He took a seat on a stone bench, leaning back against the perimeter wall as the dogs dropped into the grass at his feet. They didn’t stay long, though. Anna appeared in the front door and started toward the outbuilding where the athletic gear was kept. She laughed as they danced around her, trying to smack them on their noses, but every time proving to be just a fraction too slow. He watched her in silence as she crossed the lawn. A reminder that he had no choice but to ignore every instinct he’d developed over the years. Mitch Rapp the family man. The peacemaker. The fount of reason and compromise. It was hard not to laugh.
“I want a truce. Can you broker it?”
When Kennedy responded, she didn’t bother to hide her relief. “I’ll call Catherine this morning and see what I can do.”
CHAPTER 8
CIA HEADQUARTERS
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
USA
EVERYTHING looked familiar but, like so many things in Langley, it was an illusion. In fact, nothing was the same. The organization she’d spent so many years shaping was gone. The ideas, values, and beliefs it was built on had been cast aside with terrifying speed and ease.
Irene Kennedy was wearing a visitor’s badge and being led through the building by a nervous young woman she’d never seen before. Catherine Cook had refused her request for a face-to-face meeting and instead insisted that Kennedy go through Darren Hargrave, the man who had replaced her. She assumed that it was a reminder from the president that she was now persona non grata in Washington. Catherine Cook likely would have preferred to handle this herself. It was a meeting that had the potential to define her husband’s time in office and the first lady was too smart to trust it to a man as unstable as Hargrave.
The reaction of the people she passed was interesting in its predictability. A few—old acquaintances close to retirement—stopped to exchange veiled words about what was happening to the organization and country. Most, though, just averted their eyes and scurried away.
In the alternate universe that was the nation’s capital, one was either in power or invisible. It was an adjustment that many influential people never managed to make, causing them to spend the rest of their lives begging for scraps. Kennedy, on the other hand, had always looked forward to the day she would leave it all behind. Obviously, this wasn’t the way she’d imagined that exit, but it had its advantages. A clean break with no entanglements that could arrest her momentum.
Mitch Rapp’s philosophy was even more unusual. His preference would have been to go through life without anyone in Washington ever knowing he existed. Paradoxically, he’d accomplished too much to make that possible.
And now here she was, not asking for the gratitude he was owed or the recognition he deserved. Nor for compensation for the endless list of injuries he’d accumulated or the personal losses. Only that he be allowed to live out his life in peace. After everything he had done, that was the best he could hope for.
They entered the elevator and rose to the seventh floor. When Kennedy stepped out, she found the same décor but all new faces. Expected, but still disorienting. Old colleagues had warned her that Hargrave had little interest in the Agency’s operations throughout the world and was focused entirely on eradicating her influence from the organization. Talented veterans were being demoted, forced into retirement, or moved to remote posts, only to be replaced by people she would have never dreamed of putting in positions of responsibility.
After only a week under Hargrave’s leadership, her prediction was coming true. The CIA’s focus was moving from protecting the country to protecting the Cooks.
She was pointed to a chair in what had been her outer office and told to wait. It would be a while, she suspected. A petty power play that so many in Washington couldn’t resist. Yet another reminder of her newly minted insignificance.
Kennedy pulled a tablet from her bag and opened the book she was reading. Incredibly, it contained nothing at all about geopolitics, economics, or military strategy. Instead, it was a memoir by a woman who had moved to Italy to renovate an old house. Kennedy had bought it in hardback when it was first released but had been forced to donate it unread to the library when she’d run out of bookshelf space. Now she was a third of the way through the electronic version and enjoying herself immensely.
“Ma’am?”
Kennedy looked up at Hargrave’s assistant. “Yes?”
“Electronic devices are prohibited.”
She smiled and went back to reading.
“You’re up, Irene.”