Hermana Alta.
Clark noticed a marked difference in young Ryan since their last conversation. Quiet, but in good spirits. Apparently, Jack had taken a good look in that mirror they had talked about back at his apartment, and he must have fixed whatever he had seen down in Peru.
“Any line on Cluzet?” Jack asked Gavin, who was munching on a jumbo-sized Snickers bar.
“Yes, as a matter of fact. That Iron Syndicate outfit that was hunting you last year? The one Clark told me to keep an eye on? Well, I found an Interpol internal memorandum linking the Cluzet brothers to it, thanks to those funky tattoos.”
“So I take it you contacted Interpol for a line on him?”
Clark answered, “We talked about it. But the Iron Syndicate is global. They’ve got agents and informants planted in every major security agency. It’s better if we go after Cluzet ourselves, and maybe build a case that helps unravel the organization while we’re at it.”
Jack had read the 2018 DNI Worldwide Threat Assessment. It listed organized crime, a $2 trillion global enterprise, as a serious American national security threat. He wanted Cluzet dead, but he was all for taking down the Iron Syndicate in the process if at all possible.
“If we’re not going to Interpol, our only shot at finding Cluzet is the Czech.”
“That’s exactly why we’re here,” Clark said.
“Where is he now?”
“At home, in Czechia.”
“He’s making it kinda easy, isn’t he?” Jack asked.
“‘A dog always returns to his vomit,’ the Bible says,” Gavin offered, wiping the chocolate from his lips.
“And you don’t trust the Czech government to round him up for us, either, I take it.”
“I think it’ll be better if we talk to him ourselves. I’d hate for the old fart to accidentally get a bullet in the face and his secrets die with him because we tipped off the wrong person.”
“Then let’s go talk to him.”
“We’re already planning on it. You want in?”
“Do you have to ask?”
“It involves another long plane ride.”
“I can use the miles.”
“Are you one hundred percent? This thing might get a little hairy.”
Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t even think about cutting me out of this.”
Clark recognized the determination in his eyes. He also understood it. He had the same fire in his belly when he reaped bloody vengeance for Pamela Madden’s murder four decades ago.
Clark threw a thumb over his shoulder. A stack of mission gear stood in the corner of the hangar. Something serious was about to go down.
“Brought your kit along, just in case. We’re saddling up right now. Wheels up as soon as the plane is gassed and the preflight completed. I’ll brief you on the ride over.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
“You earned it, kid. You did a heck of a job down there.”
Heads nodded all around.
“No,” Jack said. “The job just got started. Now it’s time to finish it.”
83
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Case closed.
Fortson at Q Group had signed off, as had the IT division heads from each of the IC departments. So had Watson.
Foley sighed with relief. The intelligence community had dodged a bullet. No, an artillery shell. For a terrifying moment, she envisioned shutting down the entire IC Cloud, currently processing more than a thousand terabytes of video and audio surveillance data each day, and trillions of pieces of metadata from phone and computer records from around the world. Intelligence collection and processing as it was currently practiced would have ground to a halt. The damage to American intelligence credibility would have been devastating, perhaps insurmountable. No ally would ever trust the United States again.
Fortunately, the leak was cauterized.
Fung had been the lone perpetrator, and his breach had been severely limited in scope and time. The forensics on his laptop had been completed and confirmed Fortson’s initial conclusion. Watson immediately and secretly patched Fung’s breach with the CIA comms satellite.
She then helped design a secret emergency security audit, searching desperately for any other signs of a breach in the IC Cloud. If some other party had broken in and saw what they were up to, they’d go to ground. The bigger challenge was to keep the IC Cloud humming along while the investigation was going on. Too many other critical, real-time projects were at stake, and even the hint of a possibility of a breach would have put their allies—particularly the Five Eyes members—in a panic.
Foley was grateful for Watson’s Herculean efforts. Judging by the time stamps on her calls, texts, and e-mails, Watson had worked around the clock for the last forty-eight hours. Now she was