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Rapp said good-bye to Papadakos and thanked him for his cooperation. The old man asked Rapp what would happen to Deckas. Rapp lied and told him he wasn’t sure, even though he knew exactly what he was going to do with him. He was going to squeeze every last bit of information from him and then he was going to give him a death befitting a man who set off car bombs in the middle of an urban neighborhood. He needed to be made an example of. Rapp could tell the old man was worried so he told him that people way above his pay grade would be sorting the whole mess out. If Rapp had only known how accurate that statement was he probably would have finished off Gazich right there on Cyprus.
16
The phone rang at 6:01 a.m. Ke
“Hello.”
“Director Ke
“Speaking.”
“Major Hansen…duty officer White House Situation Room.”
“Yes, Major.”
“POTUS has called a meeting for zero seven hundred.” POTUS was the military’s acronym for President of the United States.
“In the Situation Room?”
“No, the Oval, Ma’am.”
“I’ll be there.”
Ke
The tile on the bathroom floor felt cold on her bare feet. January in DC. Ke
Ke
Ke
Ke
When they pulled up to the first checkpoint, it was already 7:00 a.m. By the time she cleared security she was five minutes late. When she entered the Oval Office she found four men standing in a loose circle around the president’s desk. They were the president himself, Attorney General Stokes, FBI Director Roach, and President-Elect Alexander. Roach was in a gray suit and striped tie. The other three were wearing blazers, dress slacks, and open-collar shirts. At first glance she was surprised by the absence of several key players, the Secretaries of Defense and State, the president’s national security advisor and his chief of staff. Then she remembered it was a Sunday morning with just six days left until the peaceful, democratic transfer of power. Very little got done this week. The career bureaucrats and professionals were busy ru
President Hayes stopped talking when he saw Ke
All four sets of eyes focused on Ke
“Always modest, this one,” Hayes said to President-Elect Alexander. “You’ll figure that out soon enough. No offense to these two over here,” Hayes gestured to Stokes and Roach, “They have done admirable jobs, but this one here…she’s done an amazing job and she gets almost no credit for it. All of her victories and successes are locked up in a vault out at Langley. A hundred years from now they’ll be writing about her in the history books.”
Ke
Hayes smiled, gestured toward the furniture opposite his desk, and said, “Let’s sit.”
Two lengthy couches, big enough to comfortably seat four adults each, faced one another with a glass-topped coffee table in between. In front of the fireplace sat two blue and gold striped silk armchairs. President Hayes gestured for Alexander to sit next to him in front of the fireplace. The place of honor.
“Would anyone care for coffee or tea?” Hayes was hovering in between the two couches. He bent down and dropped a bag of Green Tea in a china cup and added hot water. His hand shook ever so slightly. “Irene.” He placed the cup on a saucer and handed it to Ke
Ke