“Much more so. The population is very transient. People here do not recognize anyone, except perhaps their closest friends; it is as Lebanon used to be.”
“Or Bahrain still is?”
“That is far too close to home.” He didn’t have to explain. Many Saudis drove there in their chauffeured cars to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh, but too many of them might recognize his voice, if not his new face. The Saudi royal family wanted him as dead as the Americans did. Indeed, they’d set up viewing stands in Chop Chop Square in Riyadh for the infidels to see his last minutes with their mini-cams and other recording systems. There were many prices on his head. . . . And the American one was not nearly the highest. “Come. Let us find you a proper bed.”
And Hadi followed him through the kitchen and into the house, thence left toward the bedroom wing.
“You are secure here?” Hadi asked.
“Yes, but in a few minutes I can be away. It is not perfect, but it is the best a man can arrange.”
“Do you test your escape route?”
“Weekly.”
“So it is for me in Italy.”
“Rest!” the Emir said, opening the door to the bedroom. “Do you require anything?”
Hadi shook his head. “I could eat, but I need sleep. I will see you in the morning.”
“Good night, my friend.” A shake of the shoulder, and the Emir closed the door. The man had flown almost six thousand miles. He’d earned the right to be exhausted.
51
BELL AND GRANGER were waiting in Hendley’s office when Jack and Clark walked in. “Washed out in Chicago,” Clark told them, falling into a swivel chair. “He flew as far as Las Vegas. After that, who can say? McCarran has flights to everywhere. Maybe L.A., San Francisco, hell, back to the East Coast, maybe.”
“His traveling name?” Bell asked.
“Joel Klein. Jewish, would you believe? Makes sense, I suppose. I suppose we can surf the computers to see if he booked a flight on from there, but who’s to say he doesn’t have numerous other identities?”
“Already being checked,” Granger assured him. “No hits yet. I’m fresh out of ideas.”
“If I had to bet, I’d say he’s bedded down somewhere, maybe scheduled to continue his travel regimen tomorrow. Not enough manpower, Rick. We need more bodies and more eyes to do this.”
“We got what we got,” Bell said.
“Yeah.”
“There is another possibility,” Jack said. “What if Las Vegas was his destination? Then what?”
“Damned scary thought,” Granger replied. “It means we’ve got an operational URC cell here.”
Tell us about Peshawar,” Hendley said a few minutes later.
Clark dug into his carry-on and laid Masood’s drive on the desk. He gave the Reader’s Digest condensed version of the trip. “Why they didn’t toss the house I don’t know,” he said. “According to Masood, he copied everything he did for the URC. Have to assume the guy who helped them move was the Emir.”
“For now we will.” Hendley nodded to Bell. “Rick, can you get that down to Gavin? Have him send up the contents asap?” To Clark: “You want to call Mary Pat?”
“Already did. She’s on her way.”
Hendley picked up the phone and called the lobby. “Ernie, Gerry here. Got a visitor coming. Mary Pat Foley. Right, thanks.”
Mary Pat appeared in Hendley’s doorway forty minutes later. “Nice digs,” she said. “Looks like I’m in the wrong business.” She walked across the carpet and shook Hendley’s hand. “Good to see you again, Gerry.”
“You too, Mary Pat. This is Rick Bell and Sam Granger. And I think you know Jack Ryan.” More handshakes, and a surprised look from Mary Pat. “Keeping up the family legacy?” she asked Jack.
“It’s early days yet, ma’am.”
“Mary Pat.”
Hendley said, “Have a seat.” She took the chair next to Clark. “You look tired, John.”
“I always look this way. It’s the lighting.”
“Let’s get on the same page,” Hendley said.
Clark gave Mary Pat the same recap. When he was done, she let out a low whistle. “A mover. That tells us something. You don’t need somebody like Masood unless you’re leaving the region.”
Granger said, “We should have the hard drive contents shortly.”
“It’s not going to tell us where he is,” Mary Pat predicted. “The Emir’s too slippery for that. Probably used more than one mover. Used them to hopscotch himself somewhere he could drop off the radar. Best we’re going to get is close.”
