Commander-in-Chief

29

On Jack Ryan, Jr.’s fifth day of surveillance of the Luxembourg attorney Guy Frieden, he realized he had managed to reach a level of symbiosis with his target that he had never wanted to achieve. All week Jack had been taking bathroom breaks at the same time Frieden did. This was by necessity, of course; he had learned through uncomfortable missteps in the field that he needed to take advantage of every available opportunity to go when there was a lull in the action.

But now as Jack zipped up his fly and washed his hands he realized his last few calls of nature had corresponded naturally with Frieden’s. His bladder had fallen into a rhythm with the man’s down the street.

Jack found it both depressing and funny that his biology had melded sympathetically with his target’s, but he shook the feeling away and headed back into his dark little office.

Not to watch Frieden so much — although that remained his main duty — but to get back to his computer.

So far, the only interesting person who had come into contact with Frieden — physically, anyway — was Andrei Limonov. Jack had gotten no closer to the money-laundering network used by Mikhail Grankin, and it didn’t look like he would do so unless and until Gavin Biery cracked the man’s files.

But while the objective that sent Jack to Luxembourg in the first place seemed — temporarily, at least — out of reach, he had been able to dig into Limonov and uncover a few things about the man’s patterns. He had no information at all about Blackmore Capital’s clientele, so he didn’t know if Limonov invested one thousand rubles for one million clients, or one billion rubles for a single client. But through his research he had succeeded in discovering that Blackmore Capital Partners of Moscow had just very recently opened an office on Callcott Street in the Kensington district of London.

The computer techs at The Campus had successfully managed to tap into London’s municipal camera feeds on an operation there a year and a half earlier, so Jack logged on to a Campus portal that served as his way in. It was estimated there was a camera for every eleven citizens of the United Kingdom, and through the portal Jack had access to every cam in the nation.

He tapped the address of Blackmore Capital into the program, and instantly he was shown the seven cameras within a one-block radius. One of these cameras even pointed right at the street and pavement in front of the little house with the gold BCP sign on the front door.

He saw no activity on the street or obvious movement through the half-open blinds of the house.

Between glances up to his monitor showing him the activity in Frieden’s office, Jack closed the program displaying the London CCTV feeds, and he began to research how Limonov and Kozlov had gotten to Luxembourg.

He knew they’d first visited Frieden on Monday, so he looked at direct flights from both Moscow and London that arrived on that day. Through a Department of Homeland Security database, he checked passenger manifests on the airlines, but found nothing. If the men were traveling under their real names, they hadn’t flown commercial on that day. He widened the search, but still came up with nothing.

The next step, he knew, was to check private aircraft. Luxembourg Airport was really the only potential location for a private flight to deposit someone into the city, so Jack pulled up a list of fixed-base operators working there. Within minutes he had a list of all the registered flights that came in on Sunday or Monday. There were seventy-three, which sounded like a lot to Jack until he considered the amount of money in play here in the city, at which point he realized it should come as no surprise that a bunch of people with private planes would come here to bank or to shop.

Of these seventy-three, eight had come directly from Moscow and nine directly from London.

Jack started with the London aircraft first, thinking it relevant that Limonov had opened an office there just a month earlier. He researched each plane to try to determine the owners and their passengers.

This took a half-hour, and when he was finished there was only one plane, a Bombardier Global model 6000, that he could not identify. It had arrived in Luxembourg just ninety minutes before Limonov and Kozlov met with Frieden in his office and, according to civil aviation information, it was still at the FBO at Luxembourg Airport.

Jack jotted the tail number down, not positive this was Limonov’s aircraft, but certain he had no other leads.

He expected it to just return to London soon, so he wasn’t over the moon with his potential discovery. Perhaps the two Russians were meeting with other bankers here in Luxembourg, setting up some new network for a big player in the Kremlin. Jack knew short of switching his surveillance from Guy Frieden to Andrei Limonov, finding out which hotel he was staying at, and trying to get photos of the man with any other associates here in town, he had pretty much exhausted investigative potential.

With a sigh of frustration he looked up at his monitor and saw that Frieden was putting on his coat. Jack checked his watch and saw it was after five p.m. He’d been working on Limonov all afternoon.

It was time to call it a day.

Five minutes later Jack walked among the heavy pedestrian traffic on the Grand Rue, his mobile phone against his ear.

“Gavin Biery” answered the voice on the other end.

“Gavin, I just wanted to let you know that everyone here in Luxembourg is still talking about that dashing American who blew through town the other day.”

“Ha. I’ll bet the natives have erected statues in my honor.”

“There was already a Burger King here, so they’ll have to think of something else.”

