“Hey, sport. You doing okay?”
“Hey, Dad . . . I have to put you on speakerphone.”
Jack Senior was disappointed his son had someone with him. He figured he’d be asked to say hi to some stranger, and though he didn’t really mind, he’d rather just hear about Jack Junior’s day. He said, “Actually, I might have to call you back. Have to run up to the Washington Hilton for a speech on foreign affairs. As you can imagine, we’ve been running behind schedule all day.”
There was no response for a moment.
“Who do you have there with you, son?”
“A man named Victor Oxley.”
Before Ryan Senior could say anything, Junior added, “He’s Bedrock, Dad. He’s got a hell of a story, and you are in it.”
“I’m in it?”
A low, gruff English accent came over Jack’s phone now. “How cold was that water, Ryan?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Must have been bloody razor blades. I was there. In Berlin. You were taking a late-night swim. I was just about to join you, when some other gents let me know they’d much rather I came along with them.”
President Jack Ryan did not speak.
“Jog your memory, does it?”
Softly, Ryan said, “It does.”
Arnie Van Damm walked purposefully into the Oval Office, ready to hurry Jack along to the limo. Jack pointed at the door, and Arnie caught the urgent gesture, the glazed look in his friend’s eyes, and he rushed out. In seconds he was on the phone announcing that the President would be a little late to his luncheon appointment.
79
Thirty years earlier
The man in the bomber jacket stood in the trees in the cold rain, watching the drama unfold. Behind him was Am Nordhafen, a darkened street. In front of him was the canal, and in front of that was a footpath. He watched the CIA man get accosted by the two men on the path, and he immediately took them for Stasi goons.
This wasn’t going to be pretty. At first he thought they were just going to beat seven shades of shit out of the Yank, but when the men started looking around, making sure the coast was clear, Bedrock realized they were going to try to waylay him, and possibly shanghai him over the border.
Saving the life of some square-jawed CIA suit wasn’t Bedrock’s mission, so he watched from the trees at first, already thinking about calling this in to Castor, his control officer, after the fact.
He’d spent the evening outside the RAF safe house, staying out of sight, in the hope that the real Marta Scheuring would turn up. He hadn’t bought the story about the dead terrorist leaving her ID outside the restaurant before blowing the place up. He knew the ID didn’t belong to the body, so he assumed Marta was still alive. If this was true, it stood to reason she would at least come by the flat for a look.
But while waiting for Marta, Bedrock saw the American CIA officer who’d been in Zug with the MI6 team there looking into the death of Penright. He assumed the American had come to Berlin for the takedown the evening before, but Bedrock did not have a clue why he’d come alone in the rain to sneak into the building. At the time Bedrock wondered if the man had much of a plan at all, as he seemed to wander around for several minutes before committing to climbing up the fire escape.
Bedrock took the Yank for a bit of a bumbling idiot at first. He just stood by and watched, looking forward to the spectacle of the local coppers arresting an American spook for breaking and entering.
And then Marta came. He’d seen her up the street when she disappeared between two buildings, and he knew she was slipping into a back entrance.
Bedrock wondered if the CIA man and the RAF woman were going to fight it out up in the flat, and then, when they had been inside the building for what seemed bloody ages, he wondered if they just might be making a baby up there.
Finally they came out, through the back entrance that Bedrock had spotted minutes into his recon of the building. He followed them, in the hope that Zenith himself would turn up looking to punch Marta’s ticket.
Bedrock’s mission was to find and kill a Russian who called himself Zenith, and the German terrorist was just, as far as he was concerned, nothing more than bait.
Bedrock knew more about the activities in Zug and the actions of a Russian called Zenith than anyone else, because he had been on this operation for more than a month. He had dutifully reported all his actions to Hugh Castor, who, Bedrock only assumed, would have scrupulously held on to this information and not passed a bloody shred of it to MI6.
He was right about that.
After following the unlikely duo through the rain-swept streets of the former French sector of West Berlin, Bedrock watched the German girl do a runner, and he watched the American promptly lose her. It was at this point he noticed two men skulking about the neighborhood, and he watched the handsome American bloke bumble right into them.
He pegged the men for Stasi operators, which meant to him the opposition had a tunnel nearby, which made perfect sense, since Marta Scheuring had just evaporated into thin air.
Bedrock stood in the trees less than twenty-five yards away, while the CIA man fought against the two Stasi officers. The Englishman was surprised to see the American was a goer, and he took down the first Stasi asset with a somewhat adequate right jab to the snout, so when, with his back turned, the other man pulled out a Walther PA-63, Bedrock deemed the man a poor sport, and he decided to intervene.
He violated his mission parameters and broke cover, racing across the footpath in what he thought to be a million-to-one chance of stopping a kidnapping or a murder.
He took the second German down, but the bloody Yank fell into the canal. Bedrock had just picked himself up off the pavement and scanned the windows of the nearby apartment buildings to make sure no one was watching, when four more men came out of the trees.
The neighborhood had gone rotten with East Germans. These would be Stasi as well, which was bad news for Bedrock.
