Commander-in-Chief

32

By the time Jack’s police minders got him to the hospital it had been worked out by the authorities that the man in their control was the son of the U.S. President. Jack explained he was in town working for his company, Hendley Associates, doing some forensic accounting on some potential acquisitions for the private equity firm. Ysabel was a friend who had just arrived for a visit, and she’d obviously stumbled onto a robbery in progress.

The police weren’t sure about anything other than the fact that this crime made their tiny nation look bad, especially because of the high-profile friend of the victim.

The police immediately became deferential to him, but Jack imagined they would change their tune quickly if the handgun at the crime scene was found and dusted for prints, and he refused to give his up.

He wanted to be long gone by then.

Ysabel had been given an MRI to check her head, neck, and torso for any internal injuries. Jack had only just arrived when a doctor came out of an exam room, introduced himself to Jack as a neurosurgeon, and told him that Ysabel was a lucky woman, considering all she’d been through, but she wasn’t out of the woods just yet. A small fracture in a cervical vertebra meant she would need immediate surgery.

Jack went pale. “You are telling me she has a broken neck.”

The doctor gave a sympathetic shrug. “It is something we can repair. There is no damage to her spinal cord.” He patted Jack on the arm. “A one-level cervical fusion is an extremely common procedure. Trust us, Mr. Ryan, we will take good care of her.”

Jack wasn’t next of kin, and the doctors knew this. They were going ahead with the surgery despite any reservations he had. Jack just nodded distantly and sat back down, staring off into space.

He thought about everything he and Ysabel had experienced together over the past month. He felt sick with the thought that after the events in Dagestan that nearly killed them both, he had led her headlong into even more danger.

Ryan’s mobile buzzed in his pocket, bringing him back to the present. He pulled it out distractedly, looked down, and saw the call coming in was from Clark. He launched out of the chair and began to walk away from Ysabel’s room. “Please tell me Gavin got the camera feeds.”

“He did. I just watched the entire event, including you taking out three hostiles. Obviously, I don’t have the context I need to understand what the hell is happening over there.”

“Neither do I, to tell you the truth.”

“Are you secure now?”

“Yeah. I mean, I think so. Might have to slip the police at some point, but they don’t seem too interested in me, considering. I don’t think they have much of a plan to deal with a big gun battle around here. I get the feeling it never happens.”

“How is Ysabel? I saw her removed on a stretcher.”

“They say she’ll live, but she’s being taken in for surgery on her neck.”

“Christ. I’m sorry, Jack.”

“Yeah.”

“Look, you need to take it from the top, tell me everything you know.” He paused for a beat, then said, “And I need you to do it right now.”

Jack told him what had happened, and although he had no idea who was responsible, he let Clark know this looked like it could have been related to the work they were doing in Rome. He said, “It’s obvious by the fact they were asking her about me that she wasn’t the real target. I was.”

Clark said, “Any idea how they found your place?”

Ryan said, “Yeah. They used Ysabel to find the location. I found a GPS tracker in her purse. It’s the size of a pushpin. Top-flight tech.”

“That doesn’t sound Russian.”

“No. It looks commercial, but top of the line.”

“Do you know how it was planted?”

“Last week she told me a woman knocked over her purse in the bathroom, then helped her pick up all the contents. About a half-hour after that a man who was following me showed up in my apartment building.”

As soon as Ryan said this, he winced, anticipating the admonitions to come.

Clark’s voice rose and his tone lowered. “What man?”

“I should have called this in, John. I screwed up. It’s just that he didn’t—”

“What man, Ryan?”

“An Italian paparazzo tailed me in Rome. I thought I shook him, but he showed up back at the condo. I roughed him up a bit, thought he was a bad actor of some sort, but when he proved he was just a stupid photographer, and convinced me he’d been tipped off to me by a girl in a café who recognized me, I didn’t think it was anything related to the op I was on. Just the occasional negative aspect of being Jack Ryan’s son.

“Still, though, just to be safe, Ysabel and I left the condo immediately. She got a hotel down there to finish up our work in Rome, and I came up here to Lux City. I thought that was the end of it.”

“Damn it, Jack! It is your job to call in contacts and compromises. Do you have any idea the danger that exposure put you in?”

“Yes… I mean, no, I didn’t. It’s pretty fucking clear now,” Jack said darkly. His eyes shot back up the hall toward Ysabel’s room. A pair of orderlies were rolling her unconscious body down the hall to surgery.

Clark asked, “Who was the photographer?”

“Salvatore.”

“Salvatore what?”

“He just goes by one name.”

Clark mumbled softly, “I hate him already.”

“Tell me about it. I didn’t trust the bastard, but we checked him out online, and he is a legit paparazzo… if such a thing exists. Anyway, I was satisfied he wasn’t working with the Russians.”

“But if it was the same GPS tracker that got him to your Rome condo that the attackers in Luxembourg used to track Ysabel, then obviously they are related.”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “As soon as she gets out of surgery and into a room here, I’m going back to Rome to get my hands on this Salvatore.”

“No, Jack. You are not. You aren’t going to be operating alone anymore. You need to get out of there.”

“I need to protect Ysabel.”

Clark ignored the comment. “I’ll get Christine there now. I have associates from my days in Rainbow right over the border in France. I can put two tier-one shooters outside Ysabel’s door when she comes out of recovery, and keep them there twenty-four/seven. That’s more than you could do.”

“I’m not leaving her side!”

“Look, Jack. She was attacked because she was by your side. You aren’t going to help her with your proximity to her. You said it yourself: You were the target, not Ysabel. I know it feels wrong to leave her, but that’s just exactly what you have to do.”

The realization hit Ryan like an ax handle to the head. Yes, he knew she was attacked because of him, that was obvious. But now he recognized that not only could he not protect her, but the longer he stayed around her, attempting to do just that, the longer she was going to remain in mortal peril.

It took him half a minute to respond to Clark. “You’re right.”

“Good. You are coming home. Now. It will take the Gulfstream ten to twelve hours to get to you, and I want you gone before then, so get yourself on the first train out of Luxembourg, and then the first transatlantic back to the States. Don’t use the main station. Too dangerous. Take a taxi to the burbs and board there.”

Jack wanted to argue some more, but he knew Clark was exactly right about everything. He just said, “When I get home, I’m going to see what I can find on Salvatore. We might have other avenues of attack beyond just threats. He’s a drug abuser. Heroin. Normally, that might be incriminating, although in his line of work I don’t suppose anyone gives a damn what he does in his free time.”

Clark said, “We’ll also run this video through facial recog, see if we get some pings on the faces of these men who attacked you and Ysabel. The quality is shit, but we might get lucky.”

Ryan got off the phone a minute later. He had a direction now, a plan to find the men responsible for what happened to Ysabel. He wouldn’t leave the hospital till Christine arrived, but he knew that was just to make himself feel better.

Clark was right, Ysabel was in more danger when he was around.