“Jack! That’s so weird. I was just about to call you. You won’t believe the stuff I’ve found.”
Gavin’s high-pitched voice squealed with the enthusiasm of a teenage gamer winning a Fortnite competition. But the portly, fiftysomething bachelor—who actually was a Fortnite player—was a world-class programmer, hacker, and researcher, and the brains behind Hendley Associates’ considerable IT department.
“Surprise me.”
“Well, where should I start? I’ll do the good stuff first. Your friend’s company, CrowdScope? It’s a CIA op, and Renée Moore was CIA.”
“What? You’re sure?”
“Helloo? It’s me. Of course I’m sure.”
Jack couldn’t believe it. Moore had never mentioned government service. The one time he’d raised it with her, she’d laughed in his face, incredulous. “Where’s the money in that, Jack?”
He wondered what had changed her mind.
On the other hand, Silicon Valley made perfect sense as a CIA station. Google, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and the other giant social media networks constituted the most successful intelligence-gathering operation the world had ever seen. They collected and dissected terabytes of personal data from their billons of users around the world—almost always provided by the users themselves, and with their own consent.
Why try to compete with that kind of data harvesting and analysis when you could simply infiltrate those preexisting networks?
Thanks to Snowden, everybody knew that the Intelligence Community had secured the cooperation of many of the technology firms early on. Companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft had billions of dollars’ worth of contracts with the federal government, including the agencies of the Intelligence Community and the Department of Defense.
But a combination of bad press, customer concerns, and activist outrage had resulted in a pushback against covert and even overt cooperation by these firms with the American government. These companies’ loyalties were to their bottom lines, not national security. It wasn’t surprising that the CIA had decided to try to find another way in. God knows how many foreign powers used platforms like Facebook and Twitter to covertly influence domestic and world opinion. If he ran the CIA, Jack would focus his efforts on infiltrating and influencing Silicon Valley as well.
“What can you tell me about Renée? What was she doing at CrowdScope—or in Barcelona?”
“That’s the crazy thing, Jack. I have access to a lot of databases—including ones I’m not supposed to have access to. But whatever your friend was up to, and whatever operations CrowdScope is conducting, I can’t get close to it. I think even their firewalls have firewalls. I tried tiptoeing around some of their defenses and set off a few alarms. If I’m not careful, I’m going to get hauled away by a CIA snatch team and dumped in an offshore prison somewhere.”
So Renée wasn’t just in federal service, Jack thought.
She was all the way in, up to her neck.
“If CrowdScope is that important, and if Renée was part of it, whatever she was up to in Barcelona must be kryptonite.”
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Gavin asked.
Jack heard paper crinkling. “Snickers or Almond Joy?”
“Snickers, baby.” Gavin took a bite and spoke with a full mouth. “It’s the PowerBar of gamers everywhere.”
“So, I’m thinking the bombing in Barcelona wasn’t a terror act at all. Maybe the real target was Renée. What about you?”
“A definite maybe. But, Jack, there is one other possibility.”
“What’s that?”
“Maybe the real target was you.”
“Why me?”
“Why not you? Besides the fact you work for Gerry Hendley and you’re the son of the President of the United States—a fact we’ve managed to hide, but it’s still a fact that someone could have discovered. You’ve killed, captured, or jailed enough bad guys on your own in the last few years to put you on a dozen hit lists. Remember van Delden? The Iron Syndicate?”
Jack surely did. The Iron Syndicate was an international crime organization with tentacles reaching into almost every security organization on the planet. They’d put a bounty on Jack’s head—or technically, for the collection of his severed head—two years ago. Thanks to his time in Poland with Liliana, the Iron Syndicate was largely dismantled and its members dead, in jail, or on the run.
God rest your soul, Liliana.
“I appreciate the thought, Gav, but I’d be really surprised if they were after me. I’ve been wide open the whole time I’ve been in Spain. There were dozens of better opportunities to take me out without any collateral damage.”
“Collateral damage is a great way to hide a crime, you know.”
