Kennedy’s response was to shelve the threat assessment. She thought of the risks her father and stepmother had taken. Her dad had also worked for the CIA. He’d been the station chief in Beirut back in 1983 when a car bomb leveled the place. Her stepmother worked for the State Department. Kennedy’s parents divorced when she six. Her mother, it turned out, wasn’t cut out for the world of international espionage. Kennedy spent a significant portion of her teens and early twenties overseas. She’d lived in Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, and Beirut before everything fell apart. Having walked the streets of Beirut with machine-gun fire in the distance and mortars going off only blocks away it seemed ludicrous to think that such violence could come to the tranquil streets of Potomac Palisades.

When President Hayes decided not to seek reelection, Kennedy put the decision to move on hold. When Alexander and Ross won the race, she banished any thought of moving. Kennedy was an exceedingly civil person. Always polite and rarely confrontational. She was a woman in a man’s world, and she knew her mere presence could be threatening to the insatiable egos of the men who were drawn to work in Washington. Thomas Stansfield, her mentor, had warned her often about the perils of working for men who needed to constantly prove that they were right. Kennedy avoided most of the frays by staying respectful, but firm. She also avoided gossip and politics. She had tried to do the same with Ross, but there had always been signs that there was an agenda lurking beneath the surface. Nothing big, just little things, but the little things often spoke volumes about people.

For example, Ross was habitually late for every meeting. Kennedy remembered Stansfield telling her once that when someone is constantly late, they fall into three categories. The first, he calledidiot savant. The type of person who is so smart in his or her field of expertise that their mind is literally elsewhere. In layman’s terms he explained that these people were smart in school and dumb on the bus. The second category was made up of perfectionists, people who were incapable of letting go of one task and moving on to another. These people were always playing catch-up, rarely rose to any real position of power, and needed to be managed properly. The third category, and the one to be most wary of, were the egomaniacs. These were the people who not only felt that their time was more important than anyone else’s, but who needed to prove it by constantly making others wait for them.

Kennedy was worried. She looked out the window and checked for headlights. Rapp and Dumond had said they’d found some interesting stuff and they were on their way over. In the past she had always tried to keep her personal feelings separate from her job, especially when dealing with those who’d been elected to office. Ross was making that difficult. It was as if she’d seen him for who he really was, for the first time, this morning. The man had yet to take his oath of office. If he’d called and questioned her about the article, she would have understood. If he’d called for an appointment, she would have thought he’d had more important things to do, but would have accommodated him nonetheless. But showing up unannounced was peculiar. It was as if he needed to see her beaten down.

A pair of bluish white xenon headlights appeared at the far end of the block. A few seconds later a silver Audi came to an abrupt halt at the curb. Kennedy watched as Dumond and Rapp got out of the car and started up the walk. The younger man, Dumond, moved with a carefree gait, his attention focused on some small device he was carrying in his left hand. Rapp moved with an athletic grace. There was nothing herky-jerky or rushed about his movements. His head swiveled from left to right and then back, like a radar searching for potential threats. She remembered seeing that awareness when she’d recruited him all those years ago at Syracuse. Kennedy strode through the living room to the foyer and punched a code into the security panel on the wall. Somewhere behind the wall she heard the faint whirl of an electronic motor as it retracted three steel pins from the door.

Kennedy opened the door and immediately noticed a puzzled look on Dumond’s face. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure. I’ll know more in a minute.” He stepped into the foyer and kept tapping the keys of a very small laptop.

Rapp closed the door and kissed Kennedy on the cheek. “Tommy in bed?”

“Yes. He has school in the morning.”

Rapp took off his coat and handed it to Kennedy. Dumond was too focused on his computer to bother removing his jacket and continued down the hall toward the smell of coffee. Rapp and Kennedy followed him.

“Would anyone like coffee?” Kennedy asked.

“Please.” Rapp backed up against the black soapstone counter and placed his hands on the edge. He looked at Dumond, who hadn’t answered Kennedy, and said, “Hey, dip shit?”

Dumond tore his eyes away from the small screen and said, “Huh?”

“Coffee?”

“Sure.”

“How about ‘please’?” Rapp prodded.

“Please,” Dumond said without taking his eyes off the screen. “With cream and sugar.”

Kennedy poured two cups and took the cream from the fridge. She handed one cup to Rapp. “So what have you learned?” She placed the other cup on the table next to the cream and slid the sugar bowl over.

“So far,” Rapp said, “nothing concrete, but we have a few interesting tidbits. Back in early October, Garret flew to Switzerland for a day.”

“Another October surprise.” Kennedy was referencing a conspiracy theory which held that the Reagan camp had met secretly with members of the Iranian government and conspired to delay the release of American hostages until after they beat Carter in the 1980 presidential election.

“All we have are the dates of his departure and return. We have no idea who he met with. He did call a bank in Geneva several times before and after the trip, but again we have no idea who he spoke with.”

“E-mails?” Kennedy asked.

“We’re still trying to track all those down. The guy has at least six different addresses and he must receive and send easily a hundred a day.”

“What about Ross?”

“He was in Switzerland last weekend for an environmental summit.” Rapp held his white coffee cup by the handle. “Rivera got me the list of the people he met with while he was over there. We cross-referenced it against some of the other data and one name got kicked out: Joseph Speyer.”

“Should I know him?” Kennedy asked with a furrowed brow.

“No, but he happens to be the president of the bank in Geneva that Garret called back in October.”

“What do we know about the bank?”

Rapp pointed at Dumond. “Marcus is working on that. Apparently it’s one of Geneva ’s oldest and most secretive institutions.”

“And by far the most difficult one to hack into,” Dumond added without looking up.

“Is that what you’re working on?” Kennedy asked.

“No. Something else.” Dumond hadn’t touched his coffee. His two index fingers were busy tapping keys.

Kennedy’s stoic gaze shifted to Rapp. “What about our Belarusian friend?”

“Nothing yet. Hornig says she needs a little more time to soften him up.”

“When?” Kennedy asked impatiently.

“She thought maybe she could start in the morning.” Rapp could sense her frustration. “I didn’t think we were operating under any time constraints.”

“In two days we’re going to have a new president and vice president who might be guilty of murder and treason and god knows what else. Based on how Ross has been acting, I don’t think he’s going to waste any time getting rid of me. We need to get to the bottom of this while we still have the power to.”

“Yes,” Dumond said triumphantly. He looked up smiling. “That little bastard took me longer than I expected.”