Free Jihad by Stephen Coonts

mayonnaise from one’s chin. He especially hated “working lunch meetings,” a euphemism for a gobbled sandwich at the desk of an overworked superior. In his opinion, the only tangible result was heartburn.
    But Donna Bing was the doyenne of working lunch meetings; Rubens had been down to see the new national security advisor twice in the three weeks since she had taken over the job, and each time he’d been forced to share a roast beef sandwich in her office. Today Bing showed her bold side—she ordered her sandwich with Russian dressing. Rubens had his dry, as usual.
    He gave her the latest on Red Lion, including the fact that they had taken his driver. Bing blanched so severely when Rubens mentioned that the terrorists who had come to kill the man had themselves been killed that he quickly added the Turks had started the fracas by firing automatic rifles.
    “This could be an incident if our role is discovered,” said Bing.
    “I don’t believe that’s likely,” said Rubens stiffly.
    “You’re ready to take Red Lion at the end of the meetings?”
    “Absolutely.” A Gulfstream jet was sitting at the airport in Istanbul; once captured, the terrorist leader would be flown to Diego Garcia, an isolated Navy base in the South Pacific, for interrogation.
    “Thank you for the update,” said Bing. “The president is very interested in the project.”
    “I had been under the impression that I would brief him as well,” said Rubens.
    “Oh?” Bing managed to mix a tone of genuine surprise with the hint of haughty disdain in her voice—quite an achievement in one syllable. “Well, I don’t believe that it’s really necessary for you to waste your time waiting for the president. And of course the president’s agenda is chock-full these days.”
    The real waste of time, Rubens thought, was coming down to Washington to deliver a five-minute progress report that could have been just as easily conveyed in a phone call, if not an e-mail. But time or convenience wasn’t what was at stake here—nor, really, was the operation, not at all.
    “I believe the president prefers to be briefed in person on sensitive matters,” said Rubens.
    “I don’t know that that’s necessary at this point,” said Bing. She reached down and took a bite of her sandwich, dribbling dressing on her chin. “And as it happens, the president is not in the Oval Office this afternoon; he’s lunching with the vice president and the Senate majority leader. That meeting has been arranged for some time.”
    In other words, Rubens had been summoned here at precisely the time the president would be away.
    “There is another matter I’d like to discuss with you at some point,” said Bing. “Of a more philosophical nature. Desk Three is, for all intents and purposes, a reincarnation of several CIA operations established at the NSA’s behest during the Cold War, and given that—”
    “That’s not precisely correct,” said Rubens.
    “Oh? I did get that impression from the briefing papers and the background memoranda establishing it.”
    “The key is the melding of the technology with the field operatives,” said Rubens, realizing what was going on. “As for the mission set, it goes beyond the so-called black bag operations common to ZR/RIFLE—”
    “I’m not referring to the mission set, but to organizational arrangements and missions.”
    “That debate was conducted at the beginning of the administration.”
    “Perhaps it is time to revisit it.”
    It had been an admirable performance really, not especially subtle yet couched in just enough ambivalence to give plausible denial that it wasn’t what it surely must be: a play to cut Rubens’ role in the administration. Bing would start by cutting off his access to the president—under Hadash he’d had almost unlimited access—and would finish by giving Desk Three to the CIA, limiting the National Security Agency to a strictly secondary role in the intelligence community.
    It was