Threat Vector jrj-4 Page 15

  Crane pocketed the notebook with the original letter, and he looked at Ken Farmer’s body. Gull had placed his Five-seveN pistol in the dead man’s right hand.

  A few extra pistol magazines went into Farmer’s pocket, and within a minute the four men were out of the lab. One of the team lit the fuses in the basement, and they headed back out the kitchen door and climbed into the waiting Explorer.

  The four-man security team was already in the vehicle.

  They drove out of the parking lot calmly and slowly, just thirteen minutes after entering the property. Four minutes after they turned off Ravenswood onto the highway, a massive explosion lit the early-morning sky behind them.

  SIXTEEN

  Jack Ryan, Jr., drove his black BMW 335i into D.C. for a morning run around the National Mall. Melanie was with him; she’d spent the night at his place. They were dressed in running clothes and running shoes, and Melanie wore a fanny pack on her hip that contained a water bottle, her keys and wallet, and a few other small odds and ends. They passed a thermos back and forth, sipping the coffee for a little more energy before their run.

  Ryan pulled into the parking lot just north of the Capitol Reflecting Pool, and they finished their coffee while listening to NPR’s Weekend Edition. There was a brief report about a murder-suicide with five victims the previous morning at a software company in Menlo Park, California.

  Neither Jack nor Melanie commented on the piece.

  When the news ended they climbed out of Jack’s Beamer and walked to the Reflecting Pool, where they spent a few minutes stretching, sipping water, and watching the sunrise over the Capitol building and the morning joggers moving in all directions.

  Soon they set off to the west. Though both Melanie and Jack were in excellent condition, Melanie was the all-around better athlete. She’d started playing soccer when her father, an Air Force colonel, had been stationed in Egypt during her teenage years, and she’d taken to the sport, earning herself a full-ride scholarship to American University, where she played as a tough and dependable defender and even led her team as captain her senior year.

  She’d kept her fitness up in grad school and in the two years since college with running and many angry hours spent in the gym.

  Jack had gotten used to three- or four-mile jogs a few mornings a week, and this helped him keep pace with Melanie for much of the run, but he found himself sucking wind after the end of the fourth mile. As they passed the Smithsonian he fought the urge to ask her to slow down; his ego would not allow him to admit he was struggling.

  He noticed her looking over at him several times just past the fifth mile, and he knew his face would be showing the strain he felt in every part of his body, but he did not acknowledge her.

  She spoke in a relaxed tone. “Should we stop?”

  “Why?” he asked, his voice clipped between hard gulps of air.

  “Jack, if you need me to slow down a bit, all you have to do is say—”

  “I’m fine. Race to the finish?” he asked, picking up the pace slightly and getting in front of her.

  Melanie laughed. “No, thanks,” she said. “This pace is comfortable for me.”

  Jack slowed back down a little, silently thanking God she did not call his bluff. He felt her eyes on him for another fifty yards or so, and he imagined she could see right through him. She was doing him a favor by not pushing him any further this morning, and he appreciated her for that.

  All in all, they covered just over six miles. They finished at the Reflecting Pool, where they started, and as soon as they stopped, Jack doubled over, his hands on his knees.

  “You okay?” she said as she put her hand on his back.

  “Ye-yeah.” He struggled to recover. “I might have a little cold coming on.”

  She patted his back and pulled her water bottle from her fanny pack and offered it to him. “Have a sip. Let’s go home. We can stop and get oranges on the way and I’ll make juice to go along with the omelet I am going to make you.”

  Jack rose back up, squeezed a long stream of water into his mouth, and then kissed Melanie softly. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.” Melanie took her bottle back and took a long gulp of water, and then, as she looked down the length of the bottle, her eyes narrowed.

  A man in a trench coat and sunglasses stood a hundred feet farther along the Capitol Reflecting Pool, facing her. He was looking at them both, and he made no effort to avoid Melanie’s gaze.

  Jack was unaware of the man behind him. “Ready to head back to the car?”

  Melanie looked away from the man quickly. “Yes. Let’s go.”

  They walked toward Pennsylvania Avenue, away from the direction of the man in the trench coat, but had gotten no more than twenty yards when Melanie reached out and took Jack by the shoulder. “You know what? I hate to do this, but I just remembered I need to get home this morning.”

  Ryan was surprised. “You aren’t coming back to my place?”

  Her face registered disappointment. “No, I’m sorry. I’ve got something I have to take care of for my landlord.”

  “You need help? I’m handy with a screwdriver.”

  “No… no, thanks. I’ll take care of it.”

  She saw Jack’s eyes flick around, as if he was looking for a clue as to what really caused her to change her mind.

  Before he could question her further about the sudden change of plans, she asked, “We’re still having dinner tonight in Baltimore with your sister, aren’t we?”

  Jack nodded slowly. “Yes.” He paused. “Is something wrong?”

  “No, not at all. Other than the fact I forgot I had some things I needed to take care of around my place. I also have some stuff to do for work on Monday.”

  “Something you can work on in your apartment, or are you going to Liberty Crossing?” Liberty Crossing was the name of the building complex that housed the ODNI, Melanie Kraft’s place of employment.

