Maden Mike - Tom Clancy Firing Point

“He’s your boss?”

“Not exactly. He runs the student exchange programs, but he’s a pretty big deal around the consulate. He and the CG spend a lot of time together.”

“Well, head back to your office and tell Mr. Dellinger you followed me here and you saw me leave. Got it?”

“Got it.”

Jack stood and snatched up the bill for Davis’s breakfast. “Next time, try the pancakes. And if I ever see you again?”

Davis stood. “You won’t.”

“Good.”

Jack watched the kid slink away. Davis was almost the same age he was when he joined The Campus. He couldn’t help but grin.

Was I ever really that green?

Jack pulled out his wallet but it was empty. He put the kid’s bill on his credit card instead.

He decided to head back to his place and see what he could dig up on the dead bomber on his own, hoping like hell Noèlia Aleixandri was her real name, while he waited for Gavin’s call.

Lost in his thoughts, he didn’t see Crooked Nose following far behind him, shielded by a Chinese tour group.

—

Jack sat on the rooftop terrace of his apartment. It was a warm day with a slight breeze from the sea. The building itself contained several other apartments, but Jack’s had exclusive access to the terrace through a separate stairwell. It had become his favorite thing about the place, with views of both the Mediterranean to the south and the old city to the north. It even had a great Internet connection. At night, he could see the lights from the basilica on the high mountain north of Barcelona. The terrace had a stout table and chairs that sat beneath a sturdy aluminum awning frame, though the awning itself was nowhere to be seen. It didn’t matter. The sun was warm and welcoming this time of year, not a beatdown like it could be in the summer, according to the travel books he’d read.

The dead bomber’s name and face appeared in the Spanish language newspapers and, as far as Jack could tell with his poor Spanish, all of them reported essentially the same terse information, probably from the same press release that authorities sent out on a case like this.

Noèlia Aleixandri was twenty-three years old at the time of her death. She had been a journalism major at the Universitat de Vic, a small city up north near the Pyrenees where she was born, before dropping out two years ago. She had been a student activist involved with the independence movement while in school, “but never violent, and never arrested for anything criminal,” according to her grieving mother.

Too bad, Jack thought. A bright young woman with a promising future, blown to hell by her own negligence, or someone else’s.

It was the someone else that really interested him. Getting hold of her cell phone would open that door, and Gavin was just the guy to do it.

Time for a phone call. He headed back downstairs to the relative security of his apartment. No telling who might overhear his conversation with Gavin about the bombing and draw the wrong conclusions.

14

“Jack! That’s so weird. I was just about to call you. You won’t believe the stuff I’ve found.”

Gavin’s high-pitched voice squealed with the enthusiasm of a teenage gamer winning a Fortnite competition. But the portly, fiftysomething bachelor—who actually was a Fortnite player—was a world-class programmer, hacker, and researcher, and the brains behind Hendley Associates’ considerable IT department.

“Surprise me.”

“Well, where should I start? I’ll do the good stuff first. Your friend’s company, CrowdScope? It’s a CIA op, and Renée Moore was CIA.”

“What? You’re sure?”

“Hell oo ? It’s me. Of course I’m sure.”

Jack couldn’t believe it. Moore had never mentioned government service. The one time he’d raised it with her, she’d laughed in his face, incredulous. “Where’s the money in that, Jack?”

He wondered what had changed her mind.

On the other hand, Silicon Valley made perfect sense as a CIA station. Google, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and the other giant social media networks constituted the most successful intelligence-gathering operation the world had ever seen. They collected and dissected terabytes of personal data from their billons of users around the world—almost always provided by the users themselves, and with their own consent.

Why try to compete with that kind of data harvesting and analysis when you could simply infiltrate those preexisting networks?

Thanks to Snowden, everybody knew that the Intelligence Community had secured the cooperation of many of the technology firms early on. Companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft had billions of dollars’ worth of contracts with the federal government, including the agencies of the Intelligence Community and the Department of Defense.

But a combination of bad press, customer concerns, and activist outrage had resulted in a pushback against covert and even overt cooperation by these firms with the American government. These companies’ loyalties were to their bottom lines, not national security. It wasn’t surprising that the CIA had decided to try to find another way in. God knows how many foreign powers used platforms like Facebook and Twitter to covertly influence domestic and world opinion. If he ran the CIA, Jack would focus his efforts on infiltrating and influencing Silicon Valley as well.

“What can you tell me about Renée? What was she doing at CrowdScope—or in Barcelona?”

“That’s the crazy thing, Jack. I have access to a lot of databases—including ones I’m not supposed to have access to. But whatever your friend was up to, and whatever operations CrowdScope is conducting, I can’t get close to it. I think even their firewalls have firewalls. I tried tiptoeing around some of their defenses and set off a few alarms. If I’m not careful, I’m going to get hauled away by a CIA snatch team and dumped in an offshore prison somewhere.”

So Renée wasn’t just in federal service , Jack thought.

She was all the way in, up to her neck.

“If CrowdScope is that important, and if Renée was part of it, whatever she was up to in Barcelona must be kryptonite.”

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Gavin asked.

Jack heard paper crinkling. “Snickers or Almond Joy?”

“Snickers, baby.” Gavin took a bite and spoke with a full mouth. “It’s the PowerBar of gamers everywhere.”

“So, I’m thinking the bombing in Barcelona wasn’t a terror act at all. Maybe the real target was Renée. What about you?”

“A definite maybe. But, Jack, there is one other possibility.”

“What’s that?”

“Maybe the real target was you.”

—

“Why me?”

“Why not you? Besides the fact you work for Gerry Hendley and you’re the son of the President of the United States—a fact we’ve managed to hide, but it’s still a fact that someone could have discovered. You’ve killed, captured, or jailed enough bad guys on your own in the last few years to put you on a dozen hit lists. Remember van Delden? The Iron Syndicate?”

Jack surely did. The Iron Syndicate was an international crime organization with tentacles reaching into almost every security organization on the planet. They’d put a bounty on Jack’s head—or technically, for the collection of his severed head—two years ago. Thanks to his time in Poland with Liliana, the Iron Syndicate was largely dismantled and its members dead, in jail, or on the run.

God rest your soul, Liliana.

“I appreciate the thought, Gav, but I’d be really surprised if they were after me. I’ve been wide open the whole time I’ve been in Spain. There were dozens of better opportunities to take me out without any collateral damage.”