Page 45 of Tom Clancy Line of Sight

“You’ve got my attention. Shoot.”

Gavin shifted around in his chair. “So, is Jack still going to press charges against that Elena Iliescu woman?”

“Last time I talked to him, yes. Can’t say that I blame him, especially after the ice-chest revelation.”

“Yeah, that was creepy, for sure. Did she press charges against him yet?”

“Strangely, no. I just got off the phone with the lawyer we hired for Jack. She thinks Iliescu is holding off, hoping that Jack will drop his charges against her.”

“A Mexican standoff,” Gavin said. Then he caught himself. “Is it okay to say that?”

“Who the hell knows anymore.” Gerry leaned forward on his desk. “Why don’t you fill me in on the details of your e-mail.”

“So, just like the Slovenian police told Jack, the woman is squeaky clean. No priors, no Interpol notices, not even a ticket for jaywalking. I mean, I don’t know if jaywalking’s a crime over there, I’ve never been to—”

Gerry waved a grandfatherly hand. “Go ahead, son, get on with it.”

“Anyway, I wanted to double-check her background myself, and so I broke into the Interpol network—”

“You what?”

“No worries, I’ve done it before, and I’m buried behind a Tor browser and a couple remote VPNs.”

Gerry sighed. His IT director might as well have been chattering in Urdu, with all of his technical mumbo-jumbo. But that’s why he hired Gavin in the first place. He was the best. He could hack into virtually any computer, anywhere, and hide from just about anybody.

“Go on.”

“So I checked the retinal scan she has on file with Interpol, the one that gets checked when she passes through EU customs.”

“And?”

“All clear.”

“But you said you found something.”

“Don’t ask me why, but I got a bug up my nose, and I decided to pull up the retinal scan Jack sent me from the crime scene.”

“And?”

“And the funny thing is, the scan Jack sent doesn’t match the Interpol scan.”

“How can that be?”

“I can think of a couple things, but it all boils down to the fact that somehow she’s managed to get her actual retina scan to convert to a clean dummy file within the Interpol system that makes her look like Mother Teresa. Which made me think, of course, that maybe she isn’t, especially since Mother Teresa was Albanian, and not—”

“Please, Gavin. Stay focused. I’ve got a lot on my plate today.”

“Yeah, sorry.” Gavin yawned like a hippo. “Sorry, I’m running on fumes.”

“No worries.”

“So, where was I?”

“The real versus fake retina scan.”

“Oh, yeah. So, that isn’t easy to do, spoofing a major database like that. Somebody’s got some chops—or insider access.”

“Interesting.”