It was the bank account that was the key. How was Lee connected to the bank account? Instead of running down Lee, Jessi turned her attention to the Cayman Islands and began to research account number 343934425. Like accounts in Swiss banks, the Cayman Islands accounts were kept confidential, but unlike the Swiss, the Cayman Islanders had neither the tradition nor the backbone to maintain that privacy under pressure. As she dug deeper, Jessi expected to find history on some FBI or CIA investigation that had linked the name Marcus Lee to account 343934425.
She was right that a prior investigation had matched Lee to the account. But to her surprise she found that the investigation itself was Russian. Jessi stared at the screen for a moment, baffled by the notation. But there was no mistake: Russian intelligence had fed the CIA the data. This wasn’t completely unheard of, but to Jessi it was a gaping hole in the road.
Fortunately, she knew someone who might be able to help. She dialed a number she hated to admit she knew by heart.
“Hey,” said the voice on the other end of the line.
“Hi Kelly,” Jessi said. “How are you?”
“Well, better now,” said Kelly Sharpton. “I’ve been hoping you’d call.”
“It’s business,” Jessi said.
“Oh.”
Kelly Sharpton had been her boss for a short time at CTU. He’d been brought in on temporary assignment during Jack Bauer’s fall from grace. There’d been a spark between them, but Sharpton had left the unit some time ago, “seduced by the lure of filthy lucre,” as he put it, and the spark had never started a fire. At least that was how Jessi thought of it. But they spoke every now and again when Kelly was in town, and Kelly had been growing more and more obvious with his hints.
“You have some contacts with the Russians, don’t you?”
“Did,” he corrected. “It’s been a while.”
“I’m following a trail that leads from a CIA file to Russian intelligence. Can you put the word out for me?”
“Do I get a dinner out of it?” Kelly laughed.
Jessi felt her heart flutter. She shouldn’t be flirting with him. He’s older, he’s traveling, his work might put us in conflict… But she heard herself say, “Depends on how good you are.”
“Deal,” he said. “Expect a call.”
Jack slipped out of the double doors and ran behind the line of officers near the entrance of the Federal Building.
The scene was rapidly spiraling out of control. A bottle shattered on the ground a few feet behind him. Dark smoke mixed with the plumes of tear gas, and Jack knew that protestors had set fire to something, probably a car. He also knew that over at the Veteran Center, half a mile away, LAPD had mustered the horse-mounted squad. If the violence continued, they’d be charging down Wilshire Boulevard, backed up by rubber bullets.
Jack reached the north end of the Federal Building. “I’m here,” he said into his mobile phone. “Talk to me.”
He was still in touch with Cynthia Rosen downstairs in the command center. She talked back to him now. “He’s still there. Getting tough to stay on him, though. Bodies are starting to fly around there.”
“I’m there.”
The north side of the Federal Building was the narrowest plot of land — an arcade no more than ten yards wide, with a grass lawn another twenty yards, and then the street.
LAPD’s original plan had blocked traffic from the street, allowing the protestors to occupy the boulevard and leaving a healthy perimeter between them and the building. The riot had changed all that, and as Jack rounded the corner, the crowd was pushing its way onto the concrete. There was a police line there as well, and in Jack’s view they were exercising admirable discipline. Protestors were pushing at their phalanx of riot shields, but they had yet to bring their batons to bear.
“He’s at your nine o’clock,” Rosen said. “Blue shirt.”
Jack looked to his left. It was nearly impossible to get a clean look at anyone beyond the riot shields and in the swarming crowd. But a flash of blue caught his attention and he focused on it. The man wearing the shirt did not stand in the front ranks, but close enough to be noticed, raising his fist and yelling at the police line.
Jack hesitated before moving on. Something about this man’s presence at the protest didn’t make sense. Why would a terrorist working for Ayman al-Libbi bother with the political protest? It didn’t make sense even to risk a showing. There was no upside, and al-Libbi could not be completely confident that Federal investigators hadn’t identified at least some of his help. So this man was either so far down the food chain that al-Libbi considered him unimportant, or he had some other reason for keeping him at the protest. Jack tucked that thought away as he made his move.
He did not want the subject or anyone nearby to see him come from the Federal Building, so he turned back around the corner, then passed through the police line.
“Where do you think you’re—?” one of the officers asked.
“Federal agent,” Jack said, flashing his badge. He held it tight in his left hand, figuring he might need it again soon.
Crossing the line between the police phalanx and the rioters, Jack felt like a sailor leaping from the ship and into a choppy sea.
“Who the hell are you?” a young man challenged, grabbing Jack as he pushed his way into the crowd.
Jack kneed him in the groin. “No one to mess with.”
He stepped over the man and into the space created where he fell. A few more people yelled at him or clutched at him, but Jack ignored them, and a few steps later he was among people who hadn’t seen him and didn’t pay attention to him except for the second during which he pushed past them. They were all chanting in the same rhythm, but he had the impression the words changed from group to group, as though the rioters were made up of distinct groups with distinct messages who’d all fallen under the same spell. As he made his way through the crowd, rounding the corner of the building, a young Latino pushed him aside and threw a bottle. Jack watched it spin through the air toward a police officer, who ducked behind his shield as the bottle bounced away. The young man smiled at Jack and said something in Spanish that he didn’t quite catch. Jack resisted the urge to punch him in the face and moved on.
He waded through the crowd and reached the north side. Using the building as perspective, he made his way back to the point where he’d seen the blue shirt. There was an ebb and flow to the mob as it pushed close to the police barricade and then gave way, and the blue-shirted man was no closer to his original position than a man overboard at sea. But Jack spotted him at last, a few yards away. He shoved his way past four or five short Latino men dressed in primitive costumes, with signs that read “dejar la amazona tranquila!”, elbowed through two men holding a banner that said, say no to china! remember tiananmen! Finally, he forced an open space next to the man in the blue shirt.
Jack had expected him to look Middle Eastern, but if looks were any indicator, the man’s background was farther east and north. He looked Chinese, or Slavic, or both. Jack had traveled in the “-stans” that were the former satellites of the old Soviet Union — Uzbekistan, Turkistan, Kyrgyzstan, and the like. The blue-shirted man reminded Jack of men from that region. This thought reminded Jack of something he’d heard in a briefing several weeks earlier, but he couldn’t recall it at the moment.
Jack pulled out his cell phone and activated the camera feature. He knew the blue-shirted man wasn’t paying much attention to him, but he pretended to enter a number and hold the phone to his ear. “What!” he yelled, just for show. “What?” He pulled the phone away from his ear the way people did who’d lost a connection, as though moving the phone a few inches away would improve the reception. In that moment the blue-shirted man’s face appeared on the screen. Jack snapped the picture. A second later he forwarded it to CTU.