He turned to dive headfirst into the water, his only means of escape.
“Halt!” came a shout from behind. He knew if these blokes came from the tunnel as well, it was likely they would also be carrying Walther PPKs or PA-63s or some other sidearm, since they did not have to go through any sort of control area.
The crack of a gunshot confirmed this, and it stopped him in his tracks. He turned and saw three men with pistols on him, and a fourth man with his gun high in the air, wisps of smoke floating in the rainy night around its muzzle.
Bedrock knew he would never make it into the canal.
A hood was placed on his head, he heard German spoken as he was pushed up the street, and soon he was shoved through the door of one of the buildings a block away from the Boyenstrasse section of the wall.
He was led down a narrow staircase, and then lowered deeper belowground in some sort of a metal basket.
It took fifteen minutes for them to get a hooded and tied man through a hundred-meter-long tunnel. Bedrock moved on his knees with his hands behind his back, and when his knees were so bloody and raw he could no longer stand it, he rolled on his back and kicked his way on, abrading his elbows and head and backside.
When he and the four men made it to the other side of the wall, he was brought back up to the surface and led into a van. As it drove around, the men with him kicked him for a few minutes, just for fun, before the van stopped abruptly.
Twenty-nine-year-old Victor Oxley, code-named Bedrock, took another boot to the back of his head—it must have been the fifth or sixth, but he’d lost count. This one slammed his face even harder into the metal floor of the van. He felt blood on his lips and running from his nose.
As much as he hurt, he knew this was only the beginning, because he was in the East now, and the opposition could bloody well do with him whatever they bloody well pleased.
The door opened. Bedrock thought he’d reached his destination, but instead someone joined them in the vehicle.
There was a long conversation in Ge
rman, some arguing, and though Bedrock could not understand the words, he had the impression that it had to do with control of him, the prisoner. It seemed the Germans were getting the upper hand, and for a short moment he thought the men above him might even come to blows, but finally things settled down.
A man leaned right over his face; the Englishman could smell tobacco and sweat. When the man spoke, he spoke in English, but there was no doubt. The man was Russian.
“I do not know who you are, but I think you are one of the people who have been making life very difficult for me and my associates. If I could, I would take you out of here and shoot you right now.” He paused. “When Stasi is finished with you, you might wish I had.”
And that was all.
The van stopped a moment later, the door opened, and someone climbed out without a word. Bedrock heard footsteps retreating on gravel, and he was surprised to hear from the uneven cadence that whoever was walking away was doing so with a pronounced limp.
They were moving again in moments; the English spy thought it was the Russian who had left, because immediately the German men around him all began talking. Ox did not speak German, but he sensed a wave of relief in the voices of the Stasi men.
The relief did not extend to Oxley himself; the boots just rained down harder.
They drove for more than two hours, but Ox knew enough about Stasi tactics to know they could have just been going in circles, a little theater to keep him guessing about where they were taking him.
When they stopped again, Ox was pulled from the van, and his arms were bound at the wrists and held high up behind him in a stress position, forcing him to lean all the way forward at the waist. There were men on both sides of him, and they pushed him onward, upstairs, downstairs, in elevators that disoriented him to the point he did not know if he was in the bottom of a nuclear silo or at the top of a TV tower.
Finally he was brought into a room, his hood was removed, and his cuffs were attached to a hook at a table.
He had not spoken a word so far, and he made a decision, right there, that would simultaneously save his life but condemn it to unbearable hardship.
He decided to speak Russian.
He had no identification on him, he’d left everything in his hotel, so he could say whatever he wanted without any direct proof he was lying.
As long as he kept his cover up.
For three days he was kept awake with cold water and electric shocks in an attempt to break him, but he spoke only Russian, told the Germans he didn’t know what they wanted, and they had no right to do this to a citizen of the Soviet Union.
Ox had heard the stories about how Stasi agents had a particularly nasty way of tracking people they had picked up. The Stasi would sit them down in front of what looked to be some sort of large camera, then tell them to wait while they changed film.
But it was not a camera. It was an X-ray machine, and the entire time the unfortunate subjects sat there they were being bombarded with radioactive particles.
The process would ensure that every time the subjects passed through any of the checkpoints with the West, all of which had radiation detectors, they would be flagged as having been previously picked up by the Stasi.
They might have their lives shortened by decades because of cancer from radiation poisoning, but no matter. The Stasi found the tactic convenient.
But Oxley was not radiated by the Stasi, because Oxley was not heading back out to the West.
No, he was headed east.
The East Germans handed him off to the KGB.
80
Present day
President of the United States Jack Ryan realized he was squeezing the side of his desk with his free hand as he listened to the gravel-voiced Englishman tell a story that had turned out so well for Ryan and so poorly for him.
When the story stopped, Jack knew there must have been much, much more, but he recognized the Englishman was waiting to hear something from Ryan, just to know he was still there.
Jack said, “I don’t know what to say.”
“Did you call it in? Did you report what happened?”
