Her smile broadened. “The house is magnificent, Mitch. So is the location. I can see why you chose it.”
“There are still a few lots left if you’re interested. I think I could convince Steven to give you half off. Fifty cents.”
She shook her head. “Thank you, but I’m a city girl at heart. I’ll just hope you invite me back.”
Rapp nodded and took a less austere pull on his beer. In some ways they had become like siblings. Despite that, they rarely saw each other outside of work. Their lives were in a constant state of chaos and the normal things that normal people did tended to get lost in it. Even now, the reason she and her teenage son were there wasn’t because of him. It was because of Claudia.
He heard Anna walk up behind him and felt a tug on his pants leg.
“Can I take Tommy to see the barn?”
He glanced at Kennedy but she turned away, pretending to examine the landscaping. His reflex was to tell Anna to ask her mother but he fought it. Kennedy was testing him.
“Sure. But there’s still a lot of construction equipment in there and I don’t want you to get anywhere near it, okay?”
She grinned and then looked up at Kennedy. “Mom wants me to ask you if you want another glass of wine.”
“No, thank you, dear. One’s my limit.”
With that, Anna sprinted toward Kennedy’s son, who was standing in front of the sculpture near the gate, studying it with a slightly cocked head.
“Tommy!” Rapp shouted. “You’re in charge. Don’t do anything that’ll make me want to snap your neck!”
The teen gave him two thumbs up and jogged toward the gate, playfully nudging at Anna as she ran.
Kennedy watched them start up the road, not speaking again until they disappeared into the trees. “Terrifying, aren’t they? I make life-or-death decisions every day and more often than not it’s Tommy that I lie awake at night worrying about.”
“Yeah. I’m not sure I’m doing a very good job making the transition.”
“Really? My understanding is that you’re doing a wonderful job.”
“Did Claudia tell you that?”
Her only answer was another dainty sip from her wineglass.
“What’s happening with the little prince?” Rapp said, changing the subject to one he was more comfortable with.
“The president’s called a meeting with the Saudi ambassador.”
“You’re not going to get anything from that idiot. No one tells him anything.”
“I agree. But I understand that he’s bringing Aali Nassar along.”
“The new intelligence chief? Interesting. Have you dealt with him yet?”
“Not personally. But I can tell you he’s very different from his predecessor. Strong, intelligent, and ambitious.”
“Is that better than Khaled’s stupid, radical, and misogynistic? Or is it worse?”
“Having a counterpart like Nassar in Saudi Arabia could be very helpful. Or it could be very dangerous. Unfortunately, where the Middle East is concerned, it’s usually the latter. I’ve been included in the meeting, so I’ll be able to give you a better assessment after.”
“And what’s the tone of this meeting going to be?”
She considered her response for a moment. “The president’s angry. In fact, this may be as angry as I’ve ever seen him.”
Rapp could very much sympathize. The redacted twenty-eight pages from the report that detailed Saudi involvement in 9/11 was only the tip of the iceberg. The Agency had been told to bury everything else they’d found on the subject. King Faisal had been left to handle the many coconspirators in his government as he saw fit. Stability and the flow of oil were preserved, but it was a decision that Rapp had been violently opposed to. At the time, though, he’d been a young operative with very little to say about decisions at that level.
“And do you feel the same, Irene?”
“Angry? Yes. But I’d be surprised if Faisal knows anything about his nephew’s activities. Even you have to admit that after 9/11, the Saudi government has been an imperfect but reasonably cooperative partner in the war against terrorism.”
“Faisal’s on his last leg, though. The man spends most of his time holed up in his palace with oxygen tubes up his nose.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “He’ll be gone soon and we’ll have a whole new set of challenges to deal with. That’s for another day, though. The question we have to answer now is whether Rabat was an isolated incident or whether there’s a greater conspiracy. The people looking to fill the vacuum Faisal’s death creates may also be looking to generate closer ties with the young radicals gaining power in the region.”
“Maybe I made a mistake, Irene. Maybe I should have let ISIS irradiate Faisal’s shithole of a country. How many times are we going to have to go through this with them? We let them off the hook for the most deadly terrorist attack in U.S. history and now here we are again. It’s starting to sound like a broken record.”
“You didn’t make a mistake. We still have a significant amount of influence on the Saudis and letting the country fall to ISIS would have been a disaster.”
“Sometimes I wonder. Every day it seems to get worse. It may be that we have to let it all burn down before we can rebuild it.”
“Possibly. But I don’t think we’re there quite yet, Mitch. I still see a few rays of hope.”
“You must have better eyesight than I do. So you think you’ll actually be able to resolve anything in the meeting with Nassar?”
“Probably not. I assume the Saudis will just deny everything and we don’t have much in the way of hard evidence. It would have been convenient if we’d actually captured bin Musaid . . .”
She fell silent but kept looking directly at him.
“Go ahead, Irene. Say it.”
“Okay, I will. You need to replace Scott. Not forever. Just until he’s fit for duty again. I heard he’s thinking about splitting his job into operations and logistics. That’s an intriguing idea.”
As if on cue, Claudia appeared from the front of the house, holding a fresh beer for him. She handed it over and smiled warmly. “Dinner will be about another half hour. So, what are we talking about?”
CHAPTER 12
Central Iraq
IRONICALLY, the house had once been the property of a U.S. contractor charged with the hopeless task of rebuilding Iraq. America’s politicians had once again made the mistake of judging this part of the world by their own standard. They believed that the natural state of humanity was justice and that it would reign if the pockets of wickedness were eradicated. In truth, the natural state of humanity was chaos. The Americans had just managed to hold it at bay over most of their short history.