Commander-in-Chief

52

Jack Ryan, Jr., sat at his desk facing three large monitors full of information. His eyes scanned back and forth, and then he lowered his head into his hands and rubbed his eyes.

It had been a long and completely fruitless day, yet it had begun with so much promise. He’d been given good-looking intelligence from many different sources, but so far nothing had panned out.

The video feed of the cameras on Tarpon Island had led him nowhere. These two obviously white, obviously tall people who’d kidnapped the Walkers knew how to simply and effectively obscure their faces. They both wore hats and sunglasses, probably because they knew some asshole was going to sit at his desk, pore over every frame searching for clues, and push images through the best facial-recognition suites in the world.

Jack was that asshole and he’d come up with nothing.

As Jack watched them conduct their brazen act, he was struck by just how calm and nonchalant they appeared to be. The woman followed her would-be victims into the home with a big smile. Then the man, her co-conspirator, appeared up the walkway from the beach, strolling into the big villa like he owned the place.

This couple weren’t newcomers to this sort of work. They appeared to be in their element during the kidnapping.

This gave Jack the idea to investigate other unsolved kidnappings around the world using intel from Interpol and SIPRNet. He watched surveillance videos of sixty crimes, read the reports on a hundred more, but he saw no other kidnappings that matched the MO of this one.

He’d skipped lunch to keep searching for information about the Walkers’ kidnappers, but he attained nothing other than a lot of doubt. His supposition that this couple were experienced kidnappers was contradicted by the fact no kidnappings he could find anywhere involved suspects matching their description.

Still, Jack knew, they were experienced in something that gave them a hell of a lot of confidence while snatching a kid and his mom out of their home.

After spending the morning working on the kidnappers, he spent the afternoon working on Andrei Limonov, spending hours trying to track the man’s aircraft before it arrived in Luxembourg, to see where else he might have gone and who else he might have spoken with. This too had been a fruitless hunt. The Bombardier owned by Limonov’s shell had spent most of the previous month, from what Ryan could tell, sitting in a fixed-base operator at Biggin Hill, an executive airport twenty minutes southeast of London.

The plane flew nowhere, which probably meant Limonov was in London during that time, but that didn’t tell Ryan anything of value.

Another failure.

He’d also made several calls to Christine von Langer throughout the day. Ysabel had been taken out of her medically induced coma and upgraded to good condition, and this was obviously great news, but she would remain in the hospital for at least another two weeks.

Christine had remained by Ysabel’s side, even though the two did not know each other. The American millionaire widow had slept on a tiny vinyl couch and eaten hospital food, which admittedly was better in Luxembourg than it was in the United States, but still was a far cry from what she was accustomed to.

Jack thanked her profusely, and she said she only wished she could do more.

Jack thought she was doing plenty; in fact, he was certain Christine had accomplished a hell of a lot more today than he had.

It was exactly the moment when he felt like giving up for the day, as he sat there with his elbows on his desk, rubbing his eyes, when Gavin Biery leaned his head into his cubicle.

“How is she?”

Jack looked up to find Gavin looming over him. “Oh, hey. Ysabel? She’s going to be fine. Eventually. I can’t figure out if she’s really lucky or really unlucky.”

Gavin sat down in the one other chair by Jack’s desk. “Lucky to be alive. Guess that’s all that matters now. The rest is over and done.”

“Yeah.” Jack noticed Gavin had a folder in his hand. “Please tell me there’s something in that folder I want to see.”

“Okay. There is something in this folder you want to see.”

“What is it?”

“The phone records of one Luigi Vignali.”

“Who the hell is”—Jack stopped himself and sat up straight—“Salvatore?”

“That’s right. Salvatore isn’t his real name. Big shocker there.”

“What did you learn about him?”

Gavin chuckled. “This guy is a piece of work.”

“You found something incriminating on him?”

“Yeah, but I don’t really know where to start. Maybe with the drug charges, or the petit larceny stuff.” Gavin glanced down at the file. “Lots of arrests for disturbing-the-peace kind of things, all over Europe. Most involving his paparazzi harassment of celebrities, but he also has been heavily involved in the environmental and antiglobalization movements. He’s been arrested in Paris for protesting nuclear power, in Frankfurt for a sit-in at the European Central Bank, and he had an attempted-arson charge in Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum.”

“Attempted arson? What does that mean?”

“He threw a Molotov cocktail at a bus full of rich conference attendees, but didn’t douse the rag with gasoline, so the thing burned out in the air.”

“Genius,” Jack said. It didn’t sound relevant to his investigation into the man, but it still showed him something of both the Italian’s character and his aptitude. Jack was disappointed. He wanted to see collusion between this man and Russian intelligence. “That’s it?”

Gavin looked back down. “Pretty much. He punched out his mom once, put her in the hospital, and did a couple of days in the slammer for that, but Mommy dropped the charges.”

“Jeez,” muttered Ryan.

“Aren’t moms the best?” quipped Gavin. “There is also some interesting logistical stuff. I geolocated his phone and found out he’s not in Rome.”

“Where is he?”

“He flew to Brussels today, went to a hotel in the European Quarter and spent the night. I pulled up the hotel’s guest info, and he’s staying there under the name Salvatore. Reservation for a week at the Stanhope Hotel.”

“What’s going on in Brussels?” Jack asked.

“What do you mean?”

“He takes pictures of celebrities for a living. Is there something happening in Brussels that would be of interest to a paparazzo?”

Gavin just shrugged. “I wouldn’t really know, Ryan.”

Jack thought about it. “Yeah, me either.”

The computer geek and the intelligence analyst both sat in silence for a moment. Neither of them was exactly dialed in to the pulse of celebrity goings-on these days, if ever.

Gavin said, “I could do some research.”

“How?” Jack asked.

“Dunno. Turn on a TV or something.”

Jack broke into a smile, his first one since Luxembourg. “Wonder if Gerry would let us expense a People magazine for research purposes.”

Gavin said, “He let Clark expense a freakin’ sailboat, so I bet he’d be okay with it.”

Jack spun around in his desk and started looking at goings-on in Brussels in the next few days. There were concerts and plays and political conferences and corporate conventions, but with no idea what he was looking for, it was hard to know how to narrow down his search.

He shrugged. “The only way to find out what he’s up to is to go over there and watch him. Or else go over there, grab him by the throat, and throttle the information out of him.”

Gavin said, “I know which method you’d prefer.”

“Yeah. He was involved with the people who hurt Ysabel. I don’t know if he knew what was going on or if he was just a patsy.” Jack shrugged. “I’m not sure I give a damn. I’ve got to use him to find them.”

Gavin leaned forward a little. “There is no way in hell Gerry is going to let you go back to Europe alone.”

Jack knew this was true.

Gavin surprised him by saying, “Tell you what. I’ll talk to him, maybe he’ll let me go along with you to watch your back.”

Jack smiled affectionately at Gavin. If Gerry wouldn’t let Jack go alone, he sure as hell wouldn’t let Jack go supported by an overweight IT director pushing sixty whose experience in the field in the past few years had been extremely hit-and-miss. He patted Gavin on the shoulder. “I appreciate it. But I need to handle this on my own for now. I’m going to walk into Gerry’s office and tell him how important it is.”

“Good luck.”

Ten minutes later Jack walked out of Gerry’s office, his face a mask of utter frustration. Gerry had said just exactly what Jack feared he would: His request to return to Europe to conduct physical surveillance of Salvatore had been denied. He returned to his desk, opened up the security feeds at the Stanhope Hotel in Brussels, and began to scroll through the different cameras.

He told himself he’d sit here all night if he had to, but he was going to learn something.