For her sake and the sake of her mother.
He agreed.
She had not spoken to him since she left for college. He retired from the military, broke off contact with all his friends and colleagues from the Air Force, and he and his wife moved home to Dallas, where he took a job selling industrial solvents and lubricants.
Melanie’s mother died two years later of the same cancer that had killed her aunt. Melanie blamed her father, though she could not say why.
In college Melanie did her best to push it all out of her mind, to compartmentalize those few anomalous days of hell from a happy life that had led her inexorably toward her own future as an employee of the U.S. government.
But the event had had a powerful effect on her. Her desire to work in diplomacy turned into a desire to work in intelligence, a natural evolution for her to fight back against the enemy spies who nearly ripped her family, and her world, apart.
She told no one about what she saw, and she lied on her CIA application and in her interviews. She told herself that she was doing the right thing. She would not allow her life, her future, to be cursed by the fact that her father could not keep his pants on. She could do so much good for her country, so much good that could not be appreciated now.
She was surprised when the lie detector did not pick up on her deception, but she decided that she had so thoroughly convinced herself that her father’s transgressions had nothing to do with her that her heart rate did not even change when she thought about it.
Her career in service to the United States would rectify all her father had done to damage their country.
Though she lived with the shame of what she knew, she had long since grown comfortable in the knowledge that no one else would ever know.
But when Darren Lipton confronted her with his knowledge of the incident, it was like she’d been grabbed by the ankles and pulled underwater. She panicked, she could not breathe, she wanted to get away.
Now that she knew people in the FBI were aware of her father’s act of espionage, she saw her world ending, her future in doubt. She now knew that at any time this could come back to haunt her.
She decided, as the Metro conductor announced her stop over the PA, that she would get Lipton what he needed on Jack. She had her own suspicions of her boyfriend. His rushing off out of the country, his deception as to where he was going and vagueness about his work. But she knew the man, she loved the man, and she did not believe for a second that he was stealing classified information to line his own pockets.
She would help Lipton, but it would come to nothing, and soon Lipton would be gone and this would all be over and behind her, another compartmentalized piece of her life. But unlike Cairo, she told herself, this would never come back to haunt her.
FBI Senior Special Agent Darren Lipton turned his Toyota Sienna onto U.S. 1 and headed south for the 14th Street Bridge. He crossed the Potomac at nine a.m., his heart still beating heavily from the encounter with the sexy piece of ass from the CIA as well as in anticipation for where he was now headed.
Things had gotten physical with Kraft, although certainly not in a way that he had anticipated. When she struck him he wanted to grab her by the throat and pull her into the backseat and punish her, but he knew that his superiors needed her.
And Lipton had learned to do what he was told, despite the urges that nearly consumed him.
The fifty-five-year-old knew he should get back home now, but there was a massage parlor operating out of a fleabag motel by the airport in Crystal City that he frequented when he couldn’t splurge on a high-class call girl, and a dump like that would be open for business this early in the morning. He decided he would let off a little of the pressure Miss Melanie Kraft built up in him before heading back home to Chantilly to his bitchy wife and his checked-out teenagers.
He would then report on today’s meeting to his superior, and await further instructions.
NINETEEN
It is estimated that nearly half a billion people tune in for China Central Television’s seven p.m. news hour. The fact that all local stations in China are ordered by government mandate to carry the program likely has much to do with this high number, but frequent announcements that the president would be making an important national address this evening ensured even higher ratings than normal.
Wei Zhen Lin’s address was also simulcast on China National Radio for those in the outer provinces who could not receive a television signal or could not afford a television, as well as China Radio International, ensuring immediate and widespread coverage around the globe.
The female news anchor opened the show by introducing President Wei, and then on televisions all across the country the image switched to the handsome and cool Wei walking alone toward a lectern centered on a red carpet. Behind him was a large monitor displaying the Chinese flag. On both sides of the small set, gold silk curtains hung from the ceiling.
Wei wore a gray suit and a red-and-blue regimental tie; his wire-rimmed glasses were a little low on his nose so that he could read a prepared statement from the teleprompter, but before he spoke he greeted nearly half of his countrymen with a wide toothy smile and a nod.
“Ladies, gentlemen, comrades, friends. I am speaking to you from Beijing, with a message for everyone here in China, in our special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau, in Taiwan, to the Chinese abroad, and to all our friends around the globe.
“I address you all today to deliver proud news about our nation’s future and the development of the socialist course.
“I am announcing with great joy our intentions regarding the South China Sea.”
Behind Wei, the image on the monitor changed from the Chinese flag to a map of the South China Sea. A line of dashes, nine in all, descended south from China into the sea. On the east it drooped just west of the Philippines, turned west at its southernmost point to run north of Malaysia and Brunei, then headed north, just off the shore of Vietnam.
The line of dashes formed a deep bowl that contained virtually the entire sea.
“Behind me you see a representation of Chinese territory. This has been Chinese territory for as long as the People’s Republic of China has been in existence and well before, though many of our friends and neighbors refuse to accept this fact. China has indisputable sovereignty of the South China Sea and sufficient historical and legal backing underpinning claims for this territory. These important waterways are a core interest of China, and for too long we have allowed our neighbors to dictate their terms to us, the fair claimants of this property.
“Before he became chairman of the Central Military Commission, my colleague, comrade, and friend Chairman Su Ke Qiang had been an outspoken critic of our reluctance to press the issue of the South China Sea. As a four-star general and an expert on military history, he was in a position to know how vulnerable we had become by allowing our neighbors to dictate to us our movements, fishing rights, and mining and drilling authorities in these waters that belong to us. Chairman Su has made rectifying this injustice a key component of his long-term military modernization. I applaud Chairman Su on his brilliant foresight and initiative.
“It is I addressing you today, and not Comrade Chairman Su, because I want to show that I agree with his assessment, and I personally authorize upcoming naval actions that will advance our territorial claims.
“It would be a serious miscalculation for other nations to assume there exists disagreement between Chairman Su and myself in any regard, but specifically with regard to our bilateral relations with our neighbors in the South China Sea region. I fully support the chairman’s recent clear remarks on China’s historical claim to these waters.”