Commander-in-Chief

8

Jack Ryan, Jr., was sure he’d lost the man who had been following him, so he climbed out of the taxi two blocks from his apartment on Via Frattina, in the center of Rome. Glancing at his watch, he realized he’d been in the cab for a quarter-hour. He could have walked home from the Piazza del Popolo faster than the vehicle had gotten him here, since the tiny one- and two-lane streets in this part of town made footpower and scooters more efficient than four-wheeled transport. Still, he was sure he’d lost the man in the pandemonium of Roman traffic, especially with all the twists and turns the taxi driver took to get around the worst part of the chaos.

He approached his apartment on foot, a little warily, because he had not been able to rule out the fact that one follower he’d identified could have confederates. But he checked the four or five places he figured someone might position himself if he wanted to watch the front door of his place, and he saw no one who did not belong.

He opened the door to the building and entered a long echoing hallway of black-and-white-checkered tile. His place was four stories above, on the third floor, and the slow, rickety, coffinlike elevator gave him the creeps, so he headed for the enclosed stairwell on his right.

Thirty seconds after Jack entered the stairwell and started heading up, a brown-haired man with a ponytail, wearing a brown leather jacket and carrying a backpack on his right shoulder, entered the front door of the apartment building, carefully shutting the door behind him so it would not echo in the large entry hall. He then stepped to the stairwell, cautious to ascend softly so the noise of his footfalls would not carry upstairs.

He climbed the stairs almost silently, taking his time doing so, and stopped at the first floor. Here he slowly leaned his head out into the hall. He looked left, then right. Seconds later he was back on the stairs and ascending again, making the turn on the landing between the floors. At the second floor he poked his head out into the hall and looked left, then right.

Once again he returned to the stairwell, climbed up to the third floor, and moved to the doorway to the hall. He slowly craned his head out and looked to the left.

The tall bearded man stood there facing him, just two feet away.

Jack reached out and grabbed the man by his jacket, spun him around 180 degrees in the hall, and slammed him hard against the wall. The man with the ponytail was stunned by the blow, but he was still aware enough to reach down to the backpack hanging off his shoulder. His right hand shot inside through a partially opened zipper, and he clutched something there.

Ryan fired a right jab straight out, connecting with the man’s nose, snapping his head back.

“Che cazzo…?” the man shouted. What the fuck…?

Ryan grabbed the forearm connected to the hand in the bag in order to prevent the man from pulling out a weapon, and he smashed the man against the wall again by slamming into him with his left shoulder.

“Che cazzo…!” the man screamed again, his words echoing down the tiled hallway of the old building. The man started to reach into his front pocket with his left hand now, so Jack head-butted him in the face.

The man with the ponytail dropped down on his knees, completely dazed, his bloody face wrapped in his hands, and Jack ripped the backpack off him. In doing so the pack slammed hard into the wall.

“What were you going for, asshole?” Ryan shouted at the man. His own words echoed down the hall, but they were partially drowned out by the groans of pain from the lungs of the man with the ponytail.

Jack pulled out a large thirty-five-millimeter digital camera, cracked from the impact, a couple of high-end lenses, both shattered, and a see-through plastic neck pouch. In it was a media identification card containing a passport-sized photo of the man kneeling on the floor in front of him. The writing on the card was in Italian, but Jack recognized the word PRESSE stamped in large letters across it. Jack then knelt down and found the man’s wallet in his front-left pocket. This had an ID card that said the same thing.

Ryan dug through the man’s bag some more, found a few small Baggies of off-white powder, a metal spoon, a cigarette lighter, and a cluster of syringes, all rubber-banded together. There was also a cell phone, but Jack had apparently smashed it, as well, when he banged the pack against the wall. He dropped everything back into the bag, put it on his own shoulder, yanked the man back to his feet, and pushed him up the hall.

“If you’re press, then I’m the Pope,” Ryan said.

Ysabel rushed to the door when she heard Ryan and another man shouting in the hallway. She looked out the peephole, then opened the door just as Jack came through, his hand pulling the bleeding man by the collar behind him.

Ysabel said nothing, although her eyes revealed her surprise.

Jack all but dragged the man through the living room and into the kitchen, their footfalls on the hardwood floors echoing off the high ceilings of the luxury apartment. He shoved the man onto a chair at the kitchen table and the man crumpled there, still stunned by the vicious head butt.

Ysabel walked up behind Jack now. Sarcastically, she asked, “Will our guest be staying for dinner?”

Jack didn’t answer. He took a moment to let his adrenaline dissipate, and while he did this he watched Ysabel take ice from the freezer and put it in a wet cloth. She cracked the cubes inside the cloth with a metal ladle.

