“Who’s been kidnapped?” Storm asked.
“The stepson of a U.S. senator,” Jones replied. “His name is Matthew Dull, and his stepfather is Senator Thurston Windslow from Texas.”
Thurston Windslow. The first player in the Kabuki play that was about to begin. Windslow was one of the most powerful senators on Capitol Hill and chair of the U.S. Select Committee on Intelligence-the oversight committee charged with keeping an eye on the CIA and Jedidiah Jones. No wonder Jones was interested. But there had to be other players and more to this than a kidnapping.
“Who kidnapped his stepson?” Storm asked.
Jones waved his cigar in his hand, dismissing the smoke around him and Storm’s inquiry in one move. “We’re on our way to Windslow’s office. He can fill you in. That way you will go into this fresh without any preconceived impressions.”
It was classic Jedidiah Jones. Storm had been here before. Jones liked his officers to assess situations on their own-to come up with their own opinions. He wanted to see what they would learn. He wanted to see if they might discover something that he might have missed. Jones would give them just enough to get them started and then feed them information if they needed it, when he felt they needed it, and only if he felt that they needed it. Jones played it close to his vest, and even when you had completed a job, you were never really sure of how it fit together with some grander plan. Only Jones understood the master plan. He operated in a world of smoke and mirrors where nothing was what it appeared and nothing could be taken at face value. Even those closest to him were never confident that they knew what Jones was orchestrating.