by Mike Maden
“That’s not on you. You did everything you could, including risking your own life to save hers.”
“You don’t understand—”
“The hell I don’t.”
During the war, Clark had been forced to stand by and watch a Vietnamese family get slaughtered one by one before he finally decided to act against his orders. He stopped the killing but got shot for the effort and nearly died.
“All you can do is give it your best effort. You can’t control the outcome.”
“She got caught trying to protect me.”
“That was her job, and I’d say she did it well, judging by the fact you’re sitting here breathing and feeling sorry for yourself.”
“I should’ve kept her out of the op. Should’ve gone in all by myself without her knowing.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“She was a professional. I didn’t really think there would be a problem. I liked working with her. And it was her case, too.”
“Did you force her to go? Lie to her or bribe her or threaten her in any way to get her to go?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then I don’t see the problem. She was doing her job and you were doing yours. You know by now, kid, what we do ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. And the worst damn enemy we ever face isn’t out there, it’s the guy staring back at you in the mirror every morning. You need to get a handle on this, Jack.”
“She had a kid. A little boy. Tomasz.”
The image of her screaming out his name as she sank into the gloom flashed across his mind again. He drowned it with a long pull of beer, draining the bottle.
“His dad was killed a few years back in Afghanistan, and now this. It’s so damn unfair.”
“I know it is. And I don’t know how to sort it all out on this side of Heaven. That’s why I let the priests handle all of that metaphysical stuff. I can’t control what I can’t control. And by the way, thanks to your call from that clinic, the boy and his grandmother are sequestered in a Polish safe house right now, so quit kicking yourself in the ass.”
“Yeah. A phone call. Big hero.”
“For what it’s worth, your dad pulled a few strings. The Brits are sending over a deep-water submersible to the location that Polish fisherman gave us. He wasn’t too specific, but with any luck, they might be able to find your friend and maybe even get her back to her family for a decent burial.”
Jack darkened. “Yeah, that would be something, at least.”
They sat in silence for a while. Clark watched Jack falling deeper into his hole.
“That guy you sent on a wild-goose chase? What was his name?”
“Goralski.”
“Yeah. That’s right. He wound up in Dusseldorf. They picked him up, but he didn’t tell the cops anything. A high-dollar attorney bailed him out a few hours ago. They couldn’t hold him for anything because he had all of his legal permits to do whatever it was he was doing, and apparently it’s not against the law over there to tail somebody.” He chuckled. “That was a pretty slick move you pulled on him, kid.”
“What about Christopher Gage?”
“He was questioned, gently, because of his stepmom the senator. But he has an alibi for that night and he said he had no idea what was going on at the warehouse—he just leased it out. According to the embassy guys, he seemed genuinely surprised and upset to hear what happened to you and the girl. And unless he threatened you or you saw him at the warehouse or on that boat, there’s nothing else to be done—innocent until proven guilty, right?”
“I know who’s guilty.”
“You mean the foreign legion paratrooper?”
“I’m gonna cut his fucking heart out.”
“Gotta find him first.”
“Can’t be too hard. I was thinking about it on the flight over, even did a little research between naps. That tattoo I saw was Second Parachute Regiment of the French Foreign Legion. They have thirteen hundred enlisted officers and men at any given time. Can’t be that many blond guys aged eighteen to thirty-five over the last seventeen years in an elite unit like that.”
“That’s a good start. I’ll back your play, any way I can.”
“I need Gavin to do his hack magic. Is he available yet?”
“Gerry told me that Gavin is back in the saddle starting tomorrow morning. I’ll be sure he gets right on it.”
Jack rose to fetch another beer. “You want another one?”
“Still working on this one.”
Jack yanked open the refrigerator door. “They find the Baltic Princess yet?”
“Yeah. She’s somewhere in the middle of the Gobi desert.”
Jack frowned as he unscrewed the cap. “What are you talking about?”
“That ship spoofed itself. Our people did a search of her AIS signal but they must have turned it off, because she wasn’t showing up on anybody’s radar. But about an hour ago, the ship’s signal popped up in the Gobi desert. Some joker must have pulled the box, put it on a plane, and then shipped it by camel out there just to shoot us a big middle finger.”
“That’s just great.” Jack took a long pull of his beer, lost in thought.
Clark saw the wheels grinding behind the younger man’s eyes. “So, what’s the plan now?”
“I’ve got something I’ve got to do. I gotta prove to myself I can keep a promise and not fuck it up.”
“Does Gerry know about this?”
“He knows I was planning on this trip before he sent me to Poland.”
“When do you plan on leaving?”
“Tomorrow.”
“How long will you be gone?”
“A day down. A day there at most. A day back. Three days, tops.”
“You need any of us for backup?”
“No. This isn’t an op. It’s a favor for an old friend who died just two weeks ago. But I need to do it.”
“So you’ll do a friend a favor but you won’t do the right thing by your mom?”
“I just can’t talk about anything right now. I need to process it.”
