Tom Clancy - Command Authority

He wasn’t thinking about quid pro quo now. He was just thinking about keeping the twenty-five-year-old woman alive.

He wondered if this meant that he wasn’t hard and cynical enough for real operational work.

He pushed the thought out of his mind and stood up. “That’s not for me to say. First, let’s get out of here, and get you some protection. Then we can worry about everything else.”

“You are lying. The American government is not going to help me.”

“Well, at least we’re not going to kill you. Think about it this way, Marta. We are capitalists. You give us something, and we will give you something in trade. You give us information, and we will give you the protection you need. This relationship doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.”

“Why should I trust you?”

Jack cracked a half-smile. “Because America works with people it doesn’t like all the goddamned time.”

That seemed to sink in. Jack could tell that Marta’s dire predicament was clear to her. She did not agree verbally, she still seemed to be on the verge of panic, but she nodded.

Ryan untied her. While doing so, he asked, “Why doesn’t the RAF release a statement saying they weren’t involved in this?”

She said, “I do not lead the RAF. If the KGB tricked us, used me to take responsibility for what happened in Switzerland, the RAF will not come out publicly against the Soviet Union. That would be the final nail in our coffin. We would get no more support from any Communist Party group in the world.”

That made sense to Ryan. They were, to some degree, a vassal of Russian intelligence. They might complain internally about the affair, but they couldn’t go public and admit they had been used by the KGB.

Ryan helped Marta to her feet. He said, “You go first, I’ll walk behind you.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not turning my back on you. You’ve already stabbed me once.”

Marta and Jack moved together slowly through the darkened building. On the first floor, Jack turned to go to the fire escape, but Marta said, “No. Follow me.”

Jack followed her down another flight of stairs, all the way to the automotive shop on the ground floor of the building. There were a few dim bulbs glowing here, enough for the two of them to easily make their way to a utility room on the northwest side of the building. A narrow wooden staircase led down to the basement. Marta pulled a cord in the center of the room and a bare lightbulb revealed a washer and dryer. Next to these was a metal hatch in the wall.

“What’s this?” Jack asked.

“This was a coal chute back before the war. We use it to come and go in case the police are watching the front of the building.”

Marta opened the chute; it made a muffled scraping sound, but Jack knew the police on the far side of the building would not have heard a thing. She crawled out first, and Jack followed.

Jack found himself standing in a paved space between two buildings. There was barely room to walk.

Marta said, “Our building survived the war, but this building on the left came after. They built it so close that on a map it looks like they are connected. The stupid pigs don’t even know about this alley.”

They made their way through the dark, narrow space for a minute, moving between apartment buildings, and then they came out on a footpath next to Sparrstrasse.

Once they arrived at the street, Jack said, “We need to hail a taxi.”

Marta said, “A taxi? You don’t have a car?”

“No. I came on foot.”

“What kind of a spy are you?”

“I didn’t say I was a spy.”

Marta looked terrified again. It was clear to Ryan she was afraid of being out on the street. She said, “It’s one in the morning. Here in Wedding, at this time, the only chance is on Fennstrasse. That’s three or four blocks away.”

“Let’s go, then.”

She hesitated. Ryan saw tremors in her hands. Finally she said, “This way.”

Jack held his sore right forearm with his left hand as they walked together past a small empty park. He kept his eyes shifting from the apartment buildings on his right to the woman walking on his left. He saw a pay phone and thought about calling someone at Mission Berlin to come pick them up, but decided against it, figuring they could make it to Clay Headquarters faster by taxi, and he didn’t want to wait around out here for a ride.

It was pitch dark in the Sparrplatz, the block-wide green space next to where Jack and Marta walked in the freezing rain, so they could not see the lone man watching them from the trees next to the run-down basketball court. He stood still and silent until they made a right on Lynarstrasse and disappeared from view, then he moved out of the park, passing wide of the glow of a streetlight as he walked on the pavement they had crossed thirty seconds earlier.

He wore a leather bomber jacket, a riding cap, and leather gloves. Anyone watching from the street might note that, even though the rain was heavy enough to warrant one, the man had no umbrella, but he was otherwise unremarkable and impossible to identify.

The man turned on Lynarstrasse just as Jack Ryan and Marta Scheuring made a left on Tegeler Strasse in front of him.

The man picked up the pace and ducked his neck deeper in his bomber jacket to ward off the rain and the chill.

Jack was beginning to worry about Marta. Her nerves were getting the best of her as they walked alone in the rain, as if the darkness between streetlamps was terrorizing her anew. And each time a vehicle passed, she recoiled in terror and looked to Jack for comfort.

They spotted a passing taxi on Fennstrasse, but it drove right past them as they tried to flag it down. A second cab already had a late-night fare, so it rolled by as well. Jack was getting frustrated; he didn’t like walking the nearly empty streets, more because of the danger Marta was in than any thoughts of his own safety.

Marta saw the headlights of an approaching vehicle before Jack did, for the simple reason that Jack was too busy watching Marta to have his eyes focused four blocks up the road.

When Jack did look, he could not tell what sort of vehicle it was. “Is that a taxi?” Jack asked, and he looked back to Marta, and realized she had stopped walking.

“Das weiss ich nicht,” she said. Her eyes were locked on the headlights, and they were wide in terror.

“Marta, relax,” Jack said, and he stepped to the curb, ready to flag down the car.

But it was not a taxi. It was a large white van.

And it began to slow down as it neared them. It pulled to a stop along the sidewalk in the middle of the block, not fifty feet away.

A side door slid open loudly.

“It’s him!” she said, her voice panic-stricken.

Marta Scheuring turned and ran.

Jack started to do the same, but as he started following after her he looked back over his shoulder. A huge stack of newspapers, all lashed together with cord and wrapped in clear plastic, flew out of the open door of the van. The newspapers slammed to the ground at the front door of an all-night market.

A moment later, a man stepped out of the market, gave the van a quick wave, then lifted the newspapers and returned to his warm and dry store.

The van drove off down the street.

Jack called out to Marta: “It’s okay!” He blew out a sigh of relief, but only until he realized Marta Scheuring was gone.

He saw the door to an apartment building closing just yards away; he raced for it and tried to follow her through, but the door would not reopen.