"Have you bothered to think of the fallout?"

"Not really my forte?"

She glared at him.

"I've already talked to our French colleagues. They're as pissed off as we are. It's their damn politicians and that goofy judge who let the idiot go."

Kennedy couldn't deny the fact. She'd talked to her counterpart in France at length about this individual and several others, and he was not happy with his country's decision to set the radical Islamic cleric free. The counterterrorism people in France didn't like it any more than they did.

"This guy is a known entity," Kennedy said. "The press has written about him. They covered his release. If he turns up dead, they're going to jump all over it."

"Let them jump. It'll last a day or two…maybe a week at the most, and then they'll move onto something else. Besides…it'll serve as a good message to all of these idiots who think they can operate in the West without fear."

She looked back at him, her eyes revealing nothing. "What about the president? He's going to want to know if we had a hand in it."

Rapp shrugged. "Tell him you don't know anything about it."

Kennedy frowned. "I don't like lying to him."

"Then tell him to ask me about it. He'll get the picture, and he'll drop it. He knows the game."

Kennedy leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs. She looked at the far wall and said, more to herself than to Rapp, "He's a cleric."

"He's a radical thug who is perverting the Koran for his own sadistic needs. He raises money for terrorist groups, he recruits young impressionable kids to become suicide bombers, and he's doing it right in our own backyard."

"And that's another problem. Just how do you think the Canadians are going to react to this?"

"Publicly…I'm sure some of them will be upset, but privately they'll want to give us a medal. We've already talked to the Mounted Police and the Security Intelligence Service…they wish they could deport the idiot, but their solicitor general is hell-bent on proving that he's Mr. PC. We even have an intercept where two SIS guys are talking about how they could make the guy disappear."