Patriot games - Tom Clancy [184]
"Very well, David, what do you propose to do?"
"We'll plant microphones in his shop and his home, and tap all of his telephone calls, of course. When he travels, he'll have a companion."
Owens nodded approval. That was more than he could do legally, but the Security Service didn't operate under the same rules as did the Metropolitan Police. "How about watching his shop?"
"Not easy, when you remember where it is. Still, we might try to get one of our people hired in one of the neighboring shops."
"The one opposite his is a jewelry establishment, isn't it?"
"Nicholas Reemer and Sons," Ashley nodded. "Owner and two employees."
Owens thought about that. "I could find an experienced burglary detective, someone knowledgeable in the field "
"Morning, Jack," Cantor said.
"Hi, Marty."
Ryan had given up on the satellite photographs weeks before. Now he was trying to find patterns within the terrorist network. Which group had connections with which other? Where did their arms come from? Where did they train? Who helped with the training? Who provided the money? Travel documents? What countries did they use for safe transits?
The problem with these questions was not a lack of information, but a glut of it. Literally thousands of CIA field officers and their agents, plus those of every other Western intelligence service, were scouring the world for such information. Many of the agents-foreign nationals recruited and paid by the Agency-would make reports on the most trivial encounter in the hope of delivering The One Piece of Information that would crack open Abu Nidal, or Islamic Jihad, or one of the other high-profile groups, for a substantial reward. The result was thousands of communiques, most of them full of worthless garbage that was indistinguishable from the one or two nuggets of real information. Jack had not realized the magnitude of the problem. The people working on this were all talented, but they were being overwhelmed by a sea of raw intelligence data that had to be graded, collated, and cross-referenced before proper analysis could begin. The difficulty of finding any single organization was inversely proportional to its size, and some of these groups were composed of a mere handful of people-in extreme cases composed of family members only.
"Marty," Jack said, looking away from the papers on his desk, "this is the closest thing to impossible I've ever seen."
"Maybe, but I've come to deliver a well-done," Cantor replied.
"What?"
"Remember that satellite photo of the girl in the bikini? The French think they've ID'd her: Francoise Theroux. Long, dark hair, a striking figure, and she was thought to be out of the country when the photo was made. That confirms that the camp belongs to Action-Directe."
"So who's the girl?"
"An assassin," Marty replied. He handed Jack a photograph taken at closer range. "And a good one. Three suspected kills, two politicians and an industrialist, all with a pistol at close range. Imagine how it's done: you're a middle-aged man walking down the street; you see a pretty girl; she smiles at you, maybe asks for directions or something; you stop, and the next thing you know, there's a pistol in her hand. Goodbye, Charlie."
Jack looked at the photograph. She didn't look dangerous-she looked like every man's fantasy. "Like we used to say in college, not the sort of girl you'd kick out of bed. Jesus, what sort of world do we live in, Marty?"
"You know that better than I do. Anyway, we've been asked to keep an eye on the camp. If we spot her there again, the French want us to real-time the photo to them."
"They're going to go in after her?"
"They didn't say, but you might recall that