Jack wasn’t worried, just frustrated. His only real concern was that he would feel bad if he had to beat up a dozen or so old geezers.
He stood up from the bar, looking at Oxley. “It was really a small thing I needed from you. You might have been able to do some good, at no cost to yourself.”
“Fuck off.”
Jack said, “You were SAS? I find that very hard to believe. You really let yourself go, didn’t you?”
Oxley looked back down to his beer. He squeezed it with a meaty hand, and Jack saw the sinewy muscles in the man’s hand ripple with the squeeze.
“No response?”
Oxley said nothing.
“I thought Brits were supposed to have manners.” Jack Ryan turned and walked out the door without a look back.
52
The rally in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk drew more than ten thousand this weekend, triple the attendance of the week before. Even though it was a cold, rainy Saturday afternoon, Pushkin Boulevard was packed tight with pro-Russian Ukrainians, all out to make their voices heard.
There was nothing spontaneous about this rally. Today’s event, like all the others, had the backing of the FSB, who were all over the place here in eastern Ukraine. This was the largest of the weekly rallies this year, and it was no mystery as to why. The assassination of Oksana Zueva and the NATO action in Sevastopol—there were accusations that the CIA had been involved as well—brought the pro-Russian eastern Ukrainians out in droves.
While the men and women in the crowd held their new Russian passports high over their heads and marched behind banners expressing their allegiance to Moscow, and not Ukraine, a van moved slowly behind the last of the stragglers, south on Pushkin. Then it turned onto Hurova Avenue so that it could maneuver to get in front of the action.
Minutes later, the van rolled back onto Pushkin south of the red banners at the front of the march, and it parked along an open square adjacent to the National Academic Ukrainian Musical and Drama Theater. The square in front of the massive theater served as the midpoint of the march, and here the civilian organizers would make speeches through bullhorns and incite the crowd against the pro-nationalists in power in Kiev, before everyone set off again to march east toward the river.
The two men in the van did not get out when they parked. Instead, they sat there smoking cigarettes with stone faces and watched the crowd in the distance walk up Pushkin in their direction.
The two occupants of the van were members of the Seven Strong Men. They were both Russians by birth, but they had been living in Kiev recently and working under the orders of the FSB.
Behind them, in their van, was a single fifty-five-gallon oil drum under a canvas tarp. The drum had been filled by others the evening before, but the two mafia enforcers knew what was inside.
The explosive was RDX, Research Department Explosive, also known as hexogen. It was not a new or high-tech explosive, it had been around forever, but it was suitable for this operation.
Through the hole in the top of the drum, a shock-tube detonator had been inserted into the granular material, and the detonator was, in turn, attached to a simple timing device. The timer was set for three minutes; it needed only the flip of a switch to start the countdown, so the two men in the front of the van sat in silence, watching the crowd carefully, trying to pick just the right moment to set the bomb in motion.
Local police were out, of course, but they weren’t searching parked cars along the route. They had enough to worry about with trying to stop the protesters from breaking windows of the few known nationalist shopkeepers along the route, as well as dealing with a surprising counterprotest that had materialized a few blocks farther south on Pushkin Boulevard. Though the counterprotest was small, it had the effect of pulling police patrols away from the path of the march.
The pro-nationalists who stood along the road waving Ukrainian flags and yelling at the marchers had been set up by the FSB the evening before, meaning Russian intelligence had a hand in organizing both sides of the conflict here in Donetsk today.
When the red banner was just one block away from the van with the fifty-five-gallon bomb in the back, the two Seven Strong Men operatives opened their doors. Then the passenger flipped the switch on the timer, calmly stepped out, and joined his partner as they walked away to the east.
Two minutes later, they were picked up by a confederate driving a car with stolen license plates.
And a minute after this, when the protest marchers were still forming in the square next to the National Academic Ukrainian Musical and Drama Theater, the shock-tube detonator sent a percussive wave into the RDX, and the entire van exploded in a flash with a blast radius of eighty feet.
A few close by were spared death because the van had been parked in a lot with vehicles on both sides and this stifled some of the bomb’s potential carnage, but those in front of and behind the vehicle were torn apart instantly. Those who did not take the full force of the blast but were still within the radius of the major shock wave had their eardrums and internal organs assaulted, and several people in a second ring of victims, just outside the range of the shock wave, were killed by shrapnel from the blast.
The entire rally was pitched into chaos as the dead and maimed littered the ground and thousands ran for their lives, even crushing the fallen in their path.
Within minutes of the attack, a call came in to TRK Ukraina, a local news television station. The caller claimed to be a Ukrainian nationalist, and he took credit for the attack on behalf of the Ukrainian people and their allies in the West. He said any attempts by Russia to take over the Crimea would result in the wholesale slaughter of Russian citizens and anti-nationalists, effectively throwing down the gauntlet and ensuring more unrest between Ukraine’s two sides.
The caller was actually an FSB agent phoning from the Fairmont Grand Hotel in Kiev. The FSB had already decided that once the city of Donetsk was retaken by Russian forces, the pro-Russian marchers who died today would have a plaque erected in their name in the square next to the National Academic Ukrainian Musical and Drama Theater.
