by Mark Greaney
“I’m way ahead of you, Jack.”
Jack cocked his head and slowed. A grin grew on his face. “You’re already here, aren’t you?”
Ysabel laughed. “Guilty. Hope that’s okay.”
“Okay? It’s the best news I’ve had since I left Rome.”
“I wanted to call you and not just barge into your apartment. No offense, but I know how jumpy you were last week.”
Jack smiled wider, started walking along the Grand Rue again; he felt his feet pick up the pace automatically; he couldn’t wait to see her.
“I’ll be home in ten minutes.” There was a long pause, and this surprised him. “Ysabel? Did we get cut off?”
“You’re not at your apartment right now?”
“Not yet. Won’t be long.” After another pause on the other end he asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. It’s just . . . your doorman said you were home and I should go right on up. I’m standing outside your place now. I guess he was mistaken.”
Jack slowed a little. “You must have the wrong building. What’s the address?”
“It’s the address you gave me. Five Place de Clairefontaine. Apartment Four E.”
Jack Ryan, Jr., broke into a sprint. He tore down the middle of the pedestrian street as fast as his legs would take him. As he darted around the afternoon foot traffic, a sense of dread grew in the pit of his stomach.
Ysabel was in his building, but his building did not have a doorman.
30
As Jack ran he kept the phone to his ear and forced himself to keep his voice calm. “Listen carefully. I want you to step away from my apartment, but do not go back into the stairwell or the elevator. Just stand there, hang up, and call 112. That’s local emergency services. Stay on the phone with them till I get there.”
“What is it? What’s wrong, Jack?”
“Tell them you are being mugged.”
“Why would I do that? There is no one up here in the hall but me. What’s going—”
Before Jack could respond he heard a scream from Ysabel, and the phone clanged to the ground.
“Shit!” He ran as fast as he could, pushed aside pedestrians in his way, leapt over a bum lying on the corner of Grand Rue and Rue des Capucins. As he sprinted he dialed 112, the phone rang three times, and then it was answered in German. He told the operator he needed the police at his address, and he recited it slowly. He described the situation, a woman had just been attacked, but when they asked for more information, he just hung up. He wanted to free up his hands to sprint—he needed two free hands more than they needed any more information from him.
From his first day here in Luxembourg Jack had noticed how few police he saw around on the streets. Other than the occasional squad cars driving by at speed on the main streets and a few bored patrolmen at the train station, he had not encountered much law enforcement at all. That had been a benefit to his operation, of course—no one doing surveillance work likes to worry about roaming law enforcement bumping up against their operation—but now he wished like hell this little burg were crawling with cops.
Instead he sprinted through the middle of the town square, the Place Guillaume II, then made a hard right onto the Rue du Fossé. The occasional tourist glanced at the well-dressed businessman running as if his life depended on it, but his actions didn’t cause any alarm.
He slowed quickly right before he entered the pedestrian square in front of his apartment building, then he walked at a normal pace toward the front door. As he did so his eyes scanned the square, looking for any signs of trouble.
It didn’t take him long to see an unmarked panel truck parked in a fire lane on the far side of the little square. A man stood next to the driver’s-side door smoking a cigarette, and when Jack focused on him he turned away.
Jack stepped up to his building and reached for the door, but to his surprise a man in a suit and tie stepped out through the door and held it open for him. He was young, in his twenties, with a dark complexion and broad shoulders. He smiled at Ryan, but Jack saw the recognition on the man’s face.
Jack smiled back as he passed by. “Merci beaucoup.”
“Avec plaisir, monsieur,” the man said. He had an accent, but it didn’t sound French to Jack.
Just as he passed through the door, with the fake doorman right on his heels, Jack quickly scanned the tiny lobby, looking for anyone else. As he suspected, this man was serving as a lookout and there was no one else down here, but Jack was certain there were men in and around his place.
He barely broke stride as he headed toward the elevator. Taking three steps into the lobby, he felt the continued presence of the “doorman” close on his heels.
Jack spun and reached out with his left hand, grabbed the man’s necktie, and yanked him along with his spin. The man had his right hand on the grip of a pistol tucked in his belt under his jacket. Ryan grabbed the man’s wrist and then pivoted on his feet to his left. As he did so he brought his right elbow up, using the spin and all the muscles in his back and shoulder for added velocity.
His elbow connected with the man’s face, snapping his head back and dazing him, and Jack shook the man’s wrist as he fell, freeing the pistol from his grasp. It fell to the floor with a thud and bounced on the carpet.
Ryan had disarmed the man, but he didn’t have control of the situation yet. He threw another punch, following his right elbow with a powerful left jab, again into the man’s face. The man started to fall onto his back, but Jack leapt at him, spun his weak and dazed body around, and put him in a vicious chokehold.
The fake doorman couldn’t get his hands behind him, so tight was the hold, and the man’s knees gave out fully. Jack went down with the man, slamming him onto the ground.
Into his ear, Jack said, “How many? How many men?”
