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“You better be careful.” Claudia raised her voice. “You’re beginning to sound like some of my old university friends who you despise so much.”
The mere mention of her socialist deadbeat friends sent Gould’s temper flaring. The last thing they needed was a shouting match that ended with the hotel calling the police, so he checked his temper and in as calm a voice as he could muster said, “Everybody is killing each other. Each side tries to take the righteous high ground, and all we’ve done is sit in the middle and profit.”
“It’s a hell of a way to make a profit.” She looked out the window and shook her head.
It was obvious she was disgusted, but Gould couldn’t tell if it was with him or herself. “Claudia, I’m sorry.” Part of him wanted to scream at her to go turn herself in if it bothered her so fucking much, but that wouldn’t solve a thing. He lowered his head, and even though he didn’t mean it, he said, “I’m sorry, I let you down.”
With that he put on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt and picked up the car keys sitting on the desk.
“Where are you going?” Claudia asked.
“I’m not sure.” He grabbed a Chicago Cubs baseball cap he’d purchased at a truck stop yesterday evening and slid into his tennis shoes.
“I thought you wanted to get on the road.”
He detected a bit of nervousness in her voice, which was what he wanted to hear. “I get the feeling you’d rather not be around me right now.” Gould grabbed the door handle and said, “I’ll be back in time to check out. If you decide you’d like us to go our separate ways I’ll understand.” Before she could say anything Gould opened the door and was gone. Pregnancy or not, he felt he had to do something to snap her out of her current emotional state. Yelling at her would only make things worse. Passive-aggressive was the better path to take. A subtle threat to leave would force her to look at more than just the last twenty-four hours. She knew he loved her, but she also knew he had the lone wolf gene in him. A little solitude and the thought of raising their child all on her own would get her thinking rationally again.
42
WASHINGTON, DC
I rene Kennedy was emotionally drained. She’d gone straight from the hospital to CIA headquarters with the knowledge that she needed to put things in motion before meeting with the president and several of his cabinet members in the morning. From the moment the doctor told her Anna was dead, she knew where they were headed. There would be no stopping him. Under normal circumstances he was difficult enough to manage, but now in the wake of his own personal hell, it was foolish to think that anyone could control him. There would be those in Washington, however, who would think otherwise—powerful people who were used to having their orders followed to the letter.
Where the president would fall in this regard, Kennedy was unsure, but she had little doubt where her new boss would come down on the issue. Support from the other members of the National Security Council was sure to be sparse. Some of them would be deeply concerned that the rule of law be followed, and others would be terrified over the thought of a vengeful American on the loose undermining their diplomatic efforts. One or two of the members might support Rapp, but they would never do so publicly. For all of its bellicose underpinnings, Washington was a town that prided itself on civility. These people would blanch at the idea of a government employee on the loose seeking vengeance for the murder of his wife.
If they wanted to avoid the inevitable they had just two options. The first would be to incarcerate him, but Kennedy had already taken the precaution of having Rapp transferred from Johns Hopkins to a CIA safe house in rural V
irginia. Even if they somehow managed to jail him it would only be a temporary solution. They could not hold him forever. The other, more permanent, solution would be to have him killed. The problem here was that the only people with the temerity to do so, the quiet warriors like Coleman, were already lining up to support him. Kennedy knew that in a month or a year many of these civilian leaders would have wished that they had thought of killing him, but none of them had the stomach to issue such an order. For now, though, they would delude themselves into believing they could actually order him to stand down.
During the night Kennedy had talked to the head of the Jordanian Intelligence Service three separate times. They now had a name to go with the bounty that had been placed on Rapp’s head: Saeed Ahmed Abdullah, a Saudi billionaire. Kennedy had not made the connection at first, but one of her counterterrorism analysts did shortly after the information was dispersed. Saeed Ahmed Abdullah was the father of Waheed Ahmed Abdullah, a terrorist who had been involved in a plot to detonate nuclear bombs in both New York and Washington. U.S. Special Forces had apprehended the man in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan, just days before the attack was to take place. With the clock ticking, Rapp was left with little alternative other than to torture Waheed into revealing the details of the plot. The information Rapp got from the terrorist helped intercept one of the bombs before it could be brought into the country.
How the father had learned of Rapp’s role in his son’s downfall was unclear, but Kennedy had her suspicions. For now, she’d ordered the Counterterrorism Center to collect every scrap of information on Saeed Ahmed Abdullah, and keep it within the family. She’d already made the risky decision that the CIA would not be passing everything they learned onto their sister agencies—agencies that were hamstrung by the rule of law. They would give the appearance of full cooperation, and reams of information would be handed over to the FBI, but almost all of it would be useless. The valuable intel would be used to stay out in front of the actual investigation.
Kennedy arrived fifteen minutes early for the meeting, as was her habit when meeting with the president. She was escorted to the Oval Office by one of the White House staffers where she waited by herself until 9:05, when she was joined by the president’s national security advisor, Michael Haik. The two possessed similar temperaments and had a very good working relationship. Haik unbuttoned his suit coat and sat next to Kennedy on the couch.
“How are you holding up?”
“Fine.”
“I know you are, but how are you holding up?” It was a question from one friend to another.
“I’ve been better,” Kennedy answered honestly.
“How’s Mitch?”
“He’s pretty beat up, but the worst of it is behind him…at least physically.”
Haik was the steady type of thinker every president needed—pragmatic, disciplined, and cautious. There wasn’t much that ruffled his feathers. “How did he take the news of his wife?”
Kennedy kept it together. She’d already cried and she would cry more, but not here, not in the Oval Office. “He had to be sedated.”
Haik nodded as if he’d anticipated the answer and then he leaned back and draped an arm over the back of the couch. It was clear that he wanted to say something, but that he was trying to figure out where to start. “Irene, we’ve always been straight with each other, so let me tell you what’s going on here this morning. Right now the president is in his private dining room finishing up a meeting with the vice president, Secretary of State Berg, Attorney General Stokes, and Director Ross.”
Even though she was surprised Kennedy nodded as if she’d already known this.
“To put it bluntly, they are deeply concerned over what Mitch might do when he recovers.”
“So am I.”
