by Mark Greaney
The full scope of the North Korean operation was laid out to Sharps by Roblas himself at a luxury hotel in Saint Maarten. The American ex-spy agreed on the spot—as soon as Roblas agreed on a cost plus fee for the private intelligence firm.
Sharps charged an incredible amount of money for the work he did. Often the brash American infuriated Óscar Roblas by his near-extortionate fees and his occasional reluctance to get his hands really dirty. Sharps would spy, he would break some laws, and he would push some boundaries, but a man in Roblas’s line of work occasionally needed extreme measures taken, and Sharps was too aboveboard to do the real dirty work.
But Sharps and his people had their place. They would help get foreign nationals into North Korea, they would help move material and steal proprietary software needed for the production facility, they would pressure elected officials and UN members to vote the way the North Koreans desired to keep the money and the material moving. In the final analysis, even though Duke charged too much and refused to assassinate, kidnap, or beat Roblas’s enemies, the businessman in Óscar Roblas knew that Duke Sharps and his staff were worth every damn cent.
15
Present day
John Clark’s mobile phone’s alarm began chiming on his desk, and he looked away from the paperwork in front of him and turned it off. He sighed a little. It was ten a.m., time to do his daily exercises.
Damn, he thought to himself. Ten o’clock comes around every day, doesn’t it?
He got up and shut the door to his office, then opened a drawer in his desk and removed a blue racquetball. He sat back down in his chair, took the ball in his right hand in front of him, and began squeezing with all his might.
Clark did all manner of other exercises in a small gym he’d built for himself in his Emmitsburg, Maryland, farmhouse, but the workout he did there he actually enjoyed. His hand therapy, on the other hand, was miserable.
Clark’s hand had been smashed by torturers in Russia a couple of years back, and despite a half-dozen reconstructive surgeries in the intervening years the index finger on his right hand was still both stiff and weak. Arthritis and scar tissue around the small joints of the appendage were the root cause of the problem, and his surgeon had told him he’d done all he could to repair the damage. John asked the man what John himself could do to improve his situation, and the doctor had replied with a shrug.
“I’d say PT, every day, to strengthen the muscles and stretch the tissue. The only problem is the arthritis in the knuckles. Working out that hand is going to hurt. Every day, it will hurt.”
The doctor thought he was talking a senior citizen into just giving up on a full recovery and enjoying his retirement years in comfort, but the doctor didn’t know John Clark. Clark had happily accepted that ten-second primer on what he needed to do to make the best of his horribly damaged hand, and since that day he’d put himself through an excruciating daily twenty-minute regimen of stretching and strengthening.
The doc had been correct. Yes, it hurt. A lot. Every day. And even with all the pain and suffering, Clark’s trigger finger was still so noncompliant he’d taken to firing guns with his middle finger, resulting in the joke around The Campus that when Clark flipped you the bird, he really meant it. But his hand had improved markedly in the months he’d been putting himself through his daily ten a.m. torture session.
He squeezed down on the ball, and white-hot flame grew in the back of his hand and it shot up his index finger. He winced with pain.
And his office door flew open.
Clark quickly put the ball down and looked up at the doorway. Jack Ryan, Jr., stood there with a sheet of paper clutched in his hand. There was a wide grin on his face.
“Do you knock, kid?”
“Sorry, John,” Ryan said, but he looked too excited to mean it.
Clark blew out a long sigh. “What do you have?”
“Skala.” When Clark did not react to this, Ryan said, “Remember the name Hazelton wrote before he died?”
“Of course. Who is he?”
“Hazelton said he had something to do with Prague airport. It looked like a dead end, since we couldn’t find anyone by that name associated with the airport. But finally I found a guy named Karel Skála, who is a low-rung consular official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Czech Republic who works in the bureaucracy of the European Union. He operates out of an office at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building in Prague, so I didn’t see a connection. But after some more digging, I see that by appointment he will meet traveling EU diplomats at the customs and immigration office at Václav Havel Airport.”
Clark was impressed. He said, “Not too far of a stretch to speculate this guy gave something to Hazelton, and that was what the North Koreans were after. What might he have that interested them?”
Clark knew the answer to the question he had posed. He just wanted to see if Ryan would get it as well.
Ryan answered confidently. “Probably travel documentation. That’s foreign ministry territory. Issuing passports, entrance visas, or other EU documentation. Skála’s particular job involves preparing travel documentation for Czech diplomatic employees. This guy knows what he gave Hazelton, which means he probably knows why someone killed Hazelton. I say we pay the man a visit.”
Clark stood. “Let’s grab the guys and then go talk to Gerry.”
—
Twenty minutes later Gerry sat in the conference room surrounded by all the Campus operators. He rubbed his temples. “You want to go to the Czech Republic and find out what you can about this Skála character.”
“That’s right,” said Ryan.
“Covertly or overtly?”
“Covertly, for sure.”
Gerry looked at Clark. “What do you think, John?”
Clark said, “I’m for it. We can send Ryan and Caruso to Prague. While they are there, the rest of us will go up to New York. I want to put some resources into learning a little more about what Sharps Global Intelligence Partners is up to.”
