Mark Greaney - Full Force and Effect

Just then a computerized female voice startled him.

“Match found.”

Gavin lifted his head and stared at his machine in astonishment. He couldn’t believe an identity had been determined so quickly.

It was the woman, the redhead who looked to be in her mid-forties. The monitor displayed the image used in her passport photo in the Czech Republic on one side of the screen, and on the other was another picture of her. Here she stood at a lectern; apparently she was speaking to an audience. Several other photos, all identified by the facial-recog software as the same woman, were tiled under this photo.

Gavin saw why the software identified the redhead so quickly. She was apparently quite prominent in her field, and there were a lot of images of her on the Internet.

He worked another few minutes to double-check the woman’s name and biography with his own Internet search, then snatched up his phone’s receiver and dialed Gerry’s extension.

He supposed this could wait until Gerry’s meeting with Dom and Jack broke up, but Gavin thought it possible this bit of good news just might help the two cousins out of their predicament.

Hendley answered on the first ring. “Yeah, Gavin?” He sounded annoyed, and Gavin read that to mean he was annoyed not just at the two young men sitting in front of him, but also at the man on the other end of the line.

Gavin said, “Sorry to bother you, Gerry. But we have a match on a face we got from Karel Skála.”

Hendley sighed. “Okay. You’d better come up.”

Gavin swallowed. He wanted to take some of the heat off the cousins, but he didn’t want to go up there and sit with them while they got yelled at.

“Um . . . sure. I’m on the way.”

—

Afew minutes later Gavin entered Hendley’s office and found Dom and Jack sitting quietly in front of the ex-senator’s desk. Hendley sat in his chair behind the desk, but unusual for him, he did not stand when Gavin came in.

An empty chair sat next to Jack.

Gerry said, “Come in, shut the door, and tell us what you’ve got.”

Gavin sat down. “I have an ID on the redheaded woman. The software is still trying to identify the other four images.”

Gerry Hendley waited for a moment, then he sighed. A little irritated. “Well, who is she?”

“Oh, sorry. Her name is Dr. Helen Powers. She is Australian. A geologist.”

Jack and Dom stared at each other. A geologist? They had been expecting the five mystery travelers to be nuclear engineers or rocket scientists.

Gavin said, “She’s a big deal in Australian geology, apparently, lots of pictures of her at conferences and such. She’s involved in the search for rare earth mineral deposits, mostly in the Australian outback.”

Dom said the thing the others were thinking. “Why the hell are all these people getting killed over geology?”

Gavin left a minute later, and Gerry turned his attention back to the two men in front of him. “Jack, Dominic. Prague was a disaster. You are lucky to have survived, and any chance that that target of yours might have been able to pass on more intelligence about whatever the North Koreans are planning was lost when he was killed.

“The fact that the last two men that The Campus has gone into the field to watch over have both turned up dead within hours of our arrival makes me wonder if we need to reevaluate what the hell we are doing.”

Jack and Dom just nodded. They’d been doing a lot of that over the past hour. Now wasn’t the time to argue with the director of The Campus. But even taking that into consideration, Jack felt like he needed to get Gerry on another topic.

Jack said, “I guess this is not the time to ask. But I was wondering if there was any chance we could go up and support Clark’s operation in New York. He’s thin up there with just three guys.”

Gerry turned to Caruso. “Dom, I want you up there by this evening.”

Dominic sat up, surprised. Gerry said, “You are John Clark’s subordinate, don’t go thinking for yourself on this one. Let John use you for surveillance.”

Dom was too happy to be offended. He had pictured himself sitting at his desk for the next few months while Clark and the others got to delve into this mystery in the Big Apple, so he was thrilled to get the chance to go.

He said, “You’ve got it, Gerry.”

Jack raised an eyebrow. Was he going to be punished with desk duty?

Gerry said, “And as for you, Jack. That was your operation in Prague, there was a poor result, so you take the brunt of the heat.

“Let’s put you at your desk to remember what it’s like to do straight analytical work for a while. Go to work on Dr. Helen Powers. Find out what the hell is going on involving mines that is getting people murdered on multiple continents.”

“Okay, Gerry,” Jack said. He and his cousin stood to leave soon after.

Out in the hallway Dom put his hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Not fair, cuz. I pushed you to do the sneak-and-peek on Skála’s place.”

Ryan shrugged. “Gerry’s putting both of us where we need to go right now. You go up there and get some dirt on Sharps. I’ll stay here and figure out what the next piece to this puzzle is.”

28

Lieutenant General Ri Tae-jin of the Reconnaissance General Bureau was surprised with the incredible speed at which his plan was taking shape. Normally when a scheme formed at anything more than a snail’s pace he was satisfied, so hard was the intelligence game when it came to real-world application. But his new operation—the computer had chosen the code name Fire Axe—might have been progressing too fast for its own good. Fire Axe, if successful, would culminate with the assassination of the President of the United States, and the general had more concerns than good feelings about its prospects—he wondered if he was rushing into a maelstrom of his own making.

He hoped the quick development of Fire Axe was simply fortune intervening, and that his good fortune would continue. And as each step of the operation came and went with a positive outcome, he became . . . if not more confident, at least less quick to dismiss the entire prospect of the affair.

Ri had lost full confidence in Choi Ji-hoon, but he did have to admit, the Dae Wonsu was absolutely right in his analysis. Killing Jack Ryan would almost unquestionably lead to success in his other quest, that to obtain a working mid-range ICBM.

He allowed himself to entertain thoughts of the post-Ryan world, where North Korea had the ability to strike the United States or Western Europe with a plutonium missile. He didn’t consider actually seeing the ICBM put to use in this task. No, that would mean the certain death of everyone in North Korea when the USA retaliated. But if North Korea possessed the missile and threatened to use it, the fortunes of his nation would be starkly and unquestioningly improved.

And this was part of the fuel that spurred him forward. The other part, the larger part, was the same fuel that propelled his quest for the ICBM. His own self-preservation. He did not have the luxury to shelve Fire Axe if it did not pan out perfectly, because he knew his next meeting with Choi, were he to balk at the assassination attempt, would only lead to his own death.

The evening after his meeting with Choi at his Kangdong-gun property he had organized an emergency conference with his top lieutenants and he tasked them to work on the plan. Almost immediately there was a framework—in truth, the assassination of world leaders was a constant theoretical, and occasional real-world, exercise at RGB, and several proposals were drawn up every month, so the infrastructure was already in place.

And there were few state actors on earth more experienced in international crime than North Korea.