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Chapters (83)
  1. Cover
  2. ALSO BY TOM CLANCY
  3. PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
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  83. What’s next onyour reading list?

Lian added, “Police departments are our first target market, but any government agency that needs to track the movement of people—polluters, poachers, illegal immigrants, pirates—will all demand a system like this.”

Singh nodded in agreement. “We also believe there will be an even bigger market for private companies. For example, trucking firms that want to track their delivery vehicles or auto insurance companies that want to determine the actual cause of car wrecks.”

Terrorist groups and crime syndicates would love to “time travel,” too, Jack thought. So would outfits like The Campus.

“If history teaches us anything, it’s that human morality follows technology, and not the other way around,” Lian said. “It’s only a matter of time before your crime-infested urban areas come around to our way of thinking.”

Jack agreed. He understood all the advantages of this kind of program, and it made sense for governments to deploy it on behalf of their citizens’ safety.

But he couldn’t help wondering, What happens when a government can’t be trusted? Dictators and tyrants would definitely use this kind of technology against their own people. But even in the United States, lone wolves in federal agencies like the IRS, the FBI, and even the CIA used their power to persecute domestic political enemies.

Jack glanced up into the hazy sky. He couldn’t see the Dalfan drone circling overhead, but he knew it was there, and he hated the idea that it was watching him. It was irrational, he knew, but it was already changing the way he was thinking about himself and his personal security—and he wasn’t one of the bad guys.

He ran a hand over the smooth fuselage again. It seemed just like an ordinary airplane, but today’s demonstration proved it was anything but ordinary.

“Have you seen enough, Mr. Ryan?” Lian asked.

“Yes, thank you. Quite enough.”

At least for now, Jack told himself.

This was just the kind of dog-and-pony show Gerry Hendley had warned him about. There was something more they weren’t talking about, but he sure as hell was going to find out what it was.

29

Paul Brown played poker in college, shaking down wealthy Greeks in their smoke-filled fraternity basements and beer-soaked-carpeted game rooms across the Iowa State campus. He made enough to cover his books and tuition for two years and stopped only when a three-hundred-pound lineman threatened to break his spine after Paul relieved him of five hundred dollars in a single hand.

His keen numbers brain allowed him to accurately calculate the odds in a hand, but he excelled at the game because he knew that in poker you don’t play the cards, you play the man, and Paul had developed the world’s stoniest poker face. A poker face he had used to great effect today.