by Maden, Mike
13
Jack left through the Guardia Civil’s double-wide gate and turned toward the little café next door. The place was still jumping. But something about the college-age kid sitting near the door bothered him. Slacks, shirt, tie.
Not a tourist.
Jack turned into the café, grabbed an empty chair from the next table, and sat down next to the kid, startling him. An empty chocolate-smeared demitasse cup and a plate littered with churro crumbles were on the table in front of him.
“What’s your story?” Jack asked.
“Perdón, señor?”
Jack shook his head. Pointed at his left hand. “Not a lot of Spaniards wear Texas Aggie class rings.”
The kid reflexively raised his ring hand and stared at it. “Wow, good catch.”
“So, who are you, who sent you, and why are you following me?”
“Name’s Sam Davis. I was in the break room at the consulate when Mr. Dellinger grabbed me and told me to follow you.”
“Why?”
“He said to just keep an eye on you and report back what I found.”
“And what did you find?”
“That you came to the Guardia Civil building, stayed about twenty minutes, and left.”
Jack leaned closer, lowered his voice. “Look, Sam, no offense. But you kinda suck at being a spy.”
“I’m not a spy. I’m here on a semester internship with the Office of Agricultural Affairs. I’m an international business major. But when Mr. Dellinger says go, you go.”
“He’s your boss?”
“Not exactly. He runs the student exchange programs, but he’s a pretty big deal around the consulate. He and the CG spend a lot of time together.”
“Well, head back to your office and tell Mr. Dellinger you followed me here and you saw me leave. Got it?”
“Got it.”
Jack stood and snatched up the bill for Davis’s breakfast. “Next time, try the pancakes. And if I ever see you again?”
Davis stood. “You won’t.”
“Good.”
Jack watched the kid slink away. Davis was almost the same age he was when he joined The Campus. He couldn’t help but grin.
Was I ever really that green?
Jack pulled out his wallet but it was empty. He put the kid’s bill on his credit card instead.
He decided to head back to his place and see what he could dig up on the dead bomber on his own, hoping like hell Noèlia Aleixandri was her real name, while he waited for Gavin’s call.
Lost in his thoughts, he didn’t see Crooked Nose following far behind him, shielded by a Chinese tour group.
* * *
—
Jack sat on the rooftop terrace of his apartment. It was a warm day with a slight breeze from the sea. The building itself contained several other apartments, but Jack’s had exclusive access to the terrace through a separate stairwell. It had become his favorite thing about the place, with views of both the Mediterranean to the south and the old city to the north. It even had a great Internet connection. At night, he could see the lights from the basilica on the high mountain north of Barcelona. The terrace had a stout table and chairs that sat beneath a sturdy aluminum awning frame, though the awning itself was nowhere to be seen. It didn’t matter. The sun was warm and welcoming this time of year, not a beatdown like it could be in the summer, according to the travel books he’d read.
The dead bomber’s name and face appeared in the Spanish language newspapers and, as far as Jack could tell with his poor Spanish, all of them reported essentially the same terse information, probably from the same press release that authorities sent out on a case like this.
Noèlia Aleixandri was twenty-three years old at the time of her death. She had been a journalism major at the Universitat de Vic, a small city up north near the Pyrenees where she was born, before dropping out two years ago. She had been a student activist involved with the independence movement while in school, “but never violent, and never arrested for anything criminal,” according to her grieving mother.
Too bad, Jack thought. A bright young woman with a promising future, blown to hell by her own negligence, or someone else’s.
It was the someone else that really interested him. Getting hold of her cell phone would open that door, and Gavin was just the guy to do it.
Time for a phone call. He headed back downstairs to the relative security of his apartment. No telling who might overhear his conversation with Gavin about the bombing and draw the wrong conclusions.
14
“Jack! That’s so weird. I was just about to call you. You won’t believe the stuff I’ve found.”
Gavin’s high-pitched voice squealed with the enthusiasm of a teenage gamer winning a Fortnite competition. But the portly, fiftysomething bachelor—who actually was a Fortnite player—was a world-class programmer, hacker, and researcher, and the brains behind Hendley Associates’ considerable IT department.
