Page 71

He sat down across from her, leaned forward, and said, “Why are you doing this to yourself?”
Kennedy tried to compose herself, wiping her tears with the sleeve of her sweater. “I had to watch it. I need to know what he gave up.”
Rapp shook his head in a slow, disapproving way. “That’s not true and you know it. You can’t make out half of what he says in a quiet room . . . up here forty thousand feet you might be able decipher twenty percent. The audio needs to be cleaned up, and that’s what they’re doing at Langley right now. By the time we land you’ll have a detailed transcript of everything he said. Twenty-four hours after that you’ll have a damage assessment from your top people, and we’ll deal with it, but there is no reason to watch that other than to beat yourself up.”
“Thomas always told me I needed to understand just how rough things could get in the field.”
Thomas was Thomas Stansfield, Kennedy’s mentor and her predecessor. Rapp thought highly of the man, but there were times where he wondered if Kennedy didn’t try a little too hard to live up to Stansfield and his legend. “Being detached has never been a problem of yours. Don’t beat yourself up over this. It’s not your fault. It’s no one’s fault. It’s just part of the job.”
“It’s a part I don’t like.”
“It’s a part none of us like, but we move on.” Rapp grabbed her hand and said, “Someone I respect told me once to take a little time to grieve and then get my shit together and get back in the game.”
“Stan?”
Rapp nodded. The tough, no-nonsense Stan Hurley was famous for telling people to suck it up.
“And if I can’t?”
“Then you go see our favorite shrink.”
Now, Kennedy spun her chair and looked out across the tree-laden landscape of the Potomac River Valley. She hadn’t made an appointment with Dr. Lewis yet, but she would have to. She was going to need some help sorting through all of this guilt and relief. The problem would be finding the time. Her schedule was booked solid with meetings that had been rescheduled because of the emergency trip to Afghanistan and fresh meetings with allies who wanted to discuss the fallout from Rickman. And then there was Congress. They wanted a briefing this afternoon, and Kennedy had a little surprise for them. Hayek’s DNA samples from the torture room had brought in a match. One of the men in the video was Wafa Zadran, who had spent three years in Guantanamo. Several members of the Joint Intelligence Committee were harsh critics of the detention center in Cuba and had made a platform out of lecturing the CIA and the Pentagon that Gitmo was a recruiting tool for terrorists. This particular group of politicians fell into the dangerous mind-set that Islamic radicals thought, acted, and behaved like anyone else, and if you were simply nice to them they would be nice to you in return. In its mildest form, this type of thinking was naïve, and in its harshest form it was extremely narcissistic. Either way, it was wrong and did nothing to help fight Islamic terrorism. Zadran was yet another example of their failed and short-sighted policy, but Kennedy knew these politicians all too well. They would never accept responsibility for what they’d done.
There was a soft knock on the door and then a woman in her midfifties entered. It was Betty Walner, the CIA’s director of the Office of Public Affairs. “Everything is ready. Do I have your authorization to release the clip?”
The clip was their solution to the stampede of panicked agents and assets. Chuck O’Brien, the director of the National Clandestine Service, had advocated the idea. As O’Brien put it, “Dead men don’t tell secrets. This will put an end to it.”
Kennedy was averse to the idea at first. The CIA didn’t like making sensitive things public, and this was about as sensitive as it could get. Her mind had been pretty much made up for her when the terrorists decided to release a second edited clip of Rickman’s beating. It became obvious that they were going to try to milk Rickman’s interrogation to make it seem as if he was still alive. O’Brien’s idea became the toaster in the bathwater. Release the clip of Rickman’s death and short-circuit the entire game. There was also a serious opportunity to embarrass the Taliban by showing the execution of the two interrogators by one of their own. It would make them look like rank amateurs.
“Yes, the White House signed off on it,” Kennedy said, reaching for her cup of tea.
“I’ve already received more than a few requests for interviews with you.”
“I’m too busy right now.”
“I know you are, but you’re going to need to make some statements. First about Rickman and Hubbard and their service to our country. You have to do that.”
Kennedy nodded. ?
??I will at some point.”
“It needs to be today.”
Kennedy didn’t take it personally. Walner was just trying to do her job. “I’ll have something prepared by the end of the day.”
“And it would really help if you’d do a sit-down with a half dozen or so reporters.”
“Off the record?”
Walner shook her head. “Not on this one, Irene. It’s too big. Have you had time to read the papers today?”
“No.”
“The hawks on the Hill are screaming bloody murder over the reintegration program in Afghanistan and all the green-on-blue violence. They’re laying all the blame on the White House, and you’re stuck in the middle. Five at the most and they’ll have you in a committee room with cameras and they’ll be asking anything they want. Your best chance is to start shaping your message right now.”
Kennedy looked down the length of her office at the small hallway that connected her office to the deputy director’s office. Stofer was leading a group of her top advisors her way. She didn’t have the energy to deal with the media right now and she wanted to hear what her advisors had to say. “Stop back in a few hours with a plan and we’ll review it,” she said to Walner.
Walner left and Kennedy got up with her cup of tea and moved over to the seating area, which was composed of one long couch with its back to the window, a rectangular, glass coffee table, and four chairs, two across from the couch and one at each end of the coffee table. Kennedy took her normal seat and set her cup of tea on the table. “So where do we stand?” she asked her advisers.