“Which is a damned sight closer than we are now,” Rick Bell observed.
While Biery and his geeks dug into Masood’s drive and Clark and Chavez caught a power nap on the break-room couches, Jack turned his attention to the flash drive Ding had taken off one of the Tripoli tangos. Having determined that it contained stego-encoded images, he and Biery had decided to try a brute-force algorithm crack, with a free steak dinner for whoever got there first. Busy as he was with Masood’s drive, Jack felt confident in his head start.
After two hours of crunching, one of the algorithms struck gold and an image began depixelating on his screen. It was a large file, almost six megabytes, so the decoding would take a few minutes. He picked up the phone and called Granger. Two minutes later Jack had an audience of eight standing over his shoulder, watching the monitor as the photo resolved.
“What the hell is that?” Brian asked, leaning in.
The photo was blurred and desaturated of color. Jack imported it into Photoshop and washed the file through some filters, working the contrast and brightness until the image came clear.
There was ten seconds of silence.
The 8×10 image was done in 1940s pinup style: a dark-haired woman in a white cotton peasant skirt, sitting on a bale of hay, her legs crossed demurely. She was naked from the waist up, her impossibly massive breasts drooping to her thighs.
“Tits,” Sam Granger said. “My God, Jack, you’ve discovered tits.”
“Oh, shit,” Jack muttered.
Everyone burst out laughing.
Dominic said, “Jack, you little pervert . . . I had no idea.”
Then Brian: “So, Jack, exactly how much ‘depixelation’ do you do in your spare time?”
More laughter.
“Very funny.” Jack groaned.
Once the laughter died down, Hendley said, “Okay, let’s break it up and let Mr. Hefner carry on. Nice work, Jack.”
At four o’ clock, Jack woke up Clark and Chavez. “Show-time, guys. Conference room in five minutes.”
They showed up in four minutes, both armed with an extra-large cup of coffee. Everyone else was already seated: Hendley, Granger, Bell, Rounds, Dominic, and Mary Pat. Clark and Chavez took their seats. Rounds took the lead. He looked up from the summary Biery had sent up a few minutes earlier.
“A lot of this is nuts-and-bolts stuff that may help us down the road. The big-picture items are three. He picked up the remote and aimed it at the forty-two-inch wide-screen TV. The frontspiece of a passport appeared on the screen. “That’s what our guy looked like at some point in the last six to nine months.”
There was ten seconds of silence around the table.
“Bears a resemblance to the few pics we’ve got of him,” Bell said.
Rounds said, “Forged French passport. High-quality work. The stamps, the backing, the threading—all perfect. According to Masood’s hard drive, the Emir used this three months ago. Peshawar to Dushanbe, Tajikistan, then to Ashgabat, Volgograd, then Saint Petersburg. Then nothing.”
“That’s as far as Masood took him,” Dominic added.
“Can’t be his final destination,” Jack replied. “Another mover took over, maybe?”
Clark said, “If you average out his hops, he was heading generally northwest. Extend that a little and you’re into Finland or Sweden.”
“Sweden,” Mary Pat said. “The plastic-surgery thing?”
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“Maybe,” Granger said.
“The Hlasek Air thing?” Chavez wondered aloud.
“That, too, maybe. If Saint Petersburg was as far as Masood took him, that means he dumped the French passport for a new one. If he went into Sweden or Finland on a new one, he wouldn’t be able to land anywhere after that—at least not legitimately.”
“Explain that.” This from Hendley.
“He couldn’t use his old face for the next passport, and there’s no way he gets one all bandaged up, so he sits still until all the swelling and bruising are gone, then gets the passport.”
“Let’s back up a second,” Jack said. “Who took over as the mover in Saint Petersburg? That’s the question we need to ask.”
“Needle in a haystack,” Bell said.
“Maybe not,” Mary Pat came back. “Masood was ex-ISI. The URC chose him because he was a pro at it. They’d want the same thing in Russia. Maybe we’re looking for ex-SVR, or ex-KGB.”
