Command Authority

36

Jack Ryan woke to the patter of light rain, although he barely noticed it. This was England, after all; the absence of rain this time of year would have been unique. He reached out with a long, slow stretch and found his wife’s warm shoulder in the dark. Cathy was sound asleep still, which, at twenty minutes before six in the morning, seemed to Jack to be perfectly reasonable.

Their alarm was set for a quarter till the hour, so Jack took his time waking up. Finally he reached over and turned off the alarm before rolling out of bed. He shuffled into the kitchen to start the coffee and headed out to the front porch to get the paper.

The street was perfectly quiet. The Ryans lived in Chatham, in North Kent, some thirty miles from London. He and Cathy were the only couple on Grizedale Close who had to commute all the way to the capital, so theirs was more often than not the first house on the street with its lights on and movement inside each morning.

The neighbors all knew Cathy was a surgeon at Hammersmith Hospital, and they thought Jack had some boring job at the U.S. embassy. And while that was officially true, the truth would have inspired much more gossip over the hedges on Grizedale Close.

The young American was, in fact, an analyst in the CIA.

Jack noticed the milkman had delivered his usual half-gallon of whole milk. His daughter, Sally, would drink every drop of it before the next delivery. He picked the milk off the porch, and then searched for a moment before finding the newspaper in the bushes near the door. The copy of the International Herald Tribune was wrapped in a plastic bag to protect it from the weather, indicating the paperboy had better sense than he had aim.

Ryan went back inside and woke Cathy, then made his way to the kitchen. After pouring himself a cup of coffee, Jack snapped open the paper and took his first sip of the morning.

Below the fold on the front page, a picture grabbed his attention. A body covered in a tarp lay in a street. From the look of the buildings, he guessed it was Italy or perhaps Switzerland.

He read the headline below the photo.

“Swiss Banker Shot Dead, Four Others Wounded.”

Jack scanned the details of the article. It seemed the banker’s name was Tobias Gabler, and he worked at Ritzmann Privatbankiers, a venerable family-owned bank based in the Swiss canton of Zug. Gabler was killed, and several others were injured, when someone opened fire from the window of a building into a street full of pedestrians.

So far, the police had no one in custody.

Ryan looked up from the paper when Cathy strolled into the kitchen in her pink housecoat. She kissed Jack on the top of the head, and then she shuffled on to the coffeemaker.

“No surgery?” Jack asked. She never drank coffee when she had any surgery planned for the day.

“Nope,” she said, as she poured herself a cup. “Just some follow-up appointments. A jittery hand while I’m fitting someone for glasses won’t be the end of the world.”

Jack had no idea how his wife could go to work most mornings and slice into eyeballs. Better her than me, he told himself.

On the way to the shower, Jack peeked in on his five-year-old daughter, Sally. She was sleeping, but he knew she would be up and wide awake by the time he got out of the bathroom. He liked to get at least one nice, peaceful look at his little girl while she wasn’t darting around like a moving target, and first thing in the morning was his only opportunity.

He next peeked in on Jack Junior. His toddler was sound asleep, facedown in his crib on the top of his covers, his diapered butt sticking up in the air. Jack smiled. His little boy would be walking soon, and that little crib wouldn’t keep him for much longer.

Jack started the shower and then took a moment to look at himself in the mirror. Ryan was six-one, in fair shape, although he’d let both his diet and his exercise slip in the past few months here in the UK. Two small kids in the house meant keeping a flexible schedule, which got in the way of his workouts, and it also meant there was an abundance of snacks and cereals and treats in the pantry, one or two of which seemed to call to Ryan every day.

As he did most mornings, Ryan poked at the pronounced white scar on his shoulder. A year earlier he had saved the Prince of Wales and his family from an assassination attempt by an offshoot of the Irish Republican Army. Jack earned himself honorary knighthood from the queen for his quick-thinking actions, but he’d also earned himself a gunshot wound from the terrorists for not being quite quick enough.

Ryan had had other run-ins with danger, both with the Irish and in Vatican City, during the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II. He’d done his best to prevent the attack, but he’d narrowly missed the Bulgarian agent working under orders from Moscow.

