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Lonsdale ran a hand along the front of her black Theory ‘Rory-Tailor’ jacket and matching pants. She spotted a few wrinkles and frowned.
Wassen read her mind and said, “Don’t worry about it. No cameras.”
He was right. She set the half-finished cigarette in the ashtray and grabbed a small makeup bag from the credenza behind her desk. She took a brush with powder and began dabbing her face. “Can you believe Joe Valdez is a United States senator?”
“Not the sharpest tack in the drawer.”
“And then that bitch Patty Lamb. She’s going to try and wrestle this thing away from me and get it in front of Homeland Security.”
“Let her try,” Wassen said as he checked his watch, “it’ll never happen.”
Lonsdale put the makeup brush away and plucked at the neck of her white spandex T-shirt to get some of the skin-colored powder off. She began lining her lips and said, “It’s going to come down to Ted Darby and I.”
“Yes it will, and you’ll both end up holding hearings. There’s no way you’re going to wrestle it away from him, and there’s no way he’s going to wrestle it away from you.”
She thought about the chairman of the Armed Services Committee while she finished lining her lips. “I suppose you’re right.”
“We need to get back. You don’t want them to start without you and let someone else go after them as hard as you will.”
Lonsdale put out her cigarette and said, “Right you are, Ralphy.”
She gave herself a quick spray of perfume and put on her pumps, and they left. Her personal assistants were standing when she walked through the small lobby. Both wished her luck and told her to go get them. Lonsdale kept a pleasant yet determined look on her face and shook her fist in the air as she walked past them and into the wide hallway. As they strolled back to the committee room, more people wished her luck. This was the big show on Capitol Hill today and everyone knew she would be the one to go for the throat.
Lonsdale was in fact one of the last people to make it back to the committee room. She took her seat and peered down at the CIA employees. Her face slowly transformed into a disapproving frown and then
she began to sadly shake her head. Senator Safford called the meeting back to order and before turning things over to Lonsdale reminded the witnesses that they were still under oath.
“Senator Lonsdale,” Safford said as he slid his reading glasses up onto his shiny forehead, “you may begin.”
Lonsdale thanked the chairman and took a moment to look down at her notes even though what she was about to say was not written down. She deliberately removed her stylish black reading glasses and said, “Director Kennedy, I think that your performance as director of the Central Intelligence Agency has been an embarrassment to this country from the day you took over. Your tenure has been one disaster after another, and for the life of me, I can’t understand why you won’t simply resign.”
The objections erupted from the other side of the table. Even Lonsdale’s fellow party members were shaking their heads and mumbling to each other. Safford banged his gavel until silence was restored and then admonished Lonsdale. “We are here today to gather information, not to indict and convict on incomplete evidence.”
Lonsdale stayed on the offensive, saying, “I’m not even talking about illegal activities. I’ll get to that in a minute. I’m talking about gross incompetence. This is not our first go-around with Mr. Rapp. This committee has been telling Director Kennedy for some time that she needs to keep Mr. Rapp on a shorter leash. Apparently she has intentionally ignored us, or she is incapable of managing her people. You choose,” she said, looking directly at Kennedy. “Either way, she needs to go.”
The objections erupted yet again, with Senator Gayle Kendrick leading the charge, “I would like to remind my colleague from Missouri that Director Kennedy has devoted nearly twenty-five years of her life to the service of this country and she deserves to be treated with respect, regardless of one’s political beliefs.”
“So you want us to just blindly respect people because they’ve been a bureaucrat for twenty-five years without taking into account the abuses and illegal activities they’ve condoned and participated in?”
“You see,” Kendrick said to the chairman and vice chairman, “this is what she’s going to do when she gets this in front of her committee. She’s going to turn a hearing into a trial, and she’s going to act as the judge even though she already has her mind made up.”
“That’s not true,” Lonsdale said without much conviction.
“You know it is. All you want to do is crucify her in front of a nationally televised audience.”
“My committee will go where the facts take us,” Lonsdale replied with a steely look.
“You will do great harm to an organization that is trying its best to protect us from our enemies.”
“I would like to remind the senator from Virginia that we are a nation of laws. And it is our job to make sure those laws are obeyed.”
“And I would like to remind the senator from Missouri that nowhere in the Constitution does it say we should go out of our way to afford those protections to our enemies.”
The committee members erupted again with the two sides shouting at each other. Safford gaveled the room back to silence, and then without being told to proceed, Lonsdale said, “I think we can all agree that striking an officer in the United States Air Force is a crime. Now, Mr. Rapp, would you agree with that statement?”
A faint smile formed on Rapp’s lips.
“Do you find this humorous, Mr. Rapp?”
