Patriot games - Tom Clancy [186]
"Passport records?"
Cantor leaned against the doorframe. "Let's say Mr. X flew to Europe, an American on vacation-we're talking tens of thousands of people per month. He makes contact with someone on the other side, and they get him the rest of the way without going through the usual immigration-control procedures. It's easy-hell, the Agency does it all the time. If we had a name we could see if he was out of the country at the right time. That would be a start-but we don't have a name to check."
"We don't have anything!" Ryan snapped.
"Sure we do. We have all that"-he waved at the documents on Ryan's desk-"and lots more where that came from. Somewhere in there is the answer."
"You really believe that?"
"Every time we crack one of these things, we find that all the information was under our nose for months. The oversight committees in Congress always hammer us on that. Sitting in that pile right now. Jack, is a crucial lead. That's almost a statistical certainty. But you probably have two or three hundred such reports sitting there, and only one matters."
"I didn't expect miracles, but I did expect to make some progress," Jack said quietly, the magnitude of the problem finally sinking in.
"You did. You saw something that no one else did. You may have found Francoise Theroux. And now if a French agent sees something that might be useful to us, maybe they'll pass it along. You didn't know this, but the intel business is like the old barter economy. We give them, and then they give us, or we'll never give to them again. If this pans out, they'll owe us big-time. They really want that gal. She popped a close friend of their President, and he took it personally.
"Anyway, you get a well-done from the Admiral and the DGSE. The boss says you should take it a little easier, by the way."
"I'll take it easy when I find the bastards," Ryan replied.
"Sometimes you have to back off. You look like hell. You're tired. Fatigue makes for errors. We don't like errors. No more late hours, Jack, that comes from Greer, too. You're out of here by six." Cantor left, denying Jack a chance to object.
Ryan turned back toward his desk, but stared at the wall for several minutes. Cantor was right. He was working so late that half the time he couldn't drive up to Baltimore to see how his daughter was doing. Jack rationalized that his wife was with her every day, frequently spending the night at Hopkins to be close to their daughter. Cathy has her job and I have mine.
So, he told the wall, at least I managed to gel something right. He remembered that it had been an accident, that Marty had made the real connection; but it was also true that he'd done what an analyst was supposed to do, find something odd and bring it to someone's attention. He could feel good about that. He'd found a terrorist maybe, but certainly not the right one.
It's a start. His conscience wondered what the French would do if they found that pretty girl, and how he'd feel about it if he found out. It would be better, he decided, if terrorists were ugly, but pretty or not, their victims were just as dead. He promised himself that he wouldn't go out of his way to find out if anyone got her. Jack went back into the pile, looking for that one piece of hard information. The people he was looking for were somewhere in the pile. He had to find them.
"Hello, Alex," Miller said as he entered the car.
"How was the trip?" He still had his beard, Dobbens saw. Well, nobody had gotten much of a look at him. This time he'd flown to Mexico, driven across the border, then taken a domestic flight into D.C., where Alex had met him.
"Your border security over here's a bloody joke."
"Would it make you happy if they changed it?" Alex inquired. "Let's talk business." The abruptness of his tone surprised Miller.
Aren't you a proud one, with one whole operation under your belt, Miller thought. "We have another job for you."
"You haven't paid me for the last one yet, boy."
Miller handed over a passbook. "Numbered account, Bahamian bank.