved to her hips and a deep frown covered her face. “Why?”
“I didn’t want it to look so professional.”
She shook her head.
“Irene, trust me. I know how cops think. This thing will be classified as a revenge crime. They’re gonna think that asshole defiled some guy’s daughter, which by the way he probably did. We stuffed the money in his mouth and left him there with multiple stab wounds. Details like that will eventually get leaked to the press, and no one in a million years is going to think we had anything to do with it.”
Kennedy turned and walked to the seating area at the far end of her office. A long couch and two armchairs were arranged around a rectangular glass-top coffee table. Rapp waited a bit and then followed.
She stood with her back to him looking out the window at the bright fall colors of the Potomac River Valley. After a long moment she shook her head and asked, “How was your meeting?”
Rapp, relieved that they were off the subject, said, “Unusual. Why didn’t you tell me what they wanted?”
“I wanted your honest reaction.”
“You wanted them to catch me off guard,” Rapp corrected.
“You could say that,” replied Kennedy. “You seem unusually calm. I half expected you to come marching in here and bite my head off.”
Rapp was looking out the window, staring off into space. The fact that he and Senator Hartsburg had agreed on a pivotal issue was enough for him to question his senses, but that was only the beginning. The proposal that the two men had floated his way was mind-boggling. It had been the last thing he’d expected.
“You don’t think they’re trying to set you up?” she asked.
“No.” Rapp kept staring out the window. “They might hate me, but I can’t imagine them going through all of this just to take me down.” He paused and then added, “Plus, they know I’d kill them before I’d ever let them string me up at some hearing.”
Kennedy wasn’t sure if he was kidding or not, which she supposed suited Rapp’s purposes perfectly. The urban lore regarding Rapp’s exploits had grown far beyond reality.
“I could maybe see Hartsburg being zealous enough to set me up, but not Walsh.”
“I agree.” She set her cup down on the coffee table. “I know what you’re going through. I went through the same thing last week when they came to me. You spend all of this time in an adversarial relationship with them and then when you end up on the same side of an issue, it causes you to stop and question your own judgment.”
Rapp looked at her. “That’s exactly it. Kind of a thanks, but no thanks…do me a favor and get off my team.”
“There’s a key to understanding their motivations. Have you figured it out yet?”
“No.”
Kennedy had seen it right away and was surprised Rapp hadn’t. “I’m guessing you had a nice quiet drive from Capitol Hill out to Langley. What have you been thinking about?”
“How to structure it…how to fund it…how to kill them if they double-cross me.”
She nodded slowly, deciding he really did mean that he’d kill them if they set him up. “I don’t think they’re going to double-cross any of us.”
“I wish I could share your confidence, but I just can’t bring myself to trust Hartsburg.”
“The bomb changed everything, Mitch.”
Rapp gave her a skeptical look. The bomb she was referring to was part of a plot by Islamic radical fundamentalists to incinerate Washington, DC. If it hadn’t been for Rapp and a handful of dedicated government employees, Senators Walsh and Hartsburg and the majority of their colleagues would have been killed by the detonation of a fifteen-kiloton nuclear weapon.
The tumblers fell into place for Rapp and he said, “Self-preservation.”
“It’s their strongest instinct.”
Rapp thought about that for a moment. Politicians were an amazingly resilient breed. He supposed on some Darwinian level she was absolutely correct. “Whatever works. I just want them one hundred percent on board.”
“So what do you think of their proposal?” Kennedy picked up her cup for another sip.
“It’s basically an expansion of the Orion Team. Which as we’ve discussed has been greatly underused.”
The Orion Team was a covert operations unit that had been founded by Kennedy’s predecessor, Thomas Stansfield, some twenty years ago. The idea was that the unit would operate in secret, independent of the CIA or the rest of the national security apparatus. The team allowed Stansfield to circumvent the leviathan of politics and get around small impediments like the executive order banning assassinations. It allowed him to do things that the more civilized crowd didn’t have the stomach for. Rapp had been the group’s star operative almost from the day he started at the age of twenty-two. He’d spent significant amounts of time in Europe, the Middle East, and Southwest Asia collecting intel and when the situation called for it, dealing with threats in a more final manner.
“Except this time we wo
uld have them on our side.” By them Kennedy meant Hartsburg and Walsh.
“I might be missing something here, but explain to me why that’s a good thing.”
“I was part of the Orion Team,” Kennedy began, “for eighteen years. Six of which I spent running it.” She gave him a forced smile. “In addition to spending most of my time trying to keep you out of trouble, the next most difficult task was trying to scrape together the money to sufficiently fund the operations. With Hartsburg and Walsh on board the funding will no longer be an issue, and more importantly, we won’t have to worry about them launching any investigations. Your job will be much easier.”
Rap nodded. “I see your point. I just want to make sure they are beholden to us, and not the other way around.”
“Absolutely.” Kennedy brushed a strand of hair back behind her ear. “Any ideas?”
“Yeah, one.” Rapp held up his BlackBerry. “Mutually assured destruction.”
“MAD.”
“Exactly.” Rapp pressed a few buttons and began replaying the conversation that had taken place in the Congressional Library. After a few seconds he stopped the recording and smiled. “I hope you’re not disappointed?”
“I would have been disappointed in you if you hadn’t.”
Rapp snapped the BlackBerry back onto his belt clip. “And I don’t want any armchair quarterbacking.”
“I already explained that to them.”
“And how did they take it?”
“Listen, Mitch, you have a certain reputation in this town that has grown beyond even your own remarkable achievements. The secrecy regarding your past, the untimely death of two politicians who were involved in blowing your cover…it has all added up to an almost mythical reputation. When people mention your name they do so in whispers, and then only after they’ve looked over both shoulders. You get credit for things I know for a fact you had nothing to do with.”
“How can you be so sure?” Rapp gave her a devious look.
“Because I know you weren’t even on the same continent let alone in the same city when some of this stuff happened. But nonetheless people like a good conspiracy and you play into that perfectly.” Kennedy rolled her eyes. “Rugged good looks, a beautiful wife who works for NBC, and none other than the president of the United States as your biggest champion. Add to that the aforementioned deceased politicians and what they leaked to the press, the press referring to you as an assassin…our first line of defense…and there isn’t a person on Capitol Hill who doesn’t get a little nervous around you.”