Command Authority

61

Jack Ryan, Jr., arrived in Corby at eleven a.m. The sky was even grayer here than it had been in London, and the air felt noticeably colder as he climbed out of his Mercedes on the street in front of Oxley’s building.

On the two-hour drive up he’d convinced himself this would be a dead end. He was not letting himself think for a moment that this morning’s attack had been a random event, but he could not put together how this old ex-spy would have had anything to do with it. He’d almost turned around in Huntingdon, but he’d pushed on, telling himself that it wouldn’t hurt to continue on up to see Oxley — if nothing else, just to annoy the old fart one more time.

Jack decided to tell him about the attack and then gauge his reaction. Jack was confident that if Oxley had been behind it, for whatever the reason, just showing up at his place would cause him to give away his involvement.

Jack took the stairs up to Oxley’s first-floor unit, and as he climbed he noticed his knee was aching from his run-in with the two thugs earlier that morning. He should have known to ice the damn thing; sitting still in the car on the ride up would probably ensure he’d be walking with a limp for the next few days.

He pushed this irritating thought out of his brain and focused his attention on the annoying prospect of having to speak with Oxley again. He told himself that if the man made any more disparaging comments about his dad, Ryan would punch him in the jaw.

He would not hit the man, and he knew it, but it made Jack feel good to think about it.

Jack stopped at Oxley’s door and brought his hand up to knock, but as he did this, he noticed the door wasn’t latched. He looked down at the latch and saw a smeared black boot print right below the lock. Next to it, the doorjamb was broken.

Someone had kicked in the door, recently enough that Jack could see mud in the boot print.

Ryan’s blood began pumping hard and fast. Just as had happened this morning during the attack, his threat indicators were redlining. He spun around, looked down the little hallway toward the back stairwell, but there was no one else around.

His first thought was to turn and head down the stairs and back to his car. He could call the cops from there. But he had no idea if Oxley was still alive. If he was, any delay might make the difference between life and death for the old bastard.

As slowly and silently as he could, Ryan put his hand on the latch and pushed the door open.

Instantly, Jack realized Vick Oxley was very much alive. He sat there, on a metal chair at his little kitchen table, just ten feet from the front door of the one-room flat. In front of him was a cup of tea. His hair was askew, and a little sweat shone on his high, wrinkled forehead, but otherwise he appeared to be completely composed. A man in his kitchen, enjoying a morning cup.

On the cold hardwood floor at his feet, however, two men lay on their backs. They were quite clearly dead, and their bodies were unnaturally contorted. Ryan could tell one of the men had had his neck snapped, as his head lay wrenched to the right, opposite from the disposition of his hips.

The other man had bloody contusions on his face, and his eyes were wide open.

Oxley looked up at Ryan, showing some surprise at seeing the young American, although he composed himself quickly and lifted his cup. He waved it and asked, “Just pop round for a cup of tea, did you?”

Ryan raised his hands slowly. He didn’t know what the fuck had happened in here, but he was prepared for the big man to launch off his chair and come at Ryan himself.

Instead, the man just calmly took another sip.

Jack lowered his hands. “What… what happened?”

“You mean just now?”

Ryan nodded, his eyes wide in disbelief.

“The President of the United States’ son just walked into me kitchen.”

Oxley had gone from being a complete asshole to being a smart-ass. Ryan wasn’t sure that was progress, but at least he had him talking. He entered the flat and shut the door behind him.

“I mean, obviously, before that.”

“Oh. Those blokes? They bumped into my brass knuckles, got back up to have another go, bumped into them again, and didn’t get up the second time.”

Ryan knelt over them, checked them both for pulses, but found none. Oxley just watched him do it, his face half hidden behind his mug of tea. Slowly he lowered his tea to his lap, and his voice turned dark, almost malevolent. “You brought trouble with you, didn’t you, lad?”

“I didn’t bring them.”

“Well, you show up, then the next day they show up. Either you caused them to come or they caused you to come. Since you were here first, I blame you.” He smiled, but it was a patronizing smile. The smile of an annoyed person. “Wet streets don’t cause rain, do they?”

Jack pulled up a metal chair and sat down across from the Englishman. He said, “Two men came after me this morning. In London. Not these two.”

“What a bleedin’ coincidence, that.”

“I’m going to go out on a limb and say it was no coincidence.” Ryan looked at the heavyset man, then back down at the two bodies. He really couldn’t get his head around the obvious fact that Oxley had managed to dispatch these young and fit men. “You killed them?”

“Well, they didn’t die of natural causes. You are as thick as your daddy.”

Jack gritted his teeth.

Oxley put his mug down on the table. “Despite your parentage, I suppose I have to be a good host and make ya some tea.” He climbed up to his feet and moved into the kitchen, grabbed the teakettle and put it back on the gas burner, which he cranked up till the blue gas flames licked up the sides.

Jack said, “Hey! I don’t want tea. I want answers. How did this happen? How did you manage to—”

Oxley wasn’t listening. He pulled a mug down from the little cabinet, blew into it to clean out the dust, and then he tossed in a tea bag. The kettle began whistling soon after, and the white-haired man filled the mug with hot water. He dropped in two sugar cubes he picked with his fingers out of a cardboard box, then glanced over his shoulder at Ryan.

