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Kennedy nodded. She couldn’t really tell him that there were as many or more people in Washington who wanted to simply let Rapp loose.
“And this Coleman guy. I wasn’t born yesterday. That guy spells trouble.”
Kennedy said nothing.
“I’m going to do my best,” continued Ross, “to stay out of the day-to-day business of the Agency. I have a lot of faith in you, you’ve done a great job so far, but I worry that you have a blind spot where Rapp is concerned. I’ve already talked to the president about this and he shares my concerns.”
Kennedy listened to the words without showing an ounce of emotion. Inside, however, her stomach started to churn.
“We’ve decided,” said Ross, “to keep a close eye on the situation. If Rapp can’t start following orders and respect the chain of command, some changes might have to be made.”
“You talked to the president about this?” Kennedy wanted to be clear on this point. One of the classic power plays in Washington was to drop the president’s name to bolster your position.
“Yes, and he’s been worried for some time about it.”
Kennedy looked Ross in the eye and wondered if he had bothered to tell the president what had caused Mitch to become so insolent. She doubted that Ross had told him about his investigation of Scott Coleman and his company. Scott Coleman, a man who had been the commander of SEAL Team 6 and who had won both the Silver Star and the Navy Cross. A man who after leaving the navy had conducted dozens of black ops, a handful that the president himself had authorized.
Where Rapp was quick to anger, Kennedy was the opposite. She didn’t like any of this. She hated the fact that Ross was meddling in such delicate matters, and it really irked her that he had already begun politicking with the president. In spite of those emotions she remained calm.
She gave Ross a slight nod and said, “I’ll have another talk with him.” And with the president, she thought to herself.
“Good.” Ross pivoted so he was standing next to her. Gordon moved into position on her left. The two men had her bracketed. Talking out of the side of his mouth Ross said, “You’re probably wondering why I asked you to come to this reception.”
“The thought has crossed my mind.”
“The Saudis are the key.”
Kennedy looked across the room to the diplomatic receiving line. The foreign minister and his lengthy entourage had just entered the room. Kennedy had noticed that Ross liked to make statements like “The Saudis are the key” and then add nothing more. His aim was to get you to ask him why, so that he could then dispense his wisdom. Kennedy, a professional spy from the old school, was very good at keeping her mouth shut and listening.
“Don’t you care to know why they are the key?”
Kennedy spoke Arabic. She’d spent the majority of her youth moving around the Middle East, and understood the Saudi culture about as well as a foreign woman could hope. She had forgotten more about Saudi Arabia than Ross could ever hope to learn, but nonetheless, she was actually interested to hear where he would go with this.
“Why are they the key, and to what are they the key?”
“Very good qualification,” Ross replied. “They are the key to solving this whole mess.”
“Which mess?” asked Gordon in a slightly impatient tone.
“The whole mess…the Middle East, terrorism, the spread of radical Islam. They hold the key. If we can get them to trust us…to see that we mean them no harm, we will do more to secure this country from terrorist attacks than we could ever hope through use of force.”
Kennedy was suddenly hopeful, not that Ross would offer her a realistic solution, but that she was about to get an invaluable look at how the man’s mind operated. “And how do we go about doing this?”
Ross pointed. “The problem isn’t with people like the foreign minister, or the king. They like us. They get it. They know we don’t want to take over their country and their culture. The problem is with people like Prince Muhammad bin Rashid.”
Kennedy spotted the minister of Islamic affairs. He was in line right behind the foreign minister. He was the problem all right. The man had softened his rhetoric as of late, but Kennedy didn’t buy any of it.
“How well do you know him?” asked Ross.
Kennedy could write a lengthy briefing on the man. At the moment, though, she was more interested to hear what Ross thought of him. “I know a little. What’s your take on him?”
“The road to peace lies through their religious leaders, and he is the way to get to those leaders. He is the key,” Ross said emphatically. “I personally asked him to come on this trip. I told him I wanted to open an honest dialogue about how our two great nations can get to know each other better.”
Kennedy nodded. The fact that Ross would use the word great to describe the United States and Saudi Arabia in the same sentence would have been business as usual if he had been from the State Department, but this was the director of National Intelligence talking, a man who was supposed to use his words very carefully, a man who was supposed to collect intelligence. It was not his job to conduct affairs of state with any foreign citizen he chose, let alone someone who had a history of sponsoring terrorists. Kennedy understood the need to interact with adversaries and allies alike. She also very much wanted to get to know Prince Muhammad bin Rashid better, but not the way Ross did. She wanted to study him the way an FBI profiler studies a serial killer.
The man was an incurable bigot, and for Ross to not already know this was a bit unsettling. He was, after all, the president’s chief advisor on intelligence and the international terrorist threat. If their relationship had been better, she would have taken the time to explain to Ross why Muhammad bin Rashid could not be trusted, but at present it would be a waste of breath. Ross would not want to hear why his plan wouldn’t work. He would have to spend some time with the prince and figure it out for himself. In the meantime, Kennedy would have to make sure he didn’t reveal anything, or promise something that might screw up the delicate balance they fought to maintain with the Saudis.
“Irene,” said Ross as he looked at Prince Muhammad, “he is in certain ways the most powerful man in Saudi Arabia.”
