asked that too many damned times, just fine,” Jack replied. “It was just a nick, Gerry. Nothing a little superglue couldn’t handle.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“I know what you’re talking about.”
“Jack, less than twelve hours ago you killed a man. If you tell me it’s not bugging you, I’m chaining you to your desk.”
“Boss—”
“He’s serious,” Granger said. “Like it or not, you’re President Jack Ryan’s son. If you don’t think that gives us pause, think again. And if for a second we don’t think you’ve got your head screwed on right, you’re benched.”
“What do you want from me? The truth is, my hands still shake a bit and my stomach’s churning. I pushed the plunger on MoHa because he deserved it. This Sinaga guy . . . I don’t know. Maybe he deserved it, maybe not. He came at me, tried to kill me. ...” Jack hesitated, cleared his throat. “Did I want to kill him? No. Am I glad it’s him and not me? You bet your ass.”
Gerry considered this for a few moments, then nodded. “Give it some thought and let me know tomorrow. Whatever you want to do, you’ve got a place here.”
“Thanks.”
“Sam, ask them in, will you?”
“Hang on a second,” Jack said. “I already ran this by John and Ding. ... Remember the birth e-mail we got?” Hendley nodded. “It never went anywhere. No replies, no follows. Just dead air, pretty much across the board. I’m thinking that e-mail was a ‘change the channel’ order.”
“Explain,” said Granger.
“We know the URC’s using steganography to communicate. Probably in the banner images on their websites, and they’ve probably been doing it awhile. What if the e-mail was a signal telling cells to switch to some stego-only protocol—call it their version of radio silence.”
“To what end?”
“Special ops guys go radio-silent when they’re getting ready to jump off. Maybe the Emir gave the go signal on an operation.”
“We saw a drop in chatter before Nine-Eleven,” Granger observed. “Bali and Madrid, too.”
Hendley nodded. “Jack, I want you to glue yourself to Biery. Tear down the dump from Nayoan.”
“Okay.”
“Call them in, Sam.”
Granger opened the door, and Clark and Chavez walked in and took their seats next to Jack. Hendley said to Clark, “You hear?”
“What?”
“The charges against Driscoll are gone.”
“Imagine that,” Clark said with a grin.
“Kealty’s press secretary announced it yesterday at close of business. Just in time to slide into the weekend. Sam talked to an old friend at Benning. Driscoll’s clear. Honorable discharge, full pension plus disability. His shoulder going to be a problem?”
“Not unless you’re hiring him to drywall your office, Gerry.”
“Good. Okay, let’s hear it.”
“Didn’t find anything in Sinaga’s trailer but a digital SLR camera,” Clark said. “Nikon, medium price range. It had an SD card inside it with a few hundred images. Mostly landscape stuff, but maybe a dozen were head shots.”
“Passport head shots,” Chavez added. “All men, mostly Middle Eastern or Indonesian, looks like. And one we’ve seen before. Remember the courier we tailed—Shasif Hadi.”
“No shit?” said Granger.
“But get this,” Jack replied. “In the head shot Sinaga had, Hadi’s clean shaven. When we were tailing him, he had a beard and mustache. Shave it off, use the new passport, and you’re good to go.”
Clark said, “That might answer the question of where he went after Las Vegas—at least partially. He left the country.”
Hendley nodded. “Where and why, though? Sam, what else do we know about Sinaga?”
“He’s high on the hit parade in Jakarta. I talked to a friend of a friend who’s the station chief in Surabaya. The guy was good. Had a real eye for passports.”
“Where are we with facial recognition?”
Jack answered this one. “Biery’s got his system in beta testing, but we don’t know much about the system ICE and Homeland Security is using. Their parameters might be different than ours.”
“FBI?” Granger offered.
“Probably the same system. If not, they’ll all be cross-pollinating anyway.”
“When Dom gets back, let’s have him run up a trial balloon. Since Hadi’s our only known quantity, let’s focus on him first. Find out where he was heading from Vegas. Mr. Clark, where did you leave things in San Francisco?”
“We’re clean with Nayoan. Left everything as is but downloaded a lot of data. Gavin’s massaging it right now. One thing’s for sure, Nayoan was a big logistics operator for the URC. Money, documentation . . . Who knows what else. As for Sinaga, we staged a break-in. He lost the fight with the burglar and got killed. Took his DVD player, some