Lipton said, “I’ve been working counter-intel operations for most of thirty years. I’ve worked ops against Americans working for foreign nations, Americans working for organized crime, or just Americans committing acts of espionage for shits and grins — assholes who leak classified docs onto the Internet just because they can. I’ve been at this long enough to where the little hairs on the back of my neck stick up when I’m being lied to, and I put people in federal prison for telling lies.”
His voice had softened, but now the menace returned.
“I swear to God, young lady, if I get so much as a twitch in the hairs on the back of my neck that you are not shooting straight with me, you and your father will be cellmates at the shittiest, tightest facility the DOJ can find for you. You got me?”
Melanie just looked off into space.
“We’re done,” Lipton said. “But you can be sure I’ll be in touch.”
Melanie Kraft rode nearly alone on the Yellow Line Metro, across the Potomac and back toward her little carriage-house apartment in Alexandria. Her face was in her hands for most of the way, and though she did her best to control her tears, she sobbed from time to time as she thought about her conversation with Lipton.
It had been almost nine years since she’d learned that her father was a traitor to the United States. She had been a senior in high school in Cairo, she had her scholarship to American in hand, and already she planned to major in international relations and go into government service, she hoped at the Department of State.
Her dad was attached to the embassy, working in the Office of Military Cooperation. Melanie had grown up proud of her father, and she loved the embassy and the people there, and wanted nothing more than to make that her own life, her own future.
A few weeks before Melanie’s graduation, her mother was away, back in Texas tending to a dying aunt, and her father had told her he would be spending a few days on temporary duty in Germany.
Two days later Melanie was out driving her Vespa on a Saturday morning and she saw him leaving an apartment building in Maadi, a southern neighborhood full of tree-lined streets and high-rise apartments.
She was surprised that he had lied to her about leaving town, but before she could drive up to confront him she saw a woman step out of the building and into his arms.
She was exotic and beautiful. Melanie had an immediate impression that she was not Egyptian; her features had some other Mediterranean influence. Perhaps Lebanese.
She watched them embrace.
She watched them kiss.
In her seventeen years she had never seen her father hold or kiss her mother like that.
Melanie pulled into the shadow of a shade tree across the four-lane street and watched them for a few moments more. Then her father climbed into his two-door and disappeared in traffic. She did not follow him. Instead she sat down in the shade between two parked cars and watched the building.
As she sat there, tears in her eyes, her mind filled with rage, she pictured the woman walking out the front door of the apartment building, and she pictured herself crossing the street, walking up to her, and beating her onto her back on the sidewalk.
After thirty minutes she had calmed down slightly. She rose to get back on her bike and leave, but the beautiful Mediterranean woman appeared on the curb in front of the building with a rolling suitcase. Seconds later a yellow Citroën with two men inside pulled up next to her. To Melanie’s surprise, they loaded her luggage in the trunk and she climbed in.
The men were young toughs, with heads on a swivel and conspiratorial movements. They pulled back into traffic and raced off.
On a whim she followed the car; on her Vespa it was easy to keep up with the yellow Citroën in traffic. She cried as she steered the little bike and thought of her mother.
They drove for twenty minutes, crossing the Nile River on the 6th October Bridge. When they entered the Dokki district, Melanie’s broken heart sank. Dokki was full of foreign embassies. Somehow she now knew her father was not just having an affair, but was having an affair with some diplomat’s wife or other foreign national. She knew his position was sensitive enough that he could be court-martialed or even thrown in jail for this act of utter foolishness.
Then the yellow Citroën pulled into the gates of the Palestinian embassy, and she knew, again, she just knew, that this was not just an affair.
Her father was involved in espionage.
She did not confront the colonel at first. She thought of her own future; she knew if he was arrested there would be no chance she could ever get a job working for the Department of State, the daughter of an American traitor.
But the night before her mother returned from Dallas, Melanie walked into his study, up to the edge of his desk, and she stood there, in front of him, on the verge of tears.
“What’s wrong?”
“You know what’s wrong.”
“I do?”
“I saw her. I saw you together. I know what you are doing.”
Colonel Kraft denied the allegations at first. He told her his travel plans were changed at the last minute and he’d gone to meet an old friend, but Melanie’s razor-sharp intellect defeated lie after lie and the forty-eight-year-old colonel became more and more desperate to extricate himself from his deceit.
He broke down in tears next; he confessed to the relationship, told Melanie the woman’s name was Mira and he had been having a clandestine affair for some months now. He told her he loved her mother and he had no excuse for his actions. He buried his face in his hands at his desk and asked Melanie to give him some time to get himself together.
But Melanie was not through with him.
“How could you do it?”
“I told you, she seduced me. I was weak.”
Melanie shook her head. It wasn’t what she was asking. “Was it for the money?”
Ron Kraft looked up from his hands. “The money? What money?”
“How much did they pay you?”
“Who? How much did who pay me?”
“Don’t tell me you did it to help their cause.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The Palestinians.”
Colonel Kraft sat up fully now. From cowed to defiant. “Mira isn’t Palestinian. She’s Lebanese. A Christian. Where did you get the idea that—”
“Because after you left your love nest two men picked her up and then drove to the Palestinian embassy on Al-Nahda Street!”
Father and daughter stared at each other for a long time.
Finally he spoke, his voice low and unsure: “You are mistaken.”
She just shook her head. “I know what I saw.”
It soon became clear that her father, the Air Force colonel, had no idea that his mistress was using him.
“What have I done?”
“What did you tell her?”
He put his head back in his hands and sat there, silently, for some time. With his daughter standing over him, he thought back to every conversation he’d had with the beautiful Mira. Finally he nodded. “I told her things. Little things about work. About colleagues. About our allies. Just conversation. She hated the Palestinians… She talked about them all the time. I… I told her about what we were doing to help Israel. I was proud. Boastful.”
Melanie did not respond. But her father said what she was thinking.
“I am a fool.”
He wanted to turn himself in, to explain what he had done, damn the consequences.
But seventeen-year-old Melanie screamed at him, told him that by attempting to make peace with his own foolishness, he would destroy the lives of both herself and her mother. She told him he needed to be a man and break off the relationship with Mira and never speak again of what he had done.