Page 59 of Denied Access (Mitch Rapp #24)

W ASHINGTON , DC

S IR, Irene is on the phone for you.”

Thomas Stansfield closed the folder on his desk before acknowledging his assistant.

The cover sheet glared back at him, adorned with a combination of abbreviations in capital letters meant to announce its classification level. In theory, there were fewer places on the planet more secure than the office of the acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

In theory.

In practice, classified operations had begun to unravel with startling alacrity.

That the majority of these operations involved Russian assets seemed to suggest that the security breach was localized to the CIA’s Near East, or NE, Division, but that was scant comfort to the agents who’d embarked on one-way trips to Lubyanka Square or the agency handlers who’d lost them.

Only after ensuring that the paperwork was properly shrouded did Stansfield look up.

“Thank you, Meg. Please put her through.”

“Yes, sir.”

Stansfield was a spy and so he approached the penetration from a spy’s perspective. It did not escape his notice that many of his agency’s most prized recruitments had been low-level functionaries with access to vital information. People who worked adjacent to the real decision-makers.

People like Meg.

Stansfield had known his assistant for almost two decades.

While not on the level of his relationship with Irene, he felt a familial affection for the mother of two.

Meg was not his adopted daughter, but she could have been a much younger sister or perhaps a favorite niece.

He no more suspected Meg of passing secrets to the Russians than he did his own wife.

Which was exactly why she would be perfect for the job.

With a sigh, Stansfield made a mental note to ask the agency’s counterintelligence division to refresh Meg’s background investigation. This was what it truly meant to live as a spy—questioning a twenty-year friendship because the leak had to be coming from somewhere.

One of the two phones resting on Stansfield’s spotless desk trilled.

The red phone. He reached for the handset a bit too eagerly, just as much because he was anxious for an update from Irene as he was relieved to have an excuse to abandon the dark path his thoughts had been traveling.

It would rend his soul if counterintelligence found cause to believe Meg was a Russian asset, but part of him would feel relieved.

Until the source of the burnt operations was discovered, the hemorrhaging would continue.

Hemorrhaging and dead agents.

“Irene?”

“Good day, sir.”

Whether this was actually the case remained to be seen.

His counterpart at MI6, Rollie Smith, had forwarded him the CCTV footage of the shooting in London.

While Irene still hadn’t heard from Rapp, Stansfield was now reasonably certain the assassin was not the newest member of the Orion team.

On the not-so-positive side of things, someone had leaked Youssef bin Muhammad’s name from the Orion’s supposedly secret kill list, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence had formerly requested that he return to testify a second time, and the wife of one of his CIA officers was still in a Russian jail.

This was not a banner day to be the acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Even so, he refused to allow his pessimism to infect his interaction with Irene.

Things weren’t good at the moment, but as a veteran of World War II, Stansfield had a unique perspective on what was truly bad.

“How is Moscow Station?”

“I apologize for jumping straight to the chase, but I’ve sent a rather urgent cable. I’d appreciate it if you could read it and respond as soon as you are able, sir.”

Stansfield frowned as he read between the lines.

That she was speaking to him on the red phone meant that she was calling him from the secure bubble deep within the CIA’s annex inside the embassy.

Her words would be scrambled at her handset and then further encrypted before they were transmitted.

The same was true for his side of the conversation.

Even if the Russians somehow intercepted the coded signal by hacking into a landline, it would take the equivalent of the entirety of Fort Meade’s supercomputers working around the clock for a solid year to break the encryption protocols.

Short of her standing in the room with him, this was the most secure voice communication available on the planet.

Knowing all this, Irene still refused to divulge specifics. Stansfield was equal parts intrigued and terrified. Either she’d stumbled onto intelligence of monumental importance, or she had reason to believe that the most secure voice communication in existence was no longer secure.

“Understood,” Stansfield said. “You’ll have my response within the hour. Anything else?”

“Actually, yes. As you suspected, morale here is… poor. I’m instituting changes as we speak, but there is one item that is severely affecting my team’s performance. I could use your help with it.”

“If you’re referring to Miss Henrik’s detention, I share your frustration, but the secretary of state has convinced the president to give him the opportunity to resolve this diplomatically.

I have argued for a harder tack against the Russians, but I’m afraid my counsel doesn’t hold much weight at the moment. ”

This was putting the situation mildly.

A more accurate assessment would be to say that with the current uprising in Congress and anger from the Brits, the president was reassessing Stansfield’s value to his administration.

Reassessing it on what felt like an hourly basis.

Even though Stansfield had nothing to do with Cooke and the French debacle, politics was politics.

If throwing his candidate for DCI overboard was what it took to calm the partisan storm, Stansfield had no doubt that he would soon find himself treading water.

He didn’t voice this to Irene, because he knew he didn’t have to.

His mentee was also very skilled at reading between the lines.

“Yes, sir. I understand, but my request goes beyond just Kris Henrik’s well-being. As you know, fully half of my case officers have spouses and family members residing in Moscow with them.”

“And they’re afraid that theirs might be next,” Stansfield said, shaking his head. “I should have seen this coming. How bad is it?”

“Bad. The station is effectively paralyzed.”

Stansfield’s gaze lingered on the single personal item displayed on his otherwise sanitary desk.

A family photograph.

Stansfield was a husband, a parent, and now, to his wife’s great delight, a doting grandparent.

Without question, his lifetime of service had taken a toll on his family.

Between holidays missed, birthdays absent, and too many sporting or school events unattended to count, his children and wife knew what it was like to share him with the unforgiving mistress that was the Central Intelligence Agency.

Even when he was home, his thoughts were often far away, and while his family never suffered physical or emotional abuse at his hands, there was no question that the decades of conflict had changed him.

In any honest reckoning of his adult life, his wife and children had paid an outsize price for his service.

But what would he have done if they’d ever been threatened directly?

“I understand your concern.”

“Thank you, sir. You’ll understand it even better after you read my cable.”

Stansfield felt his heart accelerate.

Irene was on to something.

Something that required her entire team of case officers to execute, not just the ones in Moscow without family members.

Though the intelligence service and the military were completely different animals, the organizations did share much in common.

While part of the OSS, Stansfield had worked with Resistance cells manned with partisans as young as twelve and as old as eighty.

Sometimes entire families were involved in the fight.

On more than one occasion, he’d seen the handiwork of the German SS in the form of men, women, and even children lined up against a wall and shot.

It was within his writ to order the intelligence officers of Moscow Station into the field regardless of the threat to their families.

He would not.

“I will take care of this, Irene. You have my word.”

“Thank you, sir. Please send a reply to my cable as soon as you’re able. I’ll be preparing things on this end.”

“Will do. Godspeed, Irene.”

“Thank you, sir.”

As the secure call ended, Stansfield realized he’d been wrong earlier. Most of his family was ensconced in America safely out of reach of the Russian menace.

Most, but not all.

After saying a quick prayer for his surrogate daughter, he considered how to proceed.

The president was a good man, but also a politician.

A politician fighting for his job. While Stansfield couldn’t rule out going to him for help before this disaster was resolved, it was too soon to do so now.

This was a problem best handled internally, but the solution he had in mind required a certain delicacy.

Federal law enforcement was the most obvious answer, but Stansfield thought this might prove to be counterproductive.

He needed an entity with the requisite authorities for what he was thinking, but without the nation’s top cops’ penchant for flashy press conferences, presided over by serious-looking Special Agents in Charge eyeing their next promotion to assistant director.

No, Stansfield required an entity comfortable with playing for keeps while staying away from flashbulbs and television cameras.