Page 61 of Tom Clancy Line of Sight
“None.”
The man leaned closer to Jack’s saved image. “How is that possible?”
“Beard, mustache, dark eyes. Perhaps not distinctive enough for the algorithm.”
“Perhaps.”
He stood erect again, sipping his tea. Facial-recognition technology was advancing rapidly, but it was still limited by one significant fact: “Recognition” was a comparative exercise.The quality of existing images in the search database, or the lack of them, ultimately determined the software’s success.
She scrubbed the video backward, capturing the footage of Jack walking toward the camera until the turn. She saved the clip and loaded that into the system as well.
“Gait capture will help us keep an eye on him. And whoever he meets with might give us a clue to his identity.”
“Send it along to Khodynka.” He was referring to GRU’s main headquarters in Moscow, a run-down, nine-story glass tower affectionately known as the Aquarium. “Maybe they’ll have something on him.”
The woman tapped more keys.
“Done.”
PLOCE, CROATIA
Beneath a clouded quarter moon, the Greek-registeredAegis Starsat low in the water on her twenty-meter beam, anchored in the small cove just beyond the mouth of the port of Ploce, the second busiest on the Croatian coast. The ship wasn’t scheduled to unload its cargo until mid-morning the following day. A warm breeze chucked the cold Adriatic tide against the rusting blue hull, its deck illumined only by dim navigation lights on the bow and stern. The bridge was dark.
The low hum of an electric outboard motor cut to silence as the FC-470 rubber-hulled Zodiac combat craft drifted to a halt at the stern.
Ten Russian KSSO operators scrambled silently up the aft ladder carrying only suppressed pistols on secured holsters and plasti-cuffs. The KSSO was Russia’s newest and most effective special operations unit. It was led by an eager young lieutenantwho believed that an operation was only as good as the intel that drove it.
Having trained for this kind of mission previously and possessing both the ship’s schematics and its crew manifest, KSSO made short work of securing the vessel. They first subdued the lone night watch on deck with a blow to the back of his skull, and then bound and gagged the rest of the sleeping, unarmed crewmen in their bunks, including their captain, a fat, flatulent Greek who reeked of ouzo and stale tobacco.
Twenty minutes later they were belowdecks, breaking open the last of thirty-two ten-foot-long wooden crates in hold number three. The lieutenant swore prodigiously as he yanked off his balaclava and called his commander on an encrypted satellite phone.
Another dead end, he reported.
No thermobarics.
No defectors.
Where the hell are they?
31
SARAJEVO, BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
After his interrogation by Kolak, Jack returned to his apartment. He opened up his laptop and found an e-mail from Gavin on the secure Hendley Associates website. True to his word, Gavin had revised his search list and provided Jack with the names of twenty-three brunette Aida Curices.
That was a lot of Aidas, and only forty-eight hours to check them all out before his flight back to Dulles.
He spent the rest of the evening mapping out the location of each new Aida. His intention was to call as many as he could, but when all else failed, he would attempt a personal contact. He was running out of time.
Like his father, Jack was a bulldog when it came to finding something, or someone, he was looking for. His mother jokingly called it a mild form of OCD; his dad preferred the less clinically precise termstubborn. So did Jack.
The next morning, Jack went back to the same breakfast restaurant as before and ordered the same chocolate-hazelnutpitaand two cups of Bosnian coffee. Why not? He was still on vacation. The only difference this time was he wore a ball cap to help prevent facial capture by any surveillance cameras. Kolak had spooked him.
Fortified again with sugar and caffeine, he decided to take an extra precaution and found an electronics store, where he purchased a prepaid phone. He was certain that his iPhone was secure, but somehow Kolak had figured out what he’d been up to. The use of a local phone with a local number might make his prospective Aidas more likely to pick up, too.
Kolak’s promise to back off rang hollow to Jack, considering the fact that he was apparently using him to find Aida, which didn’t make much sense. With his resources, Kolak could find anybody, or at least had a better shot at finding somebody in Bosnia than Jack did. And why in the world would he be interested in the same Aida, unless Kolak was telling the truth and he was just as intrigued by the story as Jack was?
Jack wandered over to a small park in the middle of the Turkish part of the Old Town. He found an empty bench not far from a chess game. The enormous “board” was painted on the concrete in gray and white squares, and the giant pieces ranged from shin-high pawns to thigh-high kings.
