Page 86 of Denied Access (Mitch Rapp #24)

W ASHINGTON , DC

C ONGRATULATIONS on the new office, sir.”

Thomas Stansfield gave his visitor a wan smile.

Irene Kennedy knew him better than anyone outside his immediate family, but it wasn’t just her familiarity that encouraged Stansfield to drop his professional demeanor even if only for an instant.

Kennedy truly understood his motivation for assuming the position of DCI.

She understood because she shared it.

“Thank you, Irene. It does have a nice view from this side of the desk.”

Stansfield had been an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency since its inception, and he’d held the role of deputy director of operations for years.

As a member of the intelligence organization’s executive leadership team, he’d been in this office more times than he could count, but he’d never sat behind the director’s desk.

Even when he’d been serving as acting DCI, he’d let the office sit empty rather than move in before his confirmation.

While not a military organization, the CIA was rife with traditions and customs. Stansfield respected the agency’s heritage and his predecessors’ accomplishments too much to occupy the director’s office as a squatter.

“I’m very glad the confirmation vote went your way, sir. For what it’s worth, I think my father would have enjoyed seeing you in that chair.”

This time, Stansfield didn’t smile.

It wasn’t because his protégée’s words hadn’t touched him. They had. Though they’d both been intelligence professionals, Stansfield considered Irene’s father more brother than coworker. The day Stansfield had received news of his tragic death was the second hardest of his life.

The first had been telling Irene’s mother.

Now, a decade later, his dearest friend’s daughter had taken up the family business and the risks that came with it.

Though she’d no doubt tried to dampen its effect with makeup, the bruising around Irene’s right eye still stood in stark contrast to her fair skin.

In a break from the norm, she had resisted her near-constant urge to tuck her auburn hair behind her ears in favor of allowing it to hang freely around her face.

Stansfield suspected this was not an attempt to hide her youth so much as it was to obscure the finger-sized, livid blue splotches along her cheek and temple.

Most days, he caught glimpses of her father’s face when he looked at Irene.

Today, he saw his friend’s broken body in his daughter’s bruises.

“Stop staring. I’m fine.”

Stansfield raised an eyebrow at his visitor’s sudden change in tone. “Most officers treat their boss with a bit more respect.”

“I’m not most officers.”

This was true in more ways than one.

Irene had never been just another agency officer.

Her photographic memory, keen analytical mind, and aptitude for fieldcraft had put her on the fast track from seemingly the moment she’d graduated from the Farm.

Though he was not her patron in the sense that he’d intervened on her behalf to protect her from career-ending mistakes, Stansfield had worked to ensure that Irene was presented with opportunities to demonstrate her considerable skills.

When the time had come to implement the Orion program, selecting her to lead it had been a no-brainer.

No doubt she viewed Hurley’s presence as operational training wheels to keep her on track, but in Stansfield’s mind the opposite had been true.

Stan had been too much of a cowboy for too long.

Though he had the cunning, ruthlessness, and intelligence to be one of the agency’s greatest case officers, the man was brash and impulsive.

Like a good handler, Stansfield had paired the two in order to leverage their personal relationship.

Hurley might not like the thought of Irene peering over his shoulder, but he’d tolerate her.

Until he hadn’t.

“You are definitely not like most officers,” Stansfield said.

“You are my goddaughter, the mother of a young child, and an exceptional spy. My interest in your career will always be intertwined with my affection for you and your father. I know you are aware of these things, but I want you to know that I am also aware of them. Understand?”

Irene nodded.

“Good. Then we can move on to the second part of this conversation. The portion where we answer the most pertinent question— what next .”

“What do you mean?” Irene said with a frown.

Stansfield chuckled. “Relax. This isn’t an attempt to convince you to choose a less dangerous path.

Quite the opposite in fact. Your performance in Moscow was masterful.

You arrived to find a dysfunctional station in crisis and a brewing conflict in Latvia.

By the time you’d departed, war in Europe had been averted and a threat to this nation’s safety neutered.

The vote for my confirmation as director went well because I was able to go back to the Senate Select Intelligence Committee with a story to tell.

At the closed-door hearing, I presented the classified version of how this agency preserved peace on the European continent by unraveling a Russian intelligence operation.

Even Senator Jefferson Rutledge is no longer questioning the CIA’s necessity.

The committee also agreed to close their ill-advised public investigation into the circumstances surrounding Cooke’s murder. You did this, Irene. You.”

Stansfield paused on the pretext of giving Irene a chance to reply.

In reality, he was interested in her response to his praise.

The CIA did not recruit church mice. The idea that one could waltz into an adversarial nation and convince its citizens to put their lives at risk by stealing their homeland’s secrets required a certain amount of confidence.

Confidence that too often became arrogance.

Irene had just notched what should be considered a career-defining accomplishment by any objective measure.

Would she bask in the warmth of Stansfield’s praise, brush it away under the pretense of false modesty, or do something else entirely?

Polygraphs were great, but in his experience nothing provided the measure of a person more accurately than their response to a well-earned compliment.