“Makes sense. But you can still call her and tell her you’re okay and will see her in a few days.”
Clark had a way of making a suggestion into an order without seeming to.
Besides, he was right, Jack admitted to himself.
He would call his mom, then finalize his trip plans. A visit to the “Parsonage”—his dad’s name for the free public housing known as the White House—would have to wait until he settled his account with Cory and got his head screwed back on straight.
After that, he’d go hunting.
68
WASHINGTON, D.C.
It was late. Ed was fast asleep, and Mary Pat Foley’s raging headache only worsened as she reread Jesse Benson’s report freshly arrived over the digital transom fifteen minutes earlier.
She took no comfort in the realization that her instincts were spot on, but it had taken a CIA supercomputer with AI analytical software to confirm her gut sense with hard data.
Benson’s report took it one step further. He believed a fifth incident preceding the other four was part of the mix—the liquidation of a Chinese asset working in the quantum satellite program at Hefei.
The statistical analysis of the five attacks revealed a nearly imperceptible pattern. All five were connected to a single CIA comms satellite managed by the NRO. Access to this satellite was, in effect, access to the entire Western intelligence community—or at least, any communication that transmitted through this particular bird.
Equally disturbing was the company that put it into orbit: Elias Dahm’s SpaceServe. Even more troubling was the fact that its parent company, CloudServe, had secured the satellite’s connection to the IC Cloud. Clearly, they had dropped the ball.
But what to do about it?
The IC had moved all of its data and communications into the cloud in order to improve its cybersecurity. Now the cloud was proving to be the avenue of this particular security breach. Sounding the general alarm would put the entire IC Cloud program in jeopardy or, worse, put the IC itself into a general state of paralysis. The only way to prevent a flooding ship from sinking was to dog the doors between compartments in order to contain the damage to the smallest possible location and stop the flow of water.
The same would apply here. IC departments would want to lock down to prevent further data leakage, but that would defeat the purpose of the cloud—namely, to increase the flow of information throughout the community.
The other challenge was the lack of specific data. Benson’s analysis had strongly suggested—but not proved—that the comms satellite was the common link and therefore the “leak” in the system. But who was accessing the satellite? How did they do it? How long had it been going on? Did others have access? Were other satellites at risk? Was the Cloud/SpaceServe connection a coincidence? Was the satellite breached or the cloud itself?
A hundred other questions flooded her mind, but without specifics there was nothing actionable. If there was a leak in the boat, they had to find its exact location and determine its size in order to plug it.
Foley needed more information, and the best person to provide it was the head of the IC Cloud security team, Amanda Watson. Watson had made a hell of an impression on Foley: a smart, patriotic young woman who was succeeding brilliantly in a largely male and progressive culture that wasn’t exactly known for waving American flags. More to the point, Watson had designed much of the cloud software to begin with, and designed the IC Cloud security program. If anyone would be able to answer the questions she now had, it would be Amanda.
Foley shot an e-mail to her executive assistant to arrange an immediate and secure face-to-face with Ms. Watson ASAP.
69
ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA
Jack packed light.
It was going to be only three days and, worst-case scenario, he could wash his clothes in a river or something. Or, better yet, pull a Jack Reacher and just buy some cheap local stuff and not bother with doing any laundry.
The Uber driver, a polite and soft-spoken young Afghan immigrant named Mohammad—a former translator for the U.S. Army—picked him up in front of his apartment and headed for Dulles International in heavy rush-hour traffic. It was just after five.
* * *
—
Neither man noticed the battered blue Toyota Corolla following in the distance, nor the man driving it, an acne-scarred, ex–Pinkerton man by the name of Tyler. Hiding his bloodshot eyes behind a pair of Oakleys, Tyler was determined not to lose sight of Jack Ryan, Jr. He wanted to impress his new employer, Sandra Kyle, after losing John Clark on a previous tail a few days back. Reassigned to Junior, this was his chance to prove his worth.
The Uber driver dropped Jack off with his carry-on backpack at arrival door 6 at Dulles International Airport and sped away. Tyler managed to snap a photo of Jack as well as the Uber license plate before pulling back into traffic.
Tyler texted his photos to Kyle before calling her. She rang back immediately.
He couldn’t tell her what airline Jack was heading for or where he was going. Following Jack in wasn’t an option unless Jack was planning on buying a ticket at the counter, which was highly unlikely. He would simply pass through ticketed security and disappear into one of the two insanely long Dulles terminal buildings, where nobody could follow without a ticket.
Since Ryan had only a single piece of carry-on luggage, he was no doubt grabbing a domestic flight taking off within the hour, if not two. Tyler agreed that this information didn’t help narrow much of anything down. Several hundred flights were taking off in that two-hour window to all points of the compass connecting to the rest of the planet.
To prove his mettle, he requested and received permission to question the Afghan later that night, preferably in the man’s home with a gun to his young wife’s head. “Something a tribal man will understand,” he assured her.
Kyle agreed, and promised to forward the Afghan’s address within the hour.