  “Just open-source stuff. You know how I am always moonlighting.” She said it with a smile that she hoped did not appear as forced as it felt.

  “I can give you a lift home,” he said, clearly not buying the story, but playing along.

  “No need. I’ll just jump on the Metro at Archives, I’ll be home in no time.”

  “All right,” said Jack, and he kissed her. “Have a good day. I’ll pick you up around five-thirty.”

  “I can’t wait.” As he headed off to his car, she called out to him: “Pick up some OJ on the way home. Take care of that cold.”

  “Thanks.”

  * * *

  Minutes later Melanie walked north past the Capital Grille toward the Archives Metro Station. As she turned the corner onto 6th Street, she found herself face-to-face with the man in the trench coat.

  “Miss Kraft,” the man said with a polite smile.

  Melanie stopped in her tracks, stared at him for several seconds, and then said, “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Still smiling, the man asked, “What do you mean?”

  “You can’t just appear like this.”

  “I can, and I did. I need just a moment of your time.”

  “You can go to hell.”

  “That’s not very polite, Miss Kraft.”

  She began walking again up the hill toward the Metro. “He saw you. Jack saw you.”

  He followed now, matching her brisk pace. “Do you know that, or do you just suspect that?”

  “I assume it. You caught me off guard. I had to give him an obvious brush-off because I didn’t know if you were going to walk right up to us. He picked up on the fact that something was going on. He’s not an idiot.”

  “Intellect doesn’t have anything to do with one’s ability to detect surveillance measures. That comes from training, Melanie.”

  Kraft did not respond; she only continued walking.

  “Where do you think he would have gotten that training?”

  Melanie stopped now. “If you needed to talk, why didn’t you ju
st call me?”

  “Because I wanted to talk in person.”

  “About what?”

  Now the man affected a crooked smile. “Please, Melanie. This won’t take any time at all. I’m parked up on Indiana. We can find someplace quiet.”

  “Dressed like this?” she asked. She looked down at her skintight Lycra running shorts and a form-fitting Puma jacket.

  The man looked her up and down now, taking a little too long to do so. “Why not? I’d take you anywhere looking like that.”

  Melanie groaned to herself. Darren Lipton was not the first lecherous asshole she had met while working in the federal government. He was, however, the first lecherous asshole Melanie had met who was also a senior special agent in the FBI, so she reluctantly followed him to his car.

  SEVENTEEN

  They walked together down the ramp of an underground parking garage that was nearly empty so early on a Saturday morning, and, at Lipton’s direction, they climbed in the front seats of his Toyota Sienna minivan. He put the key in the ignition, but he did not turn the engine over, and they sat in the silence and the near darkness of the garage. Only the faint light of a fluorescent bulb on the concrete wall illuminated their faces.

  Lipton was in his fifties, but he wore his gray-blond hair in a boyish flop that somehow did not make him look any younger, just less put together. His face was pocked with acne scars and frown lines and he looked like he enjoyed sitting in the sun as much as he enjoyed drinking — Melanie pictured him doing a lot of both at the same time. He wore his aftershave so heavy that Melanie wondered if he filled his bathtub with it and took a dip each morning. He talked too loudly and too quickly, and, she had noticed the first time they met face-to-face, he went out of his way to stare at her chest while they talked, clearly taking pleasure from the fact that she knew what he was doing.

  He reminded Melanie of the uncle of an ex-boyfriend she had when she was in high school who spent way too much time staring at her and complimenting her athletic physique in a way that was obviously perverse but also carefully worded so as to be deniable.

  In short, Lipton was a creep.

  “It’s been a while,” he said.

  “I haven’t heard from you in months. I assumed you had moved on.”

  “Moved on? You mean out of the FBI, out of the National Security Branch, or out of Counterintelligence Division?”

  “I mean away from your investigation.”

  “Away from Jack Ryan, Jr.? No, ma’am. On the contrary, just like you, we are still very interested in him.”

  “You obviously don’t have a case.” She said it with derision in her voice.

  Lipton drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “The Justice Department’s inquiry is just an intelligence-gathering operation at this point; whether or not an indictment comes from this is yet to be determined.”

  “And you are running it?”

  “I am running you. You don’t really need to know anything more than that at this stage.”

  Melanie looked out the windshield at the concrete wall as she spoke. “When I first heard from you in January, after DD/CIA Alden was arrested, you said exactly the same thing. The FBI’s National Security Branch was looking into Alden’s concerns about Jack Junior and Hendley Associates, suspicions that Jack and his coworkers were getting classified intelligence about national security affairs to make illegal trades on world financial markets. But you said it was all speculation, and no determination had been made by CID that any crime had been committed. Are you telling me that here we are, six months later, and nothing has changed?”

  “Things have changed, Miss Kraft, but they are things you are not privy to.”

  Melanie heaved a sigh. This was a nightmare. She had hoped she’d seen the last of Darren Lipton and Counterintelligence Division. “I want to know what you have on him. I want to know what this is all about. If you want my help, you need to fill me in.”

