Mark Greaney - Full Force and Effect

Ryan nodded. “Looking forward to it.”

—

The closest bar to the NewCorp complex was just over the border in Nevada on Interstate 15. Several low-end but enterprising casinos had sprung up within sight of California, hoping to catch the first Angelenos heading east to gamble in Nevada. It was another thirty miles or so to Vegas, but this desert oasis of hotels, strip malls, gambling halls, and fast-food joints served as a way station for those without the time, gas, or inclination to drive all the way to the Strip.

Jack Ryan and Adam Yao sat at a table in the back of an utterly nondescript bar at Whiskey Pete’s Hotel & Casino. Both men had beers in front of them—a Sam Adams for Ryan and a Shiner Bock for Yao.

There was little talk those first few minutes beyond idle conversation about the casino and the drive. Each man was sizing the other up. They weren’t unfriendly; these guys had a history together and they liked and respected each other. But that was then, this was now, and they were each curious about what the other was up to.

“You look different,” Yao said.

“The beard?”

“Yeah. That, and you’ve put on some muscle.”

“Got tired of being recognized.”

“I guess so. Can’t be too helpful in your occupation.”

“What occupation?” Ryan asked.

“Never mind,” Adam said over the rim of his glass before taking a sip. “I ran into a friend of yours.”

“Really? Who’s that?”

“Mary Pat Foley.”

“Great lady. Where did you see her?”

A pause. “You know. Just a work function.”

“Right.”

“So . . . who was the girl?” Yao asked.

“Élise Legrande? She’s with an outside vendor. Here at NewCorp for a couple of weeks. Down from Canada, she says.”

“Nice.”

“Yeah.”

Another long pause.

This conversation was going nowhere.

“Look,” Yao said, “it’s good to see you, but I guess neither of us has much to talk about.”

Ryan replied, “The beer is okay.”

Yao chuckled, surprised by the comment. “It is, isn’t it? I guess we could play craps or something, but you know I can’t talk, and I doubt you will talk.”

Jack Ryan shook his head now. He’d been thinking it over, and even though he didn’t know what Yao was up to, he decided the guy could probably use a little intel. “Not true. I need to tell you something. Hope you’ll take the info as a favor and not ask a lot of questions.”

“I’ve done good so far, haven’t I?”

Jack said, “The blonde?”

“Yeah? What about her?”

“She’s a spook.”

Yao made no outward reaction, but he lifted his beer and took a long drink. When he put it back down he just said, “You don’t say.”

“She’s not here for you. I mean . . . I don’t think so. She is supposed to be Canadian, but I think she might be French. Ex-DGSE would be my guess. Now she’s working for a private company. NYC-based.”

“How do you know this?”

“I’m with some guys looking into her outfit.”

“Some guys?”

“Yep.”

Adam shrugged. He let it go. “You know what she’s doing here?”

“Our guess is that she’s here to steal intel for a company working with North Korea on a rare earth mineral mine they are developing.”

Ryan stared at Yao’s face, searching for a reaction.

But Adam didn’t blink.

—

Adam Yao was a pro. Although he and Ryan had worked together in China, Ryan wasn’t read in on Acrid Herald, or at least Yao hadn’t been told Ryan had been read in on it. Things were getting weirder by the day on this op, however, so the CIA officer couldn’t be sure. But he wasn’t about to start offering up intel, even to the son of the President of the United States.

That would be even weirder.

“Interesting,” Yao said. “Unrelated to me, but interesting. If you’d like, I could make a call and have her checked out by the authorities.”

Ryan knew Yao was pulling his chain. He was here on the job, and it had to be related to the North Korean mine.

“Not necessary. Just letting you know in case her being here compromises you in some way.”

“Not at all,” he said. “But I appreciate your concern.” He glanced at the waitress as she passed. “I’ll take a check.”

The two men walked out into the windblown parking lot. Ryan said, “Good seeing you, Adam. Take care of yourself.”

“You do the same, Ryan. Thanks again.”

They parted with a handshake, each man climbing back into his car and taking off for Vegas.

Ryan had no idea what Yao was up to, but he was damn curious. Yao also didn’t have a clue what Ryan was doing here, but in contrast to Ryan, he didn’t really want to know. He would alert Mary Pat to what Ryan had told him, but for all he knew, she was already aware.

Yao was less concerned about what was going on in California and more concerned about where he was heading next. He would fly out the next morning, and he couldn’t go into this with any doubt in his mind he could pull it off.

43

Veronika Martel returned to her nineteenth-floor hotel room at the Palazzo on the Las Vegas Strip, threw her purse on her bed, and sat down at her open laptop. She clicked open a program; then she slipped a connector into the base of her mobile phone and the other end into the laptop. She hit a key, and instantly the contents of the phone, or at least the contents of the phone that were the application files stolen from NewCorp’s servers, began to upload to a cloud file-sharing service. There they would be picked up by Edward Riley and forwarded on to whoever at New World Metals LLC was going to give them to the North Koreans.

She didn’t know how that end of the chain worked, and she didn’t care. All she knew was her job, and the fact she had done her job perfectly today.

It had not been an easy task. It had been an ordeal to spend the last two weeks working in an industry she knew little about while simultaneously feigning rapt fascination with Ralph Baggett, the slovenly IT director at Valley Floor. This certainly didn’t make the top ten worst assignments she had faced in her career, but she would have much rather spent her time doing most anything other than this.

Nevertheless, she’d done it. She’d not gleaned the password to the server from Baggett as she had planned, but she had been able to download the files from his terminal, after he’d put in the password himself and left the machine unattended, and that was just as good.

The fact she’d pulled it off with a minimal amount of heavy petting and no actual sex with Baggett was a bonus for her, but she had been prepared to go to whatever lengths were necessary to achieve her goal.

And now, with her operation complete, Veronika had only to return to Valley Floor mine tomorrow for her last day of her two-week stint and then endure an evening bon voyage party with several people she’d been working with in Hydrometallurgy Quality Control, as well as Baggett, who’d managed to get himself invited along.

Veronika thought it idiotic that these people she’d worked with for only two weeks were throwing a going-away party for her. In France she could have worked in an office ten years and not even known the first names of her colleagues, but this was America, and it was the American way to be silly like this.

If she had her choice she’d fly home tonight and never see any of them again.

No. Actually, this was not true. There was someone she wouldn’t mind seeing again.

Veronika found it ironic that on the day she had executed her mission, she found the actual execution of the mission to be the second most interesting thing that had happened to her.