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Alexander frowned at the interruption. There was no love lost -between him and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, but Ferris was a powerful man and he couldn’t be ignored.
“Now I’m told we’ve had another leak this morning,” Alexander continued. “In Saudi Arabia this time. Irene, could you brief us on that?”
She nodded respectfully. “Mohammed Kattan, a high-level employee at Saudi Aramco, was exposed as a CIA informant. We were able to notify him and he made it to the U.S. embassy in Riyadh.”
“Not necessarily helpful,” Ferris interjected, struggling to sound solemn.
While his thinly veiled glee was despicable under the circumstances, he wasn’t wrong. Rickman had given them just enough time to warn the man but not enough for an extraction. He’d wanted to create an international incident where the Saudis would demand their citizen’s return and the United States would refuse. It had worked beautifully. The demonstrations around the embassy were growing in intensity and had the potential to turn violent at any moment.
“Irene,” Alexander admonished. “We have an agreement with the Saudis that we don’t spy on each other.”
“Completely ignored by both sides,” Barbara Lonsdale said, speaking for t
he first time in the meeting.
“True. But that mutual understanding only works when no one gets caught.”
“With all due respect,” Lonsdale said. “Screw the Saudis. They’re the biggest supporters of terror on the planet and their treatment of women is beyond disgusting.”
“They’re also the major force in OPEC and this country runs on oil,” Ferris said. “You can make all the moral arguments you want, but the American people aren’t ready for ten-dollar-a-gallon gas.”
“Look,” the president said, leaning forward and propping his elbows on his knees. “We’ve dealt with the Russians, and the Saudis are going to kick up some dust that we can handle. The situation with the Iranians is different. It’s going to set back our negotiations at least a year. But, honestly, I’ve never been sure if those talks are going anywhere or if I’m just falling on my political sword over nothing.”
Alexander was being so understanding about Iran less out of benevolence and more due to the fact that the angry protests from Tehran had actually strengthened him politically. The American people were skeptical about his outreach policy and this demonstrated that he wasn’t as naïve about the country as his opponents charged. A rare miscalculation by Rickman.
“This can’t continue, though. We can’t spend the next five years chasing leaks and groveling to foreign governments.”
When she didn’t immediately answer, Ferris saw the chance he was waiting for. “Dr. Kennedy told me that Akhtar Durrani had kidnapped Rickman and was torturing him for information. Based on the fact that classified documents keep getting released after both men’s deaths, this appears to not be true.”
She’d told him that in order to stop his grandstanding attempt to discredit the CIA. It had been a necessary measure to put out an immediate fire, but she’d known it would provide only brief cover. Perhaps she should have taken Rapp up on his offer to get rid of the problematic senator.
“It appears that Joe Rickman became unbalanced,” Kennedy admitted.
“You mean he’s a traitor,” Ferris said.
“It’s more complicated than that but, in the end, yes.”
“I don’t understand how something like this can happen,” Ferris said, warming up to his subject. “First of all, why would he know anything about a Russian informant or an Iranian ambassador? Are you tacking top-secret files to the lunchroom bulletin board?”
“Spare us the soapbox speech,” Barbara Lonsdale said. Alexander, on the other hand, remained silent. While he didn’t want to assign blame, he wasn’t above letting someone else do it.
“What does the CIA do?” Ferris continued. “Spy on people, right? Isn’t that its whole multibillion-dollar purpose? Why wasn’t Rickman being watched? Why was he exempted?”
“This is a difficult business full of difficult people,” Lonsdale said. “It happened. Now let’s figure out how to fix it.”
“You can downplay this all you want, Barbara, but it’s a disaster. An ongoing disaster. Apparently, Dr. Kennedy has no clue what Rickman knew or how he got the information. How many files are there? Ten? A hundred? A thousand? And why would we think Rickman would lead with his best stuff? I wouldn’t. What did he know that I don’t? Hell, what did he know that President Alexander doesn’t? What we’ve seen so far might just be the tip of the iceberg. But we don’t know if that’s the case and neither does Dr. Kennedy. Are we certain that her other people and operations are secure? Because, with all due respect, she doesn’t seem to know.”
“What are you proposing, Carl?” Lonsdale said. “Disbanding the CIA?”
“What do they really do for us?” Ferris said. “Occasionally solve a problem that they themselves created? At the very least, I think it’s time to consider a complete restructuring of the organization.”
“Maybe we should get rid of the military while we’re at it?” Lonsdale said sarcastically.
Ferris shrugged. “Almost a trillion dollars a year and they haven’t been able to deliver a clear win since the Japanese surrendered in ’44. Obviously, the United States needs a strong defensive force, but I wonder if that couldn’t be achieved for half the current budget.”
“I think we’re getting well off the subject at hand,” Alexander said.
Ferris grinned. “My apologies, Mr. President. As you know, I have a passion for theoretical tangents.”