The man did not answer, so Jack released the hold, leapt off the man, and launched toward the pistol on the floor. It was a CZ Omega nine-millimeter. Jack wasn’t that familiar with it, but it operated like most other pistols. He found the external safety and flipped it off, then racked the slide just to make certain there was a bullet in the chamber. A cartridge arced high and dropped to the carpet, leaving fifteen more in the weapon, assuming the fake doorman had his gun fully loaded.
He pointed it at the man. “Last chance. How many?”
The man slowly raised his hands, rolled up to his knees, and then cleared his throat.
He pinched his thumb and forefinger together. Jack noticed this, but he didn’t understand what it meant, until the man shouted, “On imeyet svoy pistolet!”
Jack realized the man had a tiny push-to-talk button in his hand, probably wired through the arm of his suit coat, and although he couldn’t understand what he was saying, he assumed the man just transmitted to his confederate or confederates upstairs that Jack had his gun. Jack rushed up to him quickly, whipped the heavy pistol across his body, and struck the man across the side of his head, steel against skin and bone. Blood spilled onto the carpet as a massive wound opened on the man’s temple, and he dropped down into the blood, wholly unconscious.
Jack was running to the elevator before the man hit the ground, and he saw the car was open at the lobby. He reached into the car and pressed the button for the fourth floor, but he did not enter.
As the car headed up, Jack ran for the stairs. Time was his enemy now; every second worked against him, and against Ysabel.
• • •
Andrei Limonov stepped into the shower in his seventh-floor suite at the Meliá Luxembourg. He’d spent the day working in his room, although mostly he just sat around and waited.
He had come to Luxembourg to meet with Guy Frieden because Limonov knew Frieden had worked on a deal with a man in the Caribbean who was extremely choosy about who he worked with. Normally, in the world of international finance a man in charge of the amount
of money Limonov now controlled would have no problem arranging meetings on his own, but this was a special situation, and Limonov had been unable to get a response from the man in the Caribbean on his own.
Frieden seemed agreeable enough about helping Limonov make contact. He promised three days earlier he would call the man immediately and set up the introduction, but in those three days he’d come back only with apologies. Apparently, his contact had been reticent about taking on new clients.
Limonov was annoyed, but he knew business relationships sometimes took time. Kozlov, on the other hand, was livid about the delay. He’d begun to do his own research on the man Limonov sought, and made his own arrangements to force the meeting. Limonov wasn’t happy about this, of course, but Vlad Kozlov had been ordered by Valeri Volodin to keep the wheels of this operation turning, and there was nothing Andrei Limonov could do to put him off his mission.
Limonov had wanted to return to London to wait for the go-ahead to fly to the Caribbean, but Kozlov had insisted they wait in Luxembourg until the meeting was arranged, because if the meeting could not be arranged, Kozlov insisted he could simply go back to Frieden’s office and encourage the attorney to be more persuasive.
Fortunately for all parties involved, Guy Frieden had called this afternoon with the news that the mysterious man in the Caribbean had agreed to meet the two Russians in twenty-four hours’ time. Limonov and Kozlov would fly out this evening, so Limonov wanted a long shower before the all-night flight across the Atlantic.
As he showered he thought about his trip. This was the big moment, the step in the process where money would actually begin leaving Volodin’s accounts and then disappearing, where it would exist in the ether before solidifying again in new accounts already set up by Limonov.
Limonov shuddered, thinking about the weeks to come. And then he smiled. They might be fraught with stress, but at least they would be spent in paradise.
He turned off the water and had just stepped out of his shower when he heard the door to his room open. He grabbed a towel and wrapped it around himself quickly, stuck his head out of the bathroom, and found Vlad Kozlov rushing across the suite toward him.
“What the fuck, Kozlov? Who gives you the right to barge into my room?”
Limonov could see the worry on the older Russian’s face.
Kozlov said, “We have a problem.”
“What problem?”
“Jack Ryan.”
Limonov just stared at the other Russian. “President Ryan is everyone’s problem.”
“Not the President. His son.”
“He has a son? What about him?”
“Jack Ryan, Jr., works for a private equity company in the USA, Hendley Associates. He and a colleague, a woman, were running around Rome last week, looking into a sale of art Guy Frieden was handling for Misha Grankin.”
“Okay.”
“Grankin’s men sent local contract hires to get better photos of the woman, and through her they found Ryan, but then Ryan disappeared after confronting the surveillance on him.”
Limonov said, “He doesn’t sound like any private equity manager I know.”
“Me either. They kept a tail on the girl, nothing happened for several days, but at noon today she went to the airport in Rome and boarded a flight here. They had a man in a cab when she came through arrivals. He picked her up and she gave him an address. They were waiting for her when the cab arrived. It was Ryan’s apartment. He’s been here in Luxembourg.”
“Here?” Limonov did not understand the significance, and Kozlov could read it on his face.
“Grankin’s office knows I’m here. They don’t know what I’m doing, but they contacted me to warn me to get out of town. The men are waiting for Ryan to get back. I don’t know what they will do to him, but we don’t want to be anywhere around when it happens.”
Limonov still missed the point Kozlov was trying to make. He said, “Grankin can’t know we are meeting with Frieden.”
