Blood Trust - Eric van Lustbader [147]
He steeled himself for one of the most difficult things he had to say. Difficult because he suspected he knew what Annika’s answer would be. “I promised Alli that she could ask you your opinion.”
“I think she’s right, Jack. We have two objectives that need to be addressed immediately.” She searched his face. “If you agree with me, I’ll send Vasily with her and Thatë, while you and I go on to the Syrian’s compound.”
Jack looked from her face to Alli’s. This was an important moment for all of them, there was no question of it. But beyond the operational imperatives, he recognized this as an emotional crossroads in Alli’s development. Despite her defiance and Annika’s arguments, he knew the decision was on his shoulders. No matter her own feelings. Alli wouldn’t go unless he gave her his blessing. In an odd way, he recognized this as the moment when a father gives his daughter to the man she is about to marry. In a very real way, she was passing out of his protection into a world filled with peril, heartache, and exultation. He also knew that she would never forgive him if he forbade her this mission. The intimate bond that had been forged between them would be ruptured and nothing he would ever do or say would restore it.
He thought of all the mistakes he’d made with Emma and, perhaps inevitably, he felt the cool wind as she settled in beside him.
—Emma?
“This is what must happen, Dad.”
—Do you know? he said. Do you know if she’ll be all right?
“I’m not a seer, Dad.”
She had told him that already.
“But I’ll be with her. I promise.”
Jack took a deep breath. His gaze on both the women, he said, “What are we waiting for? Let’s roll.”
* * *
MORNING IN Washington found John Pawnhill eating eggs Benny at an old-school dive west of Dupont Circle. It was the kind of place where the same people came to have breakfast or lunch every day of the week, the kind of place tourists never heard about.
In the booth with him was his laptop, which he had hooked into the Middle Bay Bancorp secure server. It amused him no end that InterPublic Bancorp had hired his firm to perform the due diligence on Middle Bay’s books. Of course, he had envisioned an endgame when, following Caroline Carson’s detailed plan, he had set up the Syrian’s cash flow business, via Gemini Holdings and a host of subsidiaries, through Middle Bay. It was just the kind of bank the Syrian needed in order to keep from being a PEP (a Politically Exposed Person) like Liberia’s Charles Taylor, high-profile targets like deposed heads of states, paramilitary leaders, heads of drug cartels, and arms dealers like Viktor Bout, all powerful and clever individuals who, nevertheless, had eventually been caught. Caroline deemed Middle Bay a perfect target: large enough to have international connections, but small enough to pass under the radar of the various federal task forces involved in ferreting out terrorist and money laundering operations.
Pawnhill, Caroline Carson’s eyes and hands on the ground, hadn’t found the actual work all that difficult—she was the genie who lit his way. The American government’s fractured intelligence structure allowed so much illicit international activity to fall between the cracks that you had to make an egregious mistake to come to its attention.
It was the private sector that gave him the most fits, primarily Safe Banking Systems, a small Long Island company with proprietary software that was incredibly efficient at weeding out international banking transactions like the ones that provided the lifeblood of the Syrian’s organization. God forbid the Feds should start using Safe Banking’s software—he and the Syrian would have to fold their tents and find some other sucker nation through which to siphon illicit transactions.
Popping a bite of eggs Benny into his mouth, he pressed a key on his laptop and the last of the incriminating data on Middle Bay’s servers was deleted. Next, he remotely ran a program Caroline