hell I do. Tell them to make an appointment.”
Instantly, Matt Hanley could see that Travers was uncomfortable, and that sent his stomach into a nose dive. “Who is it?”
“It’s . . . it’s Ambassador Sedgwick.”
“Son of a bitch.” Hanley had hoped to avoid the American ambassador to Germany learning that he was here in town.
“He’s in the library. He seems . . . a little . . . annoyed, sir.”
“A little?” Hanley asked dubiously.
“More than a little.”
“Right. I’m on my way.”
* * *
• • •
Two minutes later Hanley was still yanking on his gray flannel suit coat as the door to the library was opened for him.
Sedgwick and POTUS had been fellow Yalies, law partners, golfing buddies, even brothers-in-law for a time when POTUS’s brother married Sedgwick’s sister, and even the disintegration of the marriage didn’t blunt the friendship between the two.
Hanley had it on good authority that Sedgwick had been given one of the most coveted ambassadorships in the world by his friend the president to bolster his international relations credentials because he was being groomed to be secretary of state when the current secretary retired at the end of the year.
Hanley walked into the room with a smile on his face, but he knew it wasn’t going to improve the mood of the heavyset Kentuckian standing in front of the darkened fireplace.
“Mr. Ambassador. So nice of you to—”
“Don’t start shit with me. That way, I won’t have to tell you to cut the shit.”
Hanley extended a hand for a shake, giving himself about a fifty percent chance of reciprocity from Ryan Sedgwick. The ambassador did take his hand unenthusiastically, but his eyes conveyed nothing but malevolence.
As did his mouth.
Sedgwick said, “I learn the deputy director for operations of the CI-fucking-A is holed up in an Agency safe house in my town. I know you guys don’t play by any rules of courtesy, but I do not like surprises. In fact, I often find them suspicious.”
“I am here personally chasing down some intelligence related to the attack the other day.”
“Without your station notifying the ambassador of your visit?”
“Didn’t want to trouble you. Due to some sensitive matters, I didn’t even want to involve Berlin station more than I had to. Me calling in on the embassy would have been a distraction for everyone.”
The two men sat down on comfortable sofas. Coffee was brought for them; Hanley hadn’t had his first cup of the day so he drank greedily while Sedgwick just looked at him.
Finally the ambassador said, “Well . . . you’re here. I know you’re here, so your plan to keep this from me is out the window. Might as well tell me what you’re doing.”
“We are concerned there will be another attempt on the embassy.”
“By who?”
“We believe it to be an Iranian Quds Force terrorist named Haz Mirza.”
“The guy behind that pissant attack the day before yesterday?”
“Yes, sir.”
Sedgwick laughed angrily. “It takes a transcontinental trip by the DDO to tell me something I can read on Twitter? Everybody knows the ringleader of those Iranian terrorists is still on the loose. And everyone knows there was intel collected . . . by the Germans, I might add, indicating a follow-up attack on the embassy.”
“That’s correct. We do expect this next attempt to be much more robust. Perhaps the first was simply a misdirection.”
Sedgwick waved his hand in the air like he didn’t believe, or didn’t care. “Tell that to the terrorists our Marines killed. Four of Mirza’s men are dead. Three more have been arrested. The intel I read is that Mirza only had nine to begin with. The other two degenerates are probably in a brothel in Hamburg trying to get off one last time before the federal polizei find them and throw them into prison.”
“Our intelligence suggests—”
Sedgwick wasn’t having any of it. “What intelligence? Intelligence that was so inconsequential that you came here without telling my office, without calling in on Berlin station? Come on, Hanley. I’m not an idiot. You don’t want me to know what you are doing here because you know I will put a stop to it. Ever since your CIA was busted spying on Germany, in Germany, you’ve been told to watch yourselves. POTUS doesn’t want to deal with another dustup like that.
“You know my relationship with POTUS; you know there is no one more closely tied to him in all of the government, so you sneak your ass over here so I don’t know that you are running some sort