blunted his excitement to some degree.
Jack shook the man’s hand. He expected to be asked for an autograph or a picture, but he could tell Chavez was having a cooling effect on the encounter.
Yao, Ryan, Chavez, and Biery headed back down to the lobby. Adam said to Jack, “I bet that gets old.”
Ryan chuckled. “Getting recognized? It’s not a big problem. I don’t get noticed one-tenth as much as I used to.”
Gavin said, “I had a vendor in the office the other day who didn’t know Ryan worked with us. When I introduced him I thought the guy was going to crap his pants, he was so thrilled. Must have been a big Jack Ryan, Senior, fan.”
Everyone laughed. The Campus team wished Adam a good evening, and Adam headed out into the night to catch a ferry across Victoria Harbour, back to his apartment.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Melanie Kraft sat at a fast food restaurant in McLean, just a couple blocks from her office at Liberty Crossing, picking at her salad. She did not have much of an appetite after her conversation with Special Agent Lipton that morning. She worried that at any time, carloads of FBI agents could appear to arrest her, and she even caught herself looking out through the glass of the shop more than once when a car pulled up.
She thought, not for the first time, about sitting Jack down and telling him what was going on. She knew it would destroy his trust in her, and he would be justified in never speaking to her again, but maybe if she explained the situation, the entire situation, he would understand enough that he would not hate her for the rest of his life. She’d done very little, after all, in her mission to spy on him for the FBI. In fact, other than a couple of phone calls about his trips abroad, Lipton was correct when he said she was basically useless as an agent.
Her phone rang, and she answered it without looking. “Hello?”
“Hey, hon.” It was Lipton. “Okay. You get what you want. Come on over and you can meet with my boss, Special Agent in Charge Packard.”
“Come over? Come over
“To J. Edgar. Where else?” The J. Edgar Hoover Building, on Pennsylvania Avenue, was the headquarters of the FBI.
Melanie balked. She did not want to be seen walking into the Hoover Building. “Can we meet someplace else?”
“Sugar, do you think SAIC Packard’s got nothing better to do than to drive out to McLean this afternoon?”
“I’ll take the afternoon off and come to D.C. Right now. You tell me where. Anyplace but the Hoover Building.”
Lipton blew out a long sigh and said, “Let me call you back.”
An hour later Melanie entered the same underground garage where she had met with Lipton previously. Unlike that early Saturday morning, it was now packed with cars.
She found two men standing next to a black Chevy Suburban with government plates.
Packard was younger than Lipton by a few years, though his hair was fully gray. He passed Melanie his credentials, which she looked at briefly to confirm his name and title, and then he handed her all the paperwork Lipton had shown her that morning.
Packard said, “What we are asking of you, Miss Kraft, is very simple. Place a software location tracker on Mr. Ryan’s phone without his knowledge, and then stand down. We are not telling you we won’t require your services again, but we will not require you to provide us updates on his whereabouts.”
Melanie said, “I have not gotten a straight answer from Special Agent Lipton, maybe you can provide me with one. Just what evidence do you have that he has committed any crimes?”
Packard took a moment. “It’s an ongoing investigation, of which Mr. Ryan is a subject of interest. That’s really all I can tell you.”
Melanie was not satisfied. “I can’t just indefinitely spy on my boyfriend. Especially if I have no reason to believe he’s done anything wrong.”
Packard turned to Lipton now. “Darren, can you give us a minute?”
Lipton looked like he was going to argue. Packard raised a single bushy eyebrow, and Lipton shuffled off through the parking garage, headed up the ramp to street level.
Packard leaned back against his Suburban. “First things first. I know Special Agent Lipton is a little rough around the edges.”
“That’s putting it mildly.”
“He’s damn good at what he does, so I give him some leeway, but I know this must be difficult for you for many reasons.”
Melanie nodded.
“I’m sorry about this entire situation. Hell, to tell you the truth, Jack Ryan, Senior, is my hero. The last thing in the world I want to do is expose his son in some sort of illegality. That said, I swore an oath, and I go where the law points me.
“I know Lipton has, essentially, threatened to expose your father’s involvement with that Palestinian thing in Egypt if you don’t play ball with us. Sometimes our job gets a little dirty like that.”
Melanie looked down to her hands.
“I’ll be honest with you. I approved him making that threat. But we only did that because we know there is no way we can conduct this investigation without your help. I mean, of course we can put a twelve-man surveillance team on him, get federal wiretaps, and a search warrant for his home and office. But you and I know that is going to make a lot of news in this town, and we want to avoid that. If nothing comes out of this, we don’t want to do anything to harm his reputation, or the reputation of his father. So we want to do this with all the sensitivity the situation warrants.
“You get that, right?”
After a moment Melanie said, “Yes, sir.”
“Great. If you can plant the tracking software that the judge has allowed us to use, then we can be aware of his movements without doing the dog-and-pony show that’s going to make the front page of
“And my situation?” she asked.
“Nobody needs to know about that. You have my personal assurance that those sleeping dogs will continue to lie where they are.” He smiled. “Help us, and we’ll help you. It’s a win-win, Miss Kraft.”
“All right,” said Melanie. “He’s out of town right now, but when he gets back I’ll download the thing onto his phone.”
“That’s all we need.” Packard handed her his business card. “If Darren gives you too much trouble, feel free to give me a call. I can’t make him go away; the last thing anyone wants to do is bring someone else into this situation. But I will have a talk with him about his colorful behavior.”
“I appreciate that, Agent Packard.”
The two shook hands.
Adam Yao, Ding Chavez, and Jack Ryan, Jr., met at the Peninsula in the early afternoon. Yao had traded vehicles with a neighbor, allowing the neighbor to drive his Mercedes in exchange for using the man’s maroon Mitsubishi Grandis, a seven-seat minivan common in Asia. He had no idea if his own car had been spotted by the Triads, but he did not want to take any chances, and he liked the idea of having a little extra room in his vehicle for lugging around the men from Hendley Associates.
They drove up Nathan Road a few blocks, and Yao parked in an hourly lot. “I thought we could get our operation set up for this evening, maybe work out any kinks in our surveillance process.”
Chavez said to Yao, “You are in charge here. Just let us know what you want us to do.”
Adam hesitated. Ryan knew the CIA man must surely feel intimidated by running Domingo Chavez in a
