EPILOGUE.

China released the captured pilots after only three days, quietly putting them on chartered flights to Hong Kong, where they were picked up by DoD aircraft and flown home.

Brandon "Trash" White was back in Hong Kong already. He had spent the first day after his crash in a small apartment in Shenzhen with the masked American named Jack and the Asian CIA man who called himself Adam, and here he was visited by a doctor from Hong Kong whom Adam seemed to know. The man treated Trash's wounds and prepared him for travel, and then, during the night, Jack and Trash crossed a river on a raft and then walked an hour through rice paddies before being picked up on the other side by Adam himself.

From there, Trash went to a Hong Kong hospital, where he was met by Defense Intelligence Agency personnel and ferried to Pearl Harbor. He would heal, and he would be back in the cockpit of the F/A-18 soon enough, although he imagined it would never again feel the same flying without Cheese as his flight lead.

- John Clark, Domingo Chavez, Sam Driscoll, and Dominic Caruso spent nine days in Beijing, moving from safe house to safe house, being passed from Pathway of Liberty to Red Hand and back again, until a large cash payment, hand-delivered by Ed Foley to an old man in New York's Chinatown, really got things moving.

In the middle of the night the four Americans were taken to a building housing Russian pilots for Rosoboronexport, Russia's state-owned weapons exporter, and they were covertly put aboard a Yakovlev heading to Russia after dropping off cluster bombs for the Chinese.

Clark had negotiated the return trip through Stanislav Biryukov, the head of the FSB. It went off without a hitch, though John knew that the favor Biryukov had owed him had now been paid in full, so he could not count on him again to be anything more than the head of a sometimes-enemy spy agency.

- Valentin Kovalenko spent nearly a week locked in a room in a safe house belonging to Hendley Associates. He saw no one other than a couple of security men who brought him food and newspapers, and he spent his days staring at the walls and wanting to return home to his family.

But he never believed it would happen.

He feared, he expected, he was certain, that when John Clark returned he would walk into the room with a pistol in his hand and shoot Valentin Kovalenko in the head.

And Kovalenko could not say he blamed him.

But one afternoon a security man who called himself Ernie unlocked the door, handed Kovalenko a thousand dollars in cash, and said, "I have a message from John Clark."

"Yes?"

"Get lost."

"Okay."

Ernie turned and walked out of the room. Seconds later, Valentin heard a car start and pull out of the driveway.

The bewildered Russian stepped out of the building a minute later to find himself in a condominium complex somewhere in suburban D.C. Slowly he walked toward the street, wondering if he would be able to hail a cab, and where exactly he should tell the cabbie to take him.

- After returning from Hong Kong on the Hendley Associates Gulfstream, Jack Ryan, Jr., went straight to the Alexandria apartment of Melanie Kraft. He'd called ahead, giving her time to decide whether or not she would be there when he arrived, and to decide what she would tell him about her past.

Over coffee at the bistro table in her tiny kitchen, he told her what she already knew. He was working for an intelligence organization running sub rosa, working in the interest of the United States, but free of the constraints of a government bureaucracy.

She'd had several days to process this since the Chinese attack at Hendley Associates; she saw the benefit of such an organization, while simultaneously seeing the obvious dangers that went along with it.

Then it was her turn in the confessional. She explained how her father had been compromised and how she'd learned of it, then decided she would not allow him to destroy her life with his mistake.

He understood her difficult situation, but he was unable to make her believe that this FBI man, Darren Lipton, must have been an agent for Center and not actually working on a real investigation.

"No, Jack. There was another guy with FBI. Lipton's boss. Packard. I still have his card in my purse. He confirmed everything. Plus, they had the court order. They showed it to me."

Ryan shook his head. "Center was running you since he intercepted phone calls from Charles Alden discussing how you were working for him, providing information about me and Hendley Associates to discredit John Clark."

"Lipton is real. He knows about my father and-"

"He knows because Center told him! Center could have got that information from hacking into Pakistani intelligence files. His operation could do that easily."