“Thank you,” Irene said after the silence built for several seconds. “I did what needed to be done.”

Just so.

“Yes, you did,” Stansfield said. “As the newly minted director of this organization, it does not escape my attention that there are a great many things that need to be done . Which of them would you like to tackle next?”

Irene’s features contorted into a look that was so unfamiliar it took Stansfield a moment to name it.

Confusion.

“Sir?”

“You’re really going to make me spell this out?

Fine. You stand at a crossroads. Down one path lies promotion to the senior executive service, assignments as the chief of base and station to our most important postings, an office on the seventh floor of this building, and perhaps one day, this very chair.

This is the path to fulfilling your gift for leadership. ”

Had he given this speech to just about anyone else in the building, they would have been euphoric. Sure, they might have tried to mask their joy with a quiet smile followed by a serious question or two, but there would have been no hiding the jubilation in their eyes.

Not Irene.

Instead, his protégée gave a quick nod as if he’d just relayed the cheapest place in DC to buy gas.

But while her external appearance remained one of cool detachment, Stansfield didn’t believe her internal monologue was quite so serene.

Irene was nothing if not a planner. He imagined her thoughts were even now proceeding down the path and all its potential branches and sequels like a runaway freight train, exploring their collective potential.

In the time it took him to reach for the ceramic mug emblazoned with the CIA’s seal seated on the corner of his desk, they returned.

“What about the other path, sir?”

Stansfield had anticipated this question, but he still took a swallow of tea before replying.

“The other path leads to more bruises and blood. Separations from your family, hard-fought battles lost, lonely vigils waiting for nameless assets to surface, and searing sessions of self-reflection when they don’t.

Your other choice is to remain operational, Irene.

Normally, a good field hand makes a terrible administrator, and vice versa.

For most people, these sets of skills are exclusionary.

Not you. You have the ability to do both. So which is it going to be?”

Stansfield honestly had no idea which option she’d choose.

Selfishly, he wanted her in leadership. While Moscow Station had proved to be in a class all its own, far too many bases and stations were led by timid and ineffective executives more concerned with their next promotion than preventing a cataclysmic intelligence failure.

Yes, the Iron Curtain had fallen, and the Cold War was won, but Stansfield couldn’t help but think that they were on borrowed time.

Hurley, for all his faults, had a head for seeing which way the winds of conflict were blowing, and he’d been harping on the dangers of radical Islam for years.

The Orion program was a good start, but Stansfield needed more PhDs who could win a bar fight and fewer Ivy League–educated thought leaders.

Irene could help revive the agency’s warrior culture and recruit the next generation of bruisers who were unafraid to get their hands dirty on their nation’s behalf.

Those were his wishes, but perhaps not hers.

“By operational, you mean what exactly, sir?”

“I mean you get back in the field and start recruiting assets. Maybe do a tour down at the Farm to pass on your knowledge to the next batch of case officers. Either way, I’d want you on the front lines developing agents where none exist right now.”

“What about Orion?”

Stansfield leaned back in his chair, confused by the question. “What about it?”

“Who is going to run the program?”

“You mean who is going to run Rapp?”

Irene nodded.

Stansfield sighed. “I’m not sure. Stan will need a strong hand, and Rapp will require someone he trusts.

In an agency that preaches a truism that the mark of a good handler is the ability to pass an asset off to another handler, I’ve managed to create the opposite of that in the Orion team.

Don’t worry—I’ll use Dr. Lewis as an unbiased arbitrator.

He might just have some ideas about who we should look at to replace you. ”

“That won’t be necessary.”

Stansfield raised both eyebrows. “You already have someone in mind?”

“No. It won’t be necessary because I’m not going anywhere.

You said that I was at a fork in the road.

Maybe so. But I’m not ready to take either of those paths.

Not yet. I lobbied you to implement the Orion program and put me in charge.

I lobbied even harder to be allowed to run Rapp the way I saw fit.

Now that Stan is finally on board with me and Rapp, and the program is bearing fruit, you want me to move to something else? I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t do that.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

Irene didn’t answer. At least not right away. To the casual observer, she was completely unfazed. No flushed face or aggressive posture and no anger sparking from her eyes. Just an intelligence professional dispassionately stating her case.

Stansfield was not a casual observer.

As someone who’d known Irene her entire life, the set of her jaw said volumes.

“I’m not saying no, sir. I’m just saying not now. Please.”

Stansfield turned from his protégée to the expansive window.

He spent a long moment surveying the grounds of the agency to which he’d devoted his adult life.

An agency full of people who accomplished the impossible while navigating the unthinkable on a daily basis.

People like the case officer sitting across from him.

His decision made, Stansfield turned back to his surrogate daughter.

“This office really does have quite the view. I think you’d like it.”

“Maybe so,” Irene said, getting to her feet, “but I’ll stick with the view from mine for now. Good day, Director.”

Her words hung in the air long after she’d left, and Stansfield couldn’t shake the notion that they had a familiar ring.

Perhaps because he’d once said the very same thing.