53
Thirty years earlier
CIA analyst Jack Ryan arrived in Zurich, Switzerland, with the six-man team of MI6 counterintelligence officers late in the day. The men had traveled separately on the same aircraft, and they all had passports declaring themselves to be English businessmen. Ryan sat nervously through the flight. Like many, he was an anxious air passenger, although unlike most, Ryan had an excuse. The helicopter crash he’d narrowly survived a decade earlier came back to haunt him every time he flew through the air, held up by invisible forces he did not completely trust.
But the flight was unremarkable, and by late afternoon they breezed through Swiss customs and walked to the train station.
The train trip to Zug was just over a half-hour in duration; the men sat in different cars, then each made his own way to a large business-class hotel near the Bahnhof. Here, three of Eastling’s men rented cars, while Nick and the rest of his team turned his top-floor suite into a makeshift command center for the investigation.
Ryan was all but forgotten by the SIS counterintelligence officers for the duration of the afternoon, but he made his way into the command center for a scheduled evening conference.
When everyone was assembled, Eastling addressed his team and, by default, the American tagalong on his operation.
“Right. Tonight Joey will go to the morgue and collect the body. We’ve straightened it out with the embassy in Zurich. Joey will be presented as the brother of the deceased, he’ll get a look at it there in the morgue, just a quick once-over to make sure there’s not something obviously queer about the situation.”
“Like what?” Ryan asked from the back of the room. He’d decided he was going to be a part of this investigation whether Nick Eastling liked it or not.
Eastling shrugged. “Dunno. Like a suicide note in his pocket. An arrow in the back of his head. Shark bite on his arse. Things th
at might tip us off there is more to this than a bus accident.”
Ryan got the impression Eastling didn’t believe this was anything more than an accident, and this entire investigation was just some sort of pro forma Kabuki theater.
Eastling turned back to Joey. “There should be no problem getting it shipped back to the UK straightaway.”
“Why do I have to be the sod to blow half his per diem on dry ice?” Joey asked, and this comment elicited a few chuckles in the room.
“Save your receipts, my boy. You’ll be compensated for all expenses once we’re back in London.”
Ryan clenched his jaw. He barely knew David Penright, but these men were so flippant about his death it infuriated him.
Eastling continued, “Next, Bart and Leo will go to the local safe house to start checking it top to bottom. You are to tear the place apart. The rest of us will join you to help as soon as we are finished with our tasks.”
“Right, boss,” the men said.
“Stuart, you go to Penright’s hotel. Talk your way into the room. I checked before we left London, the room is paid for until next week, so they haven’t touched a thing. They are waiting on next of kin, so if you can sell that, go ahead and scoop everything up and bring it back here. Eyes out for any corrupting material.”
“Right, Nick.”
Ryan held up his hand. “I’m sorry. I’m a little confused. I thought Penright was a victim either of an accident or of foul play. You are treating him like he is some sort of a suspect in a crime.”
Eastling half rolled his eyes. “Sir John.”
“Please call me Jack.”
“Right. Jack. From all we’ve learned about Penright, he was an able enough operations officer. But we’ve got a little experience in this sort of thing, and his dossier raises certain questions.”
“Such as?”
“He was a bleeding drunk,” the man named Joey said.
Eastling nodded. “The pattern with these types is always the same. They run risks, not just with their bodies, but with their relationships, and their protocol with secret materials is the first weak link in the chain.
“I expect to find that Morningstar has been compromised by the opposition due to David Penright’s actions here in Switzerland. He bedded the wrong girl, he spilled his guts to the wrong bartender, he picked the wrong taxi stand to drop the contents of his briefcase. His death, I am sure we will find, was accidental, but we need to keep a critical eye on the fact the Morningstar operation might have been compromised by the drinking of the officer in charge of the operation.”
Ryan said, “I’m really impressed, Eastling. You have been in Switzerland for three hours, you haven’t left the hotel, and you’ve already come to all these conclusions.”
Eastling and Ryan stared each other down across the suite. The counterintel man said, “I tell you what, old boy. Why don’t you stick with me? First stop tonight will be the tavern where Penright had his last drink. Or, I will hazard to guess, his last ten drinks. We’ll poke around and see what we find.”
“That sounds fine with me,” Jack said. The staring contest continued for a moment, but soon the meeting resumed, and within a half-hour the men began moving out in pursuit of their objectives.
—
The bar where David Penright drank his last drink was on Vorstadt, right across the street from picturesque Lake Zug. It was nine o’clock in the evening when Eastling and Ryan arrived, which seemed to Ryan to be a lousy time to go poking around, because the establishment was all but packed.
The beer hall was dark and smoke-filled, and the waitresses were young and attractive, dressed in traditional clothing: red tights and puffy white blouses with floral embroidery, although the blouses were cut a little lower than Ryan presumed would be the tradition in a country as cold as Switzerland got in the winter.
Even before they made their way to the bar, Eastling took one look at the waitresses and then leaned over to Ryan. “This looks like our boy’s type of place. Care to wager that we’ll find his fingerprints on half the rumps in the house?”
