Jack Ryan 2 - Patriot Games (51 page)

The wonderful world of the international terrorist, Murray had said to him outside the Old Bailey. It wasn't very wonderful, Jack thought, but it was a fairly complete world, including all of what the Greeks and Romans thought the civilized world was. He was going over satellite reconnaissance data at the moment. The bound report he was looking at contained no less than sixteen maps. In addition to the cities and roads shown on them were little red triangles designating suspected terrorist training camps in four countries. These were being photographed on almost a daily basis by the photoreconnaissance satellites (Jack was not allowed to know their number) orbiting the globe. He concentrated on the ones in Libya. They did have that report from an Italian agent that Sean Miller had been seen leaving a freighter in Benghazi harbor. The freighter had been of Cypriot registry, owned by a network of corporations sufficiently complex that it didn't really matter, since the ship was under charter to yet another such network. An American destroyer had photographed the ship in what certainly seemed a chance encounter in the Straits of Sicily. The ship was old but surprisingly well maintained, with modern radar and radio gear. She was regularly employed on runs from Eastern European ports to Libya and Syria, and was known to carry arms and military equipment from the East Bloc to client states on the Mediterranean. This data had already been set aside for further use.

Ryan found that the CIA and National Reconnaissance Office were looking at a number of camps in the North African desert. A simple graph accompanied the dated photos of each, and Ryan was looking for a camp whose apparent activity had changed the day that Miller's ship had docked at Benghazi. He was disappointed to find that four had done so. One was known to be used by the Provisional Wing of the IRA -- this datum had come from the interrogation of a convicted bomber. The other three were unknowns. The people there -- aside from the maintenance staff provided by the Libyan armed forces -- could be identified from the photos as Europeans from their fair skin, but that was all. Jack was disappointed to see that you couldn't recognize a face from these shots, just color of skin, and if the sun was right, color of hair. You could also determine the make of a car or truck, but not its identifying tag numbers. Strangely, the clarity of the photos was better at night. The cooler night air was less roiled and did not interfere with imaging as much as in the shimmering heat of the day.

The pictures in the heavy binder that occupied his attention were of camps 11-5-04, 11-5-18, and 11-5-20. Jack didn't know how the number designators had been arrived at and didn't really care. The camps were all pretty much the same; only the spacing of the huts distinguished one from another.

Jack spent the best part of an hour looking over the photos, and concluded that this miracle of modern technology told him all sorts of technical things, none of which were pertinent to his purpose. Whoever ran those camps knew enough to keep people out of sight when a reconsat was overhead -- except for one which was not known to have photographic capability. Even then, the number of people visible was almost never the same, and the actual occupancy of the camps was therefore a matter for uncertain estimation. It was singularly frustrating.

Ryan leaned back and lit another low-tar cigarette bought from the kiosk on the next floor down. It went well with the coffee that was serving to keep him awake. He was up against another blank wall. It made him think of the computer games he occasionally played at home when he was tired of writing -- Zork and Ultima. The business of intelligence analysis was so often like those computer “head games.” You had to figure things out, but you never quite knew what it was that you were figuring out. The patterns you had to deduce could be very different from anything one normally dealt with, and the difference could be significant or mere happenstance.

Two of the suspected ULA camps were within forty miles of the known IRA outpost. Less than an hour's drive, Jack thought. If they only knew. He would have settled for having the Proves clean out the ULA, as they evidently wanted to do. There were indications that the Brits were thinking along similar lines. Jack wondered what Mr. Owens thought of that one and concluded that he probably didn't know. It was a surprising thought that he now had information that some experienced players did not. He went back to the pictures.

One, taken a week after Miller had been seen in Benghazi, showed a car -- it looked like a Toyota Land Cruiser -- about a mile from 11-5-18, heading away. Ryan wondered where it was going. He wrote down the date and time on the bottom of the photo and checked the cross-reference table in the front. Ten minutes later he found the same car, the next day, at Camp 11-5-09, a PIRA camp forty miles from 11-5-18.