“Or GRU,” Rounds added. “Military intelligence.”
“Right.”
“Any way to narrow down the list, Mary Pat?” Clark asked.
“Maybe. It’s a pretty specialized skill. Probably would take somebody who handled illegals. Lot of those still around, though.”
“How many of them are dead, though?” Jack said. “In Saint Petersburg. And in the last four months. They probably would’ve killed Masood a lot earlier if he hadn’t gone to ground. He was a loose end. The Russian mover would be, too.”
“Good thinking, Jack,” Hendley said. “Think you can work with that?” he asked Mary Pat.
“Give me a few hours.”
She was back from the NCTC in two. “Wasn’t all that hard, really. Jack, you nailed it. Last month in Saint Petersburg, Yuriy Beketov, former KGB officer, Directorate S—Illegals—of the First Chief Directorate. Shot dead in a Chechnyan restaurant. The Saint Petersburg cops put it on the Interpol wire. I’ve got a couple people trying to tease out some more details, but Beketov seems to fit.”
“Until then, let’s play with it,” Hendley said. “Say he goes to Switzerland, or Sweden or Finland, for surgery.”
“Sweden gets my vote, too,” Rounds said. “He’d want something high-end, very private, with select clientele. A lot more of those in Sweden than Finland. It’s a place to start.”
“Google,” Jack said.
It was nearly nine at night when they found what they needed. Jack pushed back from his laptop and ran his hands through his hair. “Well, I’ll give them this. They’re consistent. Ruthless and consistent.”
“Enlighten us,” Clark said.
“Three weeks ago, the Orrhogen Clinic in Sundsvall. Burned to the ground with the managing director inside. Something else: Sundsvall is only about seventy-five miles north of Söderhamn. If Brian and Dominic hadn’t shown up, it’s a safe bet Rolf the mechanic would be dead right now.”
“Okay, so the Emir has the surgery, spends a few days recuperating, then leaves,” Granger said. “Chances are halfway good he hasn’t got a passport. He’d need a private charter, a private airport, and a pilot who doesn’t mind getting a little dirty.” Hendley considered this. “How exactly would he do it?”
“Rolf gave us the answer,” Dominic replied. “Duplicate transponder code.”
“Right,” Jack replied. “Hlasek switches off the first transponder code, drops off the radar, turns on the second transponder code, and they’ve got themselves a new plane.”
“That kind of thing would certainly get written down somewhere,” Rounds observed. “Do we have an in with the FAA or Transport Canada?”
“No,” Granger replied. “Doesn’t mean we can’t, though.” He picked up the phone, and two minutes later Gavin was in the conference room.
Jack explained what they were looking for. “Doable?”
Gavin snorted. “The FAA’s firewalls are a joke. Transport Canada’s not any better. Give me a half-hour.”
Good as his word, thirty minutes later Biery called up to the conference room. Hendley put him on speakerphone. “In the time frame you gave me, eighteen flights dropped off radar in either U.S. or Canadian airspace. Sixteen were nothing—operator error—one was a Cessna that crashed outside Albany, and one, a Dassault Falcon 9000, that dropped off altogether. The pilot reported a problem with its landing gear on its way into Moose Jaw. A couple minutes later they lost it on radar.”
“Where’s Moose Jaw?” Dominic asked.
“Canada. Due north, about where North and South Dakota meet,” Jack said.
“There’s something else,” Biery said. “I did a little cross-hacking keyword search between Transport Canada, the FAA, and the NTSB. Three days after Moose Jaw lost the Falcon, a fisherman off the coast of California found an FDR—flight data recorder. According to the NTSB, the box belonged to a Gulfstream—the one that’s supposedly still sitting in a hangar outside Söderhamn. Problem is, Dassault planes are equipped with prototype FDR. It’s designed to break free of the airframe when it detects a certain kinetic threshold. And it’s got a float and a beacon—Gulfstream boxes only have a beacon. The box they found belonged to Hlasek’s Falcon.”
Hendley let out a breath and looked around the table. “He’s here. The sonofabitch is hiding right under our noses.”
