The Teeth of the Tiger - Tom Clancy [80]
"Okay, how much unexplained money, total?"
"Maybe two hundred thousand pounds-three hundred thousand bucks, call it. But I haven't really pinned it down yet, and it's not all that much money."
"How much longer to narrow it down?"
"At this rate? Hell, maybe a week if I'm lucky. This is like tracking a single car during New York rush hour, y'know?"
"Keep it up. Isn't supposed to be easy, or fun."
"Aye, aye, sir." It was something he'd picked up from the Marines at the White House. They'd even said that to him once in a while, until his father had noticed and put an immediate end to it. Jack turned back to his computer. He kept his real notes on a pad of white lined paper, just because it was easier for him that way, then transferred them to a separate computer file every afternoon. As he wrote, he noted that Tony was leaving their little room for a trip upstairs.
"This kid's got the eye," Wills told Rick Bell on the top floor.
"Oh?" It was a little early for any results from the rookie, regardless who his father was, Bell thought.
"I put him on a young Saudi living in London, name of Uda bin Sali-money changer for his family's interests. The Brits have a loose tail on him because he called somebody they found interesting once."
"And?"
"And Junior has found a couple of hundred thousand pounds that can't be accounted for."
"How solid is that?" Bell asked.
"We'll have to put a regular on it, but, you know this kid's got the right sort of nose."
"Dave Cunningham, maybe?" A forensic accountant, he'd joined The Campus out of the Department of Justice, Organized Crime Division. Pushing sixty, Dave had a legendary nose for numbers. The trading department at The Campus mainly used him for "conventional" duties. He could have done very well on Wall Street, but he'd just loved bagging bad guys for a living. At The Campus, he could pursue that avocation well past government retirement rules.
"Dave'd be my pick," Tony agreed.
"Okay, let's cross-load Jack's computer files to Dave and see what he turns over."
"Works for me, Rick. You see the take-report from NSA yesterday?"
"Yeah. Got my attention," Bell answered, looking up. Three days before, message traffic from sources that the government intelligence services found interesting had dropped by seventeen percent and two particularly interesting sources had almost completely stopped. When radio traffic in a military unit did that, it often meant a stand-down prior to real operations. The sort of thing that made signals-intelligence people nervous. The majority of the time, it meant nothing at all, just random chance in operation, but it had developed into something real often enough that the signal-spooks frequently went into a tizzy about it.
"Any ideas?" Wills asked.
Bell shook his head. "I stopped being superstitious about ten years ago."
Clearly, Tony Wills had not: "Rick, we're due. We've been due for a long time."
"I know what you're saying, but we can't run this place on that sort of stuff."
"Rick, this is like sitting at a ball game-dugout seats, maybe, but you still can't go on the field when you want."
"To do what, kill the umpire?" Bell asked.
"No, just the guy planning to throw a beanball."
"Patience, Tony, patience."
"Son of a bitch of a virtue to acquire, isn't it?" Wills had never quite learned it, despite all his experience.
"Think you have it bad? What about Gerry?"
"Yeah, Rick, I know" He stood. "Later, man."
They'd seen not another human being, not a car, not a helicopter. Clearly, there was nothing of value out here. No oil, no gold, not even copper. Nothing worth guarding or protecting. The walk had just been enough to be healthy. Some scrubby bushes, even