“Looking at you, I’d say no milk. You aren’t that refined, are ya?”

Ryan did not answer. Right now his head was spinning with the implications of this situation. He was the son of the sitting President of the United States, and he was here in a tiny one-room flat with two bodies at his feet. The man who killed them was walking around as if it was no great concern, but nearly every nerve and muscle in Ryan’s body was screaming at him to get the hell out of there now.

There was, however, only one thing in this world Ryan wanted now more than getting away from this scene.

Answers.

He sat there, waiting for Oxley to talk.

The big Englishman put the mug of tea down in front of Ryan and sat back in his chair. Only then did he speak. “So, drink up quick, mate, because I’m tossing you out in a moment. Before I decide if I kick you out my door or throw you out my window, why don’t you tell me what you know about this?”

Ryan said, “I am not sure, but there is a good chance that this is about you. Your history with the British government.”

The Englishman shook his head. Disbelieving.

Jack added, “Or maybe, I should say, this is about Bedrock.”

Oxley did not seem surprised at all to hear his old code name. He just gave a half-nod and took a sip from his own mug.

Ryan said, “I came yesterday to ask you a question about some events on the continent thirty years ago.”

“Bedrock is dead and buried a long time, lad. And digging him up now is only going to get more people killed.” He motioned to the two dead men on his floor. “Not just Russians.”

Jack’s head spun to the two corpses. “Russians? How do you know they are Russians?”

The Englishman looked at Jack for a moment, then struggled to get down on the floor on his knees. He moved awkwardly, wincing as he climbed out of the chair, but Jack couldn’t determine the exact location of the man’s pain. Jack put his mug down and leapt from his own chair, trying to help the old man before he fell on his face.

But Oxley made it down, then reached for the jacket of the first man on the floor. He pulled it off roughly. Jack thought he was going to search the man for identification, but instead he tossed the jacket aside, then reached back down to the body and unbuttoned the man’s belt.

“What, in God’s name, are you doing?”

Oxley did not answer. He opened the belt and then untucked the dead man’s shirt and undershirt. These he pulled up, and he struggled with them, fighting to get them off the man’s body.

Ryan was sickened. He shouted, “Oxley! Why the hell are you—”

Ryan stopped shouting when he saw the tattoos.

The man was covered in them, all over his chest and stomach and neck and arms.

On his shoulders were tattooed epaulets; there was a Madonna and Child on his left pectoral, an Iron Cross below his Adam’s apple, the image of a dagger piercing his neck.

Ryan could not make sense out of any of them, but he could make a guess. “Russian mob?”

“I’d say so,” said Oxley. He ran his hand across the man’s stomach. A large tattoo that depicted some sort of grouping of stones, seven in all, took up the width of the man’s torso.

“He is Seven Strong Men.”

He motioned to the other tattoos on the man’s body. “The dagger in the neck means he killed in prison, the epaulets on the shoulder means he holds — he held—rank in the Seven Strong Men, like a lieutenant. The Iron Cross means he doesn’t give a bleeding shit about anyone. The Madonna means he’s religious, Russian Orthodox, although he’s Russian-assassin religious, which isn’t terribly religious, I don’t suppose.”

Oxley motioned to the other body. “Your turn, lad.”

Jack grimaced, then moved over to the other body and pulled the jacket and shirt off. This man was as festooned with ink as the other man, and he had the same Seven Strong Men tattoo on his lower torso.

“Why are these Seven Strong Men after you?” Jack asked.

“The same reason they are after you, I guess.”

“Which is?”

“Lad, I don’t have a fucking clue. I’ve had no run-ins with Russian mafia. Ever.”

“You think the guys that jumped me today were part of the same group?”

“Did they have little banana knives?”

“One had a small hooked blade. Is that what you mean?”

“Yep. Seven Strong Men.”

Jack could not fathom it. “Here? In the UK?”

“Of course they are here. London is Londongrad, after all. My God, if you are not as dense as your daddy.”

Jack sat back in the chair. “What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you such an asshole?”

Oxley just shrugged and sipped tea.

Jack was still trying to find some sort of connection between his work at Castor and Boyle and the past of Victor Oxley. The fact he had been under surveillance since before his father had mentioned Bedrock meant that the two situations were related somehow, or else it was one hell of a coincidence, and Jack had been at this game long enough that he naturally leaned to the former. One question occurred to him: “How do you know all this about Russian prison tattoos?”

Oxley looked at Ryan. For several seconds there was no sound in the flat except for the ticking of some unseen clock, but with a shrug the white-haired Brit reached to his waist, grabbed hold of his threadbare sweater, and pulled it up.

Jack saw now. Victor Oxley did not have the Seven Strong Men tattoo on his torso, but he wore an incredible amount of ink nonetheless. There were stars and crosses and daggers, and a skull with a teardrop and a dragon, all just on the small portion of the big man’s chest and belly he’d exposed to Ryan.

Jack said, “You were in a gulag?”

Oxley lowered his shirt and reached for his mug of tea. “Where the hell you think I learned the bad manners you keep complaining about?”