Ryan ignored the comment.
At the bar, Ryan saw that even though Eastling seemed like a smug prick, he clearly knew his job. The bartender spoke perfect English, and within seconds of ordering a round of plum schnapps for himself and Ryan, the British counterintelligence officer was chatting with the round, bald-headed bartender as though they’d known each other for a long time.
He introduced Jack in passing, then said they worked for the same bank as the man who died the evening before, and they had been sent down from Zurich by his family to collect his things.
“Mein Gott,” said the bartender. He leaned close to Ryan and Eastling to talk over the loud music. “He died right out there on the street. The newspaper said his name was Herr Michaels.”
Penright had been traveling under the name Nathan Michaels.
“That’s right,” Eastling said. “Were you working last night?”
The bartender poured a beer from the tap for a customer, then said, “I was here, but I was working the bar. He sat at that table over there.” He pointed to a table near the center of the room. Ryan caught Eastling raising an inquisitive eyebrow, perhaps because the spy had chosen such a prominent location in the bar.
“Did he, now?”
“Ja. The waitress who served him has been suspended. The police are questioning if she gave him too much alcohol.”
Eastling rolled his eyes. “Oh, that’s ridiculous. How do you say ‘ridiculous’ in German?”
“We say Quatsch. It’s close, anyway.”
“Okay, then, that’s Quatsch. Nathan liked to drink. It’s not your waitress’s fault.”
“Genau! Exactly. But this is bad publicity for the bar, of course. She will be fired.”
Eastling shook his head—“Quatsch”—and ordered another drink for himself and Ryan. Ryan knew he was in the presence of an excellent investigator. He only wished the man’s mind didn’t already seem made up.
As the second plum schnapps arrived, Jack forced himself to drink down the rest of the first sugary beverage. He thought it was pretty awful, but he was following along with Eastling’s friendly and earnest demeanor to try to get information out of the bartender.
“These are delicious,” Nick Eastling said, as he held up the glass. “Is this what my friend was drinking?”
“Nein. He drank scotch. I remember because he was the only person in the bar drinking scotch at the time.”
“Ah,” Nick said. “Yes. Nathan enjoyed his scotch.”
The bartender nodded as he made drinks a few feet away. As he worked, he said, “He was not drunk. They seemed fine when they left.”
Jack cocked his head, but Eastling did not react at all. He just said, “‘They’ meaning Nathan and . . .”
“And the girl he was with.”
“What girl?” Ryan asked quickly, but Nick Eastling reached under the bar and squeezed his forearm.
“Oh. Didn’t I say? He met a girl. They sat together for over an hour. Very beautiful.”
“Right,” Eastling said. Jack saw just a hint of uncertainty on the man’s face. “She was a local girl?”
“She was not Swiss. She spoke with a German accent.”
“I see,” Eastling said.
Jack leaned forward toward the bartender. “You said he met her. You mean he met her here?”
“Yes. She was at the bar with some other men. Two of them. But they left, and she stayed. When your friend came in, he sat at the bar and started talking to her. They moved to a table.”
“And you never saw them before?” Ryan asked.
“Nein. Although we get a lot of Germans here.”
He poured more beer, but before he served them he held up a finger and said, “Renate, komm mal her!” calling out to one of the other bartenders. He spoke to her in German for a moment. Ryan could not understand a word until Renate said, “Berlin.” The bartender said something, and she nodded and repeat
ed, “Berlin.”
As she walked off, the bartender turned back to Nick and said, “Renate is from Germany. She waited on the girl before the Englishman arrived. I asked her if she could recognize the dialect. You know, the Germans have very specific dialects in different regions.”
Eastling nodded. “And she said the girl was from Berlin?”
“Ja. She was certain of it.”
—
They left the bar a few minutes later. Ryan had the sickly-sweet flavor of sugarplums in his mouth, and his eyes hurt from the smoke of the bar. He and Eastling walked out into the street, standing more or less where Penright had been hit.
“Not exactly the autobahn,” Ryan said. The street was dark and quiet.
“No,” replied the Englishman, “but if you fall right in front of a bus, that’s pretty much it.”
“True enough.”
They started walking back to the car. As they did so, Jack said, “So we’re looking for a German girl.”
Eastling shook his head. “No, Ryan. Penright was looking for a German girl last night, but he found a bus instead.” He laughed a little at his own joke.
“Where did the girl go? There was nothing in the police report about a German woman at the scene.”
“Maybe they both left the bar and went in different directions. Maybe she wanted to get laid, then decided the dashing Englishman she picked up in a bar lost some of his allure when he died right in front of her.”
Jack sighed in frustration.
54
Present day
President Jack Ryan sat at the head of the conference table in the White House Situation Room, a cup of coffee and a stack of folders in front of him. He’d been going through this material for half an hour in preparation for this meeting, and now, as everyone got situated around him, he made a few notes on his legal pad: questions to ask, points to make.
Jack looked up from his papers. He was beginning to see as much of the Situation Room as he did the Oval Office, and he knew this didn’t say anything good about the current state of peace and stability in the world.