“Which is a damned sight closer than we are now,” Rick Bell observed.
While Biery and his geeks dug into Masood’s drive and Clark and Chavez caught a power nap on the break-room couches, Jack turned his attention to the flash drive Ding had taken off one of the Tripoli tangos. Having determined that it contained stego-encoded images, he and Biery had decided to try a brute-force algorithm crack, with a free steak dinner for whoever got there first. Busy as he was with Masood’s drive, Jack felt confident in his head start.
After two hours of crunching, one of the algorithms struck gold and an image began depixelating on his screen. It was a large file, almost six megabytes, so the decoding would take a few minutes. He picked up the phone and called Granger. Two minutes later Jack had an audience of eight standing over his shoulder, watching the monitor as the photo resolved.
“What the hell is that?” Brian asked, leaning in.
The photo was blurred and desaturated of color. Jack imported it into Photoshop and washed the file through some filters, working the contrast and brightness until the image came clear.
There was ten seconds of silence.
The 8×10 image was done in 1940s pinup style: a dark-haired woman in a white cotton peasant skirt, sitting on a bale of hay, her legs crossed demurely. She was naked from the waist up, her impossibly massive breasts drooping to her thighs.
“Tits,” Sam Granger said. “My God, Jack, you’ve discovered tits.”
“Oh, shit,” Jack muttered.
Everyone burst out laughing.
Dominic said, “Jack, you little pervert… I had no idea.”
Then Brian: “So, Jack, exactly how much ‘depixelation’ do you do in your spare time?”
More laughter.
“Very funny.” Jack groaned.
Once the laughter died down, Hendley said, “Okay, let’s break it up and let Mr. Hefner carry on. Nice work, Jack.”
At four o’ clock, Jack woke up Clark and Chavez. “Show-time, guys. Conference room in five minutes.”
They showed up in four minutes, both armed with an extra-large cup of coffee. Everyone else was already seated: Hendley, Granger, Bell, Rounds, Dominic, and Mary Pat. Clark and Chavez took their seats. Rounds took the lead. He looked up from the summary Biery had sent up a few minutes earlier.
“A lot of this is nuts-and-bolts stuff that may help us down the road. The big-picture items are three. He picked up the remote and aimed it at the forty-two-inch wide-screen TV. The frontspiece of a passport appeared on the screen. “That’s what our guy looked like at some point in the last six to nine months.”
There was ten seconds of silence around the table.
“Bears a resemblance to the few pics we’ve got of him,” Bell said.
Rounds said, “Forged French passport. High-quality work. The stamps, the backing, the threading-all perfect. According to Masood’s hard drive, the Emir used this three months ago. Peshawar to Dushanbe, Tajikistan, then to Ashgabat, Volgograd, then Saint Petersburg. Then nothing.”
“That’s as far as Masood took him,” Dominic added.
“Can’t be his final destination,” Jack replied. “Another mover took over, maybe?”
Clark said, “If you average out his hops, he was heading generally northwest. Extend that a little and you’re into Finland or Sweden.”
“Sweden,” Mary Pat said. “The plastic-surgery thing?”
“Maybe,” Granger said.
“The Hlasek Air thing?” Chavez wondered aloud.
“That, too, maybe. If Saint Petersburg was as far as Masood took him, that means he dumped the French passport for a new one. If he went into Sweden or Finland on a new one, he wouldn’t be able to land anywhere after that-at least not legitimately.”
“Explain that.” This from Hendley.
“He couldn’t use his old face for the next passport, and there’s no way he gets one all bandaged up, so he sits still until all the swelling and bruising are gone, then gets the passport.”
“Let’s back up a second,” Jack said. “Who took over as the mover in Saint Petersburg? That’s the question we need to ask.”
“Needle in a haystack,” Bell said.
“Maybe not,” Mary Pat came back. “Masood was ex-ISI. The URC chose him because he was a pro at it. They’d want the same thing in Russia. Maybe we’re looking for ex-SVR, or ex-KGB.”
“Or GRU,” Rounds added. “Military intelligence.”
“Right.”
“Any way to narrow down the list, Mary Pat?” Clark asked.
“Maybe. It’s a pretty specialized skill. Probably would take somebody who handled illegals. Lot of those still around, though.”
“How many of them are dead, though?” Jack said. “In Saint Petersburg. And in the last four months. They probably would’ve killed Masood a lot earlier if he hadn’t gone to ground. He was a loose end. The Russian mover would be, too.”
“Good thinking, Jack,” Hendley said. “Think you can work with that?” he asked Mary Pat.
“Give me a few hours.”
She was back from the NCTC in two. “Wasn’t all that hard, really. Jack, you nailed it. Last month in Saint Petersburg, Yuriy Beketov, former KGB officer, Directorate S-Illegals-of the First Chief Directorate. Shot dead in a Chechnyan restaurant. The Saint Petersburg cops put it on the Interpol wire. I’ve got a couple people trying to tease out some more details, but Beketov seems to fit.”
“Until then, let’s play with it,” Hendley said. “Say he goes to Switzerland, or Sweden or Finland, for surgery.”
“Sweden gets my vote, too,” Rounds said. “He’d want something high-end, very private, with select clientele. A lot more of those in Sweden than Finland. It’s a place to start.”
“Google,” Jack said.
It was nearly nine at night when they found what they needed. Jack pushed back from his laptop and ran his hands through his hair. “Well, I’ll give them this. They’re consistent. Ruthless and consistent.”
“Enlighten us,” Clark said.
“Three weeks ago, the Orrhogen Clinic in Sundsvall. Burned to the ground with the managing director inside. Something else: Sundsvall is only about seventy-five miles north of Söderhamn. If Brian and Dominic hadn’t shown up, it’s a safe bet Rolf the mechanic would be dead right now.”
“Okay, so the Emir has the surgery, spends a few days recuperating, then leaves,” Granger said. “Chances are halfway good he hasn’t got a passport. He’d need a private charter, a private airport, and a pilot who doesn’t mind getting a little dirty.” Hendley considered this. “How exactly would he do it?”
“Rolf gave us the answer,” Dominic replied. “Duplicate transponder code.”
“Right,” Jack replied. “Hlasek switches off the first transponder code, drops off the radar, turns on the second transponder code, and they’ve got themselves a new plane.”
“That kind of thing would certainly get written down somewhere,” Rounds observed. “Do we have an in with the FAA or Transport Canada?”
“No,” Granger replied. “Doesn’t mean we can’t, though.” He picked up the phone, and two minutes later Gavin was in the conference room.
Jack explained what they were looking for. “Doable?”
Gavin snorted. “The FAA’s firewalls are a joke. Transport Canada’s not any better. Give me a half-hour.”
Good as his word, thirty minutes later Biery called up to the conference room. Hendley put him on speakerphone. “In the time frame you gave me, eighteen flights dropped off radar in either U.S. or Canadian airspace. Sixteen were nothing-operator error-one was a Cessna that crashed outside Albany, and one, a Dassault Falcon 9000, that dropped off altogether. The pilot reported a problem with its landing gear on its way into Moose Jaw. A couple minutes later they lost it on radar.”