“They don’t know, damn it! But what if Ryan does? If he was looking into Frieden in Rome, and now he’s here . . .”
Limonov got it now. “He could have surveillance on Frieden here.”
“Which would mean he has seen us. Twice.” Kozlov grabbed Limonov’s underwear and pants off the bed and threw them to him. “You and I need to get to the aircraft. We are leaving tonight. Grankin’s people are going after Ryan as we speak. Move, man!”
• • •
Jack Ryan, Jr., stood on the fourth-floor landing, listening to the sounds in the hallway. He had beaten the elevator car up, this he knew when he heard the chime announcing its arrival. The elevator was only five feet from the stairwell door, so he waited to hear the doors open, then he swung out, the CZ pistol aimed forward, but close to his body so no one standing there could get a hand on it.
The hallway was dark; someone had removed the bulbs from the sconces along the wall. In the dim he saw two men wearing blue jeans and warm-up jackets in the hallway; both had weapons pointed toward the elevator. One man was crouched, facing away from Ryan, and the other was just stepping inside the car to look around.
Ryan took the first man from behind, striking straight down on the back of his neck with the grip of the heavy pistol. The man crashed, dazed, to the carpeted flooring without so much as a grunt, but there was no hiding what had just happened from the other man, because the sound of the impact of steel on bone had been loud enough to echo throughout the hall.
The man in the elevator reached out with his pistol, pointed it into the hallway without looking. Jack found himself staring down the barrel of a gun.
He dove flat for the floor just as the pistol cracked and the flash from the barrel illuminated the scene.
Jack fired back, through the wall of the hallway and into the elevator. He knew his rounds would be inaccurate and less potent after going through the wall of the hallway and the wall of the elevator car, but he also felt confident the nine-millimeter rounds from the CZ would penetrate. He fired over and over, desperate to suppress the threat there so he could get to Ysabel, who he assumed now was in his apartment, being held by others.
After seven shots through the wall, Jack heard a voice cry out inside the elevator. He stayed low, crawled with one hand and both knees along the hallway, keeping the weapon pointed at the elevator as he closed on the danger. Unsure whether the man in the elevator was trying to trick him with his continued moans.
Inside the car he found a middle-aged bearded man in coveralls, an earpiece in his ear. Blood poured from his groin area, pooled around him. He’d dropped his gun—it lay in the dark red—and he pressed hard against the wound.
He looked up at Ryan with resigned, fatalistic eyes.
Ryan climbed to his feet now, stuck his foot in the elevator to keep the doors from closing, switched his gun to his left hand, and aimed it at the door to his apartment, just ten feet away. Looking at the wounded man on the floor of the elevator car, he asked, “Combien? How many?”
The man replied in English with a heavy accent. “Eat shit and die, Ryan.”
Jack reached a foot out and dragged the pistol back out of the car, through the blood. He kicked it behind him in the hallway. He reached down and pulled the man’s earpiece and radio set out of his coveralls. Then he pressed the button for the ground floor.
The car closed and descended.
Ryan looked back at the other man on the floor. He was coming to, but slowly.
Jack stepped forward, sent a massive front kick into the man’s face, and dropped him back down and out. On top of this, Jack knew he’d broken the man’s nose and given him whiplash that would render him immobile for days, if not weeks.
Jack turned for the door to his apartment, and he fought every urge to forget his tradecraft and barrel through at top speed. He knew Ysabel was in there, and he seriously doubted she was alone.
He felt the latch and realized the door was unlocked, so he went flat on the floor, lying on his left shoulder. He switched his pistol to his left hand, used his right to unlatch the door above him, then quickly switched the gun back again to his dominant hand. With a quick breath to ready himself, he shoved the door open with his left hand, holding it in place so it didn’t bounce back on him.
His living room was in front of him. He saw no one there, but a floor lamp lay across the ground and the glass coffee table was shattered as if someone had fallen through it.
Jack rolled up to his knees but stayed as low as possible. He crept into the room, keeping his gun arm pivoting back and forth between the two exits in front of him. The kitchen was on the right, and the hall to the bedroom and bathroom was on his left.
He cleared the kitchen first, and what he saw here made him recoil in horror. Blood on the floor, smeared on the wall at knee height. Ysabel’s luggage lay open and strewn about the room. The room was empty, so he turned back out and headed for his bedroom.
His ears were tuned to hear any sound in the apartment, but it was deathly quiet. In the distance he detected some movement in the hallway, but quickly he heard the sounds of neighbors talking to one another, screaming at the sight of the unconscious man and the guns lying about. He knew he’d have civilians on him in moments, and police here shortly after that, but his only focus now was on getting Ysabel away from any danger.
Jack cleared the bathroom with his pistol, then lowered his body and pivoted into the bedroom.
He saw her hair first, down on the floor and matted on the far side of the king-sized bed. Behind it, a bloody handprint streaked the wall next to an open window.
“Oh, God, no,” he whispered.
31
Ysabel?” He retained the presence of mind to keep his gun on the blind corner, and he moved carefully over toward the large walk-in closet, training his weapon inside to make sure it was empty.