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“No. I couldn’t get someone up there fast enough.”
“Well,” the man said in an I-told-you-so voice, “he’s is supposed to be coming back in town today or tomorrow.”
Nash figured he could waste the whole morning going back and forth like this, but he didn’t have the time. One year of his life. The words rang in Nash’s ears.
“Nobody even knows I exist. Two more days is all I ask and then I’m done. I’m going to walk into the first sports bar I can find and order a big fucking Budweiser. One of those thirty-six-ouncers. I’m gonna get smashed and then I’m gonna get laid.”
“Can I at least debrief you first?” Nash said with a grin.
“If you bring the beer.”
Nash nodded. “Toss out the normal protocols. Text me at this number.” Nash wrote the number down on the corner of the newspaper. “Ten and ten. You got me?”
“Yep. Twice a day.”
“Don’t miss your fucking check-in.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, satisfied he’d gotten what he wanted.
“There ain’t no cavalry to come save your ass. You’re out there solo. You don’t even exist.”
“I didn’t come this far to lose. I’ll get the goods on these assholes.”
“Two days. That’s all you’ve got and then I want you out.” Nash leaned forward so he could look him in the eye. “You hear me?”
“Loud and clear.”
Nash folded up the sports section and handed it back to Johnson. Without saying another word he got up and left the coffee shop.
CHAPTER 41
CAPITOL HILL
THE wide hallway outside the Senate Intelligence Committee’s meeting room was crowded with staffers. Some actually appeared to be in transit from one point to another, but a surprising number were simply loitering—leaning against walls and clogging doorways, standing with their politically like-minded coworkers. Nash knew he shouldn’t have been surprised. This was entertainment for a group of underpaid partisans, men and women who worshipped either the senator they slaved for or the party, or both. This afternoon’s little event was one of the reasons they worked for scraps. Most of them could walk across the street and within a few hours land a job in the private sector making double what they were already making. This was what kept them from leaving—the proximity to power. The draw of powerful men and women meeting in secret to discuss things that would have far-reaching implications.
Nash stopped at the door for a moment and looked at the faces of the conservatively dressed staffers. Most of them looked to be no more than a few years out of college. Nash felt a pinch of rage at the entire system. None of them should be here. Nothing that was said inside SH 219 should ever be shared with these people. They were too young and too politically motivated to ever be trusted with national secrets. But they would be. The hearing was likely to last into the dinner hour, and the more senior staffers who were read in would come and go over the next several hours, relaying messages from the bosses back to their offices and slowly but steadily the leaking would start. It would start out innocently enough.
Moods would be reported, who was upset and who was trying to calm people down. From there the facts would start to trickle out. Maybe only ten to twenty percent of what was actually going on. That’s what you could count on the staffers to do. The real damage would come from the senators themselves—men and a few women who were schooled in the nastiest game of all—politics. In the public relations arena they were the ultimate street fighters, in many cases willing to do whatever it took to win. There was a block of six or so who would uphold their end of the bargain, and another six who would hold their fire until someone else leaked first. That left two or three senators, depending on the issue, plus the four ex officio members who were the worst offenders of all. That was who Rapp was planning to meet head-on and none of them with the exception of Kennedy thought it was a wise move. Nash couldn’t figure that one out, what was going on with her, but the whole thing was making him nervous. He could feel something bad just around the corner. What it was, he had no idea, but it was twisting his gut. The last time he’d felt it this acutely was right before the mission in Afghanistan when he’d almost died.
Nash shook the thought from his head and entered the room. He took both of his mobile phones out and handed them over to a staffer who stuck them in a numbered cubbyhole for him to retrieve when he left. No electronic devices were allowed inside the secure chamber without special authorization. As a precaution to prevent someone from pulling up his call list, e-mails, and address book, Nash had already removed the SIM cards and the batteries from each phone.
Nash walked up the small ramp and entered the secure portion of the committee room. He squeezed by a few people in the narrow inner hallway, opened the glass door to the main committee briefing room, and was hit with a wall of noise. The raised portion of the room where the senators sat was packed. Sixteen of the nineteen seats were filled and the area behind the senators was crawling with committee staffers and senior staffers from the office of each senator. There were at least two people for every senator and maybe a few more. And people wondered why they couldn’t keep secrets.
In front of him were two rows of chairs and a long table where six people sat. Nash knew four of them intimately and the other two only in passing, and hoped he had no reason to get to know them any better. They were the CIA general counsel and his deputy. The two men flanked Kennedy, who was sitting in the middle of the table. Charles O’Brien, the director of the National Clandestine Service, was there as well as his deputy, Rob Ridley. Rapp was the last one, and he was sitting all the way to the left. Nash grabbed a chair behind Rapp and squeezed his shoulder.
Rapp turned around and gave Nash a confident smile. He was in a dark blue pinstripe suit with a white shirt and light blue paisley silk tie. “Glad you could make it.”
Nash leaned forward. “Are you sure about this?”
“Absolutely,” Rapp said in an upbeat tone.
“But you know”—Nash glanced up at the men and women who represented nearly one-fifth of the United States Senate—“they’re nasty fuckers, Mitch. They won’t play fair.”
Rapp laughed casually and said, “I have a few tricks up my sleeve. Just sit back and keep your mouth shut. You’re only here because they asked for you.”
“I don’t like you taking all the heat.”
“I don’t give a shit what you like,” Rapp said with a grin, “you’re not running the show. Just be a good Marine and sit there.”
