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Rielly reached over and touched his hand. "I think you should do it. At least give it a try." "Really?" Rapp said, a little surprised.
"Yeah. And don't forget, you've got the director in your corner if anything goes wrong."
Rapp studied her. "Hmm."
"What?"
"I just didn't expect you to tell me to take the job."
"We all have to do something, honey. You were very good at what you did for the last ten years." Rielly reached out and touched his cheek."I got to see it firsthand." Softly she added, "You saved my life. "A warm smile washed over her face and she leaned over and kissed him. "And now that I've fallen in love with you, you are going to have to retire from the front lines and take a desk job." She pinched his cheek. "The transition might be a little difficult at first, but you know too much about the Middle East to just walk away."
"It doesn't bother you at all that you'll have to tell your family and friends that I work for the CIA?"
"Are you kidding me?" Rielly grinned. "My girlfriends all drool over you as it is; when they find out you're a spy they're gonna lose it." She laughed. "No, I'm serious. Won't it affect how you're treated at work? You know sleeping with the enemy."
"No." She shook her head and then after thinking of a couple of potential problems added, "And if it does, I'll deal with it." Thinking about what she had just said, Rapp slowly nodded his understanding. "Well, that makes me feel better about it."
"Good. What else did you talk about?"
Rapp thought about Kennedy asking him to take over the Orion Team, but that was strictly off limits. He had never uttered the words to her, nor would he. "Not much else. Just salary and some administrative stuff."
Rielly gave him a skeptical look. "Come on. What else?"
"Nothing that I can talk about."
"Mitchell?"
"Anna," Rapp replied in a mocking tone. "You're going to have to get used to this. If I take this job, almost everything that I touch will be classified. I won't be able to come home and chat about it."
Rielly rolled her eyes. "Your whole life is classified."
"Honey, we might as well come to terms with this right now. If you won't respect the fact that I can't talk about ninety percent of what I do or see at work then I might as well tell Irene right now that I don't want the job." Rapp stared at her intensely to make sure she knew he was extremely serious about the issue.
"I'll respect it, I'll respect it. Don't worry."
"Good." Rapp leaned over and gave her a long kiss. Her lips felt so good. He was head over heels in love. He knew it was affecting his judgment, but there was nothing he could do about it. There was no turning back, no slamming on the brakes; he didn't even have the willpower to tap them. After a while he worked his way to her ear and asked, "Can we go upstairs and have sex now?"
Rielly purred her response, and they rose together and went into the house, leaving behind the warmth of the fire.
CHAPTER SEVEN.
Oval Office, Tuesday morning
"What in the hell is this meeting about?"
President Hayes tilted his head down so he could look over the top of his specs at the three people standing in front of his desk. He was still drinking his morning coffee and reading the days schedule when the three of them had come waltzing in with apprehension on their faces. They then proceeded to dump something in his lap that was unusual, to say the least.
Valerie Jones, the President's chief of staff, spoke first. "I just heard about it for the first time five minutes ago." Jones turned to look past Michael Haik, the President's national security advisor, to Irene Kennedy.
Kennedy spoke."I received the call early this morning. He was very serious, but then again, he usually is"
Hayes leaned over on the left armrest and stroked his chin. This whole thing was strange, a first for him in his relatively short career as President. Nothing good could come of it, he was sure of that. Looking up at Kennedy, he asked, "Have they ever done something like this before?"
Kennedy thought about her dealings with the Israelis over the last two decades. "They request backdoor meetings with us from time to time. Usually for the obvious reasons: they don't want the press or any opposition to find out," Kennedy shook her head slightly, "but I don't seem to ever remember them going straight to the top."
"This can't be good. The director of Mossad flies to the United States and pretty much demands to see me. I don't see anything positive that can come out of this." Hayes looked up at his NSA. "Michael, what's going on over there? Any flare-ups in the peace process that I haven't been told about?"
"No, its the same old thing. Arafat demands XY and Z and then walks away from the table. The bombs start to go off and then a month later they sit back down at the peace table and start over again." "It's not that," Kennedy said in a thoughtful tone. "If it had something to do with the peace process they wouldn't fly Ben Freidman all the way in from Tel Aviv. Their ambassador would take care of it, or the prime minister would call" She paused and thought about another possibility. "No," she said making up her mind. "Ben Freidman means real trouble. Something is going on over there that we don't know about. Something serious."
