Oath of Loyalty (Mitch Rapp #21)(15)
The three men gave her barely more attention than she had the secretary outside, but Catherine refused to acknowledge the slight. Instead she took a seat on one of the sofas, examining each of them in turn. It took more focus than she would have liked to hide her deepening concern.
In many ways, Hargrave was Stephen Wright’s opposite. The Secret Service director was good-looking, forthright, and a man who made up for his lack of creativity with attention to detail. Hargrave possessed creativity in abundance, but at his core was a backstabbing bastard with a gift for destroying everything and everyone around him. The exception to this was Anthony Cook. For whatever reason, Hargrave was utterly mesmerized by the man. To call him loyal would fall well short of describing his relationship to the president. Acolyte might be a better word. Or disciple. Hargrave was less interested in gathering power unto himself than basking in the glow of her husband’s. He was also almost pathologically jealous, using any opportunity to drive subtle wedges between Cook and anyone else who had his confidence. In fact, Catherine sometimes wondered if Hargrave’s wife and children were just a cover. If, in fact, his feelings for her husband went deeper than people suspected.
All this had been quite convenient over the course of their fifteen-year association. Hargrave was a ruthless soldier with boundless devotion and flexible morals. Now, though, he had the potential to become dangerous. She’d monitored him over the years and could already see what was coming. He would carefully stoke her husband’s fear, using it to become advisor, confidant, and guardian. Allowed enough free rein, he would set himself up as the only person who really cared while everyone else just wanted to use the president for their own ends.
A few minutes passed before her husband finally looked in her direction. “Rapp’s still missing.”
“The question is whether he’s on the run,” Hargrave said, motioning with his head toward the windows. “Or if he’s just outside the gate. Waiting.”
Catherine watched her husband’s expression go slack and couldn’t help admiring Hargrave’s delivery. Mitch Rapp suddenly felt all but omnipotent. A boogeyman whose menace was made more insidious by his absence than by his presence. An indistinct shadow just beneath the surface of the ocean. A quiet creak in the night.
“What do you think?” she said, turning her attention to Wright. “Is he waiting outside your gate, Steve?”
The Secret Service chief looked at her and then the president, clearly not yet comfortable with his new role. “We’re reasonably confident that Scott Coleman and Bruno McGraw are at Nicholas Ward’s compound in Uganda, but it’s impossible to be a hundred percent certain. Joe Maslick and Irene Kennedy are both at their homes in Virginia and Charlie Wicker is in Wyoming. We have solid surveillance on all three of them. Claudia Dufort, Coleman’s logistics chief and Rapp’s partner, is at her house in Cape Town with her daughter. Given all that and the level of security here, I don’t think an assault on us here would be practical.”
“It would be na?ve to believe that Coleman and his team are the only people Rapp can turn to,” Hargrave pointed out. “I have analysts going over the files on every operation he’s ever been involved in, and I can tell you that he has allies everywhere. People whose lives he saved, people who owe him their careers, foreign operatives he’s fought with. Even private contractors who will do anything for the right price. You could have men on your security detail right now who have a connection to Rapp that we haven’t discovered ye—”
“We’ve been extremely careful selecting the people handling the president’s security,” Wright interjected, clearly angered by the attack on his competence. “Most are too young to have served with Rapp and the rest have very clear employment histories that never put them in Rapp’s or Kennedy’s sphere of influence. We’ve also changed any security protocols…”
Catherine tuned out the argument that ensued. She’d been blindsided by the attack on Rapp’s house—something that didn’t happen often. Her husband hadn’t consulted her on the move, either because Hargrave had convinced him not to or because he knew that she’d have objected. It had been a thoughtless act driven by panic and by the sycophants he was surrounding himself with. Foolishness and weakness—traits very much on display in the heated discussion playing out in front of her—tended to be fatal at this level.
“Is Mitch Rapp even a threat?” she interrupted.
The obvious, but apparently unexpected, question caused the room to go silent.
“This isn’t your area of expertise,” her husband said, turning toward her. “Nor is it mine.”
But it apparently was the area of expertise of an acting CIA director who, until a week ago, had been their personal lawyer? A Secret Service chief who was still moving into his office? With hindsight, she wasn’t surprised that the threat of physical danger would rob her pampered husband of his reason. She was surprised, though, at how quickly and thoroughly the transformation had come about.
“Mitch Rapp loves this country,” she said. “He’s spent his life defending what he believes are its ideals. You were chosen by the American people and are governing exactly the way you said you would. Are you sure he wants to assassinate a sitting president and further destabilize a country that’s already struggling? And even if he does, any move he makes would put him up against the men and women sworn to protect you. People he knows and admires.”