Ryan left the mirror and stepped into the shower, and the hot water instantly relieved tight muscles in his back, another remembrance of his past. As a twenty-three-year-old second lieutenant in the Marine Corps, he’d been stationed on an amphibious assault ship during a NATO exercise in Crete. He’d been in the back of a CH-46 when the aft rotor failed, and the chopper full of Marines crashed into the rocks. Ryan broke his back, lost his commission, and endured years of pain after the fact before a successful surgery gave him his life back.

Ryan started his post-military life at Merrill Lynch, where he made a small fortune in the markets. After a few years of this, he decided to go back to school; he earned his doctorate in history, and then, after teaching for a while at the Naval Academy, he’d gone to work for the CIA.

In just thirty-two years Jack Ryan had experienced more than the average man does in a lifetime. As he stood under the hot water he smiled, taking comfort in the certainty that his next thirty-two years wouldn’t be nearly as eventful. As far as he was concerned, watching his kids grow up was all the excitement he’d ever need.

By the time Jack and Cathy were ready to leave for work, the nanny had arrived. She was a young South African redhead named Margaret, and she immediately began her workday by wiping jam from Sally’s face with one hand while holding Junior in her other.

The taxi honked out on the street, so Jack and Cathy gave the kids one last hug and kiss, and then they headed out the door into what now had devolved into a heavy mist.

Ten minutes later they were in the train station in Chatham. They climbed aboard the train to London, sat in a first-class cabin, and read most of the way.

They parted in Victoria Station with a good-bye kiss, and by ten till nine Jack was walking along under his umbrella on Westminster Bridge Road.

Although Jack was officially an employee of the U.S. embassy, in truth he almost never set foot in the embassy. Instead, he worked at Century House, 100 Westminster Bridge Road, the offices of the Secret Intelligence Service.

Ryan had been sent over by his boss at the CIA, Director of Intelligence Admiral James Greer, to serve as a liaison between the two friendly services. He was assigned to Simon Harding and his Russian Working Group, and here Ryan pored through any and all intelligence MI6 wanted shared with the CIA relating to the USSR.

Although he knew they had every right to protect their sources and methods, even from the United States, Jack considered the Brits to be somewhat stingy with their information. More than once he found himself wondering if his counterpart SIS analyst working at Langley came across some of the same roadblocks when trying to get information out of the CIA. He had come to the conclusion that his own service was probably even more tightfisted. Still, the arrangement seemed to work well enough for both nations.

Just before ten a.m., the phone on Ryan’s desk rang. He was engrossed in a report on Russia’s Kilo-class submarines stationed in Paldiski, Estonia, so he reached for the handset distractedly.

“This is Ryan.”

“Good morning, Jack.” It was Sir Basil Charleston himself, director general of the Secret Intelligence Service.

Ryan sat up straighter and put the dot-matrix printout he’d been reading down on the blotter in front of him. “Morning, Basil.”

“I was wondering if I could borrow you away from Simon for a few minutes. Would you be so good as to pop round?”

“Now? Sure. I’ll be right up.”

“Splendid.”

Ryan took the executive elevator to Sir Basil’s corner office on the top floor. When he walked in, he saw the director of the Secret Intelligence Service standing by a window that overlooked the Thames. He was talking to a blond man about Jack’s age who wore an expensive-looking charcoal-gray pin-striped suit.

“Oh, hello, Jack. There you are,” said Basil. “I’d like to introduce you to David Penright.”

The two men shook hands. Penright’s blond hair was slicked back, and his sharp blue eyes stood out on his clean-shaven face.

“Sir John, it’s a pleasure.”

“Please, call me Jack.”

Basil said, “Jack is a little self-conscious about his knighthood.”

“Honorary knighthood,” Ryan hastened to add.

Penright said with a smile, “I see what you mean. Very well. Jack it is.”

The three men sat in chairs around a coffee table, and a tea service was brought in.