“Surprise me.”
“Well, where should I start? I’ll do the good stuff first. Your friend’s company, CrowdScope? It’s a CIA op, and Renée Moore was CIA.”
“What? You’re sure?”
“Helloo? It’s me. Of course I’m sure.”
Jack couldn’t believe it. Moore had never mentioned government service. The one time he’d raised it with her, she’d laughed in his face, incredulous. “Where’s the money in that, Jack?”
He wondered what had changed her mind.
On the other hand, Silicon Valley made perfect sense as a CIA station. Google, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and the other giant social media networks constituted the most successful intelligence-gathering operation the world had ever seen. They collected and dissected terabytes of personal data from their billons of users around the world—almost always provided by the users themselves, and with their own consent.
Why try to compete with that kind of data harvesting and analysis when you could simply infiltrate those preexisting networks?
Thanks to Snowden, everybody knew that the Intelligence Community had secured the cooperation of many of the technology firms early on. Companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft had billions of dollars’ worth of contracts with the federal government, including the agencies of the Intelligence Community and the Department of Defense.
But a combination of bad press, customer concerns, and activist outrage had resulted in a pushback against covert and even overt cooperation by these firms with the American government. These companies’ loyalties were to their bottom lines, not national security. It wasn’t surprising that the CIA had decided to try to find another way in. God knows how many foreign powers used platforms like Facebook and Twitter to covertly influence domestic and world opinion. If he ran the CIA, Jack would focus his efforts on infiltrating and influencing Silicon Valley as well.
“What can you tell me about Renée? What was she doing at CrowdScope—or in Barcelona?”
“That’s the crazy thing, Jack. I have access to a lot of databases—including ones I’m not supposed to have access to. But whatever your friend was up to, and whatever operations CrowdScope is conducting, I can’t get close to it. I think even their firewalls have firewalls. I tried tiptoeing around some of their defenses and set off a few alarms. If I’m not careful, I’m going to get hauled away by a CIA snatch team and dumped in an offshore prison somewhere.”
So Renée wasn’t just in federal service, Jack thought.
She was all the way in, up to her neck.
“If CrowdScope is that important, and if Renée was part of it, whatever she was up to in Barcelona must be kryptonite.”
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Gavin asked.
Jack heard paper crinkling. “Snickers or Almond Joy?”
“Snickers, baby.” Gavin took a bite and spoke with a full mouth. “It’s the P
owerBar of gamers everywhere.”
“So, I’m thinking the bombing in Barcelona wasn’t a terror act at all. Maybe the real target was Renée. What about you?”
“A definite maybe. But, Jack, there is one other possibility.”
“What’s that?”
“Maybe the real target was you.”
* * *
—
“Why me?”
“Why not you? Besides the fact you work for Gerry Hendley and you’re the son of the President of the United States—a fact we’ve managed to hide, but it’s still a fact that someone could have discovered. You’ve killed, captured, or jailed enough bad guys on your own in the last few years to put you on a dozen hit lists. Remember van Delden? The Iron Syndicate?”
Jack surely did. The Iron Syndicate was an international crime organization with tentacles reaching into almost every security organization on the planet. They’d put a bounty on Jack’s head—or technically, for the collection of his severed head—two years ago. Thanks to his time in Poland with Liliana, the Iron Syndicate was largely dismantled and its members dead, in jail, or on the run.
God rest your soul, Liliana.
“I appreciate the thought, Gav, but I’d be really surprised if they were after me. I’ve been wide open the whole time I’ve been in Spain. There were dozens of better opportunities to take me out without any collateral damage.”
“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 agre
ed.
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.
It was Arnie’s suggestion to meet in the Diplomatic Reception Room rather than the Oval. It was nearer the family residence so Jack wouldn’t have to walk so far at the late hour and it was still on the first floor for Logan’s convenience.
As always, Arnie thought of everything.
One of the double doors opened and an electric wheelchair rolled into the room.
Jack and Arnie stood as Buck Logan wheeled in their direction. Ryan watched Logan’s bodyguard, a six-foot-five slab of meat in a tailored suit, take a position outside next to the PPD agents stationed there before the door closed again.