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“How bad?”
“Bad. The FBI is going to meet us when we land and take our guy into custody.”
“Didn’t we pretty much always know that was a possibility?” Brooks asked.
Coleman looked at her and quickly shook his head from side to side.
Rapp dropped one arm and looked at Brooks with a withering stare. “Yes, it was a possibility,” he said with an edge, “but considering how things went down in Cyprus, I would have advised against handing him over to the FBI, or at a bare minimum I would have made sure we had a week with him to make sure we interrogated him properly.”
Brooks nodded sheepishly and then looked at the ground.
“They’re going to meet us at the airport?” a surprised Coleman asked.
“Yes.”
“How in the hell did the FBI find out so fast?”
“Hayes told Alexander that we caught the guy who killed his wife. Alexander wants him put on trial. He wants the whole world to see that we caught the guy.”
“But we don’t have any hard evidence against this guy.”
“I know. They jumped the gun.”
“So they’re going to meet us at the airport?” Coleman asked again. “When we land.” He looked at his watch. “In less than two hours.”
“That’s right.”
“What about media?”
“Who the fuck knows?”
“This isn’t going to work,” Coleman said with real concern.
“Why?” Brooks asked. “What do we have to be ashamed of? We did their job for them.”
“You’re not thinking of the big picture.
News like this is huge. I’d bet my left nut that the phone lines in Washington are burning up right now. Everybody is going to try and get in on the act and either take part of the credit or act like they were in the know.”
“I still don’t see the problem. This is a huge success for us. For the Agency.”
Coleman laughed. “I don’t work for the Agency, and I sure as hell don’t need any publicity.”
“Well the Agency does.”
“That’s debatable,” Rapp said.
“Come on, Mitch. We’re the redheaded stepchild. I’ve heard you say it a dozen times over the past month. We need some good press.”
“You’re assuming the press is going to treat us well.”
“Well, why wouldn’t they?”
“Every news story has its cycle. And when it’s about the Agency, no matter how good it looks at the beginning, it eventually gets ugly.”
“Come again?” Brooks said in a skeptical tone.
“It all comes down to our methods. They’re vegetarians. We’re meat eaters. We’ll never see eye to eye. This plane, our tactics, the way we deploy, the way we put a black bag over someone’s head in the middle of the night, sneak them out of a country without anyone knowing…it will all come under scrutiny.”
