Lethal Agent (Mitch Rapp #18)(74)
“But this house of cards he built,” Barnett said, still trying to find her footing. “It was constructed while he was officially working for the CIA. Isn’t that right? While he was under your supervision.”
Kennedy took a sip of water and focused on staying in character. Avoiding personal responsibility and abandoning Mitch Rapp were two things antithetical to who she was. But, for now, there was no other way.
“Obviously, I’m the director of the CIA, so everything that happens there is within my purview. Having said that, the monitoring of our agents is largely the responsibility of an independent division within the Agency. They work under a very specific set of parameters, all of which were adhered to in this case. The problem seems to be that Mr. Rapp covered his tracks extremely well. His money was held in countries that we have a hard time seeing into, and his ownership interests in foreign businesses were hidden behind a maze of offshore shell corporations and partnerships.”
“So, you’re saying that, as the director of the CIA, you take no responsibility for any of this?”
“The Agency’s oversight infrastructure works independently from the office of the director. That independence is critical to their success and credibility. In light of what’s happened, though, I’d agree that the system needs to be reviewed.”
? ? ?
Christine Barnett entered her office, nearly catching Kevin Gray’s leg when she slammed the door.
“Backstabbing bitch!”
“Calm down, Senator. It may—”
“Calm down? What the hell are you talking about, Kevin? Everyone in town whispers about Irene Kennedy like she’s Joan of Arc. We went in there counting on the fact that she’d fall on her sword for her lifelong friend, the great Mitch Rapp. And what do we find out? She’s just another politician covering her ass.”
“We’ve still got—”
“And then that dipshit Hansen hands her the keys to the handcuffs!” She imitated the man’s buttery drawl. “?‘Is it possible that he acted alone?’?”
“Mitch Rapp was the CIA’s top operative for years, Senator, and in that time he stole millions of dollars. The fact that he was technically a contractor when he murdered those two men—”
“Were you not listening, Kevin?”
“Of course I—”
“Rapp killed two terrorism suspects. And his money didn’t come from stealing from the government, it came from stealing from extremists. Why would voters give a shit about that?”
“He didn’t kill those men to stop a terrorist attack, Senator. Like you said in your last meeting with Kennedy, he probably did it to figure out how to get top dollar for the drugs he was going to steal. And he didn’t take the money from those terrorist organizations to starve them of funds. He took it to line his own po—”
“Too complicated!” she shouted. “The average American is barely smart enough to tie his own shoes. Do you really expect them to follow complex motivations and offshore shell corporations? In order for them to know who to hate, we need to tell them in a way they can understand. A strong, simple narrative. One sentence. No words more than two syllables.”
“We weren’t going to get hold of the news cycle anytime soon anyway. This morning’s school shooting is sucking all the air out of the room.”
“How many kids?”
“It’s bad. Twenty-one dead and another seven wounded.”
“So we get backseated and the anthrax story—”
“—was already starting to fade,” Gray said, finishing her sentence. “The videos ISIS is putting out are just remixes of footage everyone’s seen before.”
“If we’re going to keep people focused on this administration’s inability to protect them, Halabi’s going to need to get off his ass and do something more than make movies.”
“I’m not sure we should be wishing that on ourselves, Senator.”
She dropped into the chair behind her desk. “Don’t turn into a Boy Scout on me again, Kevin.”
“You’re way out in the lead, Sen—”
“I don’t want to be in the lead!” she shouted. “I want to win the election in such a landslide that everyone in Washington drops to their knees and kisses my ass. Do you understand?”
Judging by his expression, he didn’t.
Kevin Gray was a hell of a political operative but, like everyone in his profession, he saw the winning of the presidency as an end, not a beginning. A seat in the Oval Office was a guarantee of pomp and circumstance, but not the guarantee of real power that most people suspected. As a woman, she’d have to fight for that. She’d have to tear it from the hands of the powerful men who had dominated the country since it was founded.
“The shooting of those DEA agents got some coverage,” Gray said. “But because they survived and the identity of the shooter hasn’t been released, not as much coverage as we hoped. We could leak that the perpetrator was a former CIA operative and that he also murdered two drug traffickers. Maybe hint that Kennedy could be involved. Everyone knows how close she and President Alexander are. It could get us—”
“Absolutely nothing,” Barnett said, finishing his sentence. “In the current news cycle, that story wouldn’t make an AM radio station in Bumfuck, Kansas.”