“We can’t say for certain. The evidence you’ve just seen was acquired in the last few hours. The NSA has some exceptional signal tracking abilities, and we think it’s possible that Klaus ditched his phone. If that’s the case, it would be much harder for these mercenaries, if that’s what they are, to find him. Conversely, it would also make it harder for us to reestablish contact with Klaus. We’ve focused all available assets on Tangier. Since we don’t have much of a human network there, we’re mainly talking about cyber and SIGINT. I would recommend reaching out to the French and Spanish—they have a better ground game in North Africa than we do.”
“Let’s do it,” said Ryan, his eyes on CIA director Stephens.
“I’ll take care of it,” he replied.
The President then said, “We need to put ourselves in Klaus’s place. If he really has ditched his phone, does he have an alternate method of contacting his handler?”
“I talked to his case officer,” said Stephens. “They had backups for previous meetings, but Klaus was set for extraction and there was no contingency for an abort. He’s heard nothing from Klaus since the flight departed without him.”
Mary Pat said, “Is it possible Klaus would buy a burner phone to contact his case officer?”
Stephens said, “If he’d chosen that route, I think we would have heard from him by now.”
“I agree,” Ryan seconded. “Maybe he’s spooked about phone contact of any kind. I think we should focus on what other methods he might use to contact us.”
“We don’t have a consulate in Tangier,” said the secretary of state.
Stephens added, “He’s not a trained intelligence officer. Sounds to me like he’s running scared.”
Kyle said, “My team came to the same conclusions. We believe our best bet for finding him is to scour the city electronically from every possible angle. Cameras, signals, banking information. NICHE is designed for exactly that—sorting through raw metadata.”
A brief silence ran, and no one objected.
“All right,” Ryan said. “Mary Pat, let’s give Cyber Cell 6 the lead. Direct all supporting agencies to sweep up everything they can.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
Ten minutes were spent on interagency coordination, and after that the room began to clear. Kyle and Moose were among the last out. As Kyle headed to the door, he couldn’t avoid locking eyes with the President. His father gave him a wry smile and a subtle thumbs-up. The two didn’t always see eye to eye, but today they’d found common ground. It felt good, although Kyle knew he would have done nothing different if it had been someone else at the head of the table. As he disappeared into the hall, he was already shaping search logic in his head.
At the end, only Mary Pat and the President remained.
Ryan turned circumspect and slowly began shaking his head. “Those bad vibes just keep getting worse,” he said.
“Agreed,” she said. “The downing of SAM 719 was an intentional act.”
“But I can’t see it as a one-off strike. This isn’t the Islamic State lashing out or some fringe terrorist group. That aircraft wasbrought down for one reason—someone wanted desperately to take out Gunther Klaus.”
“And now we have this video Kyle unearthed. There was a team on the ground going after him as well.”
“Led by a Czech mercenary,” Ryan added suggestively. “Sounds like just the kind of thug Malenkov would hire.”
“There are Russian fingerprints all over this, I agree. But I’m still not seeing the risk-reward balance. A year ago, when Malenkov headed up SSD, instigating a crash like this would have been a bridge too far. You can’t murder a cabinet member and a plane-load of others and not expect repercussions. Does that equation change simply because Malenkov has gone private?”
“Never forget, we’re talking about Russia. The Kremlin is all about smoke and mirrors.”
“That they are.”
“We could go direct to the source,” Ryan spitballed.
“Yermilov?”
He nodded.
She gave it some thought. “In principle, I’m not against a call. But I think it would be better to wait until we have more evidence.”
“Never point a gun at someone unless it’s loaded?”
“Something like that.”