Sam said, “John, you know Sharps, don’t you?”
“I did.”
“You guys are old buddies?”
Clark gave Driscoll a sideways glance. “I wouldn’t piss on Duke Sharps if he was on fire.”
“You and Mary Pat seem to feel the same about the guy. What did he do?”
“Duke Sharps was working for FBI’s Counterintelligence Division right after Nine-Eleven. He was based here, in Manhattan, and he was promoted to the top of the Manhattan Bureau. It was a time where we needed a lot of leadership in that job, but while everybody else saw it as their duty to stick around and work, Duke Sharps saw Nine-Eleven as an opportunity for personal enrichment. He quit FBI, then started his own consulting company. FBI needed his expertise, so they ended up paying him several times what they had been paying him.”
With a shrug Sam said, “Sounds like capitalism.”
“It gets worse. Sharps Partners was set up to work exclusively with the federal government, but slowly, over the next few years, he started branching out into the private sector, creating new divisions and offices to assist corporations on intelligence and counterintelligence matters. His work here in New York was still first-rate, from what I’ve been told, so the government kept their hands off. But after a while it became clear his private-sector work wasn’t as private-sector as everyone thought it was. He got caught working for the Saudis to identify Israeli Mossad officers in New York.”
Sam said, “Holy shit. Why the hell is he not in prison for that?”
“Sharps claimed he thought he was doing work on behalf of a Gulf oil company, corporate intel against a rival company. He also pled ignorance that the men he was tailing were Mossad. He was hauled into hearings, but they were kept quiet for a lot of reasons.”
“I’ll bet,” said Driscoll. “A guy with Sharps’s knowledge and clearances could rais
e a lot of issues in an open hearing.”
“Right. In the end, the government couldn’t prove he was knowingly working for a foreign power. He lost all his federal contracts, President Ryan saw to that, and everyone thought Sharps Partners would dissolve without all those contracts coming in. But a funny thing happened . . .”
Sam shook his head in disbelief. “He didn’t need the U.S. money anymore.”
“Nope. He had parlayed his high-profile FBI gig and U.S. contracts into God knows how many foreign deals. He basically became the guy in the U.S. the bad guys call when they want agents who talk and walk just like Americans, doing operations either on American soil or under the cover of the USA.”
“And no one has been able to prove anything?”
Clark shook his head. “Not a goddamned thing. Sharps has foreign entities and they work with other foreign entities that are set up by whatever shady government or criminal group wants to hire him. It’s a foolproof system, or at least it always has been.” Clark sneered. “If I can find any proof that treasonous bastard is taking one single dime from some other state actor for the purpose of conducting intelligence, then I will nail his balls to the steps of the FBI building as a gift to all the hardworking men and women in government who didn’t parlay their access and experience into a criminal career.”
Clark was ready to go. “We’ll need today to prep, to assemble equipment, to acquire transport and a safe house in theater. I’ll go down and talk to IT about getting us some access to cameras outside of Sharps’s office.”
Gerry said, “Okay. I agree to both operations. Good luck, guys. Your work is cut out for you. Sharps and his people are good at what they do, and New York City is their turf. You do not tail them into subways, or through any choke points, because they will spot you.”
Clark said, “You’re right about that.”
Ryan understood why he got the foreign duty. With his beard and other things he had done to alter his appearance in the past few years, he was almost never recognized, even on the streets of the U.S. But in Prague he would garner even less attention. He hated that his semi-fame had to enter into the threat matrix for each operation, but he had no one to blame but himself. Not for his fame—the fact his dad was a household name around the world was at fault there—but Jack Junior himself had sought out a life of clandestine work, and celebrity and anonymity were polar opposites.
Ryan recognized his was an unusual life. It annoyed him sometimes, but he realized he wouldn’t trade it for the world. He said, “Thanks, Gerry. Maybe I shouldn’t press my luck, but I’d like to request that Gavin comes with us on this.”
Gerry was surprised. “To Prague? Why?”
“Whatever Skála’s involvement in this matter, I’m thinking it likely he was doing it through back channels, and not in his official capacity in the government. It stands to reason. Sharps Global Intelligence Partners wasn’t contracted with the Czech government, so I figure he was moonlighting if he was working with them. That might mean he used his personal phone or computer as a means of contact with someone else involved. I’m assuming we’ll have to skim all the intel off of his electronic devices in order to figure out who he’s been talking to. If we are to do this without him knowing we’re there, then our infiltration might be time sensitive.”
“What if he’s erased the data?”
Ryan didn’t hesitate. “Oh, I’m sure he has. But I’ve watched Gavin work. He’s a bloodhound. If there is a trace of anything, even if it’s something erased, Gavin will retrieve it.”
Gerry thought it over. He wasn’t crazy about Biery running out into the field every time The Campus had a time-sensitive operation. Virtually all of their operations were time sensitive, and there was only one IT director.
Jack saw his employer’s hesitancy, so he said, “Of course, I guess I could just whack Karel Skála on the head and kidnap him.”
It was a joke, but Gerry just raised an annoyed eyebrow.
