Line of Sight - Mike Maden

by Tom Clancy

  Jack scrolled briefly through her posts. His disappointment quickly faded. She seemed to have married a stand-up guy, a banker with impeccable credentials. The two of them appeared to be building an amazing life together. “Good for you,” Jack whispered. He was genuinely happy for her.

  He started to post a note on her page congratulating her on everything but thought twice about it. No point in putting her in an awkward position where she might have to explain something to her husband that obviously didn’t matter anymore.

  Jack clicked off his phone, feeling a little more than stupid for even looking her up. Why did he assume they could just pick up where they had left off?

  A few hours and a few fingers of Maker’s Mark into the long Atlantic flight, he got the bright idea of contacting an old professor from Georgetown now teaching at the London School of Economics. He shot Dr. Patrick Costello a text, and to his happy surprise, his former teacher responded eagerly. They set a place and time to meet in London.

  As soon as Jack passed through customs, he shoved his carry-ons into a storage locker in the baggage area and grabbed a cab for the forty-minute ride into the city. He had six hours before he needed to get back to the terminal, and he was determined to enjoy every minute of it.

  8

  The narrow pedestrian street was packed with a slow-moving parade of protesters, chanting against tomorrow’s visit by Scott Adler, the American secretary of state. Jack didn’t realize that Scott, one of his father’s closest advisers, was scheduled to lecture at the London School of Economics’ prestigious Department of International Relations.

  Jack checked his iWatch. He was right on time. He pushed his way toward the school’s high-arched doorway where a phalanx of nervous police kept the belligerent crowd at bay. Protesters of every stripe and hue waved signs and shouted slogans against American imperialism, predatory capitalism, Thatcherism (Really? Jack asked himself), white privilege, and a host of other alt-left complaints.

  Sloganeering like that was typical of college campuses these days, even in Europe. Some of them were true believers, but he’d seen his share of them at Georgetown, and most of them were poseurs who preferred protesting to the actual heavy lifting of making the world a better place. And for too many of these malcontents, especially the guys, that kind of virtue signaling was designed primarily to enhance their shaky social status and, possibly, even to get laid.

  As Jack neared the doorway, a police sergeant showed him her palm to block his entry. “Business with the school, sir?”

  Just then he saw the familiar smile and shock of silver hair of Dr. Costello as he stepped through the glass doors.

  “Jack! So good to see you!” The professor touched the sergeant’s shoulder gently with an “Excuse me,” as he squeezed past her.

  The two men shook hands.

  “You look good, Jack. Staying in shape, I see.”

  “You look pretty dapper yourself, Dr. C.”

  “Comes with the job. And please, it’s Patrick.” Dr. Costello was in his traditional priest’s black suit coat and white collar, both spotless. Besides being a visiting lecturer at LSE, the shorter, bantamweight priest not only served an inner-city parish church but also tutored neighborhood kids in math.

  “Hope you’re hungry,” Dr. Costello said, pointing the way.

  “Famished.”

  “Good. We’re going to my favorite pub. Best shepherd’s pie in the city. How’s your father?”

  “Great. Thanks for asking. He sends his best.” Senior had taken a graduate course in international political economy with Costello years ago, and had recommended the professor to his son when Jack decided to attend Georgetown, too.

  “Tell him hello for me, will you? And please let him know he’s in my prayers.”

  They chatted briefly, dodging the protesters ambling down the sidewalk, many of whom seemed like only interested spectators. Jack caught sight of flags, banners, lapel pins, hijabs, and tattoos of communists, anarchists, fundamentalist Muslims, and symbols of a dozen other radical causes. Too many faces were covered by the black bandannas of Antifa for Jack’s liking. Only cowards hid their faces at public protests. Or criminals. He tensed up a little, half expecting something to happen.

  Just as they turned a corner, a large protester, three inches taller than Jack, shoved a flyer into Jack’s chest. His long, dark hair was pulled into a ponytail. He had a plain, unremarkable face, but his towering frame and intense gaze intimidated most people. Ponytail’s black T-shirt caught Jack’s eye, emblazoned with bold white letters that read FUCK FASCIST AMERIKA! above an upside-down American flag.

  “Hey, man. Careful,” Jack said.

  “Read that, dude. Join the revolution.”

  Jack recognized the man’s California accent. He read the flyer.

  Students for a Moral Order demand that American imperialism stops now! End racist American foreign policy! Impeach the fascist president Jack Ryan! Deport war criminal Secretary of State Adler!

  “Interesting,” Jack said, handing the flyer to Dr. Costello, who chuckled as he read it.

  “What are you laughing at, old man?” Ponytail said.

  “So I take it you know President Ryan personally,” Jack said.

  “Yeah, he’s a fascist fuck. You’re an American, so you know it’s true.”

  “Trust me, he’s not a fascist. His dad killed fascists with the 101st Airborne at the Battle of the Bulge. What did you ever do for your country?”

  “Oh, Christ—you sound like you voted for that bastard!”

  Jack’s fists clenched and he stepped forward.

  “Jack,” Dr. Costello said. “Let’s get some lunch, shall we?” He tugged on Jack’s arm, breaking his eye lock with Ponytail.

