Code of Honor

10

U.S. Senator Michelle Chadwick’s new boyfriend proved as competent at engaging conversation as he was in bed — which, Chadwick thought, was pretty damned competent. Better still, he shared her political views, right up to the visceral hatred of all things Jack Ryan.

Chadwick wore a baseball cap over her thick brunette hair. Not because she was trying to hide her identity from anyone in the trendy Adams Morgan restaurant called Madam’s Organ, but because David Huang had taken her to play baseball that evening. He sat across from her now, chatting amiably while he ate seasoned french fries like they would never go to his gut. David wore glasses, which made him look like an Asian version of Clark Kent. He was at least a decade younger than she was, but already had a hint of gray at his temples. That made her feel a tad less cougarish. He was Canadian — which, she supposed, explained why he was so damned nice — and worked as a lobbyist for a First Nations group out of Winnipeg. The fact that he was of Chinese descent didn’t seem to bother his employers at all. He was scary smart, and had the legal chops to go with his brains. Chadwick had met him at a function promoting Native literacy — something dear to her Native American constituents in her home state of Arizona. She’d been so smitten she couldn’t even remember who’d introduced them.

He’d keyed in on the very essence of her from the beginning, like he had some kind of secret dossier. She should have been alarmed. It was as if he knew her inner thoughts — but even spies didn’t have access to those. They both loved dogs, butter-pecan ice cream, and the color azure. He’d actually used the word. Azure. Just like she did, when others might wuss out and say “sky blue” or something equally lame. He’d quipped that it was too good to be true, like they were related or something. She’d flirtatiously said she hoped that was not so, just in case he also liked to sleep in nothing but a T-shirt. As it turned out, that, too, was a habit they shared — that very evening and many others over the next two months.

Chadwick’s adviser, Corey Fite, had pretended to be jealous when she started seeing David on a regular basis, but she knew he was relieved. That physical relationship had always been awkward, and a little one-sided — though a man always got something out if it, didn’t he, even if he was being used. Corey had been available, if a little too vanilla for a girl who liked butter pecan.

David Huang was anything but ordinary. He was smart and well read and traveled — and it didn’t hurt that he had muscles in places most men didn’t have places. Chadwick knew her colleagues on the Hill thought of her as a coldhearted bitch, a battle-ax, a Wagnerian Valkyrie complete with horned helmet — and she was all those things. But David Huang made her feel like a schoolgirl — like he was a professional boyfriend.

She reached across the table to touch his hand. “Want to go back to my apartment after this?”

“I want to,” Huang said. “But there’s something I have to do first.”

A television over the bar showed a smug President Ryan walking across the White House lawn to a waiting Marine One. Ryan wasn’t a bad-looking guy, she thought. Just evil.

David followed her gaze over his shoulder to the screen. “Look at the way he salutes. You can tell he wishes he was in the military.”

“He was a Marine,” Chadwick said automatically. She’d made it a point to know everything about her opponent. He could never run for President again, but he was powerful, and would surely try to shove someone he wanted down the country’s throat.

“A Marine.” Huang grunted, turning so he could get a little better view of the screen. “It’s no wonder he tries to start wars all over the world. What wouldn’t you do to bring him down?”

“You’ll get no argument from me,” Chadwick said.

Huang turned back around to fully face her, taking her hands in his on top of the table. “Really?”

“Really what?”

Huang’s playful demeanor turned to stone. “Would you do anything to bring Jack Ryan down?”

Chadwick drew her hands away, hackles going up.

“Why are you asking me that? You know how I feel.”

“Don’t be that way,” he said. “I just mean, you know, he’s a problem that needs to be fixed.”

She gave a skeptical nod. “I want him out of office.”

“And we can help with that.”

The way he said “we” made her shiver.

“Let’s talk about something else. I’m not comfortable with where this is going…”

“Nothing has changed,” Huang said. “But I do think it’s time we take the next logical step.”

He reached beneath the table and produced a cell phone, wrapped in the wires of a set of earbuds. He pushed it toward her.

“There is something you have to see.”

“I don’t have to do shit,” Chadwick snapped. She wanted to get up and leave, but something about the way he looked at her kept her rooted in place. The look in his eyes said he would feel really, really bad if he had to kill her.

“I’ll concede to that,” he said. “You do not have to see it, but you should.” He nudged the phone a little closer. “Please. Take a look for me.”

