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Nightfall had crept across the countryside, bringing to a close another day and with it more worries. She sat in her office on the top floor of one of the world’s most notorious organizations, and pondered a multitude of potential threats.
    They were not imaginary, exaggerated or petty. Dr. Irene Kennedy knew better than anyone the lethal nature of her foe. She had seen it with her own eyes. She had watched the tide of fanaticism swell over the last thirty years, watched it roll toward America’s shores like an increasingly ominous storm. She had been Churchillian in her warnings about the growing threat, but her dire predictions had fallen on deaf ears.
    The people she answered to were infinitely more concerned with the issues that dominate the political discourse of a peacetime democracy. No one wanted to deal with, or even hear about, an apocalyptic threat. They were more concerned with triangulating issues and with weakening their opponents through real or imagined scandals. She was even called an alarmist by some, but through it all she stayed the course.
    It was an irony that didn’t sit well with her, that many of the same senators and congressmen who labeled her an alarmist were the same ones who were now calling for her resignation. Some had even suggested that the CIA should be put out to pasture like some old plow horse that had served its purpose, but was no longer capable of doing its job.
    The storm that she had predicted, however, was upon them, and the professional politicians who had ignored her warnings, and frustrated her actions at every turn, were not about to take an ounce of the blame. This unique breed of human was utterly incapable of accepting responsibility for any past mistakes, unless they wrapped it first in a well-timed act of contrition that would gain them sympathy.
    Fortunately for Kennedy there were a few honorable senators and congressmen on the Hill who shared her commitment and concern. These were men and women who had been with her every step of the way as she attempted to change policies and operational procedures in order to prepare for the coming threat. They and the president had come to her defense and stymied a plan to have her removed as the director of the CIA.
    Now it was time to play catch-up. In the glow of the desk lamp Dr. Irene Kennedy looked down at the transcripts before her and was sickened by what she read. It wasn’t in her personality to get angry; she had divorced intellect from emotion a long time ago. She was simply pained. Men had died. Good men with families and children and mothers and fathers, and they had died because people who should know better couldn’t grasp the importance of operational security. Even worse, they couldn’t even keep a simple secret for just twenty-four hours.
    Even after September 11 they lacked the commitment to protect their country. People simply didn’t understand how serious the task before them was. Intelligent, educated people put the politics of their various agencies before operational security and because of it two men were dead, an entire operation involving hundreds of soldiers, marines, aviators, airmen and sailors was called off and a family of innocent Americans were still trapped in a hell that no adult, let alone child, should have to suffer through.
    The entire episode was a monumental security failure and Kennedy had decided enough was enough. She would not lose her cool and begin screaming for people’s scalps. That was not the way she’d been taught to perform her duties. She had been trained by one of the best. Thomas Stansfield, the now deceased director of the CIA, was fond of saying that a master spy should be a closed book unless it wished to be opened. A day did not pass that his advice went unheeded.
    Before her were two red folders. The one on her left consisted of e-mail intercepts between a high-ranking State Department official and an overseas ambassador. It also