by Tom Clancy
Ryan stressed to Greer he was skeptical that the RAF had operated alone, and he was certain there were other shadowy forces involved in this entire operation.
Greer doubted Ryan’s theory of Russian involvement. “But Jack. What about Rabbit? You know as well as I do we have an asset who was well informed on KGB operations. We’ve spent months debriefing Rabbit. I find it hard to believe he’s going to just scratch his chin and then say, ‘Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention there is an assassin operating in Europe.’”
Jack said, “We need to check with him on this. Maybe he’ll remember something relevant.”
Greer said, “Look, Jack, we’ll talk to him again, but you and I both know he wasn’t holding out on us. If there were any active measures that in any way fit the description of what you are describing, he would have told us.”
“Zaitsev has been out of the KGB communication room for months. This could be something that started after he left.”
“Possible, but unlikely, and you know why. These operations take time to field. Assassinating Western European bankers. Co-opting and—I guess you are saying—framing West German terrorists. That doesn’t sound like an op that was just thrown together in the past few months, does it?”
“No,” Ryan conceded. He paused. “I know what this sounds like.”
“It sounds like you are grasping at straws. If it were anyone else, I’d dismiss this out of hand. But you aren’t anyone else. You are one hell of an analyst, and I owe it to you to tell you to follow your instincts.”
“Thanks.”
“But whatever you do, I want you to remember this. The Brits are pretty good at this sort of thing. If they say they are done with the investigation, you’ll be on your own over there. You can tap into whatever local agency facility you need to help you, of course, but be careful. You’ve come too close to danger already. I don’t want you taking any unnecessary risks.”
“That makes two of us.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later, Ryan met with Eastling and his men in a second-floor office, and here they all went over the material found in the RAF safe house again. The German BfV retained custody of the briefcase and the contents inside, so two BfV investigators loomed over Eastling’s and Ryan’s shoulders while the Englishman and the American conducted their own review of the items.
Eastling and his men went first. This had begun as an SIS operation, after all. One of Eastling’s men had a fingerprint kit, and he dusted the case and the items inside, then Eastling himself took each piece of evidence and read it over, examining watermarks on paper, the techniques used to print the photographs of the bankers, the typewriter characteristics of the letters on the bomb-making guide and the communiqué.
The case itself was examined for a false bottom or any other hidden compartments, but none were found.
Jack was fascinated by Eastling’s handling of the evidence for the simple fact that Jack himself had no training in these types of investigative techniques. He wasn’t a cop or a detective. His dad had been a detective on the Baltimore PD, and he’d always been interested in police work, but he’d never seen it as his calling.
He was an analyst, however, so when he finally got his chance to look over the material, he went for the documents first. He wore rubber gloves, of course, and had one of the BfV officers standing with him to translate.
Jack tried to get the BfV men to admit they didn’t think it was possible the RAF members at the apartment could have possibly put up such a professional fight against GSG 9, but the Germans weren’t as certain as Ryan. There were nine dead civilians in the flat on Sprengelstrasse, and so far only five of the bodies had been identified. The BfV officers said they couldn’t pass judgment on the skill of the RAF fighters until they figured out the identity of all those lying on slabs in the morgue.
Ryan learned very little from his examination of the documents. He wasn’t a specialist on the RAF by any means, but the communiqué looked like a standard pronouncement from a left-wing terrorist group, and all the material involving the attacks on Gabler and Wetzel—the photos, the maps, and the bomb-making instructions—seemed legitimate.
The only thing doubtful about the entire scene was that in order to take the briefcase and its contents at face value, one had to believe Marta Scheuring possessed some of the absolute worst operational tradecraft in the history of left-wing terror. Even though the RAF routinely took credit for their operations, like most terror groups, the fact the young German woman had brought her ID along with her on her op strained credulity.
Ryan didn’t know what to make of it. Scheuring had a couple of arrests under her belt, but she’d certainly never been implicated in a murder. That said, two of the inhabitants of the flat had been wanted for a rocket attack on a NATO installation several years earlier, and while no one had been killed or even seriously injured in the attack, certainly the intention had been to cause loss of life.
Eastling, as usual, was leaning toward wrapping up this investigation. Ryan, on the other hand, thought the spoon-fed nature of this evidence created more suspicions than the evidence itself cleared up.
As the Germans were anxious to leave with their evidence, Ryan and the Brits finished their review of the material in under an hour.
Jack had been up for more than twenty-four hours, so around nine a.m. he was offered a couch in an unused office to catch a couple hours’ sleep.
* * *
At eleven-thirty a.m. Eastling leaned into the room. Ryan sat up, rubbing his eyes and pushing a wool blanket off his legs.
Eastling sat down in the chair in front of him. His eyes were bloodshot, and his clothes were wrinkled. Jack wondered if he looked as tired and worn-out as the Englishman did.
“What’s going on?” Jack asked.
“We’ve been through everything multiple times. The documents we found in Marta Scheuring’s room at the RAF safe house look legitimate. The Germans have finally identified the other bodies in the flat. They were three girlfriends and one boyfriend of the occupants. None of them are known RAF members, but of course this will be looked into further.
