Tom Clancy - Command Authority

“Well, hullo,” Eastling said, as he looked at it.

Ryan leaned in and directed the detective’s flashlight toward a group of photographs.

The first thing Ryan saw was a black-and-white photograph of Tobias Gabler, the first banker killed in Zug. The image looked as though it had been taken from a distance, but it was unmistakably the same man Ryan had seen in the news reports on Gabler’s murder. Under this was a picture of Marcus Wetzel. Ryan had no idea what Morningstar looked like, but the photo was helpfully marked with a white sticker upon which Marcus Wetzel’s name had been typed.

Underneath this photo was a map of Zug, Switzerland.

Next in the case was a one-page typewritten message on a sheet of white paper. At the top of the page was an H&K rifle over a red star, above which the letters RAF were displayed in white.

The German said, “It is a communiqué. It looks official, I have seen these before.”

“Would you mind translating it?” Eastling asked.

“ Ja. It says, ‘The nature of these attacks speak the language of reaction. We in the Red Army Faction will not allow those who traffic in the illegal monies that lubricate the wars against the people of Central America and Africa to live freely and in peace. We will show our solidarity with the guerrillas of the world and fight against the bankers who profit from the illegitimate wars in the name of the failed capitalist system.’”

When the BfV man finished, he turned to Ryan and Eastling. “It goes on to say Tobias Gabler and Marcus Wetzel were killed because they were high-profile bankers who dealt with the accounts of German industrialists.”

Ryan asked, “And this looks real to you?”

The German shrugged. “It looks real.”

“But?”

“But Herr Wetzel was killed over twenty-four hours ago. Herr Gabler days before that. Normally this would have been distributed already. I don’t understand why it hasn’t been.”

Eastling said, “Maybe Scheuring was supposed to distribute it herself, but since she was burned to a crisp in Switzerland, she never got a chance.”

The BfV officer shook his head. “If this was a real RAF operation, someone from their propaganda wing would send this to the media. Not the actual bomber.”

The German began discussing the communiqué with some of his colleagues, so Jack and Nick walked out into the hallway.

Ryan said, “All nice and neat in one package.”

Eastling clearly was thinking the same thing. He struggled with his words, finally saying, “It does look suspiciously convenient for us, I’ll give you that.”

Ryan said, “This is a plant if I’ve ever seen one.”

The English counterintelligence officer seemed to recover from his doubt. He stopped in the narrow dark hall and turned to Jack. “ Have you ever seen one?”

Ryan had to admit that he had not. He did not investigate crime scenes, but he was a hell of an analyst, and he had dealt with all sorts of opposition disinformation campaigns. This “evidence” did not pass Jack Ryan’s sniff test.

They went back in the living room and stood over the bodies. The detectives were trying to match faces to booking photos of known RAF members. So far, they’d ID’d five of the dead, but they had no record of the other four. One of the detectives sent his partners into the bedrooms to look for purses and wallets to try to figure out who they were.

As Jack and Nick looked over the corpses lined up on the floor of the living room, Jack said, “These people, along with another guy two blocks up the street, managed to shoot nine cops and commandos? I don’t believe that for a second.”

Eastling shook his head. “They walked right into some sort of a trap. Might be a leak in German security.”

“There is another possibility.”

“What’s that?”

Jack said, “Think about it. What if it was the Russians? If the RAF was being set up for what happened in Switzerland, the Russians would have to ensure that no one in the cell would be taken into custody to proclaim their innocence. What better way to make sure nobody talks to the police than turning the arrest into a full-on gun battle? All you would need to make that happen is a shooter with a line of sight on the scene. Once the German commandos started dropping, there weren’t going to be any RAF survivors to proclaim their innocence.”

Eastling sighed, but Ryan saw definite cracks in the certainty that had been on display before the briefcase turned up. “You have nothing but conjecture. We don’t know who was in the sniper’s hide. Could have been an RAF gunman who heard the shooting and decided to fight back from that location.”

Jack just shook his head. He couldn’t prove anything, but his gut told him he and Eastling were up against forces much larger than those of a German left-wing terrorist cell.

Jack Ryan, Jr., and Victor Oxley made it back to London just before five p.m. Of course, Ryan knew better than to return to his flat. Instead, he rented a room at a motor lodge on Wellesley Road in Croydon. Oxley had recommended it, explaining that he came to London from time to time and always stayed there, and he assured Ryan it was an out-of-the-way and suitable place for a “no questions asked” encounter, which was, Oxley pointed out, just what the situation called for now.

They had made one stop along the way. After growing tired of Oxley’s pestering, Jack pulled into the parking lot of a supermarket and fanned some bills out of his wallet, passing them over to the former spy. Oxley ducked into the market and returned ten minutes later with two shopping bags.

They pulled back onto the road, heading for the lodge, and this was when Jack learned Oxley had bought a fifth of Irish whiskey, a liter of cola, and two large bottles of beer. As for food, he’d picked up some snack cakes and a stick of sausage that looked to Jack as if it might have been as old as Oxley himself.

As Jack suspected when Oxley described the place, the motor lodge was a complete dump. There was peeling paint, and burns on the carpet and mold on the walls, but each room was over its own tiny one-car garage, clearly for the express purpose of hiding the vehicles of whoever was staying inside.

They pulled into their allotted garage and closed the door, then Jack and Victor heaved the Russian mob enforcer out of the trunk of the Mercedes. Victor yanked the man’s jacket up over his head so he couldn’t see. They then frog-walked him up a flight of stairs out of the garage and into the hotel room.

The bathroom was tiny and filthy, but it was a good place to stash a Russian gang member for a few minutes. There was exposed piping along the walls, and Oxley expertly tied the man in a fashion that kept his hands high behind his back so that he could not maneuver more than a couple inches without causing himself incredible pain in his shoulders. Oxley then took a pillow with a suspicious stain on it from the bed, removed the pillowcase, and hooded the man with it.

They shut the Russian in the bathroom, and then Jack turned up the television in the bedroom. He and the fifty-nine-year-old Brit stepped out onto a tiny balcony that overlooked a busy six-lane road.

Oxley was angry the lodge did not have a single piece of glassware for his use, but he made do by drinking a few long gulps out of the bottle of cola and then filling the bottle back up to the top of the neck with Irish whiskey. They sat on cheap aluminum chairs on the balcony while Jack watched the man drink and eat for a few minutes, using every last vestige of his patience, telling himself that the more satiated and sauced the ex–English spy was, the more he might talk.