Tom Clancy - Command Authority

“They also checked into the sniper location across the street. The one-room flat had been rented by Marta Scheuring three nights ago.”

Jack was confused. “Marta rented a room two blocks away from where she lived? Why would she do that?”

Eastling shrugged. “Can’t answer that one. Her name is on the ledger, but no one could ID her picture. It’s a tenement-type lodging, so nobody pays attention to who comes and goes. Guest workers from Turkey, Ireland, and North Africa, mostly. A couple of people on her floor say they saw a man enter the room last night, late evening.”

“What did they say about the man?”

“Twenties or thirties. White. Might have been German, might have been something else. No one heard him talk. No one heard any shooting coming from the room, either.”

“How the hell is that possible?”

“Sniper rifle with a suppressor. It still makes a bloody loud racket, but considering the fact two blocks away a small-scale war was going on with more than two dozen people blasting each other and tossing bloody grenades, the pop-pop of a silenced weapon could quite easily go missed.”

Jack sighed, then he had a new thought. “We’ve got to go back to Zug, show the pictures of Marta Scheuring to the bartenders at the place where Penright met the German woman the night he died.”

Eastling was already shaking his head. “It’s done, mate. Swiss did it yesterday, used a copy of her license.”

“And?”

“Everyone working that night was in agreement. The woman who Eastling tried to pick up in the bar was not Marta Scheuring.”

Jack had been so certain. Now he did not know what to say. He just muttered, “What’s the next step?”

“That’s what I’m here to talk to you about. I know you have concerns of KGB involvement, and I’m certainly not prepared to rule anything out at this moment, but I do believe this RAF cell committed the attack that killed the two Swiss bankers.”

“What about Penright?”

Eastling answered with understated sarcasm: “I am sticking with my assertion that the bus that ran him down was not driven by the RAF, nor was it driven by the KGB. Seriously, Ryan, he wasn’t pushed. Remember, there were witnesses saying he was drunk. And we do not think he was drugged. His body did not show indications of known poisons, though toxicology results won’t be available for a while. If the Reds have some new poison we don’t know about, well, Lord help us all. But that’s not within the scope of my inquiry.”

“So what are you telling me?”

“I’m telling you we are going home. This afternoon.”

Jack rubbed his eyes. He found himself wanting to go home himself, to return to his house on Grizedale Close. Sitting on the sofa with Cathy, Sally on the floor coloring, and Jack Junior in his lap—it sounded like heaven right now.

But he pushed the fantasy out of his mind. Not yet.

Jack said, “Have a nice trip. I’m staying.”

Eastling seemed to expect this. He said, “Am I going to have to force the issue?”

Ryan’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t have to do anything. I don’t work for you.”

“Bloody hell, Ryan, we are on the same side here.”

“Not as far as I’m concerned. You are on the side of clearing up the Penright death, and I am on the side of finding out what the hell actually happened. There are other forces at work in this operation. Is it possible that David fell in front of a city bus? I suppose so, but I think we are getting played by the other side.”

“How can I convince you?”

“You can give me everything you have on Morningstar. All the files leading up to Penright’s trip to Switzerland, as well as the paperwork found in the safe at the safe house in Zug. Give me that, let me look it all over, and I’ll draw my own conclusions as to what happened.”

“I can’t—”

“Basil brought me into this investigation because he thought I could help. I have expertise in this world—in a roundabout way, anyhow. If I was read in on what Penright knew, I could talk to Langley and try to get more relevant information on Ritzmann Privatbankiers. Maybe I can help connect whatever dots Penright was working on when he died.”

Eastling said, “You’re like some sort of a foxhound, aren’t you? You think you’ve found a scent and now you won’t stop, no matter what.”

Ryan replied, “I am on a scent. I know I am.”

Eastling did not respond to this, so Ryan prompted him.

“What do you think?”

Eastling said, “What do I think? I think you are a sanctimonious Yank who does not know how to behave. You shot up some Ulstermen last year and you got your knighthood, and you shot up some RAF sniper this morning and the Krauts will probably make you a bloody Kaiser or something equally as ridiculous, but your good fortune has advanced you further than your ability to work on a team ever will. If I was the one to make the decision, you would be dumped on your arse outside the U.S. consulate and shipped back to America, where you belong, in a steamer trunk.” He took a deep breath and blew it out. “But this isn’t a call for me to make.”

He sighed again. “I’ll talk to Basil, and he will make the determination what, if anything, you can see from the Morningstar files.”

“That’s all I ask.”

Victor Oxley and Jack Ryan, Jr., waited an hour before beginning the interrogation of the Seven Strong Men hit man. Ryan had prompted the Englishman several times to get on with it, but Ox kept saying that he wanted to let the young man stew in the bathroom for a little while longer. He was held in an uncomfortable position, with no clear understanding of where he was or what was going on, and, Oxley explained to Ryan, giving him some time to think about his predicament was standard operating procedure for a hostile interrogation.

Jack thought it was just as likely that Ox wanted to sit on his ass and drink his whiskey for as long as possible, so he was stalling with all this talk of SOPs.

Jack himself got up once, declaring that he would get the ball rolling by asking the man some questions, but Oxley persuaded him to wait a little longer.

“Look, lad, we might have to resort to the ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine, and for that, I want to start with the bad cop, and that’s gonna be me.”

Oxley put his mixture of cola and whiskey down on the concrete surface of the tiny balcony, stood without a word, and went back in the room. Jack followed him in and he saw the big man pull off his sweater, revealing a wide back with as many tattoos as Jack had seen on his chest. Ox tossed the sweater on the bed and took a few slow breaths, as if trying to return to a place in his mind he had left long ago. Then he walked over to a small wooden table and chair set in the corner. With surprising ease, the fifty-nine-year-old snapped the leg off the chair with a loud crack, then turned back to Ryan.

“We need to know who sent him and why. Anything else?”

“You don’t want me in there with you?”

“No, lad, I’ll go in alone.”

Ryan knew what Oxley was doing. He said, “Look, I appreciate you wanting to keep me clear of anything that might compromise me or my dad, but I can assure you, at this point I’m already in pretty deep.”

Oxley stared at Jack for a moment, then said, “Lad, I don’t give a flying toss about compromising you or your bloody daddy. That’s a tiny loo in there, and if I have to start swinging, there’s not going to be room for the both of us.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Why don’t you be a bright boy and look over his telephone, see if it has any answers I can’t beat out of him? And while you’re at it, turn up the volume on the telly.”