KATHRYN MORGAN COULD see only the top of Tucker’s head on the monitor of the video teleconference. The candidate’s face was down and his hands were wrapped around his skull like he was in an air-raid drill. Three deep breaths, and then he faced the camera.
“Do you know what my deputy told me today?”
Morgan didn’t reply.
“A reporter, some nobody down in Virginia, was asking around to see if there were any terrorism connections to the lake-house shootings. Some neighbors heard explosions and were wondering why a bomb squad was there.”
He straightened his shirt and swallowed a pair of pills dry.
“The press!” he went on. “Do you hear me? And now you’re telling me that Hayes is on some kind of spree in the mountains? You said you had him under wraps.”
“I didn’t know he was going there.”
“Exactly. How many people did he kill?”
“Three.”
“Jesus Christ. This is your one job. You had him, and he walked away. And now I have three corpses, and this psychopath Claire Rhodes is on the loose. Where is Hayes?”
Morgan cleared her throat.
“Where is Hayes?”
“He gave us what we need to know to help the Feds and local law enforcement with the search and then headed out.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
Tucker ran his hand through his hair and grabbed a fistful near the back of his head.
“He’s out of pocket? He met with Rhodes right under your goddamn nose!”
“He is killing the people behind this.”
“Have you lost your mind? I can’t have an open war inside the United States. Whatever. I’m done. Option S the whole goddamn thing.”
It was an emergency plan to wrap the program.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. Cold Harvest. All of it. Shut it down.”
“You know that’s probably what the people behind these killings want. And some of these operators are working covers that have taken years to set up. They’re close to stopping—”
“I don’t care. I can’t have them in the field. I can’t have more firefights in the middle of the U.S. I can’t have them running around like Hayes. We can use the diplomatic security teams to go after them and bring them in.”
“To Washington?”
“No. That’ll attract too much attention. Where else?”
Morgan thought through the options. “New York. The flights will work, and we can start putting them at the Upper East Side annex. I think that’s available.”
It was a CIA safe house in Carnegie Hill, more of an apartment building, really, used to debrief foreign diplomats and officials that the CIA had turned when they came through New York.
“But what are you going to tell them?” Morgan asked.
“Me? Nothing. I’m going to be giving a campaign speech at Rockefeller Plaza, and I should be in Ohio by the time they’re all here and you tell them. You are going to be point on this. How long will it take to bring them in?”
“A lot are in the U.S. and Europe. If we crash it and use the jets, we can have half of them here by tomorrow and almost all by Tuesday.”
“Good. I’ll be long gone then. Bring them in. Tell them it’s about the death of Gray and the others. It’s an emergency meeting about the future of Cold Harvest, something about their own safety and the safety of the other operators. That’s the only thing they’ll go for. And then once we get them here, we’re going to shut them down and keep a lid on them until after the election. We need eyes on them.”
“They won’t go for it.”
“Then they’ll go to prison. They’ve been operating illegally for years.”
“And the press?”
“If it gets out, and if the Congress and the media need a sacrifice for the killings, we’ll feed them Hayes. He’s perfect for it. Hide the rest in classifications. Claim national security is at stake. You know how this goes.”
Morgan looked down at her desk. The cheap lunch she’d swallowed down from the buffet on the corner churned in her stomach. This was capitulation, giving the enemy exactly what they wanted. It was surrender.
“What is it?” Tucker asked, seemingly concerned. It was a tactic to elicit honesty. Any protest Morgan made would be fatal. Her fingerprints were all over Cold Harvest. Hayes was her fall guy, but if she didn’t pull this off, she would be Tucker’s.
In any scandal, there comes a moment where you decide how high up to make the cut, who gets thrown away and who survives. She had damn sure better survive.
The pilot in her balked, but that pilot had died in a field hospital in Kuwait after the crash.
“Nothing. I’m on it,” Morgan said.
“Bring in Hayes. I don’t care what it takes.”