He looked down at his hand now. It was scuffed, and he knew from past experience the knuckles would probably bruise to a yellowish gray, but his hand wasn’t bleeding.

“I’m fine,” he said.

She did not look up from her work. “It’s not for you. It’s for him.”

“The hell with him.”

“I’m not going to let him bleed all over the place.”

Jack would have done just that. He was furious that his feeling of safety and anonymity had been destroyed in the blink of an eye. His time here in Rome, his utterly perfect two weeks, was over, just like that, and he was having a hard time accepting this fact.

Ysabel asked, “Who is he?”

“He’s been following me.”

“Then why on earth did you lead him here?”

“I didn’t. I shook him at the Piazza del Popolo, I’m sure I did. I spent fifteen minutes in a cab checking behind me the entire time, then I came back here and he followed me in. Somehow he knows where we live.”

“What’s in the bag?”

“Camera equipment, mostly. And some fake creds that say he’s a journalist.”

“No weapon, then.”

Jack shrugged. “No. No weapon.”

“What are you going to do with him?”

“I’m going to find out who sent him.”

“Before you do that, I’m going to clean him up and stop the bleeding.”

Ysabel knelt in front of the man at the kitchen table, and Jack took the man’s backpack into the living room and sat down, careful to position himself so he could keep an eye on him in the kitchen.

He watched Ysabel kneeling in front of the man. He still seemed to be dazed, and she worked expertly on cleaning his bloody face, applying ice to the lacerations to slow the bleeding.

The man wasn’t badly hurt. Jack himself had taken blows much harder and kept his wits about him.

For just a quick flash it occurred to him that he should be appreciating the kindness of his girlfriend. Ysabel was in the same boat as he was; the appearance of this son of a bitch was a death knell to the perfect little world they had created. A temporary respite after the time of great danger and stress they’d shared on their last mission, and before Jack inevitably returned to real fieldwork with The Campus.

But Ysabel’s compassion for this man just annoyed him. He didn’t have the humanity she did, he supposed. He was just pissed.

Jack stood back up and stormed into the kitchen now. Playtime was over. It was time for answers.

He asked, “Do you speak English?”

The man had clearly come out of his stupor, because he shouted, “Eat my shit, Jack Ryan Junior!”

Jack scooped the backpack up again and began to recheck it, looking for a false partition or hidden compartment. As he did this he said, “So… you know who I am. You are going to tell me who you are and who you work for.”

“You going to hell, man!”

This guy was pissed. Not scared. That seemed odd to Jack. He pulled out the camera. “This is a nice rig. Where did you get it?”

“From your mother.”

Jack sighed. “Right. Well, I found your fake media credentials in your bag and a fake ID in your wallet. I am going to do some digging into these and see if I can figure out who you really are.”

“Fake? What shit are you saying?”

“I’m saying your name isn’t”—Jack looked at the ID card again—“Salvatore.” He cocked his head in confusion. “What, you couldn’t be bothered to make up a fake last name?”

The man touched his face. “You broke my nose!”

Jack knelt down directly in front of the man now. He had four inches and twenty-five pounds of muscle on the seated man. “It’s not broken, but I’ll break your neck if you don’t talk.”

“I’m Salvatore.”

Jack just looked at him.

“Salvatore!”

“Right! I got it! You’re Salvatore. But who the fuck are you?”

“You see the ID, man. It say who I am. I am photographer. You know… celebrity photographer.”

Ryan looked down at the credentials again. “Wait… you are saying you are a paparazzi? Bullshit.”

“Paparazzo, sì,” Salvatore said, and he fingered his swollen lip.

Ysabel had been listening in. She walked over to her laptop on a desk next to the doorway to the kitchen and began to type the man’s name into a search engine.

Jack asked, “Why were you following me?”

“You’re a celebrity, you son of a bitch.”

Ysabel called across the room. “Jack? Can I speak with you in here for a moment?”

Jack stepped up to Ysabel’s desk, a sudden pang of worry filling the pit of his stomach. When Ysabel looked up from the desk to face him, he said, “Don’t tell me.”

“He is exactly who he says he is. He’s just a photographer. A paparazzo.” She turned her laptop so he could see the website of Salvatore — just the first name, along with several celebrity photographs. Ysabel added, “And you just beat him up.”

Jack’s jaw muscles flexed under his beard. Oops. He turned and headed back into the kitchen. “Who sent you?”

“Nobody send me nowhere.”

“Bullshit,” Jack said again.

Salvatore said, “You had coffee at Café Mirabelle. The hostess… she send me tips when somebody famous comes in. She recognize you, and she send me a text.”

Jack remembered the hostess now. A beautiful college-age girl with eyes that stayed on his an uncomfortably long time. He’d mistaken the look as one of attraction.

