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Wednesday morning arrived with a bit of a hangover for Mark Ross. He had actually tried to leave the hotel at one point, but the festive atmosphere continued to build until well after midnight. After the meeting with Tom Rich from the Times, Ross had gone up to see Alexander, who was in a black mood. There’d been times over the past month when Ross had wanted to grab Alexander by the shoulders, shake him violently, and tell him the harsh truth about his deceased wife. The woman was a slut. She deserved to be the First Lady of the United States about as much as a street hooker from New Orleans did. What Ross wanted to do and what was prudent, though, were miles apart. Besides, Alexander had proved very malleable in his grief. He’d basically let Ross run the transition team, which enabled him to stack the administration with people who were loyal to him. There were a lot of people from Georgia, to be sure, but Ross made sure they got jobs at Transportation, HUD, Education, Veterans’ Affairs, and the like. Defense, State, and Justice, the crown jewels of any administration, were loaded with his people.
After meeting with Alexander in the Abraham Lincoln Suite, Ross headed down to the Round Robin Bar for a much-needed drink. That was shortly before six. Four hours later he found himself more than a little cockeyed, drinking a glass of cognac and smoking a big fat Dominican cigar with two big Hollywood producers. Party big-hitters from across the country kept showing up, and with Alexander sulking in his suite, it fell on Ross’s shoulders to thank them for their hard work and support. At midnight he finally tore himself away from the party. One of his aides convinced him to stay at the hotel and offered to fetch him a change of clothes before morning. Less than stable on his feet, Ross took the young man up on his offer.
He awoke a few minutes before 7:00 a.m. and ordered room service before jumping into the shower. The food arrived while he was shaving and he asked the young man to set it up in front of the TV. He finished shaving and then sat down in his hotel robe and dug into his eggs, toast, and bacon. He used the bacon and toast to poke at the rich yellow yolks. He chased it with some grapefruit juice and then started in with the coffee. Within minutes he was feeling better. Then there was a knock on the door.
Ross cocked his head in the direction of the sound and considered ignoring it. It was rare these days that he got to spend time alone. There was more knocking. This time it was much louder. The door shook. Ross threw his napkin on the table and walked across the suite. He yanked open the door to find Stu Garret standing there with a huge grin on his face.
Garret pushed his way past Ross and said, “I heard you tied one on last night.”
Ross closed the door and followed him, saying, “I was merely trying to be a good host.”
Garret went straight for the room service cart and snatched a piece of bacon from Ross’s plate.
“Don’t touch my food, Stu.” Ross was dead serious.
“Relax,” said Garret as he grabbed a newspaper from under his arm and presented it to Ross. “Isn’t this beautiful?”
In large black type across the top of the paper was the headline, “CIA Tortures Wrong Man.” Ross snatched the paper from Garret’s clutches and began reading in earnest. The grin on his face was even bigger than the one Garret had when he’d answered the door. “This really is beautiful. He mentions both Kennedy and Rapp in the first paragraph.” He kept reading and a few moments later added, “I’m not going to have to lift a finger. The press is going to tear them apart for me.”
“Like hyenas descending on a wounded rhino. It’s already started.” Garret picked up the remote for the TV and turned on CNN. “It was picked up by all the wire services and amplified on the cable news stations, AM radio, the Internet. You name it. The blogosphere is going nuts. They might not make it to Saturday.”
Ross laughed and shook his fist in the air. “Stu, this has to be one of your better calls.”
Garret nodded in agreement. “Pretty well played, if I do say so myself.”
A former CIA employee was on screen laying into Director Kennedy for not keeping Mitch Rapp on a tighter leash. He claimed that he had been warning people for years that the man was out of control.
“Do you think there’s a chance he could go to jail?” Ross asked.
“Who knows? It’s typically against the law to kidnap people and shoot them.” Garret found his comment amusing and started laughing.
“We should probably think about coming out with a statement.”
“Not yet. Too early. Let everyone else do your dirty work. Maybe tomorrow or Friday you could release something. For now I’d just sit back and enjoy the implosion of Kennedy’s career.”
The advice sounded good to Ross. He wondered how Kennedy was taking the news. Morale out at Langley would not be good this morning. The thought of all the long faces gave Ross a delicious idea. He clapped his hands together loudly, and then rubbing them together, started for the bedroom.
“Where are you going?” Garret asked.
“To get dressed. I’ve got a busy morning and I need to squeeze in an unscheduled stop.”
42
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
K ennedy was late for the senior staff meeting, which was very unlike her. Even more unusual was the fact that she’d slept in. She needed to catch up after a long, restless night. She had gone to bed watching Letterman and worrying about the possibility
that this thing could go all the way to Josh Alexander. She fell asleep before the first guest, woke up some time around 3:00 in the morning, and then tossed and turned for two plus hours trying to figure out just how damaging the entire thing could be. If the second limousine was the target, and it was done to both eliminate a problem for the candidates and drum up sympathy, an election had not simply been stolen. It had been manipulated, which added another layer of concern to an already horrible problem.
Innocent lives had been taken, but Kennedy was being paid to worry about an even bigger picture. Chiefly, the safeguarding of the country and its institutions from foreign attack and subversion. What worried her the most was the possibility that the Belarusian mafia may have had a hand in the affair. Russia and Belarus were very close. The communication between their intelligence agencies was good. It didn’t always flow both ways, but in the end Mother Russia got what it wanted. The separation between their intelligence services and organized crime was at times nonexistent. If the Belarusian mafia helped plan the attack on the motorcade, it was an almost certainty that the KGB knew about it. With that type of information in their possession the KGB would be in a perfect position to subvert the next administration.
She’d fallen back asleep sometime around five and was woken up by her son at 8:15. He was late for school and she was late for work. Normally this would have created a panic, but when Kennedy took a look at the front page of the New York Times, she decided she’d take her time. Langley would be rife with recrimination this morning. Longtime coworkers, some of them friends, would be weighing their options. Many of them would come to the conclusion that it was time to distance themselves from Kennedy. Her tardiness would only add to the rumors and unease, but that couldn’t be helped.
After dropping Tommy off at school, she unfolded her copy of the Times and read the article while her driver brought her straight to Langley. She read it twice and both times she smiled. Rapp had been right about two things. The first was that Rich definitely thought he was going to win a Pulitzer for the story, and the second was that this was going to be fun.
When she stepped off the elevator just outside her office, her administrative assistants were both on the phone. Pink call messages as thick as a deck of playing cards were waiting for her. Sheila, with the overdone makeup and the red hair, gave her a look that said Help. Kennedy smiled, said good morning, and walked into her office. Three men were waiting for her at the far end of the room. They were seated at the conference table. Kennedy set her briefcase behind her desk, closed the office door, and then hung her black cashmere overcoat in her closet. She tugged on the sleeves of her white blouse and unbuttoned the jacket of her blue pinstriped pantsuit. She’d picked the outfit with the press conference in mind.
Sitting at the table were Deputy Director of Intelligence Charles Workman, Deputy Director of Operations Jose Juarez, and Deputy Director Roger Billings. All three men sat in silence with their hands resting on the polished wood surface of the long table. They were obviously waiting for her to speak first. Kennedy walked to the far end where a singed American flag was framed. It had been pulled from the rubble of the Word Trade Center.
