near the former home of George and Martha Washington, on a portion of the street that was still paved with pre — Revolutionary War cobblestones. Ryan looked around at the beautiful old homes, surprised that a government employee in her mid-twenties could afford to live here.
He found her door and understood. Melanie lived at the address of a beautiful brick Georgian home, yes, but she lived in a carriage house in the back through the garden. They were still pretty nice digs, but he saw from the outside that her place was just larger than a one-car garage.
She invited him in, and he confirmed that the apartment was, indeed, tiny, but she kept it neat.
“I love your place.”
Melanie smiled. “Thank you. I love it, too. I’d never be able to afford it without help.”
“Help?”
“An old professor of mine from AU is married to a real estate guy; they own the home. It was built in 1794. She rents the carriage house to me for about what I’d pay for a regular apartment around here. It’s tiny, but it’s all I need.”
Jack glanced over at a card table in the corner. On top of it sat a MacBook Pro and a massive stack of books, notebooks, and loose printed pages. Some of the books, Ryan noticed, were printed in Arabic script.
“Is that NCTC south?” he asked with a smile.
She chuckled, but quickly grabbed her coat and her purse and headed for the door. “Shall we?”
Jack figured that was it for the grand tour, but other than the bathroom, he could see it all from where he stood, anyway. He followed her out the door and into the cool evening.
It was a ten-minute stroll to King Street, and they chatted about the old buildings as they walked. There were a lot of other people out, walking to and from dinner at this hour on a Saturday night.
They stepped into the restaurant and were led to a romantic table for two overlooking the street. As they settled in with their menus, Jack asked, “Have you been here before?”
“Honestly, no. I hate to admit it, but I don’t eat out much. Twenty-five-cent wing night at Murphy’s is a big time splurge for me.”
“Nothing wrong with wings.”
Jack ordered a bottle of pinot noir, and they perused the menu while they chatted.
“So you were at Georgetown.” Melanie said it as a statement.
Ryan smiled. “Do you know that because Mary Pat told you, because you Googled me, or because you are in the CIA and you know everything?”
She blushed slightly. “I was at AU. I saw you a few times at things around town. You were a year ahead of me, I think. You were hard to miss with that big Secret Service guy around you all the time.”
“Mike Brennan. He was a second dad to me. Great guy, but he scared off a lot of people. He’s my excuse for having a boring social life in college.”
“Good excuse. I’m sure being a celebrity has its drawbacks.”
“I’m not a celebrity. Nobody recognizes me. My parents had money, but I sure as hell wasn’t raised with a silver spoon in my mouth. I had a summer job through high school and college, I even worked construction for a while.”
Melanie said, “I was just talking about the trappings associated with being famous. I wasn’t suggesting you don’t deserve to be successful.”
“Sorry,” said Jack. “I’ve had to defend myself more than once on that front.”
“I understand. You want to be accepted for your own talents, not for who your parents are.”
“You are very perceptive,” Jack said.
“I’m an analyst.” She smiled. “I analyze.”
“Maybe we should both analyze the menus before the waiter comes back.”
Melanie’s smile widened. “Uh-oh. Somebody is trying to change the subject.”
“Damn right.” They both laughed now.
The wine came, Jack tasted it, and the waiter poured for them both.
“To Mary Pat.”
“To Mary Pat.” They clinked their wineglasses and smiled at each other.
“So,” Jack asked, “tell me about CIA?”
“What do you want to know?”
“More than you can tell me.” He thought for a moment.
“Have you spent any time overseas?”
“You mean with the Agency?”
“Yes.”
“I have.”
“Where?” He caught himself. “Sorry. You can’t tell me where, can you?”
“Sorry,” she said with a shrug. Jack saw that although she’d lived the life of an intelligence analyst for only a couple of years, she was comfortable with secrets.
“Do you speak a foreign language?”
“Yes.”
Jack started to ask her if that was classified, too, but she filled him in.
“Level-three Masri — Egyptian Arabic — level-two French, level-one Spanish. Nothing to write home about.”
“How many levels are there?”
“Sorry, Jack. I don’t get out much.” She laughed at herself. “I don’t have many conversations with people outside government service. It’s called the ILR scale. Interagency Language Roundtable. There are five levels of proficiency. Level three means, basically,s, basic that I have normal rate of speech function in the language, but I make small mistakes that don’t affect the comprehension of a listener native in the language I am speaking.”
“And level one?”
“It means I’m sloppy.” She laughed again. “What can I say? I learned Arabic living in Cairo, and I learned Spanish in college. Nothing quite like needing to speak a language to get fed to promote the learning of it.”
“Cairo?”
“Yes. Dad was an Air Force attache; we spent five years in Egypt when I was in high school, and two more in Pakistan.”
“How was that?”
“I loved it. It was tough moving around as a kid, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Plus I learned Arabic, which has proven very helpful.”
Jack nodded. “I guess in your line of work it is.” He liked this girl. She did not put on airs at all, she neither tried to be overly sexy or a know-it-all. She was obviously highly intelligent, but she was self-deprecating about it at the same time.
And she was very sexy, and it was all natural.
He did notice, more than once, that she seemed to direct the focus of the conversation back on him.
“So,” she said with a playful smile. “I’m going to go out on a limb and guess you don’t live in a four-hundred- square-foot carriage house subsidized by your ex-professor.”
“I’ve got an apartment in Columbia. It’s near work. And near my parents in Baltimore. What about your family?”
The waiter brought their salads, and Melanie began talking about the restaurant. Jack wondered if she just possessed one of those minds that had a tendency to branch off into different subjects during conversations, or if she was trying to avoid the subject of her family. He couldn’t tell which it was, but he let it go.
They meandered back to the subject of Jack’s work. He explained his work at Hendley Associates in the most boring general terms imaginable, not entirely lies, but his explanation was rife with holes and secrets.
“So,” she asked. “When your dad becomes President again, you will have a Secret Service detail following you around wherever you go. Is that going to cause problems around your office?”
“Still. Didn’t it get stifling?”
Jack wanted to put on a cool face, but he stopped himself. She was asking him an honest question. She
