Page 33 of Denied Access (Mitch Rapp #24)

S OMEWHERE OVER THE A TLANTIC O CEAN

I T was not an exaggeration to say that Irene Kennedy had known her boss her entire life.

Long before she’d understood the true nature of her father’s employment or the significance of his tragic death, she’d viewed Thomas Stansfield as a surrogate father.

When her mother had gone to pieces and her family seemed to be self-destructing, Stansfield had been her rock.

During her reflective years in college, it had been Stansfield who had shepherded her through the turbulent waters of self-doubt and fear.

Stansfield had been the one who’d broken with agency policy to explain to her the family business, and Stansfield, with Hurley, had been in the audience at the Farm for the secretive graduation ceremony held after she’d successfully completed the CIA’s clandestine training course.

After he became her boss, the nature of her relationship with Stansfield had changed.

She was a good case officer, but she wasn’t perfect.

As with any good supervisor, there had been a time or two when Stansfield had expressed his disappointment in her performance.

In all this time, Irene had never seen her mentor truly lose his cool.

Until now.

“I think the idiots might actually do it, Irene. The blown CIA operation in Moscow and this nonsense with our case officer’s wife couldn’t have come at a worse time. Rutledge might finally be able to muster enough votes to bring a motion to defund the agency to the floor for a vote.”

Irene let her boss’s words wash over her, uncertain how to respond.

It was a testament to Stansfield’s state of mind that the conversation was being held over the phone rather than in his office.

Though she was on an agency Gulfstream jet speeding east and speaking on a secure line, she still hesitated.

Rather than an outlier, the Moscow debacle was a culmination of a string of arrested Russian CIA assets and aborted operations.

While the principle espoused by Occam’s razor pointed toward a human penetration of agency secrets as the source of these failures, Irene wasn’t willing to place all her chips on that bet.

The CIA had conducted numerous successful technical operations against the Soviets and now Russians.

From tapping undersea communications cables to attaching listening devices to secure telephone lines, the agency’s Directorate of Science and Technology had proven to be quite adept at compromising what had previously been considered impenetrable communication methods.

Only a fool would assume that the Russians weren’t capable of doing the same.

Irene wasn’t a fool.

“Do you think the resolution will pass?” Irene said.

The answering sigh was both long and pronounced. “I normally have a feel for the difference between partisan outbursts and statements that reflect an elected official’s true feelings.”

“Not this time?”

Another sigh. “Something’s happening, Irene.

Something beyond the normal idiocy. I think this madness began in the usual way with the usual suspects spouting off for the cameras, but this nonsense with the Russians, along with the continued fallout over the Cooke France affair, has taken the rhetoric to the next level.

It’s as if a drunk blowhard has suddenly had his bluff called.

The situation in Moscow is only adding fuel to the fire.

Our agency is leading the news cycle, and the public outcry might just compel Congress to act. ”

Irene digested this in silence.

Her nation was historically unique because it had been founded on an idea: the notion that certain truths were self-evident and that humanity had been bestowed by its Creator with certain inalienable rights.

These precious ideals had birthed a constitutional republic in which the voice of every citizen carried the same weight, and in which disagreements were settled with ballots rather than bullets.

But this form of government was not perfect.

In an age in which TV coverage had become a campaign’s oxygen, career politicians had begun to devolve into the type of outlandish behavior that generated headlines and invitations to appear on the Sunday morning talk shows.

A government of the people, by the people, and for the people was only possible if the leaders those people elected to the nation’s highest offices exhibited the sobriety needed to make the tough decisions that national service required.

Unfortunately, sober-minded statesmen who embodied these traits seemed to be dwindling, replaced by Senator Rutledge and his ilk.

“Do you want me to return to DC?” Irene said.

Her question was an honest one and not driven by any inflated sense of her own importance.

Stansfield had been in the CIA since the organization’s inception.

He was well-respected among the rank-and-file officers and had spent the majority of his time as an agent runner in the field.

He knew where the bodies were buried both figuratively and literally, but to paraphrase the old Chinese proverb, they were living in interesting times.

The CIA was beset with scandals both abroad and at home, and Stansfield was only the acting director.

In times of crisis, this distinction mattered.

Stansfield’s acting title gave him less weight when testifying before an adversarial Congress and a diminished standing within the organization he was charged with leading.

A director’s word was law on Langley’s seventh floor, but an acting director was more curiosity than dictator.

The career executive bureaucrats who led the CIA were not immune to the political contagion infecting Congress, as Paul Cooke had so aptly demonstrated.

Until Stansfield was properly coronated as DCI vis-à-vis a formal Senate confirmation, he was at best an interloper and at worst a rival to others seeking the agency’s top job.

If leadership was a lonely enterprise, helming the nation’s premier intelligence organization was doubly so.

Irene’s charter now focused almost exclusively on the Orion project, but more and more, her additional duties consisted of acting as an aide-de-camp and confidante to Stansfield.

Hurley certainly had a longer history with Stansfield, but he had proven unsuited to office politics so Stansfield had removed Stan from the agency’s active rolls in favor of transforming the contrarian operative into a contractor.

While this was undoubtedly good for both the CIA and Hurley, it limited his ability to play the role of organizational insider.

In a moment when Stansfield was under attack on all sides, it made sense that he would want the confidants he could trust implicitly close by.

As far as Irene could tell, that category currently held a singular person.

Her.

“I appreciate the offer, but no. I need you in Russia, now more than ever. The situation in Latvia is getting worse. The ethnic Russians in Daugavpils are demonstrating in the streets against the Latvian government and the Russian president is making noise about sending in peacekeepers. We need to get to the bottom of this and my confidence in Moscow Station is at an all-time low. Max Powers has been an adequate Near East Division chief, but the chief of station in Moscow is his Farm classmate. They’re old friends. ”

“You think Max has a blind spot to Moscow Station’s failings?”

“I’m not sure. What I do know is that a potential conflict is brewing between Latvia and Russia.

A conflict that could easily spill over to the other former Soviet republics and potentially NATO.

It doesn’t strike me as a coincidence that the agency station most suited to provide insight into what the Russians are actually thinking has been completely sidelined. ”

Irene turned Stansfield’s words over in her mind. “The false-flag operation in Latvia and the burned operation in Moscow are related?”

“The Russians play the intelligence game better than anyone else, Irene. At the moment, I’m flying blind. I need you to be my eyes.”

“I’m on it, sir,” Irene said.

“I know you are. My intuition says that we are perilously close to an armed conflict in Europe. We just won a cold war. I’d rather not start a hot one. Good luck.”

Stansfield ended the connection.

Irene considered her mentor’s words as she placed the red secure phone back into its bulky cradle. She was not a military historian, but she did know one thing about her nation’s martial history: When it came to wars, the United States did not often get to choose when to fight them.