“They also checked into the sniper location across the street. The one-room flat had been rented by Marta Scheuring three nights ago.”
Jack was confused. “Marta rented a room two blocks away from where she lived? Why would she do that?”
Eastling shrugged. “Can’t answer that one. Her name is on the ledger, but no one could ID her picture. It’s a tenement-type lodging, so nobody pays attention to who comes and goes. Guest workers from Turkey, Ireland, and North Africa, mostly. A couple of people on her floor say they saw a man enter the room last night, late evening.”
“What did they say about the man?”
“Twenties or thirties. White. Might have been German, might have been something else. No one heard him talk. No one heard any shooting coming from the room, either.”
“How the hell is that possible?”
“Sniper rifle with a suppressor. It still makes a bloody loud racket, but considering the fact two blocks away a small-scale war was going on with more than two dozen people blasting each other and tossing bloody grenades, the pop-pop of a silenced weapon could quite easily go missed.”
Jack sighed, then he had a new thought. “We’ve got to go back to Zug, show the pictures of Marta Scheuring to the bartenders at the place where Penright met the German woman the night he died.”
Eastling was already shaking his head. “It’s done, mate. Swiss did it yesterday, used a copy of her license.”
“And?”
“Everyone working that night was in agreement. The woman who Eastling tried to pick up in the bar was not Marta Scheuring.”
Jack had been so certain. Now he did not know what to say. He just muttered, “What’s the next step?”
“That’s what I’m here to talk to you about. I know you have concerns of KGB involvement, and I’m certainly not prepared to rule anything out at this moment, but I do believe
this RAF cell committed the attack that killed the two Swiss bankers.”
“What about Penright?”
Eastling answered with understated sarcasm: “I am sticking with my assertion that the bus that ran him down was not driven by the RAF, nor was it driven by the KGB. Seriously, Ryan, he wasn’t pushed. Remember, there were witnesses saying he was drunk. And we do not think he was drugged. His body did not show indications of known poisons, though toxicology results won’t be available for a while. If the Reds have some new poison we don’t know about, well, Lord help us all. But that’s not within the scope of my inquiry.”
“So what are you telling me?”
“I’m telling you we are going home. This afternoon.”
Jack rubbed his eyes. He found himself wanting to go home himself, to return to his house on Grizedale Close. Sitting on the sofa with Cathy, Sally on the floor coloring, and Jack Junior in his lap—it sounded like heaven right now.
But he pushed the fantasy out of his mind. Not yet.
Jack said, “Have a nice trip. I’m staying.”
Eastling seemed to expect this. He said, “Am I going to have to force the issue?”
Ryan’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t have to do anything. I don’t work for you.”
“Bloody hell, Ryan, we are on the same side here.”
“Not as far as I’m concerned. You are on the side of clearing up the Penright death, and I am on the side of finding out what the hell actually happened. There are other forces at work in this operation. Is it possible that David fell in front of a city bus? I suppose so, but I think we are getting played by the other side.”
“How can I convince you?”
“You can give me everything you have on Morningstar. All the files leading up to Penright’s trip to Switzerland, as well as the paperwork found in the safe at the safe house in Zug. Give me that, let me look it all over, and I’ll draw my own conclusions as to what happened.”
“I can’t—”
“Basil brought me into this investigation because he thought I could help. I have expertise in this world—in a roundabout way, anyhow. If I was read in on what Penright knew, I could talk to Langley and try to get more relevant information on Ritzmann Privatbankiers. Maybe I can help connect whatever dots Penright was working on when he died.”
Eastling said, “You’re like some sort of a foxhound, aren’t you? You think you’ve found a scent and now you won’t stop, no matter what.”
Ryan replied, “I am on a scent. I know I am.”
Eastling did not respond to this, so Ryan prompted him.
“What do you think?”
Eastling said, “What do I think? I think you are a sanctimonious Yank who does not know how to behave. You shot up some Ulstermen last year and you got your knighthood, and you shot up some RAF sniper this morning and the Krauts will probably make you a bloody Kaiser or something equally as ridiculous, but your good fortune has advanced you further than your ability to work on a team ever will. If I was the one to make the decision, you would be dumped on your arse outside the U.S. consulate and shipped back to America, where you belong, in a steamer trunk.” He took a deep breath and blew it out. “But this isn’t a call for me to make.”
He sighed again. “I’ll talk to Basil, and he will make the determination what, if anything, you can see from the Morningstar files.”
“That’s all I ask.”
68
Present day
Victor Oxley and Jack Ryan, Jr., waited an hour before beginning the interrogation of the Seven Strong Men hit man. Ryan had prompted the Englishman several times to get on with it, but Ox kept saying that he wanted to let the young man stew in the bathroom for a little while longer. He was held in an uncomfortable position, with no clear understanding of where he was or what was going on, and, Oxley explained to Ryan, giving him some time to think about his predicament was standard operating procedure for a hostile interrogation.
