Command Authority

53

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 that 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 repeated, “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.