Clark nodded. “The question is, what? It would have to be something big to bring him out.”
52
OUR FRIEND ARRIVED SAFELY?” Ibrahim asked.
Digital clicks occasionally interrupted his subordinate’s voice.
“Yes,” the Emir replied. “He left again yesterday. I’ve read the details of your plan. Tell me where things stand.”
“We’re ready. Simply give the word and we can be in country within seventy-two hours.”
Talking directly to the commander of his ground team had been an impromptu decision on his part, and certainly dangerous, especially given his own precarious circumstances, but the risk was warranted. The communication method was as secure as any, a homemade encryption package they had married to the house’s VoIP—Voice over Internet Protocol—computer-to-computer Skype account.
Having decided to proceed with Ibrahim’s operation, the Emir wanted a final discussion, as a measure of reassurance not only for himself but also for Ibrahim. If he should lose his life on the mission his true reward would come in paradise, but here on earth he was still a soldier going into battle, and soldiers often needed praise and encouragement.
“How many times have you been there?” the Emir asked.
“Four times. Twice for recruitment and twice for reconnaissance.”
“Tell me more about your contact.”
“His name is Cassiano Silva. Brazilian by birth, raised in the Catholic faith. He converted to Islam six years ago. He is one of the faithful, of that I’m sure, and he’s never failed to provide what I’ve asked of him.”
“Tariq tells me your recruitment of him was nicely done.”
“Western intelligence calls it a ‘false flag.’ He believes I’m with Kuwait’s intelligence service, with connections to OPEC’s Market Analysis Division. I thought he would find the idea of industrial espionage more . . . palatable.”
“I’m impressed, Ibrahim,” the Emir said, meaning it. “You’ve shown good instincts.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And your plan . . . you’re confident it is feasible?”
“I am, but I’d like to remain cautious until I am on the ground. On the surface, all the parts fit together nicely.”
So he’d let Ibrahim go forward with his plan and know it would be the first domino in a series, at the end of which awaited a truly world-changing event. But that was in the future—not far in the future but far enough that focusing on it to the exclusion of the smaller pieces could harm the whole.
“How many casualties do you expect?” the Emir asked.
“That is impossible to say at this time. Hundreds, perhaps. As you said, though, those numbers are largely irre
levant.”
“True, but dead bodies on television have a fearsome effect, which is something that will work to our benefit later. How long will your final reconnaissance take?”
“Five to six days.”
“And after that?”
“Forty-eight to seventy-two hours to the event itself.”
The Emir brought his mental calendar to the forefront of his mind. Juggling more than one operation as he was, he would have to hold off on final approval until they heard back from the Russian teams at least. The other pieces in Dubai and Dakar were in place and standing by. The cornerstone, of course, their lovely Tatar girl, could be hurried only so much. Tariq was confident she was moving at an appropriate pace, and that would have to do for now, but in the back of his mind he had to consider alternatives should she fail. Still, they had to be ready to step in. A dangerous gambit, that. They might be able to disguise their actions or put in place some delaying tactics, but violence—especially the kind of violence that would likely be required—would without a doubt draw the attention of the authorities.
If such action became necessary, could they stay far enough ahead of the authorities to complete Lotus?
“You have final approval,” the Emir said.
Their hunch that the Emir was in all likelihood already in the United States, hiding somewhere between the Dakotas and California, was quickly followed by the realization that there was little they could do to confirm the hypothesis. True, they knew Shasif Hadi, flying under the alias Joel Klein, had been headed for Las Vegas when they lost his trail, but that meant nothing. The Klein passport hadn’t subsequently shown up in the system, which could mean he went no farther than Las Vegas, or it could mean he’d simply followed the rules of tradecraft and dumped Klein for yet another alias. Jack’s peel-back of Hadi’s activities had shown a lot of travel to the Persian Gulf states, Western Europe, and South America—which would necessitate a number of CONUS layovers. Short of distributing Hadi’s photo to Las Vegas law enforcement, there was little they could do but continue to work the problem with what they had in hand.