He saw that she did not believe him; she felt her entire life was about to fall down on her head when the FBI charged her for lying about her father's espionage.

Jack said, "One way we can clear this up right now."

"How?"

"We go pay Lipton a visit."

- It took a day to find him. He'd taken a leave of absence from work, and both Jack and Melanie worried he'd fled the country. But Ryan got Biery to hack into the man's bank records, and when he found out Lipton took out four hundred dollars from an ATM at a DoubleTree hotel in Crystal City just minutes earlier, Jack and Melanie headed over.

By the time they got there Biery had the room number for them, and minutes later Jack used a master keycard Melanie pilfered from a maid.

Ryan and Kraft came through the door and saw a half-naked Lipton and a fully nude hooker, and Jack told the girl to get her things, her four hundred bucks, and hit the road.

Lipton seemed scared seeing Ryan and the girl here, but he seemed in no great hurry to dress. Jack threw a pair of khakis at him. "For the love of God, dude, put these on."

Lipton slipped into the pants, but did not put a shirt on over his wife-beater.

"What do you want with me?" he asked.

Jack said, "Center is dead, if you didn't already know."

"Who?"

"Center. Dr. K. K. Tong."

"I don't know what you're-"

"Look, asshole! I know you were working for Center. We've got all the transcripts of your conversations, and we've got Kovalenko, who can finger you."

Lipton sighed. "The Russian with the beard?"

"Yep."

It was a lie, but Lipton fell for it.

He gave up the ruse. "Center was my handler, but I don't know K. K. Tong. I had no idea I was working for the Russians, otherwise I wouldn't-"

"You were working for the Chinese."

Darren Lipton winced. "Even worse."

"Who was Packard?" Melanie asked.

Lipton shrugged. "He's just some other poor schmuck that Center had by the balls. Just like me. He wasn't FBI. I got the impression he was a detective. Maybe D.C., maybe Maryland or Virginia. Center sent him to me when the phony court order didn't convince you to bug the phone. I dressed the guy up, gave him a fifteen-minute primer on the situation, and he did the good cop to my bad."

"But you asked me to go to the J. Edgar Hoover Building to meet him. What if I said yes?"

Lipton shook his head. "I knew you wouldn't walk through the front door of the Hoover Building."

Melanie was so furious she had been played by this son of a bitch that, in a moment of fury, she hit him in the mouth. Instantly blood appeared on his lower lip.

Lipton licked at the blood, then winked at Kraft.

Her face reddened even more, and she growled. "Jesus! I forgot. He gets off on that."

Ryan looked at Melanie, understood what she meant, then turned to Lipton.

Jack said, "Get off on this," and he threw the most vicious right jab of his life, connecting with the FBI man's fleshy face. Lipton's head snapped back, and the big man went down in a heap. His jaw was swollen and purple within seconds.

Jack knelt down over him. "You have one week to resign from the FBI. Do it, or we come back for you. Do you understand?"

Lipton nodded weakly, looked up at Ryan, and nodded again.

- The funerals for the Hendley Associates employees killed by the Divine Sword commandos took place all over Virginia, Maryland, and D.C. All of the Campus operators attended, as did Gerry Hendley.

Jack went to the funerals alone. He and Melanie had achieved some sort of detente in their relationship; they both understood why they had lied to each other, but trust was a precious commodity in a love affair, and trust had been thoroughly breached by both of them.

For whatever justifications, their relationship was tarnished, and they found they had little to say to each other.

- Jack was not surprised to see Mary Pat Foley and her husband, Ed, at Sam Granger's funeral in Baltimore. When the Saturday-afternoon services were completed, Jack asked for a moment alone with the director of national intelligence. Ed excused himself to go chat with Gerry Hendley, and Mary Pat's security officer lagged far behind his boss and the President's son as the two walked alone through the cemetery.