“Did I call it in? I was with the German police five minutes after the fact, looking for you. An hour later, I had every U.S. intelligence asset in the city on the hunt. By the next day, I was in London in the office of the director of the SIS. Of course I looked for you. I did not know you were a British operative, but I had everyone hunting for you and Marta nonetheless.”
Oxley said, “Fair enough, Ryan. I’ve got reasons to believe you now, thanks to your boy here, but I spent thirty years under the impression you’d kept your mouth shut about the whole bloody affair. I’ve been holdin’ a bit of a grudge, to be honest. I didn’t know you from Adam at the time. But years later I was sitting in my pub when your face came up on the telly saying you were the American President.”
Jack Junior spoke up now: “Dad, Ox was the man who gave SIS the intel about Talanov being Zenith. He was in a gulag when Talanov was there. He didn’t meet him, but he picked up the story.”
“Is it credible?”
Oxley said, “Seemed so, but it was a long time ago. My memory is not what it once was.”
“I understand, Mr. Oxley.”
Jack Junior said, “We have to go. I’m going to get answers for you on Zenith, but I don’t have them yet.”
“Just tell me you are okay.” Jack Junior could hear the emotion in his father’s voice. He was lost in the past now, and had no idea what his son was involved in at present.
“I’m with Ding, Dom, and Sam in the Hendley jet.”
“The Hendley jet? You aren’t in London?”
“We’re going to check a lead or two on the continent. I’ll call you when I know something. You’ve got enough on your plate right now dealing with Ukraine.”
“It is a difficult situation,” Ryan said, “but as long as I know you aren’t in the middle of it, I’ll feel a little better.”
Jack Junior just said, “I’m a long way from Ukraine, Dad.”
—
Ryan, Chavez, Caruso, Oxley, and Driscoll arrived in Zurich in the early evening, rented a pair of Mercedes SUVs, and headed south toward Zug. There was heavy rain and fog, which Ryan hoped would work to their advantage, as they had no idea who was looking for them.
The four Americans were armed now. Before they left the G550, Adara had passed out pistols that had been hidden in an access panel on the flight deck. Jack and Ding both chose the Glock 19, and Driscoll and Caruso took SIG Sauer P229s. The men knew if Castor was protected by any sizable security force they would not be able to initiate any sort of real attack with handguns, but at least with the firearms hidden inside their jackets they would be able to defend themselves from most threats.
They had little information about the physical property of Castor’s place, other than some notes Galbraith made for Jack regarding the layout. From this and a careful search of online maps, the men decided their best chance to enter undetected was via the lake at the rear of the property.
They rented a boat and scuba gear in the marina, and by seven p.m. they were a quarter-mile offshore from Castor’s lake house, scanning the two-acre grounds through binoculars. They could see some activity inside through the huge floor-to-ceiling windows, as well as plainclothes security men patrolling with submachine guns around the building’s exterior and down a hill in the rear of the property at a pier and boathouse on the lake.
The security men looked like a professional group, and it gave Ryan confidence that Castor was, in fact, on the premises.
Ding said, “I see eight to ten guys. We are not getting through them undetected, and we aren’t shooting it out with Swiss rent-a-cops.”
Ryan agreed. “We’ll have to figure out another way in.”
The Americans sat on the boat, discussing some way to covertly gain access to Castor without being detected by his security.
Oxley had been silent, sitting alone up on the bow. Finally he said,
“Gents, I don’t want to tell you your business, but I would like to offer a suggestion.”
Ding said, “By all means.”
“Why don’t we just walk up his bloody driveway and talk to him?”
“Talk to him?” Ryan asked.
“Of course. Castor believes in self-preservation. He believes in playing both sides. He’s not a madman. He is not going to kill the President’s son when others know you are with him. It is possible things won’t go the way we want them to, so maybe your friends can get as close as possible, but my vote is you and I just confront the sod and see what he has to say for himself.”
Ryan looked to Chavez. Ding said, “Your call, kid.”
Jack shrugged. “I don’t have anything better than that.”
Sam said, “We can drop you up the coast, then we can anchor a half-mile away and do a covert entry on the back of the grounds with the scuba gear. We might be able to parlay the distraction of your arrival into us getting a little closer to the house than we could otherwise.”
Chavez said, “I like it. But remember, Jack. They will search you before you see Castor. You can’t take a gun or any communications gear that shows them you brought company.”
“I understand.”
Jack wanted Oxley to stay on the boat. He knew the fifty-nine-year-old ex-spy had every reason in the world to want to confront Hugh Castor. He sensed there was more to the relationship than Ox had let on, but he’d not mentioned it. Jack saw nothing good coming from Oxley’s facing Castor right now. The threat of Oxley’s revealing Castor as a Russian spy, Jack reasoned, would be a lot more useful than actually having Oxley enter Castor’s grounds, where he would be vulnerable.
But Victor Oxley was having none of it. He made it clear that he would be involved in the meeting, and Jack and his mates would have to tie him to the rigging to keep him from going.
—
The Russians arrived in Zug in a Russian-built Mi-8, which was not an unusual occurrence at all, as there was a lot of offshore banking still done in Switzerland, and no one did more offshore banking these days than the Russians.