Command Authority

51

It had taken Jack Ryan, Jr., days to track down Victor Oxley, the ex — MI5 spy known as Bedrock. He first called James Buck, his hand-to-hand combat trainer back in Maryland. James was a friend of The Campus’s, and was himself an ex-member of SAS, and he happily promised to make some discreet inquiries on Ryan’s behalf.

Jack knew he could have just told his dad about his conversation with Basil, and that would have been the end of it. But the younger Ryan found himself intrigued with the old story. He’d sent an e-mail to his father after his meeting in Belgravia with the ex-head of MI6, and told him simply that he’d learned a few details, but he’d like to look into it a little more.

After Buck did some extensive digging, he told Jack that as far as anyone in the SAS knew, Vick Oxley was still alive. They had no address for him, but by checking some old records, Buck was able to give Ryan his date of birth. This told Ryan that Oxley was fifty-nine. Ryan pulled up UK tax records, a perk of working for a company like Castor and Boyle, and he found exactly one fifty-nine-year-old Victor Oxley on the books. As it happened, the man lived in Corby, two hours north of London. Ryan called the phone number listed and found it out of service, but it was a Friday, and Ryan had banked a few hours of vacation time, so he told Sandy Lamont he’d be leaving after lunch to get an early start on his weekend.

The trip north was uneventful other than the fact Ryan had done very little driving on the left side of the road. More than once he’d winced as he’d passed oncoming traffic passing him by on the right, but after an hour or so his brain started to settle down and get used to this odd sensation.

He arrived in Corby and found the address just after four p.m. Oxley lived in a ramshackle two-story apartment building with a front garden smaller than the living room in Jack’s Earl’s Court apartment.

Ryan walked through the trash-strewn grass to the entryway and took a staircase up to Oxley’s flat.

He knocked, waited, then knocked again.

Frustrated, Ryan headed back to his car, but when he got down to the street, he noticed a pub on the corner, and figured it wouldn’t hurt to check in there in case someone knew the man he was looking for.

The pub was called the Bowl in Hand. Ryan found the place to be a little dark and dingy compared with the watering holes he’d been frequenting in The City. Even the locals seemed to agree that it wasn’t much of a hangout; it was four-fifteen on a Friday afternoon and Ryan counted fewer than ten patrons in the entire pub, all gray-haired men.

Ryan sat at the bar and ordered a pint of John Courage. When the bartender brought him his beer, Ryan put down a ten-pound note and said, “I was wondering if you knew a regular here.”

The burly man said, “I know when someone’s not a regular.”

Jack Ryan smiled. He expected this; the bartender didn’t look like he’d gotten his job for his chipper demeanor. Jack reached into his wallet and put down another ten-pound note. He didn’t have a clue what the going rate was for this sort of thing, but he wasn’t going to fan off any more money than he had to.

The bartender took the money. “The name of this chap?”

“Oxley. Victor Oxley.”

The bartender made a surprised face that Jack couldn’t read.

“You know him, then?”

“Aye,” he said, and now Jack saw that any suspicions the man carried before were replaced by a sense of mild curiosity. He got the idea there were some shady individuals who frequented this pub that the publican wanted to protect, but Victor Oxley wasn’t one of them.

Still, the man said, “Leave your number. I’ll pass it to him next time he’s in, and if he’s interested in speaking with you… he’ll let you know.”

Jack shrugged. It wasn’t how he’d planned it, but it was Friday; he could get a room in a hotel in town and wait a night, because he didn’t have to be in the office in the morning. He pulled his Castor and Boyle business card out of his wallet and handed it to the bartender. Then he said, “There’s another twenty for you when I talk to him.”

The bartender raised his bushy eyebrows and put the card into his breast pocket without looking at it.

Jack turned his attention to his beer and started thumbing through his phone, looking for the closest inn that looked decent enough for one night.

As he did this, the bartender began talking with an old-timer at the end of the bar. Jack paid little attention to them as he concentrated on his phone.

A minute later the bartender returned and dropped Jack’s business card next to the glass of John Courage. “Sorry, lad. Vick isn’t interested in chatting.”

Ryan looked over to the man at the end of the bar, who was lost in his own beer. At first he thought there was no way this man was only fifty-nine. He was wrinkled and heavy; he looked like a slightly thinner version of Santa Claus. But upon closer inspection Ryan thought it possible the man could be younger than he first guessed, and when the man looked up and noticed Ryan looking at him, he gave the bartender a look like he wanted to wring his neck.

This is the guy.

Jack pulled out a twenty-pound note and put it on the bar, then grabbed his beer and headed over.

Oxley shifted his eyes back down to his beer. He had thick, wavy, and slightly long white hair and a full white beard. His bloodshot eyes gave Jack the impression the man had been sitting right here downing pints since whenever this bar opened for business that day.

Jack spoke softly to keep the conversation between the two of them. “Good afternoon, Mr. Oxley. I apologize for coming unannounced, but I would very much appreciate a few moments of your time.”

The older man did not look up from his pint. In a voice as low as a locomotive’s rumble, he said, “Bugger off.”

Great, Jack thought.

He tried a bribe. It had worked with the bartender, after all. “How about you let me pay your tab, and we go find a booth and talk for a few minutes?”

“I said bugger off.”

Basil had said the man might be trouble.

Jack thought he’d try one more avenue. “My name is—”

Now the bearded man looked up from his pint for the first time. “I know who you are.” And then, “Your dad’s a bloody wanker.”

Ryan gritted his teeth. He noticed the bartender had come around from behind the bar and was talking to a couple of men in a booth. They were all looking his way.

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.