  Jack turned to the priest. “Sounds good, Dr. C.”

  “Yeah, go get some lunch with your pedophile friend.”

  Jack’s eyes narrowed. “What did you say?”

  “You heard me. We all know what the Catholic Church is all about. And Hitler was a Catholic, you know.”

  “Hitler persecuted the Catholic Church,” Jack said. “Priests and nuns were killed in the Holocaust along with the Jews and a lot of other people who weren’t politically correct.”

  The man sneered and pointed a finger at Dr. Costello. “He told you that? That’s just a bunch of Vatican propaganda. Right, Padre?”

  Jack felt the heat rise in his face. “You don’t know who this man is, and I don’t appreciate you insulting him or my faith.”

  A group of protesters gathered in a loose circle around them now. A few wore the cliché Guy Fawkes masks. Some were clearly high on something. Most were agitated, itching for a fight. Jack knew they were all out of eyesight of the police, who were back around the corner. The odds were stacking up in the wrong direction, but Jack didn’t care.

  “Religion is bullshit, dude. It’s the Muzak in the men’s room at Macy’s. Wake the fuck up.”

  “You tell him!” someone said, and laughed.

  Dr. Costello said to Ponytail, “If you want to change the world, son, meet me at Saint Luke’s at four o’clock and help me teach algebra to some bright young minds.”

  “First of all, I’m not your son, and second, do we teach them algebra before or after we rape them?”

  “You need to watch your piehole, ace.” Jack stepped closer, his eyes focused on the man’s throat.

  Dr. Costello smiled at Ponytail. “I’m sorry you’re so angry.” He turned to Jack. “Come on, the shepherd’s pie is getting cold.” He tugged on Jack’s arm, but Jack didn’t budge.

  “It’s not worth it, son,” Costello said.

  Jack turned to him. “But he insulted you, and our faith.”

  “Our Lord suffered far more for our sake.” He nodded at Ponytail. “And his.”

  “Yeah. You two go run along and find yourself a safe
space—while you can. Some of us have work to do.” The big man pushed against Jack, but Jack held his ground, jabbing a finger in the man’s broad chest.

  “The truth, you stupid bastard, is that if your fat ass got caught in a sling over here, it would be some God-fearing eighteen-year-old U.S. Marine who’d be laying it on the line to save your worthless hide. So show some respect for your country and your flag, especially over here.”

  “I don’t have a flag anymore, Richie Rich. I wiped my ass with it this morning, and then I burned it.”

  Everything in Jack told him to take the shitbird down, honor most of all. But he also had responsibilities as a Hendley employee, and as his father’s son. Dropping this sack of human waste hard onto the pavement with a smashing blow to the temple would feel mighty fine, and would render at least a small service to humanity. But a criminal and diplomatic incident wouldn’t do anybody any good, least of all him, and the idea of turning this guy into some kind of hero-martyr wasn’t very appealing. It took Jack all of half a second to decide to stand down.

  About the length of time it took for Ponytail to start braying like a donkey at his own foul joke.

  “Get out of my way,” he barked, as he brushed past Jack, who suffered the humiliating laughter and catcalls rolling through the crowd following in the big man’s wake.

  Jack stood fixed to the pavement, his blood still boiling.

  “Free speech is a beautiful thing, isn’t it?” the priest said with a snarky smile on his face.

  “So’s a well-thrown punch, Dr. C. You should try it sometime.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t.”

  “Me too.”

  “You had me worried for a minute, son. I prayed for you.”

  “I was never very good at that turning-the-other-cheek stuff.”

  The priest-professor tugged at Jack’s elbow. “If it was easy, it wouldn’t be a virtue.” Costello’s eyes crinkled with his impish smile. “How about a pint of Guinness and we talk about old times? First one’s on me.”

  9

  Jack and Dr. Costello spent the next two hours catching up over pints of Guinness and the best shepherd’s pie Jack had ever eaten. Costello grilled him on his work with Hendley Associates, nodding approvingly as Jack explained the wide range of practical skills and fiduciary knowledge he’d acquired in the field after his stint in Costello’s economics course.

  “You ever think about going back and getting your Ph.D. in finance?”

  Jack shook his head. “No, not really.” For some reason he’d never considered it as a possibility. His dad had a doctorate, of course, and his mother was an M.D., but they were brainiacs. So was his older sister, also a doctor.

  “You might consider it.”

  “Maybe later. I’m having too much fun now,” Jack said. Between his duties for both The Campus and Hendley Associates, he just didn’t have the time, and the idea of spending more hours behind a desk instead of in a HALO parachute didn’t appeal to him at the moment. But he had to admit it was an intriguing thought, at least for later. Why not?

  They finished up and Jack paid the bill for both of them. Outside, they said their good-byes, promising to stay in touch. Jack hailed a cab for the airport as Costello headed for the Tube. Neither paid any attention to the CCTV cameras posted on the lamppost just outside the pub; they were ubiquitous throughout the city. Second only to communist Beijing, London had nearly half a million of the surveillance devices monitoring the activities of visitors and citizens alike, including Jack, who, for a split second—against his training and better judgment—cast his open face upward to catch a glimpse of a jetliner roaring low overhead before jumping into the taxi.

