Threat Vector

by Tom Clancy

  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.

  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.”

  Wei paused, took a sip of water, and cleared his throat.

  He returned to his teleprompter. “I have a business and a political background, I am not a soldier or a sailor. But as a businessman I understand the value of property and the legal exercise of proprietary rights. And as a politician I represent the will of the people, and I, in whatever capacity I possess, claim the property of our ancestors for today’s China.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, facts are not something to be accepted or rejected. Facts are truths, and behind me on the map, you see the truth. For nearly one thousand years these seas, and the land that exists within them, have been the historical property of China, and it is time for the historical injustice of the theft of this property to end.

  “So with our territorial claim established, now comes the question of what to do with those peoples who reside and make commerce illegally in our territory. If a man is living in your house uninvited, if you are a good person you don’t just throw him out. You tell him he must leave before taking further action.

  “My predecessors have made such notifications for some sixty years. I see no reason I should do the same. As the people’s leader, I see my role in this long-standing injustice as putting those nations in our territory on immediate notice that we will be reclaiming our rightful property in the South China Sea. Not at some vague time in the future, but immediately.”

  Wei looked up, directly at the camera, and repeated himself: “Immediately.

  “If the use of force becomes necessary in this endeavor, the world at large must recognize that responsibility for this lies with those entrenched on Chinese territory who ignored repeated polite requests to remove themselves.”

  Wei pushed his glasses up higher on his nose, addressed the camera directly again, and smiled. “We have worked very hard for very many years to establish good relations with countries all over the world. Currently we do business with over one hundred twenty nations, and we consider ourselves, first and foremost, friends to our business partners. Our movements in the critical area of the South China Sea should be recognized as our attempt to make sea lanes safe for everyone, and it is in the interest o
f world commerce that we do this.”

  He said the next line with a wide smile and in halting but understandable English. “Ladies and gentlemen, China is open for business.”

  And then he switched back to Mandarin. “Thank you very much. I wish you all prosperity.”

  The president stepped off to the side and out of the room, giving the full camera shot to the map of the South China Sea, including a line of dashes, nine in total, that all but encircled the sea.

  As the image on hundreds of millions of Chinese televisions stood static, “The Internationale,” the anthem of the Communist Party of China, played in the background.

  TWENTY

  At ten a.m. on the Monday morning after President Wei’s national address, there was a full house in the Oval Office. Twelve men and women sat on the two sofas and six chairs, and President of the United States Jack Ryan had rolled his own chair around in front of his desk to be closer to the action.

  President Ryan at first considered having the meeting in the conference facility in the Situation Room in the basement of the West Wing. But he decided the Oval Office would be the proper venue, as China had not actually done anything yet, other than make vague threats in diplomatic-speak. Also he decided to get everyone together today in the Oval Office because his intention was, in part, to rally his troops so that they would all be focused on a task that, Ryan thought, he and his administration had not focused on sufficiently in the first year of his new administration.

  And the Oval Office commanded suitable authority for this purpose.

  On the sofa in front of Ryan and to his right, Secretary of State Scott Adler sat next to the director of national intelligence, Mary Pat Foley. Next to them was Vice President Rich Pollan. Across the coffee table on the other sofa, the director of the CIA, Jay Canfield, sat between Secretary of Defense Bob Burgess and Ryan’s chief of staff, Arnie van Damm. National Security Adviser Colleen Hurst sat on the wingback chair on the far side of the coffee table. On other chairs arrayed on either side of her were the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General David Obermeyer, the U.S. ambassador to China, Kenneth Li, and Attorney General Dan Murray.