Maden Mike - Tom Clancy Firing Point

“Collateral damage is a great way to hide a crime, you know.”

“I think you’re reaching.”

“Just keeping an eye out for you.”

“I appreciate that. More than you know. But it seems to me that Renée is the obvious target. As near as I can tell, she’d only just arrived in Barcelona. Maybe you can find out when and where she flew in from. That might give us a clue as to her assignment.”

“Sure thing.”

“Thanks. You said you had other stuff you’ve discovered besides Moore’s CIA connection?”

“Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. I was thinking about the CCTV tape. Any luck with your CNI contact?”

“I tried. No go.”

“Well, no worries on that account. I hacked their server—”

“You did what? How?”

“Oh, Jack. I’m hurt. You doubted me?”

Jack shouldn’t have been surprised. Gavin was a one-man wrecking machine when it came to hacking. Even NSA-level encryption didn’t stop him. He usually found his way around technological firewalls by exploiting the failings of the human operators. Gavin idolized the Israeli agents who destroyed the centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear facility. They did it by dropping a Stuxnet-infested flash drive on the ground, knowing that an OCD Iranian scientist would pick it up and insert it into one of the air-gapped computers.

“I never doubt you, Gavin. You only manage to astound me.”

“Oh, you know. All in a day’s work.”

Jack rolled his eyes. Gavin’s gloating practically oozed through the phone. “So what did you find on the CCTV tapes?”

“I only had time to download an hour’s worth before their IT people discovered I was snooping around. I know you know this, but there’s video-editing software on the secure Hendley cloud server you can use to check out what I downloaded, along with some facial-recognition software that might help.”

Gavin had built an entire suite of proprietary investigative tools that members of The Campus could access remotely for occasions just like this. Gavin was more than happy to do the work himself but usually there was far more of it to do than even an extraordinary technician like Gavin could handle. He not only built the suite of tools, he trained the team on them as well. They couldn’t come close to Gavin’s talent on the really technical stuff, but for grunt work like reviewing hours of video or audio transmissions, it was better to put less skilled hands on the oars.

“Gavin, I can’t believe it. That’s perfect. Post it up on the Hendley cloud as soon as you can and I’ll start going through it.”

Gavin’s mouth was full of Snickers bar again. “Already done.”

“Okay, okay. You’re obviously one step ahead of me.”

“That goes without saying.”

“Then let me throw you a curveball. I’m sending you something now.”

Jack texted the photo of the Bluetooth Blonde Brossa gave him and links to the stories he’d found about her. He gave Gavin a minute to look it over.

“Sounds like you already know who she is. What do you need from me?”

“I saw her at the restaurant just before it blew. She was on a phone. My bet is that it’s a burner phone. The CNI says they don’t have it.”

“They might be lying.”

“Could be. But for now, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. Any chance you can break into the citywide camera system and track her movements? If she bought that phone herself, you might be able to find the store where she got it. From there, we might be able to run her down.”

“Yeah, that’ll be fun. I’ve got a new automated tracking software I wrote that I want to try out—it lets the computer do all of the monotonous stuff.”

“Thanks, Gav. I couldn’t do this without you.”

“No question about that.”

“So, you said that you had some bad news?”

“Oh, yeah. I nearly forgot. I chased down this Sammler guy you asked me to look into. I couldn’t come up with anybody who had any obvious ties to Moore. Sorry about that.”

“Don’t sweat it. My Spanish source came up short, too. Though apparently there was a German national by that name in Spain a few days ago and she’s chasing him down.”

“I saw him, too. Already checked him out. He’s not the guy. Are you sure you heard the name right? Could she have said ‘Samuels’ maybe? Or ‘Stattler’? Something like that?”

“I heard it right. Renée made sure of that.”

“I don’t mean to offend you, but maybe she was hallucinating toward the end, or losing oxygen to her brain. She might have said ‘Sammler’ but that might not mean anything at all.”

“It’s a possibility.” Jack’s hopes began to fade. “Unless the Spaniards pull up something on Sammler, I’m afraid he’s a dead end for now.”

15

WASHINGTON, D.C.

DIPLOMATIC RECEPTION ROOM, THE WHITE HOUSE

“Show him in, please.” Arnie van Damm, the President’s chief of staff, cradled the phone, then stifled a yawn. His suit was rumpled from a long day that always began before Ryan’s, and Ryan always started early.

“Can I get you a cup of coffee?” Ryan smiled. “Or maybe a can of Ensure?”

Arnie wiped a smudge off his rimless glasses with his tie. “Did I ever tell you that my old man used to work the graveyard shift at the steel mill to make extra money so he could put me through college so I wouldn’t have to work late nights?”

“You call this work?” Ryan pointed at the elegant Federal period room around them. The two old friends sat on gold silk wingback chairs in front of a roaring fireplace with the iconic Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington hanging over the mantel. The panoramic wallpaper surrounding the room had been installed by Jacqueline Kennedy, and every important president, prime minister, and potentate from the last fifty years had either stood or sat in this room at some point.

Ryan was in a pair of jeans, Sperry Top-Siders, and a Fly Navy sweatshirt, having come straight down from the family residence. He was already in bed and propped up on his pillows next to Cathy and only a few pages into Lieutenant Colonel Rip Rawlings’s latest when Arnie called forty minutes ago. He wasn’t all that surprised by the call but grew concerned when Arnie told him Buck Logan was actually on his way over. Ryan assumed he’d be getting a call from the big Texan. He wasn’t expecting a personal visit.

“Must be damned important,” Arnie said.

Ryan agreed.

The phone call with Logan that morning was odd, to say the least. When Ryan had asked Logan about his sunken ship, he denied it happened. According to Admiral Talbot, that was a lie. And then Logan insisted on mentioning the nonexistent Andrews fundraiser—not a lie so much as a statement that was demonstrably false.

It took about a heartbeat and a half for Ryan to figure out Logan’s coded message. I just told you an obvious lie about the fundraiser so that we both know I’m lying, and that way, you know I just lied to you about the sunken ship.

And that’s how Ryan knew Logan was in trouble.

Given the dramatic meeting about to happen, he assumed that meant big trouble.

Ryan had given Arnie a heads-up about Logan while he was still in transit from Walter Reed. Arnie was almost always the first call Jack made when the excrement hit the oscillator because his chief of staff was about the sharpest pencil in the drawer as far as politics was concerned. Arnie had been chief of staff to three presidents, including him from the beginning. The crow’s feet around Arnie’s pale blue eyes were deeper, and his bald scalp a little paler and flakier, than when he’d first met the man. But Arnie’s mind hadn’t aged. Arnie might have looked a little like Merkin Muffley, the hapless American President in Dr. Strangelove, but he was General Chesty Puller when it counted on the political battlefield, and Ryan couldn’t ask for more than that.