In the meantime, the paunchy ex–Pinkerton man was feeling a powerful thirst. D.C. metro traffic was snarled at this time of day, but twenty minutes later he managed to shuffle into a busy strip-mall Irish pub he frequented.
Tyler climbed onto his favorite stool just as a shot glass of Jameson and a draft PBR were set on the bar in front of him. Two failed marriages cost him his house and wiped out his pension. At least the shitty per diem Kyle paid was in cash so he could avoid paying taxes and, more important, wage garnishments from his ex-wives’ blood-sucking attorneys. A couple of trips to O’Hare’s each week was his one solace, and the guy behind the bar—an ex-cop—charged him only half-price, thanks to some nasty PI photos of the man’s wife he’d provided in a vicious custody battle.
The second round arrived as a dark-eyed Mexican about his age took the stool next to him. They nodded a silent greeting before the bartender asked, “What’ll ya have?” The Mexican ordered a club soda.
Tyler fought back a grin as he tossed back the whiskey. What was the point of ordering a club soda? He chugged his beer and wiped the foam from his mouth with his hand, relishing the familiar burn in the back of his throat.
He pulled a ten from his wallet as he stood, tossing it onto the bar.
“Sit down.” The Mexican was talking to his club soda.
Tyler couldn’t believe his ears. “Excuse me?”
“You deaf? I said sit the hell down.”
The Mexican turned to him. Ding Chavez was a half-head shorter than Tyler, but the soul-snatching eyes boring into him suggested the smaller man was not to be trifled with.
“I won’t say it again.”
Tyler wobbled uneasily in place, weighing the options in his booze-addled brain.
“You buying?”
“Sure.”
The fat man sat and waved for another round for himself.
“What do you want to know?” Tyler asked.
“Why you’re tailing people from Hendley Associates.”
“What does it matter to you?”
“The shovel in the trunk of my car thinks it’s important.”
Tyler nearly shat himself. This sumbitch wasn’t kidding. “I need to take a piss.”
Ding took a sip of club soda. “Talk first, then piss.”
“I really gotta piss.”
“Then talk fast or piss yourself. I don’t care which, but you ain’t moving.”
Tyler talked, his tongue loosened by two more rounds of boilermakers and the vision of ending the evening lying on his back in the cold ground with his face covered in freshly spaded earth.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Amanda Watson’s face paled like she was about to vomit.
Mary Pat Foley was on a secure, encrypted video chat line with the senior CloudServe executive in her San Francisco office.
“I don’t know what to say, Madame Director.”
“First of all, my friends call me Mary Pat.” The DNI needed Watson to gather her wits and calm herself down. Foley could only imagine the guilt and embarrassment she must be feeling at the moment.
“Well, Mary Pat, if you hadn’t sent me your analysis, my first response would have been to say it isn’t possible. But the numbers are pretty damn convincing. It would be easy for me to pass this off as a satellite and hardware problem, but my instinct is that the report is onto something.”
“You and me both. That’s why I reached out to you. I think you see my dilemma. Without specifics, I can’t find the bastard behind these leaks, let alone nail his scalp to the wall.”
Watson leaned back in her chair, her eyes narrowing in thought.
“The reason why your report bugs me so much is
that I thought I had discovered a problem with part of that very same satellite uplink code a few months ago. You know, we’re always searching for vulnerabilities in our systems, and I put my best man on it. He said the vulnerability was there, but it was minimal and, to the best of his knowledge, had never been exploited. He patched it and we moved on.”
“Is it possible he missed something—another vulnerability, perhaps?”
“No, we ran diagnostics up and down after he patched. It was bulletproof.”
Foley sighed. The worst American spy scandals in history weren’t perpetrated by foreign agents but by American traitors. Aldrich Ames was CIA, as Edward Snowden had been before he began working for an NSA private contractor. Robert Hanssen was FBI; Pollard and Walker were both Navy. It was as likely as not that this breach was an inside job as well. “I hate to ask, but do you trust your man on this?”
Watson frowned. “Funny you should ask. Larry Fung is one of the smartest guys I’ve ever worked with. Up until recently, I would have pounded the desk in his defense.”
“What’s changed your mind?”
Watson shook her head, obviously disgusted with herself.
“He’s passed every in-house security audit and his TS clearance is active, so there’s no reason to suspect him, right? But in my counterintel briefings I was told to watch for certain behavioral signs—and that whole MICE thing. The guy likes to play martyr, and he’s bleeding cash, as near as I can tell.”
“I thought you Silicon Valley types were all rolling in dough.”
“We get paid very well, but not the kind of money you think—and between federal and state taxes, we lose almost half of that. The big payoff is in stock options, and Elias has been very generous with those for me and Larry in particular. The problem is, the way he guarantees the NDAs and noncompetes we sign is that he holds our stocks in escrow for five years after the last date of our employment.”
“Is that legal?”
“Legal? Yes, but not ethical. Certainly effective. So Larry’s gotta wait quite a while to cash in his CloudServe lottery ticket.”
