walked across the carpet and shook Hendley’s hand. “Good to see you again, Gerry.”
“You too, Mary Pat. This is Rick Bell and Sam Granger. And I think you know Jack Ryan.” More handshakes, and a surprised look from Mary Pat. “Keeping up the family legacy?” she asked Jack.
“It’s early days yet, ma’am.”
“Mary Pat.”
Hendley said, “Have a seat.” She took the chair next to Clark. “You look tired, John.”
“I always look this way. It’s the lighting.”
“Let’s get on the same page,” Hendley said.
Clark gave Mary Pat the same recap. When he was done, she let out a low whistle. “A mover. That tells us something. You don’t need somebody like Masood unless you’re leaving the region.”
Granger said, “We should have the hard drive contents shortly.”
“It’s not going to tell us where he is,” Mary Pat predicted. “The Emir’s too slippery for that. Probably used more than one mover. Used them to hopscotch himself somewhere he could drop off the radar. Best we’re going to get is close.”
“Which is a damned sight closer than we are now,” Rick Bell observed.
While Biery and his geeks dug into Masood’s drive and Clark and Chavez caught a power nap on the break-room couches, Jack turned his attention to the flash drive Ding had taken off one of the Tripoli tangos. Having determined that it contained stego-encoded images, he and Biery had decided to try a brute-force algorithm crack, with a free steak dinner for whoever got there first. Busy as he was with Masood’s drive, Jack felt confident in his head start.
After two hours of crunching, one of the algorithms struck gold and an image began depixelating on his screen. It was a large file, almost six megabytes, so the decoding would take a few minutes. He picked up the phone and called Granger. Two minutes later Jack had an audience of eight standing over his shoulder, watching the monitor as the photo resolved.
“What the hell is that?” Brian asked, leaning in.
The photo was blurred and desaturated of color. Jack imported it into Photoshop and washed the file through some filters, working the contrast and brightness until the image came clear.
There was ten seconds of silence.
The 8×10 image was done in 1940s pinup style: a dark-haired woman in a white cotton peasant skirt, sitting on a bale of hay, her legs crossed demurely. She was naked from the waist up, her impossibly massive breasts drooping to her thighs.
“Tits,” Sam Granger said. “My God, Jack, you’ve discovered tits.”
“Oh, shit,” Jack muttered.
Everyone burst out laughing.
Dominic said, “Jack, you little pervert . . . I had no idea.”
Then Brian: “So, Jack, exactly how much ‘depixelation’ do you do in your spare time?”
More laughter.
“Very funny.” Jack groaned.
Once the laughter died down, Hendley said, “Okay, let’s break it up and let Mr. Hefner carry on. Nice work, Jack.”
At four o’ clock, Jack woke up Clark and Chavez. “Show-time, guys. Conference room in five minutes.”
They showed up in four minutes, both armed with an extra-large cup of coffee. Everyone else was already seated: Hendley, Granger, Bell, Rounds, Dominic, and Mary Pat. Clark and Chavez took their seats. Rounds took the lead. He looked up from the summary Biery had sent up a few minutes earlier.
“A lot of this is nuts-and-bolts stuff that may help us down the road. The big-picture items are three. He picked up the remote and aimed it at the forty-two-inch wide-screen TV. The frontspiece of a passport appeared on the screen. “That’s what our guy looked like at some point in the last six to nine months.”
There was ten seconds of silence around the table.
“Bears a resemblance to the few pics we’ve got of him,” Bell said.
Rounds said, “Forged French passport. High-quality work. The stamps, the backing, the threading—all perfect. According to Masood’s hard drive, the Emir used this three months ago. Peshawar to Dushanbe, Tajikistan, then to Ashgabat, Volgograd, then Saint Petersburg. Then nothing.”
“That’s as far as Masood took him,” Dominic added.
“Can’t be his final destination,” Jack replied. “Another mover took over, maybe?”
Clark said, “If you average out his hops, he was heading generally northwest. Extend that a little and you’re into Finland or Sweden.”
“Sweden,” Mary Pat said. “The plastic-surgery thing?”
“Maybe,” Granger said.
“The Hlasek Air thing?” Chavez wondered aloud.
“That, too, maybe. If Saint Petersburg was as far as Masood took him, that means he dumped the French passport for a new one. If he went into Sweden or Finland on a new one, he wouldn’t be able to land anywhere after that—at least not legitimately.”