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“And?”
“The Pentagon sent over the sanitized version, and Ross didn’t buy it. He or one of his deputies called back and tried to browbeat some captain into handing over the full file, especially anything involving any work he may have done for the CIA. The captain directed them to the Joint Special Operations Command, who in turn kicked it all the way up to General Flood.”
“Did Flood give them what they wanted?”
“Are you kidding me? The only people who are more pissed than us about National Intelligence is the Pentagon. Flood told them, in a not so polite way, that unless he got a phone call from the president telling him to release the file they could go to you know where.”
Kennedy in fact did. General Flood was in his final months as chairman of the Joint Chiefs and he seemed to be taking great pleasure in telling certain people exactly how he felt about them. “Did they go to the president?”
“Not that I know of, and I doubt they’ll bother.”
“Why would Ross be so interested in Coleman?” Kennedy set her reading glasses down on her desk. “Has he been up to anything that I don’t know about?”
“No. He’s clean.”
“The timing of this is not good.”
“I agree, and there’s one more problem. The IRS showed up on Coleman’s doorstep yesterday. They want to see all of his books.”
Kennedy brought her hands together and formed a pyramid under her chin. The frown lines on her forehead deepened. “What in the hell is he up to?”
“He’s either picked up some intel that we’re reconstituting the Orion Team or he’s on a fishing expedition.”
Kennedy’s mind ran through a half dozen possibilities. She wondered if Ross would be so bold as to have her office bugged. As paranoid as it sounded, it wouldn’t be the first time that an intelligence overlord had decided to spy on the home team. Ross had been on the job less than a month. She doubted he could move that fast, but she still made a note to have Delgado’s group sweep the office.
“My gut,” she said, “tells me a fishing expedition.”
“What if we’re being set up?”
“By whom?”
“Senator Hartsburg.”
Kennedy shook her head. “No. If Hartsburg wanted to fry us he wouldn’t go through Ross. I think it’s a fishing expedition.”
“Why?”
She thought about it for a while and said, “Mark Ross is a good man. He’s not out to destroy us, or Coleman for that fact.”
“You’ll excuse me if I don’t share your confidence.”
“I think he has a natural distrust for the operations side of the business. He comes from the intel side, and guys like you and Coleman make him nervous.”
Rapp frowned. “Why?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say he thinks you’re going to embarrass him. He’s the new guy in charge, and a lot of people are hoping he falls flat on his face.”
“Again, what in the hell does that have to do with me?”
Kennedy sighed. Rapp was very good at his job, but he was a complete neophyte when it came to the politics of Washington. “Thank God much of what you’ve done is classified. You’ve had an amazing track record, but one of these times, I fear, you’re going to have an operation head south and you’re going to land all of us in the middle of a monumental scandal.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
She shook her head. “You know you have my confidence.”
Rapp nodded. “Well, if you want to win, you have to play the game. We can’t just sit on the sidelines and hope they start liking us.”
“I agree.” She reached out and grabbed a pink message slip from her desk. “I’ll figure out a strategy for Ross, in the meantime we’d better put your project on hold.”
