“In English?” Omar asked.
“The President wiped the slate clean, and Jackson was released after serving seventeen months of a thirty-year sentence.”
“Could be a coincidence,” Trent suggested.
“The Vice President’s Office lobbied hard for the pardon. The President might have granted it, but VP Hampton was the driving force.”
Jake sighed. “Have Jackson and his father been in contact since his release?”
“No. Not for lack of trying. Cal called him eleven times last week. Jackson doesn’t appear to have picked up or returned any of the calls.”
“Damned kids, so ungrateful,” Trent snarked. “You sell out your colleagues and your country to get them sprung from the slammer, and they still won’t answer your calls.”
Jake and Ryan laughed bitterly. Omar didn’t.
A headache bloomed behind his eyes, a vice tightening around his skull. He pressed his fingers into his temples. “So what’s the theory? The VP killed Langley’s operation to extract Hanna, but they still wanted her intel?”
“To bury it, probably,” Ryan said.
“Then Hampton learned the CIA contracted the job out to us and got nervous. He couldn’t control a PMC the way he could a federal agency,” Jake pieced it together.
“Until he found an in through McCloud’s kid,” Trent finished.
“It’s just a theory,” Ryan warned, ever the lawyer.
“But it hangs together,” Omar said through gritted teeth.
“It does.”
“Good work, Ryan. Any leads on McCloud’s current location?” Jake asked.
“Still working on it.”
“Let us know when something pops.”
“Will do. I’ll pick you up at BWI. With luck, I’ll have an update.”
Jake and Trent were energized by the new development.
Omar forced himself to match their energy. “So Hampton used McCloud to monitor us in case we upset the delicate balance he had with the Mahmouds and Samuel Ayari.”
“And when you and Marielle took Hanna off the yacht, it set off alarm bells in Tunis and DC,” Trent said.
Omar ran a hand over his face. “Are we sure staying in the biggest suite in the most exclusive hotel in Paris with an international superstar is a good idea for Marielle and Liv given all these unknowns? That’s an awfully high profile cover. And does it really make sense to send Chelsea and Leilah into that?”
“It makes sense for Poppy’s cover,” Jake said. “She operates out in the open. Poppy told me Josephine Baker used to go into the restroom at parties with Nazi officers, write notes about their conversations on scraps of paper, and pin them to her bra. She pulled it off because she was Josephine Baker, and nobody was going to strip search her. Nobody would suspect Poppy of being an intelligence officer. Hell, you didn’t.”
Omar and Trent exchanged a careful look. Maybe she’s not.
“How much do you know about Poppy Jones’s background aside from what she’s told you?” Trent asked Jake.
He rattled off her bio like a living, breathing Wikipedia page. “Twenty-six-year-old pop star with three platinum albums and four Grammys. Poppy Louise Michaels was born in Calgary. Her father, an officer with the RCMP, was killed in the line of duty when she was twelve. Her mother remarried two years later to a Canadian diplomat, Evan Jones, who adopted Poppy. She spent her teenage years bouncing around embassies in Europe, Asia, South America.”
“Perfect cover for recruitment,” Omar said.
“Exactly.”
“So she could be legit,” Trent said.