Jack told himself not to get overly excited: 11-5-18 could belong to the Red Army Faction of West Germany, Italy's resurgent Red Brigade, or any number of other organizations with which the PIRA cross-pollinated. He still made some notes. It was a “datum,” a bit of information that was worth checking out.

Next he checked the occupancy graph for the camp. This showed the number of camp buildings occupied at night, and went back for over two years. He compared it with a list of known ULA operations, and discovered . . . nothing, at first. The instances where the number of occupied buildings blipped up did not correlate with the organization's known activities . . . but there was some sort of pattern, he saw.

What kind of pattern? Jack asked himself. Every three months or so the occupancy went up by one. Regardless of the number of the people at the camp, the number of huts being used went up by one, for a period of three days. Ryan swore when he saw that the pattern didn't quite hold. Twice in two years the number didn't change. And what does that mean?

“You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike,” Jack murmured to himself. It was a line from one of his computer games. Pattern-recognition was not one of his strong points. Jack left the room to get a can of Coke, but more to clear his head. He was back in five minutes.

He pulled the occupancy graphs from the three “unknown” camps to compare the respective levels of activity. What he really needed to do was to make Xerox copies of the graphs, but CIA had strict rules on the use of copying machines. Doing it would take time that he didn't want to lose at the moment. The other two camps showed no recognizable pattern at all, while Camp -18 did seem to lean in that direction. He spent an hour doing this. By the end of it he had all three graphs memorized. He had to get away from it. Ryan tucked the graphs back where they belonged and returned to examining the photographs themselves.

Camp 11-5-20, he saw, showed a girl in one photo. At least there was someone there wearing a two-piece bathing suit. Jack stared at the image for a few seconds, then turned away in disgust. He was playing voyeur, trying to discern the figure of someone who was probably a terrorist. There were no such attractions at camps -04 and -18, and he wondered at the significance of this until he remembered that only one satellite was giving daylight photos with people in them. Ryan made a note to himself to check at the Academy's library for a book on orbital mechanics. He decided that he needed to know how often a single satellite passed over a given spot in a day.

“You're not getting anywhere,” he told himself aloud.

“Neither is anybody else,” Marty Cantor said. Ryan spun around.

“How did you get in here?” Jack demanded.

“I'll say one thing for you, Jack, when you concentrate you really concentrate. I've been standing here for five minutes.” Cantor grinned. “I like your intensity, but if you want an opinion, you're pushing a little hard, fella.”

“I'll survive.”

“You say so,” Cantor said dubiously. “How do you like our photo album?”

“The people who do this full-time must go nuts.”

“Some do,” Cantor agreed.

“I might have something worth checking out,” Jack said, explaining his suspicions on Camp -18.

“Not bad. By the way, number -20 may be Action-Directe, the French group that's picked up lately. DGSE -- the French foreign intelligence service -- thinks they have a line on it.”

“Oh. That may explain one of the photos.” Ryan flipped to the proper page.

“Thank God Ivan doesn't know what that bird does,” Cantor nodded. “Hmm. We may be able to ID from this.”

“How?” Jack asked. “You can't make out her face.”

“You can tell her hair length, roughly. You can also tell the size of her tits.” Cantor grinned ear to ear.

“What?”

“The guys in photointerpretation are -- well, they're very technical. For cleavage to show up in these photos, a girl has to have C-cup breasts -- at least that's what they told me once. I'm not kidding, Jack. Somebody actually worked the math out, because you can identify people from a combination of factors like hair color, length, and bust size. Action-Directe has lots of female operatives. Our French colleagues might find this interesting.” If they're willing to deal, he didn't say.

“What about -18?”

“I don't know. We've never really tried to identify that one. The thing about the car may count against it, though.”

“Remember that our ULA friends have the Proves infiltrated,” Jack said.

“You're still on that, eh? Okay, it's something to be considered,” Cantor conceded. “What about this pattern thing you talked about?”

“I haven't got anything to point to yet,” Jack admitted.

“Let's see the graph.”