They found a wooden bench and sat down. Mary Pat looked behind her to her security officer, gave him a nod that said "Give us some space," and he stepped back twenty yards and turned in the other direction.

"You okay, Jack?"

"I need to talk to you about Melanie."

"Okay."

"She's been informing on me, first for Charles Alden, last year during the Kealty affair, and then, after Alden was arrested, she was approached by a guy at FBI, National Security Branch. He wanted intel on me and Hendley Associates."

Mary Pat's eyebrows rose. "NSB?"

Jack shook his head. "It's not as bad as it sounds for us. This guy was actually a Center proxy agent."

"Christ. What's his name?"

"Darren Lipton."

She nodded. "Well, he'll be out of a job by lunch on Monday, that's for damn sure."

Jack cracked a strained smile. "You won't find him in his office Monday. I think I broke his jaw."

"I'm sure the Bureau of Prisons will be able to accommodate his liquid diet." Mary Pat then looked off in the distance for a long time. "Why did Melanie agree to inform on you? I mean, other than the fact she was working on orders from her superior and federal law enforcement."

"A secret in her past. Something Center found out about her dad, something the FBI guy held over her."

Mary Pat Foley waited for Ryan to explain. When he did not speak, she said, "I'm going to need to know, Jack."

Ryan nodded. Then he told her about her father, about her lie.

Mary Pat did not seem as surprised as Ryan had expected. She said, "I've been doing this a long time. The drive and determination I saw in that young lady was something unique. I understand now, she was compensating, trying to outdo everyone else because she felt like she had to."

Ryan said, "If it helps at all, Clark says she saved lives at Hendley. Without her, we'd be going to a few more funerals."

Mary Pat nodded, seemingly half lost in thought.

"What are you going to do?" Jack asked.

"She knows about The Campus. She's finished at CIA for lying on her background investigation, but I sure as hell am not going to rake her over the coals. I'll head down to talk to her right now."

"If you tell her to resign, she's going to know you are aware of The Campus. This could be a problem for you."

DNI Foley waved her hand in the air. "I'm not worried about me. It may sound hokey, but it's more important to me to preserve the integrity of American intelligence, and to preserve the security of the organization your father set up with the best of intentions. I've got to try to do that."

Jack nodded. He felt like shit.

Mary Pat saw this and said, "Jack. I'll go easy on her. She did what she thought was right. She's a good kid."

"Yeah," Jack said after a moment of reflection. "She is."

- Mary Pat Foley's black Suburban pulled up in front of Melanie Kraft's Alexandria carriage-house apartment just after four in the afternoon. The temperature had dropped below freezing, and the low gray skies spit a light mix of snow and freezing rain.

The DNI's driver waited in the car, but her security officer walked with her to the front door holding an umbrella over her with his left hand. He stood beside her as she knocked on the door, with his free hand slipping inside his coat to his right hip.

Melanie answered quickly; there was nowhere in her flat more than ten steps to the front door.

She did not smile when she saw Mary Pat, who had become her friend as well as her boss. Instead she backed away from the door and said, meekly, "Won't you come in?"

On the drive down from Baltimore, Mary Pat had asked her bodyguard if he had a problem with her spending a few minutes alone with one of her employees in her apartment. This was just a tiny sliver of the truth, but it served its purpose. The burly security officer did a quick walk around the tiny apartment and then went back outside to stand underneath the umbrella.

While he did this, Mary Pat stood in the living room and looked around. It did not take the head of the American intelligence community long to derive the situation. It was easily discernible that the occupant of this apartment was moving out. Two suitcases were open against the wall. They were half filled with clothes. Several cardboard boxes were already sealed with tape, and several more were still unfolded, lying flat against the wall.

"Have a seat," Melanie said, and Mary Pat sat on the tiny love seat. Melanie herself sat on a metal bistro chair.

"I wasn't going to just leave," Melanie said by way of explanation. "I was going to call you tonight and ask if I could come by."

"What are you doing?"

"I am resigning."