Oath of Office

“The point I’m making,” Clark said, “is that I’m not going to lie and tell you nothing went on out there. But I’m not going to drill down on the details, either. The sum total of all the unpleasant things I have done in the past should probably remain classified, or, at the very least, unspoken, for the good of all. That does not mean I don’t admit it occurred. Dom knows some of it, but not all. Suffice it to say that I hashed everything out with Gerry. Here’s the thing, and the chief reason I bring it up. Gerry Hendley is my boss. He did what bosses do and that’s between him and me. I am your boss. Anyone here decides to color outside the lines, you have to hash it out with me, not Gerry. And I gotta tell you, he’s a hell of a lot more understanding than I am.”

“Damn, boss,” Midas said over the radio, the only one too far away for Clark to smack. “You’re gettin’ me all choked up with this sweet sentiment.”

Never one to explain his explanation, Clark moved on. “How is Lisanne?”

“I talked to her a few minutes ago,” Adara said. “She’s at a comfortable hotel in Lisbon chasing down a couple of Tylenol with some good Portuguese wine. Her wrist is broken in two places, and she’s bummed that she can’t be here. But she’ll be fine. I was looking at the screen shot of Lucile Fournier we got from the Snipe — not too much of a stretch to think Gaspard’s thugs mistook Lisanne for the assassin. Same hair color, pert build.”

Ryan scrolled through the images on his phone. “I can see it,” he said.

Ding hung his head. “I shouldn’t have sent her out there,” he said. “She’s not op—”

“Heat of battle,” Clark said, raising his hand to put a stop to that kind of talk. “She has plenty of training to ride along. Good job getting her out of there, Ryan.”

“Thanks,” Jack said, kicking himself for leaving her alone in the first place. His track record with women was pretty dismal of late. It seemed like he picked girls who wanted to spy on him, were too busy spying for their own country, or were bona fide evil bitches. He was as red-blooded as the next guy, but had never considered himself a girl-in-every-port kind of guy. He wanted to settle down. Date someone cool. Someone pretty. Someone… sane. Lisanne certainly fit that bill. But the idea of asking her out was ridiculous. That definitely qualified as coloring outside the lines. First of all, Clark would shoot him. Second… Clark would shoot him.

11

Crescent wrench in hand, Sarah Porter stood up from a vain attempt at repairing the leaky pipe under the sink and watched her cell phone buzz across the kitchen countertop. She looked outside in time to watch three armored personnel carriers roll down her street — Cougars, they called them. She knew this because Rod had pointed it out to her during a Cameroonian military and police parade in downtown Yaounde the weekend before.

She shook her head as the heavy vehicles clinked and rumbled by. No wonder their roads were so crappy. She’d seen plenty of military vehicles over her husband’s twenty-one-year career as a foreign service officer. But she’d never been told they were called Cougars, at least this kind. She chalked it up to her “Learn something new every day” list, which grew exponentially each time Rod bid on a new country assignment.

Cameroon was a promotion — at least on paper. Rod was the DCM — deputy chief of mission, second to the ambassador. He’d run the political section in Croatia during the last tour. There had been a lot to love about that posting — delicious food, the Adriatic, no cobras. But that’s how Rod’s career had worked out, bid on and get a great post, then promote to one that was… slightly less great. As a trailing spouse — the common term for following your diplomat other half around the globe — Sarah was used to it. Sort of.

The clatter outside stopped, but Sarah caught a glimpse of another Cougar between the houses on the next street over. She’d accidentally driven up on protests before, when the kids were little, and wondered if this was one of those.

“Are you seeing this, Rod?” she muttered under her breath, happy to have the comfortable heft of the crescent wrench in her hand as she leaned closer to the window to try and get a better look. The doorbell nearly caused her to pee her pants.

She held the wrench behind her thigh and peeked out the front curtains to find June Kim, one of the spouses from the South Korean embassy. The Bastos district of Yaounde was a mini — United Nations, with diplomat families from the many embassies to Cameroon living and working in the area.

June’s pleading eyes darted from Sarah to the armored vehicles that now sat eerily silent at the end of the street. “Does your phone work?”

Sarah put the wrench on the counter. Normally an introvert, she was suddenly happy to have company. “Come on in and I’ll check. Any idea what’s happening?”