Charleston said, “David is an operational officer, based in Zurich, mostly, aren’t you, David?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tough post,” Ryan joked with a smile. Neither of the two men smiled back.

Oops, Jack thought.

On the coffee table next to the service was that morning’s copy of The Times of London. Penright picked it up. “Have you had a chance to look over the paper?”

“I get the International Tribune. I glanced at it.”

“Did you see the article about the dreadful affair in Switzerland yesterday afternoon?”

“In Zug, you mean? Pretty awful. A man was killed, some others were wounded. The paper says it didn’t look like robbery, since nothing was taken.”

Penright said, “The man’s name was Tobias Gabler. He was killed not in Zug, but in a nearby burg called Rotkreuz.”

“Right. He was a banker?”

Penright replied, “He was indeed. Are you familiar with his bank, Ritzmann Privatbankiers?”

Ryan said, “No. There are dozens of small, family-owned banks in Switzerland. They’ve been around forever, so they must be successful, but like most Swiss banks, knowing just how successful they are is difficult.”

“And why is that?” Charleston asked.

“The Swiss Banking Act of 1934 essentially codified their bank secrecy procedures. Swiss banks don’t have to share any information with any third party, including foreign governments, unless so ordered by a Swiss court.”

Penright said, “And good luck with that.”

“Exactly,” agreed Ryan. “The Swiss are tight when it comes to giving up information. They use numbered accounts, which draws dirty money to them like a bee to honey.”

Ryan added, “The numbered accounts aren’t really as anonymous as many make them out to be, because the bank itself has to fully verify the identity of the person opening the account. That said, they do not have to fix the name to the account itself. And this makes transactions anonymous, because anyone with the correct code can deposit to or withdraw from the account.”

The two Englishmen looked at each other, as if deciding whether the conversation was to continue.

After a moment, Sir Basil nodded to David Penright.

The younger man said, “We have reason to believe a certain nefarious enterprise maintains accounts at RPB.”

This didn’t surprise Ryan in the slightest. “Cartel? Mafia?”

“We think there is a strong possibility that the man who was killed, Tobias Gabler, was managing numbered accounts for the KGB.”

This did surprise Ryan. “Interesting.”

“Is it?” Penright asked. “We were wondering if, perhaps, CIA had come to the same conclusion about the bank.”

“I can tell you with some degree of confidence that Langley doesn’t know of specific numbered accounts in Switzerland. I mean, sure, we know they exist. Russian intelligence has to stash black funds in the West so their operatives on this side of the Iron Curtain can have a steady stream of cash, but we don’t have their accounts pinned down.”

“You’re quite sure?” Penright asked. He seemed disappointed.

“I am pretty sure, but I can cable Jim Greer, just to double-check. I’d hope that if we had that kind of information, we’d either find a way to shut down the KGB’s access to the account or, better yet—”

Penright finished the thought. “Or, better yet, monitor the account, to see who makes withdrawals.”

“Right,” Jack said. “That could prove to be a treasure trove of intel about KGB ops.”

Charleston spoke up. “That was our idea. The interesting thing here, however, is there is one particular account in question that we are curious about, because it is quite large, and it’s just sitting there.”

“Maybe they are setting it up for some future operation,” Ryan suggested.

Sir Basil Charleston said, “I quite hope that is not the case.”

“Why do you say that?”

Basil leaned toward Ryan. “Because the account we are talking about has a balance in excess of two hundred million dollars. With regular high-dollar deposits coming in monthly.”

Jack’s eyes went wide. “Two hundred million?”

Penright said, “Yes. Two hundred four million, as a matter of fact. And if the money keeps coming in at the same pace, in another year there will be twice that.”

“All in one account? That’s unbelievable.”

“Quite,” said Charleston.

Ryan said, “Obviously, this isn’t being set up for an intelligence operation in the West. That’s way too much money. I… are you sure it’s KGB money?”

“We are not sure, but we believe so.”

That didn’t tell Jack much, but he assumed the Brits were holding back to protect their source. He thought for a moment. “I understand if you aren’t going to give me information about your source for this intelligence, but I can’t think of any possibility other than the fact you have someone in the inside of that bank.”

