Point of Contact

32

It was quitting time, to judge from the number of Dalfan employees gathering their belongings and heading for the exits.

Jack stopped by Lian’s office and tapped on her door. She glanced up from her computer keyboard, a pair of bold neon-orange reading glasses perched on her nose.

“Yes?”

“I was wondering if we had any plans for tonight? I mean, the three of us.”

“I thought it best if the two of you had some time to yourselves this evening. If you want to tour the city, I can recommend a few spots.”

Ouch.

Jack shook his head. “No, I think we’re heading back to the barn to try and catch up on some sleep. See you tomorrow.”

“Good night.” Lian returned to her keyboard.

Jack swung by Paul’s office and gathered him up, and the two of them headed back to the guesthouse.

“Any plans for dinner?” Paul asked in the car.

“I saw a couple of steaks in the fridge. I thought I’d fry those up for us. Maybe with some onions and potatoes.”

“I’ll throw together a salad to go with it.”

“Sounds like a plan. How do you like yours cooked?”

“Just wave it over the top of the pan before you drop it on my plate.”

“Rare it is.”

A half-hour later, Paul cut into his steak. He watched the bloodred juices sluice into the pile of fried potatoes and onions heaped up on his plate — just the way he liked it. He took his first bite, sweet and peppery.

“You ever slaughter a cow, Jack?”

“No, but I’ve eaten plenty of them. How’s your steak?”

“Perfect. If you ever decide to quit Hendley Associates and open up your own steakhouse, I’ll be your first customer.”

“Thanks. I’m not great in the kitchen, but I’m hell on wheels on a Weber grill.”

“I prefer a kamado grill, myself.”

“Is that what a Big Green Egg is?”

“Yeah. It really locks in the flavor, like a smoker. Keeps everything moist.”

Jack decided to let his hair down tonight and decompress with a glass of Bushmills — not that he was under a lot of stress at Dalfan. In fact, it had been one hell of an exciting day. He was still reeling from the virtual reality demonstration. If America had a couch potato problem now, he couldn’t imagine what would happen when teenagers locked on to VR gaming systems.

“How was the demonstration today?” Paul asked.

“Funny, I was just thinking about that. Pretty freaking awesome. I need to get you up on the third floor to check it out for yourself.”

“I’m not much of a gamer.”

“Me neither. Trust me, you need to see it to believe it. How was your day? Any interesting discoveries?”

“Actually, not much. I was finally able to download some of the Dalfan data sets I needed so I could begin running my screening software. Not a whole lot turned up, except…” Paul had also indulged in a glass of the same Irish whiskey Jack was drinking.

“Except what?”

“Well, I hate to cast aspersions, but I found a file that didn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

“What do you mean?”

“I ran a ratio analysis for some AR and AP reports on a product line that Dalfan sells to a firm in Shanghai — you know, maximum/minimum pricing over set time periods. The closer the ratio is to one, the happier I am.”

“Why is that?”

“If the ratio between the highest price and the lowest price paid for an item equals around one, that means that the overall price paid for an item is relatively stable. But if suddenly the maximum price paid for an item skyrockets — or if the minimum price suddenly bottoms out — that’s usually a pretty good sign of fraud. What bothers me is that in the last six months the price ratio nearly quadrupled. And the number of units sold doesn’t quite add up.”

Jack took another sip of Bushmills. “What kind of product are we talking about?”

“Cell phones.” Paul took another bite of steak.

“Wait. Dalfan is selling cell phones to China?”

“Disposable cell phones, too, according to the invoices.” Paul was still chewing when he spoke.

“That’s like me selling sand to the Saudis.”

“Like I said. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

“Where does Dalfan make them?”

“Here, in Singapore. They store and ship them out of a separate warehouse on the west side of the island.”

Jack ran through the list of facilities that Feng had shown him earlier. He didn’t recall a separate warehouse facility owned by Dalfan. “Maybe I should check it out tomorrow.”

“Only if you want to. Like I said, it’s odd, but it’s not really a big deal in terms of the overall financial picture. Probably just a data-entry error.”

“We’re getting paid good money to do our due diligence, so I might as well take a look. It’s that or crack open the books again.” Jack stabbed his salad with a fork.

Paul watched the younger man eat. Over the last few days he’d gotten to know Jack Ryan and he seemed like a decent fellow and whip-smart, for sure. Everything in him wanted to ask Jack for help in carrying out the mission for Rhodes, especially now that he had hit a wall, but he knew he couldn’t ask him — and not just because Rhodes had forbidden him to do it. Paul was trying to protect the young analyst. If he pulled Jack into this operation and it went sideways, the President’s son could wind up in a world of hurt.

