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Back Point of Contact Save as PDF
Chapters (83)
  1. Cover
  2. ALSO BY TOM CLANCY
  3. PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
  4. 1
  5. 2
  6. 3
  7. 4
  8. 5
  9. 6
  10. 7
  11. 8
  12. 9
  13. 10
  14. 11
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  38. 35
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  40. 37
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  83. What’s next onyour reading list?

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.