Oath of Loyalty (Mitch Rapp #21)(6)

Rapp entered the master bedroom and used his phone to turn on a white-noise generator that played over hidden Bluetooth speakers. It would obscure any conversation from hidden microphones that were almost certainly not there. Better safe than sorry.

He pulled up the list Claudia had given him and waded into the walk-in closet that he rarely set foot in. The tangle of dresses, shoes, scarfs, and God-knew-what-else at first looked random but upon further examination hinted at some overarching master plan.

He’d still managed to locate precisely none of the things on the list when Kennedy appeared with an open bottle of Bordeaux.

“What’s the difference between a heel and a wedge?” Rapp asked.

She poured a couple of glasses and then motioned him out of the closet, taking his phone as he passed. A quick glance at the list on-screen was all she needed to start retrieving things.

“What happened, Mitch?”

“Mike was your mole.”

She nodded silently. “Can I assume he was working at the direction of the White House?”

“Yeah.”

President Anthony Cook was very different from his predecessors. He was autocratic, ruthless, and had no love for the country he ran or the people who inhabited it. In fact, the opposite seemed to be true. He saw every flaw, every weakness, and had an incredible gift for exploiting them. In his mind, the further he could pit the American people against each other, the more he could control them. His only goals appeared to be basking in the adulation of his followers and the accumulation of power.

In many ways his wife was even worse. She was nowhere near as charismatic, but smarter and more calculating. Combined, they were a force to be reckoned with. If nothing else, Mike Nash had been right on that point.

When Kennedy spoke again, it became clear that she’d been thinking about something that hit a little closer to home.

“Did you kill him?”

“He killed himself.”

“Are you speaking figuratively?”

“You mean am I saying that he crossed me and that’s as good as suicide? No. He put a gun under his chin and pulled the trigger before I could stop him.”

She sagged a bit as some of the tension she was carrying released. He watched for a few seconds as she coiled a belt on top of a chest of drawers.

“What now, Irene?”

She didn’t answer immediately but when she did, it was with a phrase he rarely heard from her. “I don’t know.”

“That’s it? You got me into this, remember?”

“Do you mean the mole hunt? Or this life?”

“Both.”

“I guess I did. Maybe an apology is in order.”

“Nah. We had a pretty good run.”

“Have we?” she said, turning toward him. “Because it led here. To this place. To this moment. I recognize now that I’ve been turning away from the truth, Mitch. For a long time. Maybe for as long as we’ve known each other.”

“What truth?”

“That American democracy is much more delicate than I was willing to admit. I always knew there was a power-hungry ruling class, but I didn’t allow myself to see how many people would be willing to kneel in front of it. Maybe freedom just demands too much of the average citizen. Too much personal responsibility. Too many opportunities for failure.”

“Right before he died, Mike said we should make peace with the Cooks. That we can’t beat them. Or change what’s coming.”

“It’s probably good advice.”

“He said that, too.”

She carried a neatly folded stack of clothing from the closet and laid it on the bed before returning to her wineglass. Rapp couldn’t tell if it was his imagination or if her hand shook a little as she brought it to her lips.

“The role of the CIA is going to change under the Cooks, Mitch. It’s going to turn inward. They aren’t concerned with outside powers, because they aren’t a threat to them. They’re much more concerned with internal enemies—political opponents, critics, and eventually the American people. Homeland Security is going to become an organization dedicated entirely to maintaining their power.”

“That’s a big change that involves a lot of people. Are they going to be able to pull it off?”

“I’ve given that question a lot of thought and the answer is yes.”

“But you’re still standing. Sounds like the plan was to put Mike in your chair, but that didn’t work out.”

“No, it didn’t,” she said, staring into her wineglass.

“But either way you figure you’re done,” Rapp prompted.

“No question. I have a lot of public support and some powerful friends inside the Beltway, so the Cooks are moving cautiously. But with the lack of pushback they’ve gotten on their purge so far, there’s no reason for them to hold back.”

“And you think it’ll be effective,” Rapp said.

“Incredibly so. Consider how effective the Stasi was at controlling the citizens in East Germany using only handwritten notes, hardwired listening stations, and black-and-white film. Compare that to high-definition video, social media, and artificial intelligence. The technology to surveil every citizen in America exists today. And not just what they do and say. What they think and feel. It’s just a matter of scaling up and putting it in place.”