“Somebody’s in a joking mood. You must have found a new lead. What’s up?”

“There’s a plane parked at the airport here. Privately owned. I drilled down into the ownership as deep as I could, but couldn’t find out too much. Still, I have a tail number. Will you be able to tell me when it leaves and where it goes?”

“If it publicizes its route, you can watch it yourself. But if they BARR the flight, then I’ll have to roll up my sleeves and do some real work.”

Jack knew what Gavin was telling him. While most private aircraft registered their flight numbers and destinations with air traffic authorities, certain private planes used the Block Aircraft Registration Request system to hide this information. Celebrities, corporations hoping to keep their competitors in the dark about their actions, and the über-wealthy who didn’t want anyone to know where they were simply requested their aircraft and destination information not be placed in the system.

The Hendley Gulfstream used this service every time it went on missions for The Campus.

“Yeah,” Jack agreed, “they might BARR it. But on the flight into Luxembourg they flew in the open.”

Gavin said, “No worries either way, Ryan. Even if they try to hide it, I can probably find it. What kind of aircraft?”

“A Bombardier Global Six-K.”

“Shouldn’t be an issue. I can find your Bombardier if it takes off and tries to go ghost.”

Jack said, “While I should probably just leave well enough alone and not ask you for details, I’m curious. How will you do it?”

“The FAA uses ASDI, Aircraft Situation Display to Industry, which is just a big public database so everyone can see what plane is where. When you use an app like FlightAware, it gives you information on where a flight is, although that is class-two info, which means the data is five minutes old. ASDI class one is real-time… It’s what the people in the aircraft industry see.

“BARR flights mean the aircraft disappears from the list, so we look for planes in the air that are not showing on ASDI, then employ advance machine learning and data analytics to suck info from other public sources. If I’m searching for a single plane I can find it by using times, refueling info, catering info, private car hire info at the FBOs. Much of it is done automatically through the system. I can put in a flight number and then, within a certain time period, it will tell me exactly where to look for it. From there, all I have to do is download audio from the suspected airport and use a speech-to-text app, then do a rundown of aircraft landing there. I’ll check every one that doesn’t match ASDI and figure out who’s who.” Gavin chuckled. “The bad guys can’t hide from me.”

“You’re awesome, Gav,” Jack said.

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Pretty sure that’s impossible.”

Gavin gave a satisfied snort. “What’s your tail number?”

“November, two, six, Lima, Charlie.”

“Got it. I’ll keep an eye on activity at Lux Airport. When it takes off we’ll track it, whether they try to go ghost or not.”

Just then, Jack’s phone buzzed in his hand. He looked down and saw it was Ysabel calling. “Sorry, Gavin, I’d better take this. Keep me posted on the plane.”

“Sure, Ryan. Tell her we all said hi.” Gavin hung up.

Ryan shook his head and laughed, embarrassed that Gavin had seen through him so easily, but appreciative of the man’s powers of deduction all the same. Quickly he switched to the incoming call. “Hey, there. How are you?”

“I’m great. Better than great, actually.”

“Really? Why’s that?”

“I finished early. Got the info from the last art gallery this morning.”

“That is great. Did you run into any problems?”

“Everything went fine. You should hire me, I’m pretty good at this.”

Jack laughed. “You are very good. Hey, since you’re done a day early, why don’t you try to get on a flight tonight? I just finished for the day. I can meet you at the airport and then we can—”

“I’m way ahead of you, Jack.”

Jack cocked his head and slowed. A grin grew on his face. “You’re already here, aren’t you?”

Ysabel laughed. “Guilty. Hope that’s okay.”

“Okay? It’s the best news I’ve had since I left Rome.”

“I wanted to call you and not just barge into your apartment. No offense, but I know how jumpy you were last week.”

Jack smiled wider, started walking along the Grand Rue again; he felt his feet pick up the pace automatically; he couldn’t wait to see her.

“I’ll be home in ten minutes.” There was a long pause, and this surprised him. “Ysabel? Did we get cut off?”

“You’re not at your apartment right now?”

“Not yet. Won’t be long.” After another pause on the other end he asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. It’s just… your doorman said you were home and I should go right on up. I’m standing outside your place now. I guess he was mistaken.”

Jack slowed a little. “You must have the wrong building. What’s the address?”

“It’s the address you gave me. Five Place de Clairefontaine. Apartment Four E.”

Jack Ryan, Jr., broke into a sprint. He tore down the middle of the pedestrian street as fast as his legs would take him. As he darted around the afternoon foot traffic, a sense of dread grew in the pit of his stomach.

Ysabel was in his building, but his building did not have a doorman.