Tom Clancy - Command Authority

“Okay. But Ox… I don’t care if you sweat this guy, but don’t kill him.”

Oxley nodded; his face had taken on a blank expression since the moment he pulled off his sweater and again revealed himself to be a former inmate of a Russian gulag. He said, “I learned something a long time ago, something you’d do well never to learn for yourself. Surviving is much more painful than death. Believe me, I won’t do this arsehole the favor of snapping his neck.”

Oxley stepped into the bathroom and shut the door behind him.

He stepped back out twenty minutes later. Ryan had spent the time transcribing numbers off the Russian’s phone. All the exchanges were foreign, but Ryan hadn’t looked them up yet. He hadn’t called any of the numbers, either. The contact list was in Cyrillic, but although Ryan could read it easily, it was just a bunch of first names that told him little.

While Ryan had worked on writing the numbers down and looking through the text history on the phone, he’d heard several low wails and two sharp screams from the bathroom.

Victor Oxley’s forehead was covered in sweat now. He was a good sixty pounds overweight, but Jack noticed for the first time that his shoulders, arms, and pecs, although covered in a thick layer of fat, retained a good deal of muscular bulk. He seemed to Jack more of an aging boxer who had let himself go than a completely sedentary bar-stool drunk.

“How is he?” Jack asked.

Ox did not respond at first. Instead, he just walked out to the balcony, breathed in a little cool air, and scooped up his bottle. He also picked up a bottle of beer, then went back inside, opened the bathroom door, and rolled the bottle inside.

He shut the door again, walked over to the bed, and slumped heavily onto his back on the mattress.

Finally he answered Ryan. “He’s fine. The two of us got on like old chums. Oleg’s his name.”

“You didn’t have to beat him up?”

“Well, just to say hello. After that, he was a right talker.”

“And?”

“He is Seven Strong Men. He’s been in the UK for only three days, came over on a Ukrainian passport that he got from Seven Strong Men contacts in Kiev.”

“Kiev?”

“That’s right. He works for a Russian bloke called Gleb the Scar. Gleb is vory .”

“That’s like a made man in Russia, right?”

“Exactly. Gleb’s blokes in Kiev had ordered some other blokes to tail you, they’d been doing it for weeks, says Oleg. He couldn’t name ’em or describe them. He said he never saw them.” Oxley shrugged and swigged. “And I do believe him. He wasn’t holding out. Anyway, he and two others we met today in my flat came over to London with orders to take over for another crew that was following you around. Nothing more than that. But right after they arrived, you surprised them by driving up to Corby. One of the watchers reported that up the chain to Kiev, and then suddenly more Seven Strong Men henchmen were flying over from Kiev with new orders.”

“What orders?” Jack asked.

“You were to get a good knockabout, broken jaw, that sort of thing, enough to send you home to America with your tail between your legs. Me, on the other hand, wasn’t going to get off that easily. They had orders to kill me.”

“Why?”

Oxley chuckled, a low rumble that shook the bedsprings of the cheap mattress. “Let me explain something to you, lad. Oleg isn’t in the ‘why’ loop of things. He gets a photo and an address, and he goes and does his job without asking about the ‘why’ part.”

Jack thought it over. “So they were onto me before I even knew about you.”

“Like I suspected. You brought this down on me.”

“It must have to do Malcolm Galbraith.”

“Who’s that?”

“He’s a guy who got screwed out of a billion dollars in Russia. I’m working for him. Well, I was until I was reassigned.”

Oxley just sipped his drink, lying back on the pillows of the bed.

Jack asked, “You’ve never heard of Galbraith?”

The Englishman shook his head.

“What about Gleb the Scar?”

“Not till just now.”

Jack thought for a moment. “Do you know a man named Dmitri Nesterov?”

He shook his head. “Who might that be?”

“He’s the crook who ripped off Malcolm Galbraith. He is supposedly FSB.”

Oxley shrugged and took another drink. The big man looked somewhat tipsy, which was to be expected. Jack was no teetotaler, but he realized he would have passed out long ago if he’d downed so much booze.

Jack said, “I need to talk to my dad, and I need to talk to my boss. Maybe we can put more pieces of the puzzle together.”

“What’s dear old Daddy gonna say about you shooting it out with the Russian mafia?”

Jack had been thinking about little else for the past few hours. It was a problem, but this had gone way past the point of shielding his father from possible scandal. He said, “He’s going to want me to come home to the USA as soon as he hears what’s happened.” Jack thought for a moment. “I’ll wait for now, and call my dad once I know a little more about what’s going on.”

“He won’t be pleased.”

Jack just shrugged. He felt bad about continually worrying his parents with the life he led, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to talk to this old Brit about his relationship with his family. He changed the subject: “What are we going to do with your pal Oleg in there?”

“We’re going to let him go.”

“Let him go? Are you crazy?”

“Might be, but when you think about it, what can we do with him? We are the two sods who’ve put four men on ice today, right?”

Jack didn’t answer.

Oxley said, “Look, we turn him over to the cops, and this gets a lot more complicated for you. We cut him loose, and you don’t have to admit you were there in Corby.”

“What about your next-door neighbor? She saw me.”

“Blind as a bloody bat, and half deaf to boot. She couldn’t identify you as white, black, green, or blue, trust me.”

“But if we let Oleg go, how do we know he won’t just come back and try to kill us again?”

Ox laughed. “I’d like to see him try it with his two broken arms.”

Jack slowly put his head down in his hands. “You broke his arms?”

“I’m not fucking daft, Ryan. He’s a dangerous man. He’s not walking outta here with all his parts in working order.”

“How the hell is he supposed to drink that beer you gave him?”

Victor laughed at this, too. “Not my problem, is it?”

“Okay,” Jack said slowly. “I guess Oleg gets a pass. But if this Gleb the Scar character sent a half-dozen men after us, I imagine he can come up with another half-dozen.”

Ox nodded. “It’s a safe bet this town is crawling with Seven Strong Men killers.”

“Why don’t you come with me? You’ll be safe. I’ll talk to Sandy and see if he has any ideas as to who this Gleb the Scar is. Castor, too. It’s possible that they’ve crossed paths in the—”

Victor Oxley sat up straight on the bed. His eyes were full of intensity again; whatever alcohol-fueled impairment Ryan had detected a moment ago was gone. “What did you say?”

“I said I have to talk to Sandy. Sandy Lamont. He’s my boss.”

“The other bloke.”

“Oh… Castor. Hugh Castor. He runs Castor and Boyle, the consulting firm where I work.”

Oxley climbed off the bed, stood, and walked over to Ryan. He stood above him, his posture menacing.

“What is it?”

“You asked me if I knew a lot of people, you didn’t ask me if I knew Hugh Castor.”

“Okay. I take it you know Hugh Castor?”

Oxley squeezed the bottle hard. “Tell me again, lad. How do you know about me?”