  The older man shook his head, but he retained his little smile. “You are CIA on loan to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and you are, for all intents and purposes, my confidential informant in this inquiry. That does not get you a look at the case file. You have a legal responsibility to cooperate with the FBI on this, not to mention a moral one.”

  “What about Mary Pat Foley?”

  “What about her?”

  “When we met, you told me she was part of the inquiry into Hendley Associates as well, so I could not reveal any information to her. Have you at least managed to clear her in… in this yet?”

  Lipton just said, “Nope.”

  “So you think Mary Pat and Jack are somehow involved in a crime?”

  “It’s a possibility we have not ruled out. The Foleys have been friends with the Ryans for over thirty years. In my line of work you realize that tight relationships like that mean people talk to one another. We don’t know the details of the relationship between Junior and Director Foley, but we do know they have met a number of times over the past year. It is possible that, with her clearances, she could be communicating classified information through Jack to benefit Hendley Associates.”

  Melanie leaned her head back against the headrest and let out a long sigh. “This is fucking crazy, Lipton. Jack Ryan is a financial analyst. Mary Pat Foley is… hell, she’s an American institution. You just said it yourself. They are old friends. They go to lunch once in a blue moon. I usually go with them. Even entertaining the possibility that they are involved in some national security crime against the U.S. is outlandish.”

  “Let me remind you what you told us. When Charles Alden asked you for information tying John Clark to Jack Ryan, Jr., and Hendley Associates, you indicated your belief that they were, in fact, involved in something more than trading and currency arbitrage. You told me, in only our second conversation, that you believed Ryan was in Pakistan during the events that transpired there last winter.”

  She hesitated for a moment. “I thought he was. He reacted very suspiciously when I mentioned it. There was other… circumstantial evidence at the time that made me think he was lying to me. But nothing I could prove. But even if he was lying to me, even if he was in Pakistan… that does not prove anything.”

  “Then you need to dig a little deeper.”

  “I’m not a cop, Lipton, and I’m definitely not an FBI national security agent.”

  Lipton smiled at her. “You’d be a damn good one, Melanie. How ’bout I talk to some people?”

  She did not return the smile. “How ’bout I pass?”

  His smile faded. “We have yet to get to the bottom of this. If there is a crime being committed by Hendley Associates, we need to know.”

  “I haven’t talked to you for… what? Six months? Why haven’t you been doing anything for the past half a year?”

  “We have, Melanie, via other means. Again, you are just one tiny piece of the puzzle. That said, you are our inside man… I should say ‘woman.’” He said the last part with a grin and a quick glance down at Melanie’s tight Puma jacket.

  She ignored his misogyny and said, “So, what has changed? Why are you here today?”

  “What, you don’t like our little visits?”

  Melanie just stared at Lipton. Her look said Eat shit. It was a look he’d received from many beautiful women in his life.

  Darren gave her a little wink. “My superiors want movement on this. There has been talk of wiretaps, location-tracking equipment, even a surveillance team put on Ryan and some of his coworkers.”

  Melanie shook her head emphatically. “No!”

  “But I told them that was not necessary. Due to your… intimate relationship with the subject, any close surveillance would be an invasion of your privacy as well. My superiors were not moved by this. They don’t think you have been that helpful to date. But in the end, I bought you a little time to get us some actionable intel on your own, before the FBI orders a full-court press.”

  “What do you want?”

  “We
need to know where he is, twenty-four-seven, or as close as you can get us to that. We need to know of any trips he takes, flight times and flight numbers, hotels he stays in, people he meets with.”

  “When he travels for business, he doesn’t take me with him.”

  “Well, you will just have to get more out of him through subtle questions. Pillow talk,” he said with a wink.

  She did not respond.

  Lipton continued, “Have him e-mail you his itinerary when he travels. Tell him you miss him and want to know where he’s going. Get him to send you his e-mail confirmation from the airline when he books his travel.”

  “He doesn’t fly commercial. His company has a plane.”

  “A plane?”

  “Yes. A Gulfstream. It flies out of BWI, but that’s all I know. He’s mentioned it a few times.”

  “Why don’t I know about this?”

  “I have no idea. I told Alden about it.”

  “Well, you didn’t tell me. I’m FBI, Alden was CIA, and Alden is under house arrest at the moment. He sure as hell isn’t working with us anymore.” Darren winked again. “We’re the good guys.”

  “Right,” she replied.

  “We need you to get intel on his coworkers as well. Who he travels with, primarily.”

  “How?”

  “Tell him you are jealous, suspicious he has other lovers. Whatever it takes. I saw the two of you together just now. You have him wrapped around your finger. That’s great. You can use that.”

  “Fuck you, Lipton.”

  Lipton smiled wildly; she could see he enjoyed the repartee. “I can arrange that, my dear. Now we’re on the same page. Let me just lower the seat here. Not the first time the Sienna’s suspension has gotten a workout, if you know what I mean.”

  He was joking, but Melanie Kraft wanted to puke. Almost instinctively she reached out and slapped the middle-aged FBI agent across the jaw.

  The hard contact between the palm of her hand and Lipton’s fleshy face sounded like a rifle shot in the enclosed minivan.