“I think you’re reaching.”
“Just keeping an eye out for you.”
“I appreciate that. More than you know. But it seems to me that Renée is the obvious target. As near as I can tell, she’d only just arrived in Barcelona. Maybe you can find out when and where she flew in from. That might give us a clue as to her assignment.”
“Sure thing.”
“Thanks. You said you had other stuff you’ve discovered besides Moore’s CIA connection?”
“Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. I was thinking about the CCTV tape. Any luck with your CNI contact?”
“I tried. No go.”
“Well, no worries on that account. I hacked their server—”
“You did what? How?”
“Oh, Jack. I’m hurt. You doubted me?”
Jack shouldn’t have been surprised. Gavin was a one-man wrecking machine when it came to hacking. Even NSA-level encryption didn’t stop him. He usually found his way around technological firewalls by exploiting the failings of the human operators. Gavin idolized the Israeli agents who destroyed the centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear facility. They did it by dropping a Stuxnet-infested flash drive on the ground, knowing that an OCD Iranian scientist would pick it up and insert it into one of the air-gapped computers.
“I never doubt you, Gavin. You only manage to astound me.”
“Oh, you know. All in a day’s work.”
Jack rolled his eyes. Gavin’s gloating practically oozed through the phone. “So what did you find on the CCTV tapes?”
“I only had time to download an hour’s worth before their IT people discovered I was snooping around. I know you know this, but there’s video-editing software on the secure Hendley cloud server you can use to check out what I downloaded, along with some facial-recognition software that might help.”
Gavin had built an entire suite of proprietary investigative tools that members of The Campus could access remotely for occasions just like this. Gavin was more than happy to do the work himself but usually there was far more of it to do than even an extraordinary technician like Gavin could handle. He not only built the suite of tools, he trained the team on them as well. They couldn’t come close to Gavin’s talent on the really technical stuff, but for grunt work like reviewing hours of video or audio transmissions, it was better to put less skilled hands on the oars.
“Gavin, I can’t believe it. That’s perfect. Post it up on the Hendley cloud as soon as you can and I’ll start going through it.”
Gavin’s mouth was full of Snickers bar again. “Already done.”
“Okay, okay. You’re obviously one step ahead of me.”
“That goes without saying.”
“Then let me throw you a curveball. I’m sending you something now.”
Jack texted the photo of the Bluetooth Blonde Brossa gave him and links to the stories he’d found about her. He gave Gavin a minute to look it over.
“Sounds like you already know who she is. What do you need from me?”
“I saw her at the restaurant just before it blew. She was on a phone. My bet is that it’s a burner phone. The CNI says they don’t have it.”
“They might be lying.”
“Could be. But for now, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. Any chance you can break into the citywide camera system and track her movements? If she bought that phone herself, you might be able to find the store where she got it. From there, we might be able to run her down.”
“Yeah, that’ll be fun. I’ve got a new automated tracking software I wrote that I want to try out—it lets the computer do all of the monotonous stuff.”
“Thanks, Gav. I couldn’t do this without you.”
“No question about that.”
“So, you said that you had some bad news?”
“Oh, yeah. I nearly forgot. I chased down this Sammler guy you asked me to look into. I couldn’t come up with anybody who had any obvious ties to Moore. Sorry about that.”
“Don’t sweat it. My Spanish source came up short, too. Though apparently there was a German national by that name in Spain a few days ago and she’s chasing him down.”
“I saw him, too. Already checked him out. He’s not the guy. Are you sure you heard the name right? Could she have said ‘Samuels’ maybe? Or ‘Stattler’? Something like that?”
“I heard it right. Renée made sure of that.”
“I don’t mean to offend you, but maybe she was hallucinating toward the end, or losing oxygen to her brain. She might have said ‘Sammler’ but that might not mean anything at all.”
“It’s a possibility.” Jack’s hopes began to fade. “Unless the Spaniards pull up something on Sammler, I’m afraid he’s a dead end for now.”