Point of Contact

And if I don’t? Jack wanted to ask. But there was no reason to. He clearly wasn’t going to make his way in today, even if he had a weapon. More important, Rhodes had given explicit instructions to keep a low profile. That was probably a good idea anyway for all parties concerned, especially him.

“I must be mistaken. Sorry for the trouble.” On a hunch, Jack beckoned the tall man with his index finger to come closer. The man leaned over and Jack snapped a photo of him with his iPhone, then gunned the engine and threw the car into reverse. The two guards behind his car bolted out of the way, afraid he was going to run them over. Instead, Jack eased his way out of the drive lane and onto the street that would lead him back to Dalfan headquarters, but not before snapping two more photos of the irate and embarrassed guards cursing him in Mandarin.

Jack did a slow 180-degree turn, stopping just long enough to glance in his rearview mirror. The guards stood clustered in a loose formation, watching him leave and making sure he didn’t change his mind and turn around. He didn’t. He punched the gas and sped away.

Pulling back onto Pioneer, he wondered for just a moment if maybe Paul had gotten the address wrong or if there was some other kind of mistake. But his gut — the one that Clark told him to always pay attention to — told him there wasn’t any mistake, at least not on his part.

After turning back onto the AYE, he texted the photos of the guards to Gavin and spoke a text requesting an ID of them ASAP.

“How ASAP?” Gavin replied.

“Yesterday.”

“Sure. I’ve got nothing better to do.” Gavin didn’t dare tell Jack that he was working his tail off for Paul.

“Thanks,” Jack said. “It’s important.”

* * *

Jack stormed into Lian’s office. She was on the phone. “You had no right to block my entrance to that facility.”

Lian spoke into the phone: “I’ll call you back.” She slammed the receiver down and stood. “How dare you come into my office with that attitude. You’re the one that took evasive action today and lost my security escort.”

Jack saw that several people in the area were staring at them, including Paul and Bai across the suite. Jack stepped farther into her office and closed the door.

“I never asked for a security escort. In fact, I said I didn’t want one.”

“I suspended my people for failing to keep track of you. I’m tempted to fire them.”

“It’s not their fault. I take responsibility for what happened today.”

“Why would you take responsibility? Oh, yes, because somehow you managed to throw off two highly trained security personnel. How did you manage that?”

“What are you implying?”

“It takes training to defeat training.” She stepped closer, examining his face. “Yes, Jack Ryan, I think you have training.”

Jack thought of a quick lie. “Of course I have training. My father taught me how to shake a tail when he taught me how to drive when I was a teenager. It was a game we used to play.” He flashed a boyish smile.

“You’re a lot of trouble, that’s what you are.” She crossed back over behind her desk and fell into her chair. “Tell me why you were so eager to go it alone today.”

“It’s a violation of international auditing protocols to allow a client to observe an investigation.” Even Jack was surprised how good he was getting at lying on the fly.

“I have never heard of such a rule. But then again, we’ve never allowed any outsiders like you to come so far inside our organization.”

“My job is to make sure that Marin Aerospace and Dalfan Technologies reach a fair and equitable agreement on stock valuation, and part of that valuation is dependent upon your profitability as a company and the accuracy of its financial records.”

“Have you found a problem?”

“That’s what I was trying to determine.”

“Where did you go?”

“You know where I was.”

Lian frowned. “No, I don’t. You lost my tail, remember?”

“You had me blocked from entering.”

“I did no such thing.”

“You didn’t tell the guards to not let me in?”

“Again, if I didn’t know where you were, how would I do that?”

“They called you.”

“No one called me about you.” She frowned. “What were you looking for?”

“Just checking up on a loose end. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

“Nothing — and yet you had to ditch my security team to look for it. I want to know where you were.”

Jack wasn’t sure what to tell her. If she was the one behind the hidden warehouse, he didn’t want to tip his hand. But then again, he wanted to get inside, and if she was on the level, she could arrange that. The trick was to give her just enough information to suss her out but not enough to allow her to interfere with his investigation.

“I was at your warehouse facility on the west end.”

Lian frowned. “We don’t have a warehouse on the west end, or anywhere else. Why don’t you take me there and we’ll check it out together?”

Jack cursed himself. She gave him the worst possible answer. If she was innocent, that’s exactly what she would say. But if she was trying to interfere, she’d want to find out what it was he had discovered.