Chadwick groaned. She unwound the cord and tilted her head, pushing back her hair so she could insert one of the earbuds.

Huang reached across and punched a code into the phone, quickly, so she couldn’t follow what it was. “Now watch until the very end.”

Chadwick slumped in horror as a video of the two of them in her bedroom began to play. She yanked out the earbud and shoved the phone at him. “Seriously?” she said. “Revenge porn? I don’t have to watch this. I was there. Remember? How did you get a camera in there, anyway?”

She slid sideways to get out of the booth. Huang kicked her hard under the table, the edge of his shoe sliding down the front of her shin. It was the kind of injury that brought nausea instead of screaming. Tears filled her eyes. Five minutes earlier she would have probably married the guy if he’d asked. Now he was kicking the shit out of her. It took her a moment to compose herself after something like that.

“What… What do you want?”

He slid the phone toward her again, his handsome face passive, as if he’d not just driven his shoe into her leg. His words were quiet but viperlike, potent with implied threat. “I want you to watch until the end.”

And she did, every sickening moment of it.

Thankfully, there was only three minutes of video — cut from several hours, no doubt.

Trembling badly by the time it was over, she sniffed, trying in vain to keep her chin from quivering as she spoke. “Go ahead and put it on YouTube,” she said, attempting — and failing — to feign an air of defiance. “Voters have sex. Hell, I heard there are like fourteen thousand people doing it at any given moment. I’m a single woman in Washington. No one will care what I do in my own bedroom. I may even sponsor a revenge-porn bill and get the sympathy vote.”

Huang gave a slight nod toward the phone. “Keep watching.”

A man appeared on the phone’s screen, backlit so Chadwick could make out only the dark silhouette. The blood drained from her face when she realized it was not a prerecorded video but a live call.

“Hello, Senator Chadwick,” the man said, a slight accent in his voice. “You may be interested to know that you have been sleeping with, and, in actuality, conspiring with, an agent for the government of the People’s Republic of China. Evidence suggests that you and he are conspiring to oust the sitting President of the United States.”

“I have done no such—”

Huang wagged his finger, motioning for her to stay quiet and listen.

She found it impossible to breathe. Her normally icy demeanor turned to slush. “What… What could you possibly want?”

“We want you to continue doing what you have been doing,” the silhouette on the phone said. “Help us with the work that is necessary.”

Chadwick cupped a hand over her earpiece. Her rational brain said no one in the restaurant could hear the conversation, but she couldn’t help but feel like this treason was being broadcast over a PA.

She looked up at David through tears of anger and betrayal. “How could you do this?”

The man on the phone spoke again, firmer now. “Stop being maudlin. We are not asking you to assassinate Jack Ryan. You need only to get close to him. We want someone in his inner circle, to learn what he plans—”

Chadwick laughed, drawing side-eyes from the diners seated at a nearby table. “That’s rich.” She scoffed. “He doesn’t like me any more than I like him. He’s not about to let me hang out in the Oval Office and see what he’s up to.”

“On the contrary,” the man on the phone said. “I believe you will find that President Ryan is a dreamer. You need only appeal to his sense of hope. If you tell him that you wish to work together, he will find himself quite unable to resist. There are few friends closer than a former enemy.”

The man directed her to get the rest of her instructions from Huang.

“And what if I don’t play along?” Chadwick asked. “You’ll kill me?”

The man on the phone chuckled softly. “We are not monsters,” he said. “There would be no need. Your own country will charge you with treason and put you in a very dark hole for the rest of your life. I hear the maximum-security prison in Colorado is… What do they call it? A clean version of hell? In truth, I would prefer a quick death. But that is just me.”

The dark man ended the video call with a smug farewell — as if they were friends.

Completely undone, Chadwick pulled the earpiece out of her ear and glared across the table at David Huang.

“How do I know you won’t just release this tape after I’ve done what you want me to do?”

“Oh, Michelle,” he said, looking slightly hangdog. “You have my word. We only—”

“Your word means shit to me,” Chadwick hissed.

“I know,” David said. “But you have to think about this logically. Why would we bring down someone who wants the same thing we do?”

“But,” Chadwick stammered, “I don’t want to spy on my own government.”

“And we’re not directing you to,” Huang said. “Your job is to help us destroy Jack Ryan.”