Tom Clancy - Command Authority

“And why is that?”

John Clark spoke now: “Because the owner of that phone has spent part of the past month in a house in a Moscow suburb. That house is owned by a man named Pavel Lechkov, and although we know he’s Russian, we don’t have anything on him. We tried to find a picture of Lechkov but came up blank, which makes me suspect he might be an intelligence agent.” Clark added, “There’s more, Jack.”

“I’m listening.”

Gavin said, “I bread-crumbed his phone number and tracked it to a couple of hotels in London. But Friday evening he went to a private residence in Islington.”

Jack asked the next question with trepidation. “Friday evening is after I went to Corby to see Ox. Whose place did Lechkov go to in Islington?”

Clark said, “He spent twenty-five minutes at the home of Hugh Castor.”

“Is that right?” Jack mumbled.

Clark said, “Yes. Whether or not he met with Castor, of course, we can’t say. Nevertheless, I’m afraid your employer in London is starting to look like he might be involved—indirectly, at least—in the attack on you.”

Ryan said, “That’s two strikes against him. He’s involved with the Seven Strong Men, and he knew Oxley from a long time back. It seems like this Lechkov paid Castor a visit after I went and met with Oxley, and then Lechkov met with Oleg and the other Seven Strong Men goons and gave them orders to kill Ox.”

Clark said, “Jack, I hope you will agree, this seems like a fine time for you to head back to the U.S.”

Ryan did not agree. “I have someone here in London that I need to talk to. After that, I want to meet with Malcolm Galbraith. He might be able to connect some more dots.”

Clark went silent.

To bolster his argument, Jack said, “John, I’ll be at Stansted when the plane lands, and we’ll fly to Edinburgh. It’s Edinburgh . It’s not Kiev or Moscow. Plus I’ll have Ding, Sam, and Dom at my side the whole time. Adara will keep watch on the aircraft and Oxley. All I want to do is go have tea with a billionaire and pick his brain—how much trouble can I get into with that?”

Clark sighed. “I guess we’re about to find out.”

After his altercation with MI6 counterintelligence investigator Nick Eastling, CIA analyst Jack Ryan left the British consulate and took a cab to the West Berlin suburb of Zehlendorf. Here, on Clayallee, a large compound of buildings known as Clay Headquarters lay sprawled over several fenced-in blocks. This was the home of Berlin’s United States military command, known as the Berlin Brigade, as well as the Office of the United States Commander, and U.S. Mission Berlin.

Mission Berlin was essentially the State Department’s toehold in the city, because there was no U.S. embassy here.

The CIA, not surprisingly, had many secret locations in West Berlin, but their facility here behind the offices of Mission Berlin was among the most secure and well equipped.

Ryan had chosen this location so that he could communicate with Langley.

He was searched by the U.S. Army guards at the Clayallee main gate, and some calls were made to establish his identity. Soon he walked alone up a tree-lined street and entered the side entrance to Mission Berlin. He gave his name to a man behind a desk, and he was searched again, and then escorted to a freestanding building behind the State Department’s facility.

This was the local CIA station, and it did not take long for Ryan to establish his credentials and obtain his own small office to work from, along with a secure phone.

It took a few minutes to get the phone working, and as soon as he got a dial tone he called Cathy at Hammersmith Hospital. He was disappointed to reach a receptionist who told him his wife was in surgery at the moment, so he left a message saying all was well and he’d try to call that evening.

He then put in a call to Sir Basil Charleston at Century House, but again, he could not reach his intended party. Charleston’s secretary told Jack that Sir Basil was on a call to the United States and that he would get back with him at the soonest possible opportunity.

Jack spent an hour of the afternoon sitting in the office waiting. Finally, at four p.m., Sir Basil Charleston called back.

“I’ve heard it all from Nick,” Basil said.

“Eastling and I don’t see eye to eye on this. Or on anything, for that matter.”

“I gathered as much. You have to understand one thing, Jack. The nature of the work of our counterintelligence staff makes them a tad different than us. I am going to use a football analogy. I do hope you can follow along.”

Jack replied, “I assume you mean soccer.”

“Yes, you call it soccer over there, don’t you? Anyway, we, as intelligence officers, are offensive players. We see the world as our opponent’s goal, and we attack it, leaving the role of protecting our goal to others. Counterintelligence, on the other hand, are the defenders, they are trained to protect the goal. They take issue with us running up the field and leaving them to suss out the opposing side on their own. They look at us as a risk.

“A team needs both types, but sometimes we attackers don’t appreciate the tactics of the defenders.”

Ryan said, “I hope you will let me play some offense. Morningstar may be dead, but there is more to learn about the accounts at Ritzmann Privatbankiers.”

“I spoke with Judge Moore and Admiral Greer this afternoon. I have agreed to give you access to the Morningstar dossier and the preliminary files of the Penright investigation on the condition that you share all your findings with us immediately.”

A wave of relief washed over Ryan. “Of course I will.”

“Will you be coming back to London?”

“I’d like to stay over here in case I turn up anything.”

“I thought you might say that. I’m having everything driven over to you from our consulate in Berlin. A courier will stand by while you look it over. He’ll explain the protocol to you.”

“I’ll get right to work on it here, and I’ll call you if I find anything.”

An hour later, Ryan met the courier from the local MI6 office in the lobby of Mission Berlin. The man called himself Mr. Miles, and after Jack gave him one look he decided the man had been out of the military and working for SIS for all of about ten minutes. He was middle-aged but square-jawed and muscular and he stood with his shoulders ramrod straight. He carried a briefcase in which, Jack assumed, the files were stored. Jack reached out to take it, and Mr. Miles pulled the arm of his coat up a few inches to reveal the case discreetly handcuffed to his wrist.

“Let’s you and me have a wee chat before I hand this off to you. Is that all right, sir?”

“Sure,” Jack said. It dawned on the American analyst then that being passed secret documents in the field was a different process from having them sent over to one’s desk at Century House.

Together, Jack and Miles walked to the cafeteria, and as soon as they sat at a table, the Englishman had Jack sign several sheets of paper saying he wouldn’t steal any of the documents he was about to see, nor would he copy anything, destroy anything, or otherwise do anything that would give the British SIS courier a reason to hit him over the head with a chair.

Ryan thought this fellow to be one of the most serious Englishmen he’d met in his time over here in Europe, but, he had to admit, sending Mr. Miles over with the files did have the desired effect. Ryan told himself he’d better not get so much as a smudge on the paperwork, because he did not want this man annoyed with him.

Soon the courier sat at a table in the cafeteria to smoke cigarettes and drink coffee, and Jack went back to his tiny borrowed office so he could dig into the files relating to the Morningstar case.