  Big mistake.

  * * *

  —

  In a city with so many government and private closed-circuit television cameras already in place, the addition of still more of them in crowded public spaces was hardly noticed, let alone regulated.

  The Iron Syndicate had installed more than five hundred such cameras in London but also operated similar networks in Beijing, Frankfurt, New York, and a dozen other cities. Whatever cameras they didn’t own they were often able to hack through a variety of methods.

  The first-level hack was commercial. The vast majority of CCTV cameras sold in the world were built in just three Chinese factories in Guangzhou, each of which was partly owned by a board member of the Iron Syndicate. That provided the organization a back door into every computer chip within those cameras, including the ones deployed on NATO military installations and ships, as well as police and intelligence offices.

  The second-level hack was human. The Iron Syndicate exploited dozens of compromised individuals within corporate divisions and government agencies around the world, who provided restricted CCTV and surveillance database access, either for a fee or under threat.

  The third-level hack was the Iron Syndicate’s own world-class IT department, staffed with some of the most important private-sector and government scientists and technocrats who had originally designed these omnipresent surveillance systems. Whether through back doors they had left behind or simply through skill or brute force, there were few databases and live feeds that the Iron Syndicate couldn’t access around the globe as needed.

  The recent bonus, though, was the advent of the smartphone. Whether through live camera chat programs like FaceTime or through the new facial-recognition software required to access phone use, the smartphone companies had provided billions of new real-time and securely identified faces for the Iron Syndicate to exploit.

  But the coup de grace was the Iron Syndicate’s infiltration into the big social media platform databases—Instagram, Facebook, WeChat, Tencent. By posting billions of selfies every day, ordinary platform users were unwittingly contributing to the world’s most dangerous facial-recognition and surveillance program on the planet.

  In all cases, the Iron Syndicate maintained a central processing center in Bucharest, Romania, where images were monitored and evaluated with Dragonfly Eye software, recently acquired through their Chinese affiliates. Dragonfly Eye was an AI-driven facial-recognition program deployed by the Chinese government, capable of processing up to two billion faces in mere seconds.

  At the moment, the Dragonfly Eye algorithms were tuned to find a match for Jack Ryan, Jr., for whom current photographs were strangely difficult to come by, even by open-source intelligence, or OSINT. It was as if somebody was going to the extraordinary length of constantly scrubbing any digital facial reference to the handsome young American throughout all private and social media. However, after enormous effort, the syndicate had acquired a few degraded images. These were sub-optimal, but adequate for the task at hand.

  By the time Jack’s taxi pulled up to the departure gate at Heathrow, his image had been identified by the Iron Syndicate system, and the Code Red priority alarm triggered. The man on duty notified his shift supervisor by phone according to protocol, but he knew she would have already been alerted automatically. He’d seen only one other Code Red alarm in the last five years. Somebody wanted this guy badly.

  The surveillance camera that had captured Jack’s image was immediately identified and its footage reviewed by hand by the shift supervisor. In short order she acquired the license plate number of Jack’s taxi.

  As the Iron Syndicate reverted to its automated tracking system and tapped into its network of cameras positioned throughout London, as well as at the major airports and train stations, the taxi was quickly located and footage of Jack entering the airport secured.

  It took only a few more AI-driven moments to track the American back with his carry-ons working his way through the security check and then toward his gate, where his flight information and destination—Ljubljana, Slovenia—were secured and transmitted to Unit Black, the field operations “wet work” team. The supervisor put her best analyst on the Ljubljana airport cameras, though
the algorithms would spot Ryan faster than a human eye.

  The shift supervisor shuddered. She worked for a vast international criminal enterprise to be sure, but she was a trained software engineer, not a killer. Even within the merciless Iron Syndicate, Unit Black’s reputation was fearsome.

  This Jack Ryan fellow didn’t have long to live, and the manner of his death wouldn’t be pleasant at all.

  10

  LJUBLJANA, SLOVENIA

  A light rain streaked the small windows as the Embraer 170 jet gently touched the runway. Jack powered up his iPhone as the plane taxied to a stop, a hundred yards from the terminal. A text message pulled up on his screen. “Meet you in the lobby.”

  Jack deplaned from the narrow-bodied Air France jet onto the tarmac, ignoring the spattering drops in the brief hop over to the wide bus that ferried them to the small terminal of the Ljubljana Jože Pučnik Airport. Heathrow International this was not, but it was perfectly serviceable—more like a regional American airport than an international hub.

  Unfortunately, Jack’s carry-on suitcase was two inches too tall and three kilos over the weight limit for his air carrier, so he had to check it. The time to retrieve his luggage seemed longer than the flight itself, but customs was little more than a perfunctory nod and a quick stamp of his passport, so it all evened out. The trick with commercial aviation travel, he’d learned over the past few years, was to keep your expectations low and to relax.

  He was greeted in the airport’s small lobby with a broad smile and a firm handshake by his host, Rojko Struna, the thirty-seven-year-old owner of the firm that had hired Hendley for the consultation. He had a runner’s build and an easy gait.