And then again, he still wasn’t sure if he could trust Jack, either. Jack was pleasant enough around the office, but he was obviously in a fight last night, and didn’t want to talk about it. If it was in self-defense, why hide it? Maybe the whole Mr. Nice thing was just an act.

No, he’d have to do this one without Jack, Paul decided, but he knew he couldn’t do it by himself.

He poured himself another whiskey and drained it.

After dinner, Jack and Paul loaded the dishwasher and cleaned up, then both headed for bed. Paul was yawning his head off and Jack wanted to finish his Churchill biography.

But before brushing his teeth and heading for bed, Jack grabbed his iPhone and opened the Photo Trap app again. Photo Trap listed the photos he had taken this morning and he pulled the first one up — his clothes-closet picture. The program prompted him, READY FOR PHOTO 2. He crossed over to the clothes closet and tapped the READY prompt, and the camera function on his iPhone pulled up a faint ghosted image of his closet so that he could match his new, live comparison shot to the original, lining up the edge of the closet door, a blue oxford shirt, and a few other markers so that the photos would exactly match. The Photo Trap app also provided directional arrows, telling Jack which way to rotate or tilt the camera on its axis to help match the first and second image. When the directional gauge grayed out all the arrows, he snapped the photo, then he manually flipped back and forth between the first and second photos to compare any differences, however subtle.

He repeated the process for the photos he took of his dresser drawer and in the bathroom. After he had manually flipped back and forth several times, it was clear to Jack that somebody had been in his room and searching for something. And if they had searched his room, they had probably searched the rest of the house as well.

Jack had an idea about who might have done it and what they were looking for. He thought about telling Paul about it but decided against it. Paul seemed distracted enough as it was, and there wasn’t anything the accountant could do about it. Jack gave his room a thorough inspection for electronic microphones and cameras but didn’t find anything — or so he hoped.

He suddenly felt very exposed.

Utterly exhausted, Paul headed upstairs to his bedroom and took a shower. Unlike most Americans, he preferred to shower at night and get the day’s dirt off and climb into bed clean. It was a practice Carmen had taught him.

Beneath the hot, steaming water, Paul’s Dalfan encryption problem occurred to him again. He’d been racking his brain all day, and if he was being honest with himself, the booze wasn’t helping matters. The shower was pushing away the cobwebs. But he needed the booze tonight. Grief had fallen on him again, as unbidden as the plague. The only way to loosen its grip and keep the tears away was the booze. Better numb than despondent. At least he could work that way.

Paul had come up with half of a plan, but he couldn’t figure out a way to finish it. Suddenly it dawned on him that he knew someone who could.

Gavin Biery, Hendley Associates’ IT director, was a man Paul grudgingly acknowledged was damn good at his job, even if he was a total smart-ass.

Paul toweled off, putting the final pieces together. What he needed next was for Gavin to write a piece of software to capture the Dalfan encryption code on the Dalfan USB drive he now had. Gavin’s software had to be written in such a way that when Paul installed the Dalfan USB into his personal laptop, the code would be captured. After capturing the code, he would load it onto the CIA drive, and then he could install the CIA drive directly on the Dalfan desktop.

But none of that would happen if Gavin didn’t write that software, and write it fast. The deadline was only three days away.

Unfortunately, Paul also knew Gavin was up to his eyeballs in IT requests at the busy financial firm. He had to find a way to jump to the front of that line and convince Gavin to drop everything else he was doing and write him that piece of code, ideally within the next twenty-four hours, if that was even possible. Knowing Gavin, it would be a long shot to capture his attention, let alone get him to jump through a major hoop on such short notice.

Paul needed to come up with a compelling reason for Gavin to do this for him without compromising his mission for Rhodes. But how?

Paul pulled on a pair of pajamas, then opened up his laptop’s browser and typed in the private Web address for Hendley Associates. He clicked onto the employee portal and logged in with his Hendley Associates passcode. He searched through the company directory until he found Gavin Biery’s secured message link.

He crafted a short message he hoped would not only grab Gavin by the short hairs but also get him to respond right away so he could explain everything to him. He wouldn’t be able to talk to him at Dalfan with cell service jammed, so he’d have to check the Hendley Associates portal regularly. He needed to find a way to talk to Gavin, though, and not just message him. Talking was much better.

It was easier to lie that way.