in that chair, you’ve won. There’s nowhere else to go. You’ll be there for a few years and then you’ll retire and end up a few pages in a history book. While you’re in this office, though, it can’t just be about politics. You have the lives of three hundred and twenty-five million people in your hands.”
Barnett nodded, considering his words for a few seconds before standing. “You rule your way, Mr. President. And I’ll rule mine.”
CHAPTER 16
WEST OF MANASSAS
VIRGINIA
USA
“I CALL her Betty, Mitch. Doesn’t she seem like a Betty?”
Anna ran one of her tiny hands along the sheep’s woolly back. It nuzzled her briefly and then went back to whatever it was that it found so fascinating in the dirt.
The sun was directly overhead and the humidity kept pushing higher, creating a haze on the mountains around them. The barn they were standing next to was designed to be shared by the homeowners in the subdivision and had been set up with stalls for horses.
Rapp’s plan had been to rip them out in favor of a gym and shooting range. Unfortunately, Scott Coleman and his wily seven-year-old co-conspirator had commandeered the space while Rapp was in Iraq. He’d left for Baghdad with visions of a thirty-foot climbing wall and returned to a petting zoo.
“That animal’s not a pet, Anna. Wouldn’t a better name be something like Shank? Or maybe Stew?”
She spun, pressing her back against the sheep and spreading her arms protectively. “Betty’s not dinner! And neither is Jo-Jo or Merinda!”
“He’s just being a grouch,” Claudia said. “Look how fluffy they are. Maybe we could shear them and make him a nice sweater instead.”
Anna’s eyes narrowed suspiciously and she pointed to another knot of animals near the south fence line. “The goats aren’t fluffy.”
“But they eat grass,” her mother assured her. “We won’t need to mow anymore.”
Rapp frowned. Was he really destined to live in a subdivision with thirty people and two hundred ungulates?
“Scott told me people have ostriches.”
And a flock of eight-foot-tall flightless birds.
“They make really big eggs,” Anna said, picking up on his reaction. “You can have them for breakfast. Mom could make like a gallon of that eggs benny dick sauce.”
“Benedict,” her mother corrected.
Rapp’s phone rang and he glanced down at the screen. “I’ve got to take this. Why don’t you go see how Cutlet’s doing?”
“Her name’s not Cutlet!”
“Vindaloo?”
Anna wagged a finger at him in a gesture she’d picked up from her mother and then ran off to join her new friends.
“Hello, Irene,” Rapp said, fighting off a vague sense of disorientation. Having one foot in two completely different worlds took some getting used to. But learning to switch immediately between them was even harder. “How’d the meeting go?”
“Not as well as I’d hoped.”
He watched Claudia follow her daughter across the grass. She looked like a French fashion magazine’s idea of a cowgirl. Spotless jeans and work shirt, straw hat, and a pair of boots that suggested ostriches weren’t just good for eggs.
“What’d Gary say?”
“The anthrax threat is real. Halabi just needs a way to smuggle it in.”
“Take your choice,” Rapp said.
“We’re ramping up border security on every point of entry in the country, but it’s not an easy thing to intercept. We’re not talking about a large package or a package with contents that would look particularly remarkable.”
“I assume we still don’t know anything about Halabi or the lab’s location?”
“Probably Somalia. That’s it.”
“I killed a bunch of his people and he’s going to have to replace them. Maybe we could get to him that way. I can go back and—”
“No, you can’t.”
“What?”
“Christine Barnett’s blaming you for failing to kill Halabi in Iraq and then blowing the cover of our operation in Yemen.”
“She was opposed to that operation in Yemen. And she made us starve it to the point that it was useless.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not how she’s going to portray the situation.”
The malleability of truth was another disorienting thing that had crept into his world. There were hours of video and thousands of pages of documents demonstrating Barnett’s history of opposing U.S. operations in the Middle East. But it didn’t matter. All she had to do was get on TV and deny it. For her supporters, history would be erased.
“Barnett sees the intelligence agencies as a check on her power,” Kennedy said. “And she’s going to do everything she can to either weaken us or turn us into part of her political apparatus.”
“What about Alexander?”
“He’s reconciled himself to her being president and doesn’t want