Ryan smiled. “Sorry. Just kidding around. It’s okay. We can go without Gavin. We’ll make do.”
Gerry looked to Clark. He was the director of operations of The Campus, after all. “If I send Gavin to Prague, is that going to negatively affect your operation in New York?”
Clark shook his head. “We’ll need schematics on Sharps’s offices, employee lists, things of that sort. Might need some security measures disabled in his building if we decide to try a sneak-and-peek. Biery’s staff is more than competent to handle all that.”
“Okay.” Gerry turned to Ryan and Caruso. “You can take Gavin, but only if you promise to return him the way you found him.”
Jack and Dom laughed.
—
Gavin Biery was virtually the only employee of Hendley Associates who wasn’t happy with the new building. Although his job title had not changed since the old place, here he had control of less than half the square footage as compared to the West Odenton campus, and to Gavin that felt like a kick in the pants.
Yes, The Campus was a leaner outfit now, he didn’t need as much space, and Gerry had put in the money to ensure that the technology here was better than much of the equipment Gavin had used at their old address, but Gavin liked the feeling of control he had over the bigger operation. West Odenton had more computers and more personnel, and Gavin Biery had been master of it all.
Since the inception of The Campus many years earlier, the organization derived much of its raw intelligence by intercepting the satellite feeds beamed between the NSA building up in Fort Meade, Maryland, and the CIA building down in McLean, Virginia. To do this a huge array of dishes were necessary on the roof of the five-story West Odenton building.
The radio waves, in addition to being hard to access, were also encrypted, so that anyone who could pull them out of the air couldn’t decipher the intel. Biery and his staff got around this with state-of-the-art decryption software and the massive amounts of high-tech hardware needed to run it.
But the technology had changed over the years, and now Gavin was able to access every bit of the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System’s intelligence networks, as well as other government networks, through a back door he developed through a virtual private network.
Gone now were the dishes, the miles of cabling running up and down a communications shaft, and the mainframes used just in the decoding and decrypting process. Biery did still have a mainframe here at the Alexandria building, but he was able to task it to other projects.
Gavin missed his sat dishes and his cabling. He had developed the virtual private network access to JWICS only out of necessity, after the Chinese assault on the West Odenton building meant The Campus no longer had the line-of-sight access necessary to intercept the radio traffic. Gavin lamented the loss of his massive computer and communications complex, but he was the architect of the new system, and objectively he did have to admit they were now in a newer, more secure, and better-connected location.
But there was another reason Biery missed the big Hendley Associates building in West Odenton. Up there, they had a nice cafeteria with excellent food. Here, by contrast, they had only a break room with snack machines. Of course there were restaurants nearby. Many of the employees walked the few blocks south down to King Street for lunch, but Gavin rarely took the time to go out for lunch. Usually he had pizza or sandwiches delivered from outside the building, but every mid-morning and mid-afternoon he liked a snack to keep him going, and for that he had to deal with the damn machines.
At ten-thirty a.m. Gavin was in the little break room, dropping quarters into a snack machine. He made his selection and then groaned in frustration as his fried blueberry pie got stuck between the plexiglass window and a bag of chips.
“Damn it,” he said. He banged on the glass a few times to no avail, and then started to fish through his pockets for more money, deciding this to be some omen telling him he really wanted the ba
g of chips as well.
While he was focused on his change, Jack Ryan and Dom Caruso came out of the stairwell into the break room.
Jack said, “Your secretary said we’d find you here. Mid-morning munchies?”
“It takes a lot of fuel to power all this brain, Ryan.”
“Oh, I understand completely,” Jack said.
Dom said, “Hey, Gav. We were just wondering if you felt like taking a little trip.”
Gavin couldn’t contain his excitement. As he spun around in surprise, several quarters flew out of his hand and bounced across the tile floor. “Hell, yes! Where and when?”
“Prague, and very soon. Like tonight.”
The fifty-six-year-old smiled broadly, and his chest heaved with excitement. “Prague? Central European intrigue. Cobblestone streets. Gas lamps. Mist. The perfect town for real cloak-and-dagger work.”
Jack rolled his eyes a little. “You’ve been reading too many spy novels. No cloak and dagger. More like sitting and watching, with you back at the hotel waiting for us to show up with a mobile phone or a laptop I’ll need cracked.”
“I can do that.” Gavin shrugged. “It’s still pretty cool.”
He looked a little dejected, so Caruso added, “If it will make you feel better, you can wear a cloak in your hotel room while you do it.”
Ryan laughed, and Biery played along. “Better than nothing, I guess.”
Dom saw the stuck fruit pie. He punched the glass window of the machine and the snack fell to the bottom. Pulling it out, Dom said, “Come on, Gavin. This shit will kill you.”
Gavin snatched the fruit pie from Dom’s hand. “No, Dominic. Shooting it out with Iranians will kill you.”
Dom gave Biery a hard look that Ryan plainly saw. Biery realized he’d screwed up. Gavin cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Okay. Well, I’d better go tell my staff they’re going to have to read an instruction manual on computers, because I won’t be here to hold their hands for a few days.” He took off toward the stairs.
