Dead or Alive - Tom Clancy [230]
“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 cash, to flesh it out.”
“We’ll keep an eye on the news out there, see if it’s playing. It should. We were careful.”
“Okay, so we wait until our über-nerd has something. Thank you, gentlemen. Mr. Clark, can you stay for a minute?” Once Jack and Chavez were gone and the door was closed, Hendley said, “So?”
Clark shrugged. “He’s okay. Whether he’s got a taste for fieldwork only time will tell, but he’s dealing with it. He’s a smart kid.”
“What’s smart got to do with it?” Granger asked.
“Okay, then, he’s even-keeled. Just like his dad.”
“You’d take him out again?”
“In a New York minute, boss. He’s got good instincts, good observation skills, and learns damned fast. Plus, he’s got a little gray in him, too, which doesn’t hurt.”
“‘Gray’?” Hendley asked.
“The gray man,” Clark answered. “The best spooks know how to fade into the background: how they walk, how they dress, how they talk. You pass them on the street and you never notice them. Jack’s got that, and it’s natural.”
“More Ryan genetics?”
“Maybe. Don’t forget, he grew up under the microscope. Without even knowing it, he probably picked up a lot from his environment. Kids are savvy. Jack figured out early what those guys with dark suits and guns were doing hanging around all the time. Got his antennae working.”
“You think he’ll tell his dad?”
“About The Campus? I do. It’s nobody’s fault, really, but Jack’s living under his dad’s shadow—a damned big shadow at that. Once he figures out what he wants to do here, he’ll find a way to bring it up.”
With the help of a customs worker, Musa loaded the container into the rear of his