Tom Clancy - Locked On

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 attaché; 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?”

You have no idea, Jack thought to himself. He smiled. “Nothing I’m not used to. I became great friends with guys on my detail.”

“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 deserved a straight answer. “Actually, yes. It was tough. I’m not looking forward to that. If my dad becomes President, I’ll talk to him and my mom. I live a pretty low-profile life. I am going to refuse protection.”

“Is that safe?”

“Yeah, sure. I’m not worried.” He smiled over his wineglass. “Don’t they teach you CIA folks how to kill a man with a spoon?”

“Something like that.”

“Great. You can watch my back.”

“You couldn’t afford me,” she said with a laugh. Dinner was excellent; the conversation was fun and it flowed except for when Jack tried to probe Melanie once again about her family. She stayed as tigstayed aht-lipped about her family as she did about CIA.

They strolled home together after ten; the streets had thinned of foot traffic, and a cold wind blew in from the Potomac.

Jack walked her up the drive toward the door of her tiny apartment.

“I had fun,” Melanie said.

“Me, too. Can we do it again soon?”

“Of course.” They got to the door. “Listen, Jack. I’d better get this out of the way. I don’t kiss on the first date.”

Ryan smiled. “Neither do I.” He extended a hand, which she took slowly, careful to keep the astonishment and embarrassment off her face.

“Have a great night. You’ll be hearing from me.”

“I hope so.”

Nigel Embling’s house was in the center of Peshawar, not far from the massive and ancient Bala Hisar Fort, which, with its ninety-foot ramparted walls, commands the high ground of the city and lands around it.

The city bustled with activity, but Embling’s home was quiet and clean, an idyllic oasis of plants and flowers, the sound of tinkling fountains in the courtyard, and the smell of old books and furniture polish in the very British study on the second floor.

Embling sat next to Driscoll at a wide table in his study. Across from them, thirty-five-year-old Major Mohammed al Darkur wore Western civilian clothing, a pair of brown slacks with a black button-down shirt. Al Darkur had come alone to Embling’s to meet a man he assumed was an officer in the CIA. He’d done his best to establish the bona fides of the man he had been introduced to as “Sam,” but Driscoll had deflected his questions about other CIA officers that al Darkur had run into while working with the ISI.

This worked to Driscoll’s benefit. The CIA was, as far as al Darkur was concerned, too supportive of elements in Pakistani intelligence. Elements that al Darkur knew were actively working against them. He found the CIA and America by extension to be naive and too ready to put its trust in those who paid lip service to the shared values between the two organizations.