Clark said, “You’re right about that.”
Ryan understood why he got the foreign duty. With his beard and other things he had done to alter his appearance in the past few years, he was almost never recognized, even on the streets of the U.S. But in Prague he would garner even less attention. He hated that his semi-fame had to enter into the threat matrix for each operation, but he had no one to blame but himself. Not for his fame — the fact his dad was a household name around the world was at fault there — but Jack Junior himself had sought out a life of clandestine work, and celebrity and anonymity were polar opposites.
Ryan recognized his was an unusual life. It annoyed him sometimes, but he realized he wouldn’t trade it for the world. He said, “Thanks, Gerry. Maybe I shouldn’t press my luck, but I’d like to request that Gavin comes with us on this.”
Gerry was surprised. “To Prague? Why?”
“Whatever Skála’s involvement in this matter, I’m thinking it likely he was doing it through back channels, and not in his official capacity in the government. It stands to reason. Sharps Global Intelligence Partners wasn’t contracted with the Czech government, so I figure he was moonlighting if he was working with them. That might mean he used his personal phone or computer as a means of contact with someone else involved. I’m assuming we’ll have to skim all the intel off of his electronic devices in order to figure out who he’s been talking to. If we are to do this without him knowing we’re there, then our infiltration might be time sensitive.”
“What if he’s erased the data?”
Ryan didn’t hesitate. “Oh, I’m sure he has. But I’ve watched Gavin work. He’s a bloodhound. If there is a trace of anything, even if it’s something erased, Gavin will retrieve it.”
Gerry thought it over. He wasn’t crazy about Biery running out into the field every time The Campus had a time-sensitive operation. Virtually all of their operations were time sensitive, and there was only one IT director.
Jack saw his employer’s hesitancy, so he said, “Of course, I guess I could just whack Karel Skála on the head and kidnap him.”
It was a joke, but Gerry just raised an annoyed eyebrow.
Ryan smiled. “Sorry. Just kidding around. It’s okay. We can go without Gavin. We’ll make do.”
Gerry looked to Clark. He was the director of operations of The Campus, after all. “If I send Gavin to Prague, is that going to negatively affect your operation in New York?”
Clark shook his head. “We’ll need schematics on Sharps’s offices, employee lists, things of that sort. Might need some security measures disabled in his building if we decide to try a sneak-and-peek. Biery’s staff is more than competent to handle all that.”
“Okay.” Gerry turned to Ryan and Caruso. “You can take Gavin, but only if you promise to return him the way you found him.”
Jack and Dom laughed.
Gavin Biery was virtually the only employee of Hendley Associates who wasn’t happy with the new building. Although his job title had not changed since the old place, here he had control of less than half the square footage as compared to the West Odenton campus, and to Gavin that felt like a kick in the pants.
Yes, The Campus was a leaner outfit now, he didn’t need as much space, and Gerry had put in the money to ensure that the technology here was better than much of the equipment Gavin had used at their old address, but Gavin liked the feeling of control he had over the bigger operation. West Odenton had more computers and more personnel, and Gavin Biery had been master of it all.
Since the inception of The Campus many years earlier, the organization derived much of its raw intelligence by intercepting the satellite feeds beamed between the NSA building up in Fort Meade, Maryland, and the CIA building down in McLean, Virginia. To do this a huge array of dishes were necessary on the roof of the five-story West Odenton building.
The radio waves, in addition to being hard to access, were also encrypted, so that anyone who could pull them out of the air couldn’t decipher the intel. Biery and his staff got around this with state-of-the-art decryption software and the massive amounts of high-tech hardware needed to run it.
But the technology had changed over the years, and now Gavin was able to access every bit of the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System’s intelligence networks, as well as other government networks, through a back door he developed through a virtual private network.
Gone now were the dishes, the miles of cabling running up and down a communications shaft, and the mainframes used just in the decoding and decrypting process. Biery did still have a mainframe here at the Alexandria building, but he was able to task it to other projects.
Gavin missed his sat dishes and his cabling. He had developed the virtual private network access to JWICS only out of necessity, after the Chinese assault on the West Odenton building meant The Campus no longer had the line-of-sight access necessary to intercept the radio traffic. Gavin lamented the loss of his massive computer and communications complex, but he was the architect of the new system, and objectively he did have to admit they were now in a newer, more secure, and better-connected location.
But there was another reason Biery missed the big Hendley Associates building in West Odenton. Up there, they had a nice cafeteria with excellent food. Here, by contrast, they had only a break room with snack machines. Of course there were restaurants nearby. Many of the employees walked the few blocks south down to King Street for lunch, but Gavin rarely took the time to go out for lunch. Usually he had pizza or sandwiches delivered from outside the building, but every mid-morning and mid-afternoon he liked a snack to keep him going, and for that he had to deal with the damn machines.
At ten-thirty a.m. Gavin was in the little break room, dropping quarters into a snack machine. He made his selection and then groaned in frustration as his fried blueberry pie got stuck between the plexiglass window and a bag of chips.
“Damn it,” he said. He banged on the glass a few times to no avail, and then started to fish through his pockets for more money, deciding this to be some omen telling him he really wanted the bag of chips as well.
While he was focused on his change, Jack Ryan and Dom Caruso came out of the stairwell into the break room.
Jack said, “Your secretary said we’d find you here. Mid-morning munchies?”
“It takes a lot of fuel to power all this brain, Ryan.”
“Oh, I understand completely,” Jack said.
Dom said, “Hey, Gav. We were just wondering if you felt like taking a little trip.”
Gavin couldn’t contain his excitement. As he spun around in surprise, several quarters flew out of his hand and bounced across the tile floor. “Hell, yes! Where and when?”
“Prague, and very soon. Like tonight.”
The fifty-six-year-old smiled broadly, and his chest heaved with excitement. “Prague? Central European intrigue. Cobblestone streets. Gas lamps. Mist. The perfect town for real cloak-and-dagger work.”
Jack rolled his eyes a little. “You’ve been reading too many spy novels. No cloak and dagger. More like sitting and watching, with you back at the hotel waiting for us to show up with a mobile phone or a laptop I’ll need cracked.”
“I can do that.” Gavin shrugged. “It’s still pretty cool.”
He looked a little dejected, so Caruso added, “If it will make you feel better, you can wear a cloak in your hotel room while you do it.”
Ryan laughed, and Biery played along. “Better than nothing, I guess.”
Dom saw the stuck fruit pie. He punched the glass window of the machine and the snack fell to the bottom. Pulling it out, Dom said, “Come on, Gavin. This shit will kill you.”
Gavin snatched the fruit pie from Dom’s hand. “No, Dominic. Shooting it out with Iranians will kill you.”