Page 27 of Denied Access
But that wasn’t the only reason.
Surrogate daughter or not, Thomas Stansfield treated all his employees the same. If you produced, he rewarded you. If you didn’t, you were out. His management style was as simple as it was effective. So far, Irene had more than earned her mentor’s respect.
So far.
“Irene—nice of you to join us.”
Stansfield’s comment was delivered with a smile, but the implied warmth didn’t quite reach the discerning eyes behind his black glasses. The last several weeks had been trying for multiple reasons. Rapp’s sanctioned assassination of a former Libyan intelligence officer in Paris had been a setup. An ambush designed to kill the American assassin facilitated by information leaked by the treacherous CIA officer, Paul Cooke. Though wounded, Rapp had escaped the killing zone with his life. The same could not be said of the several innocent Parisian bystanders who had been murdered by the terrorists gunning for Rapp.
But that wasn’t even the worst of the news.
The fallout from the compromised operation had brought to the surface tensions that had long been simmering between Rapp and Hurley, while at the same time compelling Stansfield to acknowledge the shit show that had developed under his watch.
Irene suspected it was Stansfield’s forced realization of his blind spot toward Stan Hurley and the toxic environment this forbearance had created that really had her boss on edge. In the space of a week, years of work had nearly been undone. Though Rapp had managed to plug the leak before Cooke’s damaging information had left the hotel room, France was a mess, the Orion program was being rethought, and Stansfield was reexamining his thirty-year history with Hurley in a new, much more critical light. Morale might be bad for the rank-and-file agency employees who had learned that one of their own had been murdered in France, but for the handful who were truly in theknow, Irene would use a different descriptor for their collective state of mind.
Abysmal.
“Sorry, sir,” Irene said. “A cable came in downstairs that I thought might be pertinent to this discussion. I wanted to get a final update.”
Though Irene’s actual role was to run the Orion program, that project was so black as to be nonexistent, so she needed a “cover” job. Accordingly, the agency’s org chart listed Irene as loosely attached to the Counterterrorism Center, located in the basement of the Old Headquarters Building. Normally this meant that the information she was privy to had a nexus to Islamic terrorism.
Normally.
But since Rapp’s handiwork in the French hotels had been labeled as terrorism, Irene had started perusing classified cables from CIA stations and bases across the continent to determine the fallout from the deaths. In doing so, she’d stumbled across something interesting concerning a potential terrorist attack in the former Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Stansfield eyed her over the top of his reading glasses before waving her to a seat at his conference table. He didn’t arch his right eyebrow, which she took as a good sign, but Irene knew she was on borrowed time. While Stansfield had been staring down enemies for most of his life, this morning he had an appointment with a group of interrogators that caused even someone with his impressive résumé trepidation.
The United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Paul Cooke’s death had been sensational and his employment with the CIA well-known. The details were simply too juicy to pass up and the series of front-page stories that had run in theWashington PostandNew York Timeswere starting to mirror the writing style of theNational Enquirer. The cold, hard facts were that politicians made their living by attracting voters and donors, and that was easier to do when elected officials were in the news. In a rare show of bipartisanship, ranking members from both parties on the Senate committeehad declared their intention to hold public hearings into Cooke’s murder.
Stansfield had considered appealing to the coterie of legislators known to be friendly to the CIA to cancel the hearings altogether, or at a minimum close them to the press and uncleared visitors, but Irene had argued against the idea. More than just the CIA’s reputation was at stake.
Cooke’s murder had the potential to expose the Orion program, not to mention the fallout that would occur if it became known that an off-the-books CIA assassin had killed an agency executive. To Irene’s way of thinking, Stansfield’s best option was to come before the committee, handle the questions, and let the opportunists score their political points.
The French government had a vested interest in keeping the true nature of their DGSE operative’s role from coming to light and was doing what they could to characterize the gathering as an asset meeting gone bad. Stansfield’s voluntary testimony would take the air out of many of the conspiracy theories currently circulating among the Beltway elite, while also engendering some goodwill from the very senators who would be voting on his eventual confirmation as head of the CIA. It was the logical course of action and Stansfield had eventually agreed with Irene’s reasoning.
But agreeing to testify and testifying were two very different things.
“Another development in the investigation?” Stansfield asked.
Irene shook her head. “No, but perhaps something that will take their minds off Cooke.”
“Please tell me that Mr. Rapp hasn’t upstaged himself by killing the potential director of yet another intelligence service?”
Stansfield delivered the question with a ghost of a smile, but Irene knew the question was only half in jest. The people murdered in that Paris hotel room had not been on the Orion kill list and their deaths had not been sanctioned by Irene or Stansfield. Hurley had claimed that he’d given Rapp the go-ahead before the assassin had done his work, butIrene had her suspicions. So did Dr. Tom Lewis, the agency shrink in charge of vetting members of the Orion team.
Like Stansfield, Hurley was off his game because his judgment had been inadequate. Stan’s number two man in the Orion program, Victor, had proven to be a traitorous murderer who had passed the program’s classified kill list to Cooke, who in turn was preparing to sell it along with information on program operatives to a pair of terrorists when Rapp intervened. If it also came to light that Rapp had decided to assassinate four people without Stan’s go-ahead, Hurley’s future with the agency might just be over. This contingency would have beggared belief only days ago, but Irene was willing to bet that Stansfield was now considering this exact course of action.
“No, sir,” Irene said. “As per his last directive from Stan, Mitch has stayed off the radar. He calls the message service every twenty-four hours to check for instructions, but otherwise he’s a ghost.”
“A ghost with Greta?”
Irene shifted in her seat.
This topic was a source of friction. While he was certainly no stranger to the stress that came with living a clandestine existence and the torrid romances that often resulted from this lifestyle, Stansfield viewed Greta differently. The Swiss girl’s grandfather was one of his oldest friends and a comrade in arms. After learning about the relationship from Hurley, Stansfield had provided more than one thinly veiled hint that perhaps Irene should issue an ultimatum to her assassin to end the dalliance. These suggestions had not taken the form of orders yet, which gave her a bit of latitude, but Irene recognized the thunderclouds gathering on the horizon all the same.
“I think that’s a safe assumption,” Irene said.
