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.”
“What do you suggest we do to test that theory?” Hargrave countered. “Have the president make a speech from an open podium in Nebraska? Throw out the first pitch in a stadium full of baseball fans?”
Cook glared at the man, and he averted his eyes. Catherine took a bit of solace in that. Her husband wasn’t completely under Hargrave’s spell. Not yet. Unfortunately, their former lawyer would come to the same conclusion. He’d retreat for the moment, recalibrating before resuming his slow advance. In a month, would her husband be so quick to put him in his place?
“I don’t think we need to descend into the ridiculous,” she said. “In the short term, Tony should stay here behind the security the Secret Service has worked so hard to create. We’ll use that time to reacquire Rapp, refine our security protocols, and continue to purge people who are loyal to him and Irene Kennedy.”
“I agree,” Wright said. “I see this as a diminishing threat. Right now, we don’t have our systems fully updated and we don’t know everyone who owes Rapp or Kennedy. In the coming months, though, we’ll sort that out.”