“He couldn’t use his old face for the next passport, and there’s no way he gets one all bandaged up, so he sits still until all the swelling and bruising are gone, then gets the passport.”
“Let’s back up a second,” Jack said. “Who took over as the mover in Saint Petersburg? That’s the question we need to ask.”
“Needle in a haystack,” Bell said.
“Maybe not,” Mary Pat came back. “Masood was ex-ISI. The URC chose him because he was a pro at it. They’d want the same thing in Russia. Maybe we’re looking for ex-SVR, or ex-KGB.”
“Or GRU,” Rounds added. “Military intelligence.”
“Right.”
“Any way to narrow down the list, Mary Pat?” Clark asked.
“Maybe. It’s a pretty specialized skill. Probably would take somebody who handled illegals. Lot of those still around, though.”
“How many of them are dead, though?” Jack said. “In Saint Petersburg. And in the last four months. They probably would’ve killed Masood a lot earlier if he hadn’t gone to ground. He was a loose end. The Russian mover would be, too.”
“Good thinking, Jack,” Hendley said. “Think you can work with that?” he asked Mary Pat.
“Give me a few hours.”
She was back from the NCTC in two. “Wasn’t all that hard, really. Jack, you nailed it. Last month in Saint Petersburg, Yuriy Beketov, former KGB officer, Directorate S—Illegals—of the First Chief Directorate. Shot dead in a Chechnyan restaurant. The Saint Petersburg cops put it on the Interpol wire. I’ve got a couple people trying to tease out some more details, but Beketov seems to fit.”
“Until then, let’s play with it,” Hendley said. “Say he goes to Switzerland, or Sweden or Finland, for surgery.”
“Sweden gets my vote, too,” Rounds said. “He’d want something high-end, very private, with select clientele. A lot more of those in Sweden than Finland. It’s a place to start.”
“Google,” Jack said.
It was nearly nine at night when they found what they needed. Jack pushed back from his laptop and ran his hands through his hair. “Well, I’ll give them this. They’re consistent. Ruthless and consistent.”
“Enlighten us,” Clark said.
“Three weeks ago, the Orrhogen Clinic in Sundsvall. Burned to the ground with the managing director inside. Something else: Sundsvall is only about seventy-five miles north of Söderhamn. If Brian and Dominic hadn’t shown up, it’s a safe bet Rolf the mechanic would be dead right now.”
“Okay, so the Emir has the surgery, spends a few days recuperating, then leaves,” Granger said. “Chances are halfway good he hasn’t got a passport. He’d need a private charter, a private airport, and a pilot who doesn’t mind getting a little dirty.” Hendley considered this. “How exactly would he do it?”
“Rolf gave us the answer,” Dominic replied. “Duplicate transponder code.”
“Right,” Jack replied. “Hlasek switches off the first transponder code, drops off the radar, turns on the second transponder code, and they’ve got themselves a new plane.”
“That kind of thing would certainly get written down somewhere,” Rounds observed. “Do we have an in with the FAA or Transport Canada?”
“No,” Granger replied. “Doesn’t mean we can’t, though.” He picked up the phone, and two minutes later Gavin was in the conference room.
Jack explained what they were looking for. “Doable?”
Gavin snorted. “The FAA’s firewalls are a joke. Transport Canada’s not any better. Give me a half-hour.”
Good as his word, thirty minutes later Biery called up to the conference room. Hendley put him on speakerphone. “In the time frame you gave me, eighteen flights dropped off radar in either U.S. or Canadian airspace. Sixteen were nothing—operator error—one was a Cessna that crashed outside Albany, and one, a Dassault Falcon 9000, that dropped off altogether. The pilot reported a problem with its landing gear on its way into Moose Jaw. A couple minutes later they lost it on radar.”
“Where’s Moose Jaw?” Dominic asked.
“Canada. Due north, about where North and South Dakota meet,” Jack said.
“There’s something else,” Biery said. “I did a little cross-hacking keyword search between Transport Canada, the FAA, and the NTSB. Three days after Moose Jaw lost the Falcon, a fisherman off the coast of California found an FDR—flight data recorder. According to the NTSB, the box belonged to a Gulfstream—the one that’s supposedly still sitting in a hangar outside Söderhamn. Problem is, Dassault planes are equipped with prototype FDR. It’s designed to break free of the airframe when it detects a certain kinetic threshold. And it’s got a float and a beacon—Gulfstream boxes only have a beacon. The box they found belonged to Hlasek’s Falcon.”
Hendley let out a breath and looked around the table.