Breaking point - By Tom Clancy & Steve Perry & Steve Pieczenik Page 0,56

problems that came from that. He had skipped sending her into a danger zone when she’d come up in the rotation, and while she wanted him to be concerned for her as a man for his woman, she did not want the same concern from a boss to an employee.

She’d have to do some kind of work, though, and the truth was, she’d already been offered several jobs. A couple of computer companies had approached her to head up their security services, and they’d offered a lot more money than she’d been making at Net Force. There were some nice perks, too: cars, condos, a snazzy title. And she had seriously considered taking one of these. Mostly, she could work from anywhere, though there would be some travel for secure-situation setups. But while she didn’t want to work for Alex, she also didn’t want to get so far away she couldn’t see him.

There was the possibility of a transfer. Alex had never put her resignation into the system. She’d quit, but he hadn’t told anybody higher up. She was officially on personal leave, not drawing a salary, but still considered employed. Net Force was more or less freestanding as an operation, but it was still technically part of the FBI. There were people on the other side of the fence at Quantico who would be pleased to have her working in their offices—she had heard from a couple of them, too. Thing was, while that meant she’d be in the same general vicinity as Alex, it also meant she’d be viewed as something of a traitor in Net Force. Just as the CIA and the FBI always had a de facto competition going, and there was little love lost between them, Net Force ops tended to think of regular feebs as dweebs—to be tolerated, but avoided as much as possible.

Alex probably wouldn’t like it very much if she jumped into the Bureau mainline.

Then again, it wasn’t really his choice, was it? She had to do something to earn her living, and she was already in the system—a transfer to another building would be the easiest thing all around, at least insofar as keeping her apartment, getting to work, and not having to learn new systems. And she could still see Alex for lunch or work-outs in the gym every day.

Her phone’s attention-beck came on—an odd little piece of music that came from a movie more than fifty years old, a comedy about a super-secret agent named Flint. The little tune was the same as the ring of the special phone belonging to a fictional U.S. security agency, reserved for incoming calls from the President of the United States: Dah dah dah, dah dah dah, dah DAH, dah dah dah, dah dah daaah. This little sting was courtesy of Jay Gridley, of course, who loved such esoterica, and who also loved to program personal hardware when the owner wasn’t looking.

She looked at the screen but the caller’s ID was blocked. If she’d been carrying a virgil, it wouldn’t have been.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Toni. How are you?”

Some bored god must be reading her mind and taking an interest in her life: It was Melissa Allison herself, Director of the FBI. On a Sunday, no less.

“Fine, and you?”

“Surviving. Listen, I understand you are interested in transferring from Net Force into Mainline, is that correct?”

The director, who had gotten her job by knowing where a soccer stadium’s worth of political bodies were buried, was not one to mince words.

Indeed, Toni had been considering it only seconds before, but she hadn’t made the decision yet. That’s not what the director wanted to hear. She wanted a yes or no answer. Here’s the spot, Toni, and like it or not, you’ve just been put on it. Choose.

Toni glanced at Alex, who was busy watching a young couple with two small children trying to corral the little critters. The boy, about three, was running around in circles, singing a clock song—“One o‘clock, bang, bang, bang/ Two o’clock, bang, bang, bang!” The little girl, maybe a year and half, was running away from her mother at full speed across the lawn in that lurching toddle small children had, laughing as she went. Alex was smiling at the show.

“Toni?”

Toni pulled her attention back to the phone. “Yes, ma’am, I have been considering it.”

“Wise,” the director said, and Toni knew from that one word that the woman knew about her and Alex. “I have an opening in my schedule tomorrow around one.