Threat Vector

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.

Lipton recoiled in pain and surprise, and his sly smile disappeared.

Melanie shouted at him, “I’m done with you! Tell your bosses that they can send another agent to talk to me if they want, I can’t stop them, but I’m not saying one more word to you!”

Lipton touched his fingertips to his lip, looked down at a small spot of blood from Melanie’s strike.

Melanie glared at him. She considered just getting out of the minivan and walking to the Metro. Whatever Jack was involved in, it wasn’t anything that was hurting the United States. She’d done what they’d asked of her back in January.

Now the FBI could kiss her ass.

As she turned to reach for the door handle, Lipton spoke again. His tone was soft but grave. He sounded like a different person.

“Miss Kraft. I am going to ask you a question. I want you to answer me truthfully.”

“I told you. I’m not talking to you anymore.”

“Answer this, and you can leave if you want, and I won’t follow.”

Melanie slumped back in the seat. Stared straight ahead out the windshield. “Fine. What?”

“Have you, Miss Kraft, ever been employed as an agent for a foreign principal?”

Now she turned to him. “What in God’s name are you talking about?”

“A foreign principal is a legal term that refers to the government of a country other than the United States of America.”

“I know what a foreign principal is. I don’t know why you are asking me that.”

“Yes or no?”

Melanie shook her head. Genuinely confused. “No. Of course not. But if you are investigating me for something, I want a lawyer from the Agency here to—”

“Has any member of your family ever been employed as an agent for a foreign principal?”

Melanie Kraft stopped speaking. Her entire body stiffened.

Darren Lipton just looked at her. A fresh drop of blood glistened on his lip from the light of a fluorescent lamp outside the van.

“What… are you… what is this?”

“Answer the question.”

She did so, but more hesitantly than before. “No. Of course not. And I resent the accusation that—”

Lipton interrupted her. “Are you familiar with Title Twenty-two of the United States Code? Specifically Subchapter Two, section six hundred eleven?”

Her voice cracked as she shook her head and softly replied, “I am not.”

“It’s called the Foreign Agents Registration Act. I could recite it for you chapter and verse if you like, but let me just give you the takeaway from that little piece of American federal law. If someone is working for another country, as a spy, for example, and does not register with the U.S. government as such, they are subject to a sentence of up to five years in prison for each act as a representative of the other country.”

A hesitant and confused “So?” from Melanie Kraft.

“Next question. Are you familiar with Title Eighteen of the USC?”

“Again, Agent Lipton, I do not know why—”

“That one is awesome. My personal favorite. It says — and this is paraphrased, of course, but I can quote it backward and forward — that you can get five years in a federal lockup for lying to a federal officer.” Darren smiled for the first time since Kraft had slapped him. “A federal officer like me, for instance.”

Melanie’s voice had none of the bluster and insolence it did two minutes ago. “So?”

“So, Melanie, you just lied to me.”

Melanie said nothing.

“Your father, Colonel Ronald Kraft, passed top-secret military information to the Palestinian Authority in 2004. This makes him an agent of a foreign principal. Except he sure as hell never registered as such, and he was never arrested, never prosecuted, never even suspected by the U.S. government.”

Melanie was dumbfounded. Her hands began to shake, and her vision narrowed.

Lipton’s smile widened. “And you, sugar, know all about it. You knew about it at the time, which means you just lied to a federal officer.”

Melanie Kraft reached for the door handle, but Darren Lipton took her by the shoulder and spun her back around violently.

“You also lied on your application to the CIA when you said you had neither knowledge of nor contact with agents of a foreign government. Your dear old dad was a treasonous motherfucking spy and you knew it!”

She lurched again for the door handle, and again Lipton spun her back to him.

“Listen to me! We’re a quarter-mile from the Hoover Building. I can be at my desk in ten minutes working up an affidavit, and I can have you arrested by lunch on Monday. There is no parole for federal crimes, so five years means five fucking years!”

Melanie Kraft was in shock; she felt the blood rushing from her head and leaving her hands. Her feet felt cold.

She tried to speak, but she had no words.

EIGHTEEN

Lipton’s voice softened again. “Honey… calm down. I don’t care about your piece-of-shit dad. I really don’t. And I don’t even care all that much about his poor pitiful daughter. But I do care about Jack Ryan, Junior, and it’s my job to use every last tool in my toolbox to learn everything I need to know about him.”

Melanie looked up at him through puffy, tear-clouded eyes.

He continued, “I don’t give two shits if Jack Ryan, Junior, is the son of the President of the United States. If he and his fat-cat financial management company up there in West Odenton are involved in using classified intelligence to make themselves rich, I will take them all down.

“Are you going to help me, Melanie?”