Command Authority

35

Jack Ryan, Jr., had spent the entire day in his office at Castor and Boyle setting up a new IBM i2 Analyst’s Notebook database. This file pertained to his new assignment, the theft of funds from a Norwegian freighter company that had purchased some ships from a Russian firm but, upon delivery, realized they had been sold rusty hulks. Not only was the case cut-and-dried and uninteresting, but the total value of the crime was several orders of magnitude less than the Galbraith — Gazprom affair. Jack had found himself bored by noon, and by two p.m. he was already sneaking peeks at a Gazprom affiliate mind map he’d made on Analyst’s Notebook the previous week.

His phone rang, and he reached for it automatically.

“Ryan.”

“Hey, Jack. Am I interrupting anything?”

Ryan was surprised to hear from his father. “Hey, Dad! Not at all. Just dealing with the Russians.”

“You and me both.”

Junior said, “Yeah, I heard. Has Dan figured out who poisoned Golovko yet?”

“Yes, but it’s one of those things that creates more questions than answers.”

Jack Junior looked up at his mind map; it looked like multicolored spaghetti noodles in a bowl. “I hear you.”

“Mom said you called the other night. Sorry I didn’t get to talk to you.”

“That’s okay. I know you have been running around dealing with Sergey and Ukraine. I hope you guys are doing okay.”

“We’re fine. We’re back in the residence, and it’s the same as ever. They tore the john out of the living room bathroom. Can you believe that?”

“Unreal. Look, Dad. I’m sorry I haven’t checked in. Just real busy at work.”

“It’s okay, sport. Been pretty busy at work myself.”

The younger Ryan chuckled.

“So how’s life?”

“It’s fine.”

“Living in London is great, right?” Jack Junior could hear the excitement in his dad’s voice, almost as if he was enjoying himself vicariously through his son’s experience, reliving his own time here so long ago.

Junior just muttered out an unenergetic “Yeah.”

There was a pause. Jack Senior said, “It is great, right?”

“I guess I’m still settling in a little.”

“Is something wrong? Is there a problem?”

“No, Dad. Everything is fine.”

Jack Senior paused again. “You know you can talk about anything, right?”

“Of course. And I will. It’s all good. Work is just frustrating.”

“Okay.” The father left it alone, though he could hear tension in his son’s voice. He asked, “I was wondering if you had time to do me a favor.”

Now Jack Junior lightened up. “Name it. It would be good to think about something else for a bit.”

“You remember Basil Charleston, don’t you?”

“Of course. It’s been a long time. He must be well into his eighties by now.”

“And that’s the problem. I have a couple of questions for him, and I would love to talk to him in person, but I have a funny feeling he’s not going to be able to hear me over the phone. The last time I called him it was hit-and-miss.”

“Does he still have his place in Belgravia?”

“He does.”

“I can swing by, it’s not far at all. What do you want me to ask him?”

“About thirty years ago, there was a string of murders in Europe. At the time, some people thought it was a KGB agent called Zenith who was responsible. We’ve discovered some uncorroborated intelligence tucked away in an old file that suggests Zenith and Roman Talanov were one and the same.”

“Holy shit,” the younger Ryan said.

“That’s basically my thought, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself. I need to know more about this. To that end, the code word ‘Bedrock’ came up in the Zenith murders. We don’t know if that relates to a person, a place, or maybe an operation. We’d like to know just what Bedrock is. And if anyone will remember, it would be Sir Basil.”

The elder Ryan explained that it looked like Charleston had handwritten a reference to Bedrock in the file, and he said he’d have his secretary e-mail the file to Jack Junior immediately.

“Surely that’s going to be classified intelligence. Why would he talk to me?”

Jack Senior said, “Basil won’t have a problem talking to you. He knows you used to work for Gerry.”

Jack Junior knew the phone conversation between him and his father was secure, and he knew his father was aware of this fact as well. Nevertheless, his dad was speaking to him with a little code. The fact Charleston knew the younger Ryan had “worked for Gerry” clearly meant he knew about The Campus. This surprised the younger Ryan.

“Really?”

“Absolutely. He knows you were an analyst there, and he knows the sort of work Gerry was involved with.”

“Okay. Next question. Did this take place back around the time we were living in the UK?”

“Yes, exactly that time. I remember this episode well, as a matter of fact. You were in diapers.”

“No offense, Dad, but that was a long time ago. Do you think there’s any chance Basil is going to remember the case, especially since there is no other record of Bedrock at SIS?”

“Jack, you know better than most, not every important operation gets written down for posterity. If Bedrock was important enough to stay off-book, then I think it’s likely Basil will know all about it.”

“You’ve got a point. I’ll ask him. Do you really think there is any chance this Talanov character was involved?”

“No way of knowing. I’ve learned not to rely too much on one single tidbit of intelligence. It takes more to convince me.”

“But you are curious enough to have me track down Bedrock.”

“Right,” Jack Senior said, then caught himself. “Track down? Wait. I just said talk to Basil. I don’t need you to do anything else.”

“Right,” the younger Ryan said.

“So tell me, what’s going on at work?”

“I am up to my neck in shady Russians over here. They are swindling clients out of fortunes and businesses and intellectual property. They are lying with a straight face and using the court system to steal and intimidate.”

“It’s that bad?”

“You wouldn’t believe.” Jack Junior caught himself. “What am I saying? You used to go toe-to-toe with the KGB.”

President Ryan said, “Very true. Do you enjoy the work, at least?”

The younger Ryan sighed. “It’s frustrating. I’ve spent the last few years thinking about justice. Chasing down bad guys and stopping them. But here I am chasing down the bad guys, but the most I can hope for is that some court that has no real jurisdiction over the bad guys will order that some assets are seized, and that probably will never happen.”

“Justice moves slowly.”

“In this case, it doesn’t move at all. My boss, Hugh Castor, is apparently afraid to pin any corruption directly on the siloviki in the Kremlin. I understand he doesn’t want to get bogged down in court over there, or have his people harassed by the authorities, but we are letting the real criminals off too lightly.

“I can’t help but think about what I could do to some of these worthless bastards to make them change their ways. If Ding and John and Sam and Dom were here, I wouldn’t be reading old ownership transfer agreements, that’s for damn sure.”

“I understand. There were a couple of times in my analytical career where I felt like I had connected the dots that needed to be connected, but there was not enough follow-through from those above me to make a difference. There is very little more frustrating than that.”

Jack Senior said, “I’ll e-mail you the document I’d like you to show Basil. That, and what I’ve already told you, might be enough for you to prod his memory. I won’t go into the rest of it, because it’s a long story, and I don’t even remember all the details myself.”

“No problem. I’ll talk to Basil and let you know what he says. Sounds like fun.”

Jack Senior laughed a little. “I can’t promise you any more excitement than spending a few minutes chatting with an octogenarian in his study, but I guess it’s something.”

“It is something, Dad. You know I love stories about the old days.”

The President’s voice darkened. “Not this one, son. This story did not have a happy ending at all.”