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“No. It’s not important,” she said, disconnecting the call.
Her sources said that Ferris and Taj had met privately during his fact-finding mission in Islamabad. She was very interested in what the two men discussed.
In the end, though, the influential senator’s refusal to return her calls was more instructive than any of the half-truths he’d tell about his meeting. She had always known that her threats against him were only a temporary fix. Like many of his colleagues, Ferris would gladly destroy the CIA, the country, and perhaps even himself before he would allow anyone to get in the way of his ambition.
He had already hired a battery of Ivy League lawyers with PAC money that was impossible for even her to trace. Now he was in talks with some of the country’s top political operatives. There could be little doubt that he was looking to turn the tables on her and continue his march toward his party’s presidential nomination.
Normally this would be of great concern, but in this case Rapp was right. In the context of the Rickman Affair, this bloated, ridiculous man seemed almost comical. What concerned her more than Ferris’s growing army of attorneys and spin doctors was his relationship with Ahmed Taj. Once again, this outwardly inconsequential Pakistani had appeared at the center of a dire situation.
A quiet knock wrenched her back into the present, and she deleted Taj’s picture from her computer screen. “Come in.”
The door swung open and she squinted at her seventeen-year-old son, backlit by the sun streaming through her house’s windows. She’d completely forgotten it was a beautiful morning.
“Why’s it so dark in here, Mom?”
“I have a bit of a headache.”
“Maybe that’s because you sit around in this closet all the time,” he said, playing the exasperated teen to hide his concern. “It’s awesome on the back deck.”
“You make a good point. Maybe I’ll try that.”
Tommy didn’t respond but also didn’t move from the door frame. He obviously had something to say and Kennedy stared silently at him for a few seconds, before admonishing herself. It was a tactic she used to draw information out of her opponents. This was her child.
“What’s on your mind, son?”
He looked at his shoes. “Is Mitch going to be at the game to-morrow?”
After their divorce, Tommy’s father had moved away and completely lost interest in his boy. Rapp had done a lot to fill that void over the years, taking Tommy to ball games, remembering every birthday, and teaching him the fine art of lacrosse.
“I don’t know. He’s out of town.”
“Where?”
“Surfing, I think.”
Tommy laughed and answered her obvious lie with a quote from Apocalypse Now. “Charlie don’t surf.”
He was an extraordinarily intelligent and insightful boy. Straight A’s with no effort, nearly a perfect score on his SATs, and every college from Harvard to MIT actively recruiting him. He was also extremely inquisitive, which wasn’t always a good thing. He’d made it his business to become an encyclopedia of the CIA, with a particular interest in every bad decision, screwup, and unintended consequence in its long history. As forms of rebellion went, she supposed it was better than alcohol or drugs.
“So you think he might miss it?” Tommy said, sounding a little hopeful. “That he might not be back in time?”
“You seem relieved.”
Another brief examination of his shoes. “The guy’s, like, a lacrosse genius. Some people still think he’s the best player ever. Did you know he can remember where everyone on the field was at any point in a game? It’s like you guys installed a computer chip in his brain.” He paused. “You didn’t, did you?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“So, he’s basically Wayne Gretzky. And I’m just okay.”
His assessment was entirely accurate. In fact, the only reason he was even okay was that Rapp had been working with him since he was six. Kennedy admired people who could realistically assess their weaknesses and normally would wonder aloud about the best way for them to minimize the effect of those weaknesses. This wasn’t one of her -operatives, though.
“You’re too hard on yourself, Tommy. Mitch says you’re doing -really well.”
“Give me a break, Mom. He thinks I’m slow, inaccurate, and too passive.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because he told me I’m slow, inaccurate, and too passive.”
