Alien Diplomacy

Please?”
    “Um, sure. That sounds good. Try to find me before I overturn the punch bowl or something, though.”
    She laughed. “I will. Kitty…thank you. See you tomorrow.”She hung up before I could say there was no reason for thanks—I hadn’t done or promised to do anything other than speak to her tomorrow night.
    My phone rang again. Again a number I didn’t know. As I answered, it occurred to me that I had no idea how Leslie had scored my phone number. “Hello, is this Ambassador Martini?”
    “Yes.” This voice I recognized. It was good ol’ Jack Ryan. “What’s up, Jack?”
    “Don’t go to the ball tomorrow night.”
    “Right. Hilarious. I may die laughing.”
    “No,” he said urgently. “You might die.”



CHAPTER 52
    I CONSIDERED HOW TO REPLY to this statement of potential fact. Saying “Right you are, and you, too!” indicated more knowledge of current clandestine events than I wanted Ryan to know.
    However, playing stupid was always sure to work in some ways, so I went for it. “Oh, come on. What, Abner decided I have to die because I won’t play your little high school games?”
    “No. Look, I’m not supposed to be saying this to anyone. I already warned the others. I know we’re not friends, and I’m not interested in being your friend, either. But I know you, and I know that something bad’s going to happen at the ball tomorrow. So, I’m telling you, as a fellow classmate, not to go.”
    “Why do you care?”
    “I don’t want someone I know to die horrifically, okay? Is there a problem?”
    “No, not with that mindset.” Ryan’s wife was in the C.I.A. If she’d leaked something to him she could lose her job. “Jack, how did you hear this information?”
    “I eavesdropped on a conversation of Pia’s.”
    “Why are you eavesdropping on your wife?”
    “I thought she was cheating on me.”
    I could understand why she’d want to, but I managed to keep that statement to myself. “That was sort of low.”
    “Yeah, I’m sure it was. She’s not cheating, so there’s that.”
    “So glad to hear it.”
    “But she was saying that they expected some kind of action tomorrow at Planet Hollywood.”
    “Um, that’s a defunct restaurant chain, isn’t it?”
    He sighed, rather condescendingly. “That’s the code name for the President’s Ball.”
    “How do you know?” He was silent. “Jack, how do you know ?”
    He sighed. “I looked through her Blackberry and found the reference.”
    “Again because you thought she was cheating?”
    “Yes.”
    “She works for the freaking C.I.A. Why is her being secretive some kind of shocker alert to you?”
    “Look, I don’t ask about your relationship with your husband! Besides, that’s not why I called. Don’t go tomorrow night, okay? I’m trying to protect you. You’d think you’d be a little grateful.”
    He had a point. “Thanks, Jack. I appreciate the head’s up. You called everyone in class?”
    “And Missus Lockwood. Well, I haven’t called Eugene yet. But he’s next.”
    Nice to see where Eugene and I rated on the Danger Warning List. But then again, it hadn’t occurred to me to even think about warning any of them to stay away from the ball, in part because I knew it would leak classified information, but also because I hadn’t thought about any of them since before my limo exploded.
    “Okay, I’ll do my best.”
    “Good. See you next week. I hope.” He hung up, presumably to call Eugene and freak him out next. I mentally kicked myself. I hadn’t asked Jack how he’d gotten my number either.
    I wondered if Leslie had called me because Ryan had called her, or if she was calling about something else entirely. If she’d gotten Ryan’s warning, she certainly hadn’t acted like it when we’d spoken. In fact, just the opposite. She clearly expected and wanted me to be at the ball. This opened up a whole new set of questions I would have asked myself, only my phone rang again.
    “What am I, the switchboard for American Idol ?” I looked at the number before I answered. “Hi Eugene.”
    “Kitty, I just got the strangest call from Jack. I didn’t know he had my phone number.”
    “Ditto and ditto, dude. You’re calling me sooner than I’d have expected, though. He just called me a couple minutes ago.”
    “As if I wanted to chat with him for one moment longer than necessary? There’s no way Lydia can miss the President’s Ball. Do you think Jack’s actually got real information, or