Tom Clancy - Command Authority

Jack looked back to his beer. He knew he should feel flattered, but he did not. “Not much of a story, really. I’m here working in The City for a few months.”

She extended a hand. “Emily. Pleased to meet you.”

Jack looked into her eyes for a quick moment, and determined her to be not quite inebriated, but not terribly far from it.

He shook her hand. “I’m John.”

Emily brushed her hair back over her shoulder. “I love America. Went over last year with my ex. Not ex-husband, no, nothing like that, just a bloke I dated for a while, before I realized what a narcissistic sod he was. A right bastard. Anyway, got a holiday out of him, at least, so he was good for something.”

“That’s nice.”

“Which one of the states do you call home?”

“Maryland,” he said.

She looked deeply into his eyes while she talked. Jack saw immediately that she registered a faint sense of recognition, and she was confused by this. She recovered and said, “That’s East Coast, right? Near Washington, D.C. Haven’t been to the East Coast. Me and my ex did the West Coast, quite loved San Francisco, but the traffic down in L.A. was bloody awful. Never did quite get used to driving on the right side of the—”

Emily’s eyes widened suddenly, and she stopped talking.

Shit, Jack said to himself. Here we go.

“Oh… my… God .”

“Please,” said Jack, softly.

“You’re Junior Jack Ryan.”

As far as Jack knew, he had never been called this by anyone in his life. He thought the girl might have been a little tongue-tied. He said, “That’s me. Junior Jack.”

“I don’t believe it!” Emily spoke louder this time, just below a shout. She started to turn back to her friend across the room, but Jack reached out and gently took hold of her forearm.

“Emily. Please. I’d appreciate you not making a big deal out of it.”

The redhead looked around the room quickly, then at Yalda, who was looking their way. Emily turned back to Jack and, with a conspiratorial nod, she said, “Right. I understand. No problem. Your secret’s safe with me.”

“Thanks.” Not in the mood, Jack said to himself again, but he smiled.

Emily slipped into the booth, across from him.

Damn.

They talked for a few minutes; she asked him a dozen rapid-fire questions about his life and what he was doing here and how it was that he was all by himself without any protection. He responded with short answers; again, he wasn’t rude, he was simply trying to politely exude lack of interest from every pore of his body.

Emily had conspicuously not invited her friend to join them, but Jack saw a pair of men had ambled over to the olive-complexioned beauty sitting alone, and she was now in conversation herself.

He turned his attention back to Emily just as she said, “Jack… would it be forward of me to ask you if you’d like to go somewhere else where we can talk?”

Jack stifled yet another sigh. “Do you want an honest answer?”

“Well… sure.”

“Then… yeah. That would be pretty forward.”

The young woman was taken aback, not sure what to make of the American’s response. Before she could speak, Jack said, “I’m sorry. I’ve got a really early morning tomorrow.”

Emily said she understood, then told Jack to stay right where he was. She rushed back over to her table, grabbed her purse, and came back. She pulled out a business card and a pen, and began writing a number down.

Ryan took a sip of his lager and watched her.

“I hope you’ll give me a call when you aren’t busy. I’d love to show you around town. I was born and raised here, so you could do worse for a tour guide.”

“I’m sure.”

She handed Jack her card in an overt fashion that he knew was designed to show off for her friend, who was now sitting alone again. He took it with a forced smile, playing along for her benefit. She had, after all, played along with his ruse and not announced to the room he was the son of the President of the United States.

“Lovely to meet you, Jack.”

“Likewise.”

Emily reluctantly headed back to her table, and Jack worked on finishing his beer. He slipped her card into his coat; he would get home and then he would toss it onto a shelf with nearly a dozen other cards, napkins, and torn bits of envelopes, each one with the phone number of a female he’d met in similar circumstances in just two weeks here in the UK.

As he drank, Jack did not look toward Emily’s table, but a few seconds later the redhead’s friend shouted loud enough to be heard throughout the entire establishment, “No bleedin’ way!”

Jack reached inside his coat for his wallet.

Two minutes later he was out on the sidewalk—they called it a pavement over here, which Jack found to be one of the more logical of all the discrepancies between British English and American English.

He walked alone through the night to the Bank underground station, oppressed by the feeling that he was being watched. It was just his nerves—he had no reason to suspect he was really being followed—but each time he was recognized by someone he didn’t know his concerns grew that, despite his best intentions, he was continuing to expose those he cared about to danger.

He had come to the UK thinking he would slip into the fabric of the city unnoticed, but in his two weeks here at least a half-dozen people—in pubs, in the Tube station, or standing in line to buy fish and chips—had made it clear they knew exactly who he was.

Jack Ryan, Jr., was the same height as his world-famous father, and he possessed the same strong jaw and piercing blue eyes. He’d been on television when he was younger, but even though he’d done what he could to stay out of the public eye as much as possible in the past several years, he still looked enough like his younger self that he couldn’t go anywhere without harboring concerns.

A few months earlier he had been working for The Campus when he learned Chinese intelligence knew something about who he was and what he really did for a living. This knowledge by the enemy compromised not only Ryan but also his friends and coworkers, and it also had the potential to compromise his father’s administration.

So far the Chinese had not been a problem; Jack hoped his father’s air strike on China had blown the hell out of anyone who could link him with intelligence work, but he suspected the real reason had more to do with the fact that the new leaders in Beijing were doing their best to make amends with the United States. That their motivations were economically based and not due to any new altruism on the part of the Chicoms did not diminish the fact that—for now, at least—the Chinese were playing nice.

And Jack knew his breakup with Melanie Kraft, his girlfriend of one year, had also contributed to his feeling of mistrust and unease. He’d met several women in the UK (the single females here didn’t seem to have the shyness gene more common in U.S. women) and he’d been on a few dates, but he hadn’t put enough distance between himself and Melanie yet to consider anything serious.

At times he wondered if a series of no-strings-attached one-night stands might cure him of his current malaise, but when push came to shove, he recognized that he wasn’t really that type of guy. His parents must have raised him better, he surmised, and the thought of some asshole treating one of his sisters like a consumable product off the shelf made him ball his fists up in anger.

He’d come to face the fact that although he’d never had trouble attracting members of the opposite sex, he really wasn’t cut out to be much of a Casanova.