FOUR.
A small table lamp
was the only illumination in the large corner office of the
building. It was past ten in the evening and all but a few of the
thousands of bureaucrats who toiled there had gone home. The
black-clad security staff patrolled the hallways and the woods
outside, as they did twenty-four hours a day every day of the year.
There were no holidays in the business of protecting secrets.
For the woman charged
with protecting those secrets, and stealing those of her
adversaries, it was a never-ending circle of suspicion. On this
particular night an unshakable sense of foreboding enveloped her as
she looked out over the dark landscape that surrounded the massive
office complex. Nightfall had crept across the countryside,
bringing to a close another day and with it more worries. She sat
in her office on the top floor of one of the world's most notorious
organizations, and pondered a multitude of potential threats.
They were not
imaginary, exaggerated or petty. Dr. Irene Kennedy knew better than
anyone the lethal nature of her foe. She had seen it with her own
eyes. She had watched the tide of fanaticism swell over the last
thirty years, watched it roll toward America 's shores like an
increasingly ominous storm. She had been Churchillian in her
warnings about the growing threat, but her dire predictions had
fallen on deaf ears.
The people she
answered to were infinitely more concerned with the issues that
dominate the political discourse of a peacetime democracy.
No one wanted to deal
with, or even hear about, an apocalyptic threat. They were more
concerned with triangulating issues and with weakening their
opponents through real or imagined scandals. She was even called an
alarmist by some, but through it all she stayed the course.
It was an irony that
didn't sit well with her, that many of the same Senators and
Congressmen who labeled her an alarmist were the same ones who were
now calling for her resignation. Some had even suggested that the
CIA should be put out to pasture like some old plow horse that had
served its purpose, but was no longer capable of doing its
job.
The storm that she
had predicted, however, was upon them, and the professional
politicians who had ignored her warnings, and frustrated her
actions at every turn, were not about to take an ounce of the
blame. This unique breed of human was utterly incapable of
accepting responsibility for any past mistakes, unless they wrapped
it first in a well-timed act of contrition that would gain them
sympathy.
Fortunately for
Kennedy there were a few honorable Senators and Congressmen on the
Hill who shared her commitment and concern.
These were men and
women who had been with her every step of the way as she attempted
to change policies and operational procedures in order to prepare
for the coming threat. They and the President had come to her
defense and stymied a plan to have her removed as the director of
the CIA.
Now it was time to
play catch-up. In the glow of the desk lamp Dr. Irene Kennedy
looked down at the transcripts before her and was sickened by what
she read. It wasn't in her personality to get angry; she had
divorced intellect from emotion a long time ago. She was simply
pained. Men had died. Good men with families and children and
mothers and fathers, and they had died because people who should
know better couldn't grasp the importance of operational
security.
Even worse, they
couldn't even keep a simple secret for just twenty-four
hours.
Even after September
11 they lacked the commitment to protect their country. People
simply didn't understand how serious the task before them was.
Intelligent, educated people put the politics of their various
agencies before operational security and because of it two men were
dead, an entire operation involving hundreds of soldiers, marines,
aviators, airmen and sailors was called off and a family of
innocent Americans were still trapped in a hell that no adult, let
alone child, should have to suffer through.
The entire episode
was a monumental security failure and Kennedy had decided enough
was enough. She would not lose her cool and begin screaming for
people's scalps. That was not the way she'd been taught to perform
her duties. She had been trained by one of the best.
Thomas Stansfield,
the now deceased director of the CIA, was fond of saying that a
master spy should be a closed book unless it wished to be opened. A
day did not pass that his advice went unheeded.
Before her were two
red folders. The one on her left consisted of e-mail intercepts
between a high-ranking State Department official and an overseas
Ambassador. It also contained some transcripts of phone
conversations and other intelligence data. The folder on the right
was much thicker. It contained bank records from the last several
years for a variety of accounts spread around the Pacific, an
in-depth biography of the person in question, and satellite images
and intercepts.
Both folders held
clear and convincing evidence that certain individuals, at home and
abroad, were guilty of compromising the hostage rescue in the
Philippines.
In years past, this
was the type of information the CIA would have quietly disseminated
to a few select individuals around Washington.
Since no
administration liked scandal, that's where it would have ended. A
few wrists would have been slapped. Some people might have been
reassigned to less desirable posts or asked to retire early or find
a job in the private sector, but rarely was anyone really made an
example of.
This time it would be
different. Kennedy was adamant about what needed to be done. The
file on her left was going to be handled very publicly. When the
press found out, the two bureaucrats involved were going to get a
non-lethal dose of what those SEALs faced when they hit the beach
over in the Philippines. They would be met with a landslide of
lights and cameras, and where the cameras were in Washington, you
could always count on politicians to show up.
As Kennedy looked out
the window she knew which Senators and Congressmen would take to
the airwaves. There were a handful from each party that couldn't
resist. Their vanity made it impossible for them to ever pass up an
opportunity to show their faces to millions of potential voters.
There were a few others who knew TV time meant increased campaign
contributions, and increased contributions meant reelection. Within
those two groups there were those who would try to blame the
President, there were those who would try to blame the previous
President, and there were those who would try to blame the State
Department for being a bastion of lefties who cared more about the
UN than the national security of America. There were also those who
would demand justice, when justice was the furthest thing from what
they wanted. And finally there were those who would demand justice
and really mean it.
All of this would be
a side show to the main event, though. What Kennedy really wanted
to do was remind everyone in Washington with a security clearance
that this was serious business. It was not up to any given
individual to decide what secrets they could and couldn't
discuss.
These were not just
bureaucratic rules, they were laws. And to break those laws would
mean public embarrassment, prosecution, and if a judge and jury saw
fit, jail time.
The other file was
going to be handled more subtly, and in a much more final way.
Kennedy knew just the man to take care of both problems.
She had been tempted
to recall him from his honeymoon, but decided it could wait another
twenty-four hours. Things were about to change in Washington, and
Mitch Rapp was going to play a crucial role.
Kennedy knew Rapp
better than anyone. She had recruited him, she oversaw his training
and she had been his handler through the most stressful of times
and delicate of situations. Over the years she had grown to love
him like a brother. His sense of commitment and honor was of the
highest order. When he got back from his honeymoon and found out
what had happened he would need no direction, no prodding, no
explanation of the bigger picture. The only thing he might need was
restraint, and Kennedy had yet to decide if she would even attempt
to calm him when he heard the news. There would be those at the
White House who would want to keep this entire mess out of the
papers. They would want to sweep it under the rug and have the
offenders in question transferred to different jobs. That could not
be allowed to happen this time, and Kennedy knew Rapp was the one
man in Washington who would tell the President in the roughest and
most graphic terms that heads needed to roll.