“Rapp?” Kennedy asked.
“Correct.”
“Please don’t give me some psychobabble that you think I’m in love with him.” Kennedy shook her head as if anything so humdrum was beneath her. “You know that’s not how I work.”
Lewis dismissed the idea with the back of his hand. “I agree. That is not my concern.”
“Then what is?”
“That you do not give the man his credit.”
“Credit? Credit for what?”
“Let’s start with the fact that he came down here a little more than a year ago, without any military experience, and bested every man we put in front of him, including your Uncle Stan. His ability to learn, and do so at an incredibly rapid pace, is unlike anything I have ever seen.” Lewis’s voice grew in intensity. “And he does it in every field of discipline.”
“Not every field of discipline. His marks in geopolitics and diplomatic affairs are dismal.”
“That’s because he sees those fields as an utter waste of his time, and I don’t necessarily disagree with him.”
“I thought we wanted well-rounded people to come out of this place.”
Lewis shrugged his shoulders. “Mental stability matters more to me than well-rounded. After all, we’re not asking him to negotiate a treaty.”
“No, but we need him to be aware of the big picture.”
“Big picture.” Lewis frowned. “I think Mitch would argue that he’s the only one around here who keeps his focus on the big picture.”
Kennedy was a woman in the ultimate man’s world, and she deeply disliked it when her colleagues treated her as if everything needed to be explained to her. “Really,” she said with chaste insincerity.
“Your man has a certain aptitude. A certain ability that is heightened by the fact that he doesn’t allow extraneous facts to get in the way.”
Kennedy sighed. Normally she would never let her frustration show, but she was tired. “I know you think I can read minds, but today that skill seems to have left me. Could you please get to the point?”
“You do look more tired than normal.”
“Why, thank you. And you look like you’ve put on a few pounds.”
Lewis smiled. “No need to hurt my feelings, just because you’re worried about him.”
“You are a master at deflection.”
“It is my job to observe.” He swiveled his chair and looked at the eight men and the two instructors who were putting them through the basics of hand-to-hand combat. “Observe all of you. Make sure no one has a mental breakdown and runs off the reservation.”
“And who watches you?”
Lewis smiled. “I’m not under the same stress,” the doctor said as he spun back to face Kennedy. “As you said, he is your responsibility.”
Kennedy mulled that one over for a second. She couldn’t disagree, so she kept her mouth shut. Plus the good doctor excelled at compartmentalizing the rigors of their clandestine operation.
“I’m looking out for you,” Lewis said in his understanding therapist tone. “This double life that you’ve been living is not healthy. The mental strain is something that you think you can manage, and I thought you could as well, but recently, I’ve begun to have some doubts.”
Kennedy felt a twist in her gut. “And have you shared these doubts with anyone?” Specifically she was thinking of Thomas Stansfield.
“Not yet, but at some point I am bound to pass along my concerns.”
Kennedy felt a sense of relief, even if it was just a brief reprieve. She knew the only way to avoid a bad personnel report was to allay Lewis’s concerns. And the only way to do that was to talk about them. “This aptitude that you say he has, would you care to share it with me?”
Lewis hesitated as if he was trying to find the most delicate way to say something that was brutally indelicate. With a roll of his head he said, “I have tried to get inside Rapp’s mind, and there are days where I swear he’s so refreshingly honest that I think I know what makes him tick, and then . . .” Lewis’s voice trailed off.
“And then, what?”
“There are other days where I can’t get past those damn dark eyes of his and that lopsided grin that he uses to defuse anyone who goes poking around in his business.”
“That’s the aptitude that puts you at ease? His lopsided grin?”
“No,” Lewis scoffed. “It’s far more serious than his ability to be open one moment and then impenetrable the next, although that may have a hand in how he deals with everything. I’m talking about the very core of all of this. Why are we here? Why have we secretly funneled over fifty million dollars into this operation? I’m talking about the fact that he is a one-man wrecking ball. That he has methodically, in a little over a year, accomplished more than we have accomplished in the last decade. And let’s be brutally honest with each other.” Lewis held up a finger. “The ‘what’ that we are talking about is the stone-cold fact that he is exceedingly good at hunting down and killing men.”
Kennedy did not look at Lewis, but she nodded. They had all come to the same realization months ago. That was why they had turned him loose and allowed him to work on his own.
