Page 5 of Tom Clancy Line of Sight

“You’re off to the former Yugoslavia, right?” Cathy asked.

“London first, then to Ljubljana, Slovenia.”

“I’ve heard it’s beautiful over there.”

“It’s on the southern border of Austria, near the Adriatic coast. You get the Alps and the ocean for one low price.”

“Send pictures, for sure. I’m curious, though. What financial interest does Hendley Associates have over there?”

Senior again glanced up over the glasses perched on his nose. His wife didn’t know about The Campus—the “black side” special ops team that Jack also served with. All she knew was that Jack was an analyst with the “white side” financial firm Hendley Associates, which funded The Campus special operations through its highly successful investments and fiduciary services.

“There’s a company over there that wants to offer an IPO on the NASDAQ, and they hired us to do the preliminary financials.”

“Sounds... boring,” Cathy said.

“Numbers tell a story, if you know how to read them,” Senior offered. He looked at Jack. “Financial analysis has its own particular rewards in that regard... and risks.”

Junior smiled at the double entendre. Gerry Hendley was in charge of the personnel decisions, and he didn’t always inform the President when his son was deployed on a dangerous op. Neither did Jack.

“The only risk in Slovenia, from what I hear, is eating too much cream cake.”

Jack’s father smiled. “Good to know.” He returned to his reading.

Only a handful of people knew that it was the President’s idea to create the firm, or that it was his friend, the former senator Gerry Hendley, who ran both sides of the company.The Campus was a private intelligence organization created to carry out black ops missions that regular government agencies couldn’t or wouldn’t do, serving at the President’s discretion.

In a perfect world, The Campus shouldn’t have to exist, but the dysfunctional swamp of unscrupulous self-interest known as Washington, D.C., was considerably less than perfect, even in the estimation of its slimiest inhabitants. In the President’s mind, D.C. was one giant Hungarian cluster dance, with occasional interruptions of clarity and purpose, but only when the national interest was properly communicated to and understood by the preening peacocks on the Hill.

“So, I was wondering if you might do me a favor while you were over there,” Cathy said.

“Sure. Name it.”

Cathy stepped over to a chair in the corner, where a brown leather folder was perched. She picked it up and carried it back to the table. She pulled out a file folder and set it down in front of Junior before sitting down herself.

“I was cleaning out some of my old medical files from Johns Hopkins and came across this.”

Jack opened the file dated 1992. Inside the stiff green cover was a picture of his mother, twenty-six years younger, in her white doctor’s coat, holding in her arms a little girl with luminous blue eyes and blond hair, grinning at the camera. Well, one blue eye. The other was heavily bandaged.

“Her name is, or was, Aida Curic. She was just three years old at the time, when they brought her to me for eye surgery for a shrapnel wound. It was during the war.”

“Which war?” Jack asked. “From what I remember reading, Yugoslavia had several after the breakup in 1991.”

Senior closed his file. “Your mother is referring to theBosnian civil war, when Serbs, Croats, and Muslims fought one another for independence—and survival. You know the term ‘ethnic cleansing’?”

Jack nodded. “Sure. One group of people trying to exterminate another one. Evil stuff.”

“Well, Bosnia is where the term was invented. Civil wars are the worst. It was the bloodiest conflict on European soil since World War Two—even worse than the Ukraine invasion a few years ago. By some estimates, one hundred and forty thousand Yugoslavians perished because the UN and the Europeans dragged their feet. It took NATO airstrikes to finally end it.”

“If my two history wonks can spare a moment, I’d like to finish my story about Aida, if that’s okay.”

“Sorry,” both Jacks said.

“Anyway, by some miracle I managed to save her eye and her vision. After the war her parents took her back home to Bosnia, but they stopped writing to me shortly afterward.” Cathy began to tear up. “I’ve seen those blue eyes of hers in my dreams a thousand times, and I can’t tell you how many candles I’ve lit for her over the years. Sometimes when I stared into your sister Sally’s eyes, I saw hers. I don’t know why Aida had such an effect on me, but she did, and I finally had to let her go. But seeing this file again yesterday stirred something up in me and I can’t stop thinking about her.”

Cathy opened up her leather folio again and produced a sealed envelope. “I was wondering if you had any spare time while you were over there, if you could find a way to get down to Sarajevo and look for her and give her this for me.”

She handed it to Jack. Only Aida’s name, written in his mother’s graceful and meticulous hand, was on the otherwise blank envelope.

“Did you try Googling her for an address?” Jack asked.