Том Клэнси - The Teeth of the Tiger

“PREPARE TO TURN RIGHT IN FIVE HUNDRED FEET,” the computer told him.

“Thanks, honey,” Dominic grumbled.

But then the Volvo turned at the corner suggested by the computer. So, it wasn’t so bad after all, was it? Dominic took a breath and settled down some.

“Okay, Brian, looks like she’s going right home. Just follow me in,” he said over the radio.

“Roger, following you in. Any idea who this broad is?”

“Michelle Peters, so says the DMV.” The Volvo turned left, then right, into a cul-de-sac, where it pulled into a driveway that ended at a two-car garage attached to a medium-sized house of two stories and white aluminum siding. He parked his car a hundred yards up the street and took a sip of his coffee. Brian showed up thirty seconds later, doing the same half a block up.

“See the car?” Dominic called.

“That’s affirmative, Enzo.” The Marine paused. “Now what do we do?”

“You come on down for a cup of my coffee,” a female voice suggested. “I’m the broad in the Volvo,” the voice clarified.

“Oh, shit,” Dominic whispered away from the microphone. He got out of his Mercedes and waved to his brother to do the same.

Upon joining up, the Caruso brothers walked to 6 Riding Hood Court. The door opened as they came up the driveway.

“Set up all the way,” Dominic said quietly. “Should have figured that one out from the beginning.”

“Yep. Color us dumb,” Brian thought.

“Not really,” Mrs. Peters said from the door. “But getting my address from the DMV really was cheating, you know.”

“Nobody told us anything about rules, ma’am,” Dominic told her.

“There aren’t any – not very often, anyway, not in this business.”

“So, you listened in on the radio circuit the whole time?” Brian asked.

She nodded as she led them to the kitchen. “That’s right. The radios are encrypted. Nobody else knew what you were talking about. How do you boys like your coffee?”

“So, you spotted us all the way?” This was Dominic.

“Actually, no. I didn’t use the radios to cheat – well, not all that much.” She had an engaging smile, which helped to soften the blows to her visitors’ egos. “You’re Enzo, right?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You were a little close, but only a really sharp-eyed target would have noticed, given the limited time frame. The make of the car helped. A lot of those little Benzes in this area. But the best choice of car would be a pickup – a dirty one. A lot of the yokels never wash them, and some of the academics at the school have adopted the same sort of behavior to fit in, like. Out on Interstate 64, well, you’d better have an aircraft, of course, and a Porta-Potti. Discreet surveillance can be the toughest job in the business. But now you boys know that.”

Then the door opened and Pete Alexander came in. “How’d they do?” he asked Michelle.

“I’ll give them a B.”

And suddenly Dominic thought that was generous.

“And forget what I said before – calling the FBI to get a DMV on me was pretty smart.”

“Not cheating?” Brian asked.

Alexander took that one. “The only rule is to accomplish the mission without being compromised. We don’t tally up style points at The Campus.”

“Just body count,” Mrs. Peters confirmed, to Alexander’s evident annoyance.

That was enough to make Brian’s stomach contract a little. “Uh, guys, I know I’ve asked it before, but what exactly are we training for?” Dominic leaned in visibly as well.

“Patience, fellas,” Pete cautioned.

“Okay.” Dominic nodded submission. “I’ll give you that this time.” But not too much longer, he didn’t have to add.

“SO, YOU’REnot going to exploit this?” Jack asked at closing time.

“We could, but it’s not really worth the time. We’d only turn a couple of hundred thousand at best, probably not that much. But you did okay spotting it,” Granger allowed.

“How much message traffic like this comes through here on a weekly basis?”

“One or two, four in a really busy week.”

“And how many plays do you make?” Junior asked.

“One in five. We do so carefully, but even so, we always run the risk of being noticed. If the Europeans saw that we were outguessing them too much, then they’d look into how we were doing it – they’d probably shake down their own people, looking for a human leaker. That’s how they think over there. It’s a big place for conspiracy theory, you see, because of the way they operate themselves. But the game they play regularly sort of militates against it.”

“What else do you look into?”

“Starting next week, you’ll have access to the secure accounts – people call them numbered accounts because they’re supposedly identified by code numbers. Now it’s mainly code words, because of computer technology. They probably picked that up from the intelligence community. They often hire spooks to look after their security – but not good ones. The good ones stay away from money-management businesses, mainly out of snobbery. It’s not important enough for a senior spook,” Granger explained.

“The ‘secured’ accounts, do they identify the owners?” Jack asked.

“Not always. Sometimes it’s all done via code word, though sometimes the banks have internal memoranda that we can tap into. Not always, though, and the bankers never speculate internally about their clients – at least not in written form. I’m sure they chat back and forth over lunch, but you know, a lot of them, they really don’t care very much about where the money comes from. Dead Jews in Auschwitz, some Mafia capo in Brooklyn – it’s all money fresh off the presses.”

“But if you turned this over to the FBI–”

“We can’t, because it’s illegal, and we don’t, because then we’d lose a way to track the bastards and their money. On the legal side, there’s more than one jurisdiction, and for some of the European countries – well, banking is a big moneymaker, and no government ever turns its back on tax revenue. The dog doesn’t bite anybody in their backyard. What it does down the block, they don’t care about.”

“I wonder what Dad thinks of that?”

“Not much, I’ll bet,” Granger opined.

“Not hardly,” Jack agreed. “So, you track the secured accounts to follow the bad guys and their money?”

“That’s the idea. It’s a lot harder than you might imagine, but when you score, you score big.”

“So, I’m going to be a bird dog?”

“That’s right. If you’re good enough,” Granger added.

MOHAMMED WASalmost directly overhead at that moment. The Great Circle Route from Mexico City to London passed close enough to Washington, D.C., for him to look down from thirty-seven thousand feet and see the American capital laid out like a paper map. Now, were he a member of the Department of Martyrdom, he might have climbed the spiral stairs to the upper level and used a gun to kill the flight crew and dive the aircraft . . . but that had been done before, and now the cockpit doors were protected, and there might well be an armed policeman up there in business class to spoil the show. Worse yet, an armed soldier in civilian clothes. Mohammed had little respect for police officers, but he’d learned the hard way not to disregard Western soldiers. However, he was not a member of the Department of Martyrdom, much as he admired those Holy Warriors. His ability to seek out information made him too valuable to be thrown away in such a noble gesture. That was good, and that was bad, but good or bad, it was a fact, and he lived in the world of facts. He would meet Allah and enter Paradise at the time written by God’s Own Hand in God’s Own Book. For the moment, he had another six and a half more hours of confinement in this seat.