It was a mistake that had nothing to do with vanity, just experience. More women looked at Jack because he was good-looking than due to the fact he came from a famous family, because he’d done everything within his power to change his appearance. His beard, his powerful physical bearing, the eyeglasses with the uncorrected lenses — he was night and day a different person from the much younger man who had been on TV some when his dad was in the White House for his first term.

But every now and then, somehow someone still realized who he was.

“How did you find my apartment?”

“I followed you.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“You didn’t see me,” Salvatore said with a smile. Jack could see blood captured between the man’s teeth. “I am good.”

“If you’re a photographer and you saw me, why didn’t you take any pictures?” Jack had checked the man’s cracked camera and found nothing but a few pictures of a fountain.

Salvatore said, “The girl at restaurant told me who you were, but I no sure. I want follow you, wait you are sitting so I can get good pictures.”

That made sense to Ryan, and he caught himself actually wishing this guy had been some sort of an assassin, because he’d roughed him up so bad.

Ysabel stepped up behind Jack now. She whispered, “You need to let him go.”

Jack nodded. Of course he did.

He looked down at the man on the chair. Blood dripped from his chin again, and his shoulders hung slumped.

This was going to be awkward.

Jack knelt down and, with a tone much more conciliatory than before, said, “Look… Mr. Salvatore. Here’s the situation. I don’t have security protection, I don’t really need it… but the Secret Service insisted I go through some… specialized training so I could protect myself if something bad happened.”

Salvatore said nothing.

“I’ve had a couple of crazy people come after me in the past. I guess I just overreacted a little this time.” Jack held out a hand. “I hope you will accept my apology.”

The Italian just stared at him, but after a moment he shook the extended hand.

Jack said, “I think you’ll be fine, but I’d be more than happy to take you to a doctor.”

Salvatore shook his head. He said, “You got anything to drink?”

“Sure, of course.” Jack stood quickly, headed to the refrigerator, and pulled out a bottle of still water. As he turned toward the paparazzo sitting at the kitchen table, the man shook his head. “Wasn’t talking about water. You have grappa?”

Jack didn’t have any grappa, an Italian brandy, but he did have a six-pack of Moretti beer in his fridge. He wanted more than anything to get this guy out of his apartment, but he felt obliged to drink a beer with him.

Salvatore drank in silence — mostly, he seemed like he wanted the alcohol, not the fellowship of sharing a beverage.

Jack muttered a few words here and there about wanting to protect his privacy for the benefit of the people around him, but Salvatore did little more than nod and drink.

When he finished he stood. Jack said, “Your camera equipment and your phone. What’s that worth?”

“Ten thousand euros.”

Jack shook his head. “Try again. That camera is fifteen hundred, and it’s repairable. The lenses might be five hundred each. Another five hundred for the phone. That’s less than three thousand euros.” Jack sighed. “I’ll give you five.”

Salvatore shrugged, then nodded.

Jack always carried a lot of cash when he worked an operation. Less this time than usual, because this was only half a mission, as much analysis as anything else. Still, he had exactly five thousand euros hidden under a shelf in the bathroom. He pulled an envelope containing one hundred fifty-euro notes out of a hiding spot in the back bathroom, then handed them over to the Italian.

Salvatore took the bills and tucked them into his pocket. Ysabel held out the backpack, and he took that and left the apartment without another word.

Ysabel locked the door behind him, then turned to look at Jack. He could see what she was thinking by the look on her face. She was also worried about what this meant for their time in Rome.

She asked, “Are you okay?”

“I don’t know. Something about that guy… I don’t know.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I have to leave. Get out of town. It’s the only way to protect the operation.”

She said, “Why? I’m sure you aren’t the first person to punch a paparazzo in the nose. It’s a known job hazard for guys like Salvatore.”

“He’ll talk about this, you can bet on it.”

“Do you think he’ll call the police?”

Jack shook his head. “He had enough dope in his backpack to get himself thrown in prison. He knows that I know, so the last thing he’s going to do is go to the cops. They’ll give him a drug test, and that guy is an addict. He won’t be clean, and he knows it.”

Ysabel shrugged, as if the matter were settled. “So… he tells some friends. Some other paparazzi. Maybe somebody camps out with a camera outside. We’ll just deal with that when it happens.”

Jack shook his head. He’d been playing the double game of espionage a lot longer than Ysabel Kashani had. “I wish we could do that, I really do. But I need to get out of here. You, too, just to avoid any hassle if more media show up. We can sanitize this place and get a hotel room tonight, and I’ll head up to Luxembourg tomorrow.” He wanted to invite her with him, but he had not yet cleared that with his bosses at The Campus.

Ysabel said, “I thought we had more galleries to check out.”

