Serious Risks. Rachel Lee
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and longer. This time DIS isn’t going in with the assumption that everything’s on the up-and-up. This time they know something’s seriously wrong, and they’re going to dig for any sign or symptom of it. It’s certainly apt to irritate people, and it should make anyone with a guilty conscience just a little uneasy. People get incautious when they’re worried, and you just might pick up on something.” He shrugged and lifted his fork. “I just want you to be alert and then share your impressions with me. Maybe you’ll get something, maybe you won’t.”
“Well, I can do that much,” Jessica readily promised, and then laughed. “I have to admit, though, when they ask me if I’ve had any suspicious contacts, you’re definitely going to be the picture that pops into my mind.”
Arlen laughed, too. “Just try not to look guilty.”
“Did you bring one of your cards for me today?” Jessica asked. “It doesn’t really matter, but last night I realized that I never knew FBI agents carried business cards. And then I got to wondering what it looks like.”
“Just a regular card. No bells or whistles or anything fancy.” He patted his pockets until he found the one holding his card case. “I don’t know why it is,” he said, “but I can never remember where I keep these damn things. Here you go. But I’d really be a lot happier if you didn’t carry this around with you.”
“I’ll give it right back, then.” She accepted the white card, studying it with an interest she didn’t bother to hide. Embossed in gold with an FBI badge in one corner, it identified Arlen as Special Agent in Charge of the local field office.
“Special Agent in Charge?” she read questioningly.
“We call it SAIC. It means I get to do a lot of extra paperwork and stand on the firing line for a lot of extra flak.”
She handed the card back and smiled at him. “You’re just being modest.”
“I’m never modest. It’s the plain truth. I also get to work twice as many hours as anyone else when we have multiple operations going.”
At that moment his pocket beeper tweeted at him. Looking rueful, he switched it off and spread his hands apologetically. “It also means I can’t enjoy an uninterrupted lunch with a lady. Will you excuse me?”
He crossed the room to the pay phone near the exit, weaving among tables with a grace that could only come from peak physical conditioning. A gun and a pocket pager. Shaking her head ruefully, Jessica lifted a forkful of crabmeat to her mouth. No sane woman would be attracted to a man who wore a gun under his coat on one side and a pager in the pocket on the other side. Neither object promised a tranquil existence, and that kind of excitement was not what she wanted.
But he hinted at other kinds of excitement, too, she found herself thinking wistfully. Excitement of a kind she’d never thought she might experience—and in all honesty still didn’t think she ever would.
With a sigh, she forced her thoughts back to the safer area of espionage. That was Arlen Coulter’s sole interest in her, and she would do well to remember it.
And then, like the proverbial bolt out of the blue, she remembered something that had happened just the week before last. No, maybe it had been a little longer ago than that. Closing her eyes, she tried to remember exactly when it had happened.
“Sorry I was gone so long,” Arlen said, sliding into his chair. And then he noticed her frown of concentration. “Jessica? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I just remembered something.” She looked at him, eyes troubled behind her lenses. “I suddenly remembered something that happened a couple of weeks ago. Someone I met. I was just trying to remember exactly when.”
Arlen leaned toward her intently. “You had a suspicious contact?”
“I don’t know. It wasn’t any big deal. It’s just that something didn’t feel right about it, and I was trying to pinpoint it. I don’t know how familiar you are with MTI, but a lot of us graduated from the local university, and many of us still have social and professional contacts there. I keep in touch with a lot of the professors from the computer science and engineering departments, and sometimes I brainstorm with them.”
Arlen nodded encouragingly. “Go on.”
“Well, on one of those visits Professor Kostermeyer in engineering introduced me to a couple of his graduate students. One of them was Chinese.”
“From Taiwan or the People’s Republic?”
“I don’t know. It never occurred to me to wonder.”
Arlen nodded again. “What happened?”
“Nothing, really, but even just thinking about it bothers me. I was in the supermarket two weeks ago, the one near my house.”
He nodded. “I know the one. Corbett’s.”
“Right. An awful long way from the university. And I ran into the Chinese grad student Kostermeyer introduced me to. The thing is, I really didn’t remember him until he reminded me, and then it struck me as really odd that he would remember me well enough to recognize me and call me by name several months later.” She watched him, half hoping he would reassure her somehow, maybe tell her that it wasn’t odd at all.
The back of Arlen’s neck was prickling overtime, a sure sign that this was important. It was an instinct that had never failed him yet. “Well, some people do have really amazing memories for faces and names. They’re also about as rare as ice at the equator. It’s exactly the kind of contact you’re supposed to report to your security officer. This is a classic type of recruitment approach. What exactly happened?”
“Well, he suggested we have lunch together, and I said I was busy. Then he suggested we do it another time, but I managed to keep it vague and left. It was just now, sitting here, that I really started thinking about it.” She shrugged. “Maybe I’m just getting paranoid because of this other stuff?”
“Did he by any chance offer to pick up the tab when he made the suggestion?” Students were usually too tight on money to do more than pick up their own tabs, especially foreign students, who were often living on very restricted stipends. If this fellow had offered to buy lunch, the contact would be even more suspicious.
She looked down, trying to remember exactly how the invitation had been worded. “I’m not sure about that, either. I just wasn’t paying enough attention, Arlen.” She raised eyes that asked for his understanding. “The whole thing seemed more like a slightly uncomfortable nuisance, if you want the truth. I figured he wanted some help getting a job at MTI. And I was vaguely worried that he might be persistent about it.”
“That may be all he wants,” Arlen agreed. “I’ve seen recruitments start out exactly like this, though.” Reaching out, he startled her once again by briefly covering her hand with his. Almost as soon as she registered the dry warmth of his skin, he withdrew his touch.
“Let me tell you a story, Jessica.”
She nodded, pushing her salad aside and giving him her full attention.
“A number of years ago, a university student knocked on his neighbor’s door and complained that the volume of the man’s stereo was disturbing his studying. The neighbor, a Bulgarian student, apologized and promptly turned his stereo down. A few days later, the Bulgarian invited the American over for a drink, and the American accepted to show there were no hard feelings. With me so far?”
Jessica nodded. “Is this true?”
“Absolutely. Anyhow, while he was having a drink with the Bulgarian, the American was introduced to a friend of the Bulgarian’s, a man who was identified as a cultural attaché at the Bulgarian embassy. The attaché talked to the American for a while, ascertained that the student, like most students, could use some extra money, and offered to hire him to do some economic research.”
“I think I can guess the rest,” Jessica said.
Arlen