Free The Survivor by Vince Flynn, Kyle Mills

the Judiciary Committee. Surrounded exclusively with yes men and lobbyists, his ego had expanded to proportions unusual even by congressional standards. It gave him a gift for pontificating convincingly on any subject, ingratiating him with his constituents who tended to prefer simplicity and certainty to the more nuanced arguments of experts. The intelligence and military communities, though, saw him for what he was: an ignorant and ultimately dangerous blowhard.
    He sat staring straight ahead, forgoing his normal demands from her staff for everything from coffee to the removal of a spot from his tie. Itwas a side of the influential senator that she had never seen, but that wasn’t entirely unexpected.
    Ferris had spent the last two years building a web of disgruntled CIA, FBI, and State Department employees to help him in his quest to bring the Agency under his control. Combined with information fed to him by a contact high up in Pakistan’s ISI, he had been attempting to assemble enough damning evidence to hold public hearings designed to raise his own stature at the cost of America’s security. Those plans had come to a grinding halt when she and the FBI had wiretapped one of his little cabal’s meetings and arrested a number of his co-conspirators.
    “How does he look?”
    She glanced up at Mitch Rapp, who was sitting at one end of the conference table centered in her office. “Nervous. But reasonably healthy.”
    His eyes narrowed. The CIA possessed information on heart problems that the increasingly overweight senator was keeping quiet in hopes that he would be his party’s next presidential nominee. She was convinced that the first thing Rapp did every morning was check his newsfeeds in hopes of finding a story about Carl Ferris dropping dead.
    “I’m going to say again that I’d rather you weren’t part of this meeting, Mitch. Based on what we’ve learned about the Rickman situation, it’s time for a deescalation between us and the senator.”
    “I’m staying.”
    Kennedy sighed quietly. Ferris was scared, and that was something she could use. Panic, though, was a very different emotional state. It could create an environment where the politician turned desperate and unpredictable.
    She reached for the intercom, resigned to the fact that nothing she could say would change Rapp’s mind. “Please send him in.”
    Ferris entered a moment later, but froze when he saw Rapp. “What’s he doing here?”
    “Please close the door behind you, Senator.”
    “Areyou crazy? He threatened to kill me! He said he was going to sneak into my house and—”
    “Senator!” Kennedy said, allowing the volume of her voice to rise slightly. “Close the door.”
    He hesitated, but finally recognized that he had no choice. Kennedy indicated toward the conference table and Ferris kept a wary eye on Rapp as he took the chair farthest from him.
    For her part, Kennedy remained at her desk. It would be seen by the politician as the same power play he himself used daily, but the truth was simpler. She was repulsed by the man and preferred to maintain physical distance whenever possible.
    Kennedy didn’t immediately speak, letting the politician sweat for almost a minute. He had undoubtedly gone over this meeting in his head a thousand times by now, crafting an exhaustive script of the lies and spin he was so well known for.
    “I’d like you to tell us about your relationship with Pakistani intelligence,” Kennedy said finally.
    “I don’t have one!” he protested. “This is ridiculous.”
    “Then you’re telling me the emails we found on your maid’s computer were hers? That she was corresponding with Akhtar Durrani, the deputy director of the ISI’s external wing?”
    “No, of course not. But I’ve never met the man. I swear. He started a dialogue with me and made a number of accusations about illegal CIA activity.”
    “And you lapped them up,” Rapp said. “Figured they’d sound great on