Jack thought it was just as likely that Ox wanted to sit on his ass and drink his whiskey for as long as possible, so he was stalling with all this talk of SOPs.
Jack himself got up once, declaring that he would get the ball rolling by asking the man some questions, but Oxley persuaded him to wait a little longer.
“Look, lad, we might have to resort to the ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine, and for that, I want to start with the bad cop, and that’s gonna be me.”
Oxley put his mixture of cola and whiskey down on the concrete surface of the tiny balcony, stood without a word, and went back in the room. Jack followed him in and he saw the big man pull off his sweater, revealing a wide back with as many tattoos as Jack had seen on his chest. Ox tossed the sweater on the bed and took a few slow breaths, as if trying to return to a place in his mind he had left long ago. Then he walked over to a small wooden table and chair set in the corner. With surprising ease, the fifty-nine-year-old snapped the leg off the chair with a loud crack, then turned back to Ryan.
“We need to know who sent him and why. Anything else?”
“You don’t want me in there with you?”
“No, lad, I’ll go in alone.”
Ryan knew what Oxley was doing. He said, “Look, I appreciate you wanting to keep me clear of anything that might compromise me or my dad, but I can assure you, at this point I’m already in pretty deep.”
Oxley stared at Jack for a moment, then said, “Lad, I don’t give a flying toss about compromising you or your bloody daddy. That’s a tiny loo in there, and if I have to start swinging, there’s not going to be room for the both of us.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Why don’t you be a bright boy and look over his telephone, see if it has any answers I can’t beat out of him? And while you’re at it, turn up the volume on the telly.”
“Okay. But Ox… I don’t care if you sweat this guy, but don’t kill him.”
Oxley nodded; his face had taken on a blank expression since the moment he pulled off his sweater and again revealed himself to be a former inmate of a Russian gulag. He said, “I learned something a long time ago, something you’d do well never to learn for yourself. Surviving is much more painful than death. Believe me, I won’t do this arsehole the favor of snapping his neck.”
Oxley stepped into the bathroom and shut the door behind him.
* * *
He stepped back out twenty minutes later. Ryan had spent the time transcribing numbers off the Russian’s phone. All the exchanges were foreign, but Ryan hadn’t looked them up yet. He hadn’t called any of the numbers, either. The contact list was in Cyrillic, but although Ryan could read it easily, it was just a bunch of first names that told him little.
While Ryan had worked on writing the numbers down and looking through the text history on the phone, he’d heard several low wails and two sharp screams from the bathroom.
Victor Oxley’s forehead was covered in sweat now. He was a good sixty pounds overweight, but Jack noticed for the first time that his shoulders, arms, and pecs, although covered in a thick layer of fat, retained a good deal of muscular bulk. He seemed to Jack more of an aging boxer who had let himself go than a completely sedentary bar-stool drunk.
“How is he?” Jack asked.
Ox did not respond at first. Instead, he just walked out to the balcony, breathed in a little cool air, and scooped up his bottle. He also picked up a bottle of beer, then went back inside, opened the bathroom door, and rolled the bottle inside.
He shut the door again, walked over to the bed, and slumped heavily onto his back on the mattress.
Finally he answered Ryan. “He’s fine. The two of us got on like old chums. Oleg’s his name.”
“You didn’t have to beat him up?”
“Well, just to say hello. After that, he was a right talker.”
“And?”
“He is Seven Strong Men. He’s been in the UK for only three days, came over on a Ukrainian passport that he got from Seven Strong Men contacts in Kiev.”
“Kiev?
”
“That’s right. He works for a Russian bloke called Gleb the Scar. Gleb is vory.”
“That’s like a made man in Russia, right?”
“Exactly. Gleb’s blokes in Kiev had ordered some other blokes to tail you, they’d been doing it for weeks, says Oleg. He couldn’t name ’em or describe them. He said he never saw them.” Oxley shrugged and swigged. “And I do believe him. He wasn’t holding out. Anyway, he and two others we met today in my flat came over to London with orders to take over for another crew that was following you around. Nothing more than that. But right after they arrived, you surprised them by driving up to Corby. One of the watchers reported that up the chain to Kiev, and then suddenly more Seven Strong Men henchmen were flying over from Kiev with new orders.”
“What orders?” Jack asked.
“You were to get a good knockabout, broken jaw, that sort of thing, enough to send you home to America with your tail between your legs. Me, on the other hand, wasn’t going to get off that easily. They had orders to kill me.”
“Why?”
Oxley chuckled, a low rumble that shook the bedsprings of the cheap mattress. “Let me explain something to you, lad. Oleg isn’t in the ‘why’ loop of things. He gets a photo and an address, and he goes and does his job without asking about the ‘why’ part.”
Jack thought it over. “So they were onto me before I even knew about you.”
“Like I suspected. You brought this down on me.”
“It must have to do Malcolm Galbraith.”
“Who’s that?”
“He’s a guy who got screwed out of a billion dollars in Russia. I’m working for him. Well, I was until I was reassigned.”
Oxley just sipped his drink, lying back on the pillows of the bed.
Jack asked, “You’ve never heard of Galbraith?”