Jack unfolded it from the back of the binder. “Every three months, mostly, the occupancy rate picks up.”

Cantor frowned at the graph for a moment. Then he flipped through the photographs. On only one of the dates did they have a daylight photo that showed anything. Each of the camps had what looked like a shooting range. In the photo Cantor selected, there were three men standing near it.

“You might have something, Jack.”

“What?” Ryan had looked at the photo and made nothing of it.

“What's the distinguishing feature of the ULA?”

“Their professionalism,” Ryan answered.

“Your last paper on them said they were more militarily organized than some of the others, remember? Every one of them, as far as we can tell, is skilled with weapons.”

“So?”

“Think!” Cantor snapped. Ryan gave him a blank look. “Periodic weapons-refresher training, maybe?”

“Oh. I hadn't thought of that. How come nobody ever --”

“Do you know how many satellite photos come through here? I can't say exactly, but you may safely assume that it's a fairly large number, thousands per month. Figure it takes a minimum of five minutes to examine each one. Mostly we're interested in the Russians -- missile silos, factories, troop movements, tank parks, you name it. That's where most of the analytical talent goes, and they can't keep up with what comes in. The guys we have on this stuff here are technicians, not analysts.” Cantor paused. “Camp -18 looks interesting enough that we might try to figure a way to check it out, see who really lives there. Not bad.”

“He's violated security,” Kevin O'Donnell said by way of greeting. He was quiet enough that no one in the noisy pub would have heard him.

“Perhaps this is worth it,” Cooley replied. “Instructions?”

“When are you going back?”

“Tomorrow morning, the early flight.”

O'Donnell nodded, finishing off his drink. He left the pub and walked directly to his car. Twenty minutes later he was home. Ten minutes after that, his operations and intelligence chiefs were in his study.

“Sean, how did you like working with Alex's organization?”

“They're like us, small but professional. Alex is a very thorough technician, but an arrogant one. He hasn't had a great deal of formal training. He's clever, very clever. And he's hungry, as they say over there. He wants to make his mark.”

“Well, he may just have his chance next summer.” O'Donnell paused, holding up the letter Cooley had delivered. “It would seem that His Royal Highness will be visiting America next summer. The Treasure Houses exhibit was such a success that they are going to stage another one. Nearly ninety percent of the works of Leonardo Da Vinci belong to the Royal Family, and they'll be sending them over to raise money for some favored charities. The show opens in Washington on August the first, and the Prince of Wales will be going over to start things off. This will not be announced until July, but here is his itinerary, including the proposed security arrangements. It is as yet undecided whether or not his lovely bride will accompany His Highness, but we will proceed on the assumption that she will.”

“The child?” Miller asked.

“I rather suspect not, but we will allow for that possibility also.” He handed the letter to Michael McKenney. The intelligence officer for the ULA skimmed over the data.

“The security at the official functions will be airtight. The Americans have had a number of incidents, and they've learned from each of them,” McKenney said. Like all intelligence officers, he saw his potential opponents as overwhelmingly powerful. “But if they go forward with this one . . .”

“Yes,” O'Donnell said. “I want you two to work together on this. We have plenty of time and we'll use all of it.” He took the letter back and reread it before giving it to Miller. After they left, he wrote his instructions for their agent in London.

At the airport the next morning Cooley saw his contact and walked into the coffee shop. He was early for his flight, seasoned traveler that he was, and had a cup while he waited for it to be announced. Finished, he walked outside. His contact was just walking in. The two men brushed by each other, and the message was passed, just as was taught in every spy school in the world.

“He does travel about a good deal,” Ashley observed. It had taken Owens' detectives less than an hour to find Cooley's travel agent and to get a record of his trips for the past three years. Another pair was assembling a biographical file on the man. It was strictly routine work. Owens and his men knew better than to get excited about a new lead. Enthusiasm all too easily got in the way of objectivity. His car -- parked at Gatwick Airport -- had considerable mileage on the clock for its age, and that was explained by his motoring about buying books. This was the extent of the data assembled in eighteen hours. They would patiently wait for more.