Moose called the two passport photos up and put them side by side on the screen. One was purportedly a German, dark hair and fifty-two years old. The other was Austrian, light hair, ten years younger.
From that starting point, the rest was simple. With a name and a photograph of each suspect, MAADN began scraping government databases, social media, and news articles. The German Ronald Hauptman turned up everywhere. He was the chief technology officer of a middling telecommunications company. His face and name bubbled up all across the internet: interviews, boardroom photos, Instagram selfies with his family. Even in its most enthusiastic moments, TSD would never have gone to such lengths to backstop a legend.
The Austrian Hauptman was the opposite. If it was a TSD legend, it had clearly been a rush job—they’d done little if anythingto reinforce it. The name and image drew only one hit in the broad seine cast by MAADN, and a damning one at that.
SAM 719 had not departed from the commercial terminal in Tangier, but from a remote facility reserved for diplomats and VIPs. MAADN acquired footage, as best it could, from every camera within a quarter mile of the VIP terminal. It ran the face from the suspect passport and got a hit with a grainy picture from the curb in front of the terminal. According to the time stamp, Ronald Hauptman could be seen getting out of a taxi less than an hour before SAM 719 had taken off.
“Bingo,” Kyle said. “Our no-show passenger.”
“Has to be,” agreed Moose. “But hedidshow up.”
“Can you run that video?”
Moose went to battle with his keyboard. “All we have is this still capture for now. There’s a problem with the source memory. I might be able to get the rest, but it’ll take some massaging.”
“Have at it.”
“The problem is that this false identity only tells us who heisn’t. This would all go a lot faster if we knew the guy’s real name.”
“True.” Kyle cocked his head thoughtfully. “I see two possibilities.”
“Put MAADN on it?”
“That’s one.”
“And the other?”
“We ask the CIA.”
“You really think they’d give us the name?”
“Probably not. But I know somebody they’d have to give it to.”
30
Turkey/Georgia Border
2338 Local Time
“That was uneventful,” Ding commented.
“Let’s hope it stays that way,” Clark replied.
They had just flown into Georgian airspace, the dimly lit border checkpoint sliding past the port-side window. Wheeler and Ross were monitoring the radios closely. So far, no alarms had been raised.
Clark returned to the cargo hold, where the rest of the team was waiting.
“Here’s the scoop,” he said. “We are now in Georgian airspace. Our external lights are off, the moonlight is minimal, and our transponder is off. That’s about as silent as we can run.”
“The pilots aren’t talking to air traffic control?” Bauer asked.
“They didn’t initiate contact, but they’re monitoring the radios passively. Wheeler said the controllers might see a primary radar return, a few pings here and there, but this isn’t exactly a hot border. With any luck, we’ll be in and out before anybody realizes we’re here and has a chance to react. We’ve got a good track onthe GAZ, and right now we’re in a tail chase. According to the latest intel, odds are high that it’s headed for the Russian border.”
“Time to intercept?” Ding asked.
“We should overtake it in ten to twelve minutes…which means we need a plan right now.”
Charlie said, “I think we have to ask the question, why did they take Conza to begin with?”