Basil looked at Penright and nodded again. He clearly was giving the younger intelligence officer the okay to share information with the CIA analyst.

Penright said, “We have a source at the bank. Let’s just leave it there.”

“And the source has reason to suspect the two hundred mil is KGB money?”

“Something like that.”

“And now Gabler, the account manager, is dead.”

“I’m afraid so,” said David Penright.

“You think the KGB found out their moneyman was compromised somehow, so they killed him?”

Basil said, “That is one operating theory, but there is a major hole in it.”

Jack said, “Nothing about the assassination of Gabler looks like a KGB hit.”

Penright said, “Quite right. We are confused by that bit. The witnesses say he was crossing a two-lane street, on foot, at six p.m., when an assault rifle appeared out a window of a supposedly unoccupied hotel room. An entire thirty-round magazine was fired at him at a range of less than fifty feet. He was hit three times out of thirty, which isn’t terribly impressive accuracy.”

Penright added, “Sir Basil’s house cat could do that.”

Basil raised his eyebrows but did not respond to the quip. Instead, he said, “Four other passersby were wounded.”

“And no one saw the shooter?”

Penright replied, “No. A van came screeching out of an underground garage, nearly ran down a group of onlookers, but no one got a glance at the driver.”

Jack said, “It’s not exactly a poison umbrella in the back of the leg.” He was referring to the 1978 assassination of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov, who was assassinated just a few hundred yards from where Ryan, Penright, and Charleston now sat.

“No,” Sir Basil admitted. “Nevertheless, we are very concerned that Herr Gabler was not a victim of a random act of violence. Could he have been assassinated by another intelligence agency that became aware of his association with the Russians? Could he have been killed by other clients of his, for some perceived violation of their trust? We would like to know if your agency has any knowledge of either the nefarious affairs of the bank or of any names on this list.”

Penright handed over several sheets of paper folded in half. Ryan opened them and saw literally hundreds of names.

“Who are they?”

“RPB’s employees and clients. As you may know, some numbered accounts are set up by shell corporations, so, despite the rules, even the bank itself doesn’t know who actually owns the funds. It’s another layer of secrecy.”

Ryan understood. “You want us to check our files to see if we have anything on any of the names, in the hopes you can find someone else who had a reason to kill Gabler.”

Penright added, “That, and also we’d like you to try and weed through the corporate accounts. U.S. banking is not as private as it is in Switzerland. You might find some similar data sets that can link actual names to these shell companies.”

Ryan said, “You need to be certain your source in the bank has not been compromised.”

“That’s it exactly,” Charleston agreed.

“Okay. I’ll get to work on this immediately. I don’t want to cable this list to Langley, it’s too sensitive. I’ll go over to the embassy right now and send it over in the diplomatic bag. It will take a few days to get answers back to you.”

Penright said, “The sooner the better. I’m trying to get in touch with our inside man in Zug. It’s a good bet he is going to be shaken up by all this. If we don’t hear from him by tomorrow, I’m going to have to start making preparations to go over there to make contact. I’d like to be able to tell him he has nothing to worry about.”

Jack started to get up, but he stopped himself. “Sir Basil. You know as well as I do that Langley will ask to be dealt in to this hand. This autonomous asset of yours… are you offering to make him bilateral?”

Basil had been expecting the question. “We will share the intelligence we get from this source with our friends in Washington. And we will readily take any advice you might have for us on the operation. But I am afraid, at this juncture, we are not prepared to go bilateral with this relationship.”

“I’ll let Greer and Moore know,” Jack said, and he stood up. “They might want more involvement, but I am certain they will understand that the main focus right now should be on finding out if your agent is in any danger — for his sake, of course, but also for yours. I can’t imagine what two hundred million dollars’ worth of KGB money is doing sitting in a Western bank, but we need that inside man right where he is so we can keep an eye on it.”

Charleston stood and shook Ryan’s hand, as did David Penright.

Sir Basil said, “I had no doubt at all that you would see the urgency of this matter.”