Page 46 of Tom Clancy Line of Sight

“The next thing I decided to do was take another run at her in some of the other databases I have access to.”

“Such as?”

“It’s better if you don’t know. I mean, legally.”

“Humor me.”

“Well, I took a gander at TIDE. She isn’t listed there.”

“How the hell did you break into TIDE?” Gerry couldn’t believe it. The Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment wasone of the most highly classified databases in the intelligence community, shared by the CIA, FBI, NSA, and every other alphabet agency he could think of.

“I’d rather not say. But it’s what you hire me to do.”

“You’re right. So, what did you find in your other searches besides TIDE?”

“Nothing to write home about. She always came up squeaky clean. She’s some sort of a consultant. Lots of international travel, lots of airline and hotel miles, mostly in Europe. I checked her tax records. She has a steady income, but with irregular bumps. Some kind of bonus structure is my guess.”

“You got her tax records?”

Gavin shrugged. “Sure. No big deal.”

“Did you find out her favorite brand of toothpaste?”

Gavin frowned and pulled up a screen on his tablet. “I didn’t realize you needed that. Let me see if I can find it.”

“I’m joking, son. Sorry to interrupt your train of thought. Please continue.”

“So, I started digging into the consulting firm she works for. Again, clean, nothing unusual or suspicious, except that the firm sometimes billed for work with one particular company with a Jersey office.”

“You mean the state, or the country?”

“The country.”

“A banking haven,” Gerry said. “One of the Ten Dwarfs.”

“Exactly. So I dug a little further on that and got the names of the board of directors of that Jersey company, and one of them is a British citizen. Well, I have access to an MI6 back door you probably shouldn’t know about. It turns out that this director fellow is suspected of being somehow connected to an organization known as the Iron Syndicate.”

Gerry frowned. “What the hell is the Iron Syndicate?”

Gavin shrugged. “Can’t say exactly. MI6 was referencing it in regards to Afghan heroin, Libyan MANPADS, and human trafficking in Malawi. But they didn’t have anything else.”

“Holy cow. A global criminal enterprise that large and I’ve never even heard of it.”

“I kept digging around but couldn’t find anything else. CIA, DIA—all dead ends. So I put some bots together a couple hours ago and sent them off into the Net on their own to bird-dog this thing. They haven’t turned up anything yet, but I hope to get something by the end of day.”

“‘Hope’? That doesn’t sound like you.”

“That’s what’s freaking me out. These Iron Syndicate guys are good at hiding secrets. Like, government-level good.”

“You think this Iron Syndicate is a foreign agency?”

“Not really. More like a private outfit would be my guess. But given the quality of the OPSEC—”

Gerry sat up. “Rogue foreign intel officers?”

“Rogue or retired. Or both.”

“What would connect heroin, arms, and human trafficking?”