“We do. There is another week’s worth of work here. But I can’t compromise the mission by sticking around. If Salvatore really did have a confidante at that café, he might have others all over town. Who’s to say someone in the hotel won’t tip him off, too?”

Ysabel thought for a moment. “I can stay here, Jack. I’ll just stay in a hotel and visit the remaining galleries. I’ll be finished in less than a week. Done by Saturday.”

Jack hesitated.

Ysabel smiled at him. “You said I was a natural.”

Now Jack chuckled. “Okay. But only to look for pieces that have already been purchased. If you find one of the paintings that has sold, you call me, and I’ll call Gavin to have him hack the gallery. If he can’t, we just move on. I don’t want you sneaking around, trying to plant bugs on their computers. Without me ready to help you out of there, it’s too dangerous.”

“No problem.” She looked around and sighed now. “I’m going to miss this place.”

“Me too. I’m sorry. This is my fault. I just thought he was going for a weapon when he reached in his bag.”

She nodded. “That’s good to know. I won’t make any sudden moves in front of you.”

“I guess I’m a little jumpy. We saw a lot of action in Dagestan. When this guy started following me, then showed up again, it felt like the real deal.”

She stepped over and kissed him slowly, running her fingers up the back of his neck and into his hair.

Jack smiled a little. He was in a shitty mood, but Ysabel was helping. He put his arms around her.

Ysabel said, “I can hear it in your voice. You feel like you’ve done something wrong. You haven’t. You are very good at what you do, Jack, but you will always have to deal with the fact that your father is a public figure.”

He shook his head. “Nobody has recognized me in months. Doesn’t happen more than a handful of times a year, and almost never when I’m outside of D.C.”

She shrugged. “Obviously the guy was telling the truth. You were recognized.”

Jack nodded, then he changed the subject. “Listen. I was going to ask you after I got it approved, but I’m sure it will be okay. I’d like you to come up to Luxembourg when you’re done here. You can fly up next week. You can help me on my surveillance there.”

Ysabel broke into a wide smile. “I was hoping you’d ask.”

“We work well together, don’t you think?”

She kissed him again. “I think so. We also play well together, wouldn’t you agree?”

He nodded. “I would.” In minutes they began sanitizing the apartment together. Regardless of the fact that today’s compromise didn’t put him or Ysabel in danger, Ryan knew he needed to get moving, because just the possibility another paparazzo might show up would destroy the operation he was working on, and he could not let that happen.

There was something else Jack knew he should do now, but he decided to wait. Standard operating procedure was to report this contact to John Clark. Clark was director of operations for The Campus, and he’d want to know that one of his ops guys was compromised in the field, even if it wasn’t by any foreign intelligence agency or enemy actor.

Clark would be pissed, not at Jack but at the situation. Jack had busted his ass to transition from straight analytics into fieldwork, and he’d acquitted himself well during many operations, but there was always the possibility that his cover would be blown. Not by any errors in his operational security, but simply by virtue of the fact that he still looked just a tiny little bit like the son of one of the most well-known people on planet earth.

Jack decided he could wait till tomorrow to let Clark know. For now he grabbed the two beautiful rib eyes wrapped in butcher paper, and he tossed them in the garbage. He had to get moving. For operational security reasons, he and Ysabel had no time for a cookout tonight.

A half-hour after he left Jack Ryan’s rented apartment, Salvatore pulled his scooter into the little driveway next to his apartment on Via Arpino in Municipio V, east of the city center. He locked it to a rack in front of his building, then took the outside stairs quickly to his first-floor flat.

Inside his apartment, he threw his backpack on a chair, then opened his freezer. He pulled out a frosty bottle of grappa and poured himself a double shot in a water glass, and he drank it down while he walked back to his bedroom.

Here he grabbed his cordless phone off his bedside table and headed straight to the bathroom, dialing a number from memory as he walked. He looked in the mirror while he waited for the connection to be made.

A man answered in Italian, with a thick foreign accent. “Prego?”

Salvatore touched his broken lip with the tip of a finger. He replied in English, “It’s him. You were right.”

“You’re sure?”

“I just drank a beer with him.”

“You what?”

“It’s fine. He does not suspect anything. The identity is confirmed.”

There was a long pause. Then, “You will find the money in your mail slot in the morning. We have more work for you.”

Salvatore was surprised by this. “For the same fee?”

A pause. “The fee is acceptable to us. But the work will be outside of Rome. In Brussels.”

“No problem.”

“Good. One week from now, maybe two. We’ll let you know.”

“Tutto bene.” Then, “Wait… there is something else.”

“Yes?”

“He is suspicious. He thinks someone is after him. And he’s ready. For trouble, I mean.”

Salvatore heard the man chuckle, then the line went dead.