Tom Clancy - Command Authority

A man leaned right over his face; the Englishman could smell tobacco and sweat. When the man spoke, he spoke in English, but there was no doubt. The man was Russian.

“I do not know who you are, but I think you are one of the people who have been making life very difficult for me and my associates. If I could, I would take you out of here and shoot you right now.” He paused. “When Stasi is finished with you, you might wish I had.”

And that was all.

The van stopped a moment later, the door opened, and someone climbed out without a word. Bedrock heard footsteps retreating on gravel, and he was surprised to hear from the uneven cadence that whoever was walking away was doing so with a pronounced limp.

They were moving again in moments; the English spy thought it was the Russian who had left, because immediately the German men around him all began talking. Ox did not speak German, but he sensed a wave of relief in the voices of the Stasi men.

The relief did not extend to Oxley himself; the boots just rained down harder.

They drove for more than two hours, but Ox knew enough about Stasi tactics to know they could have just been going in circles, a little theater to keep him guessing about where they were taking him.

When they stopped again, Ox was pulled from the van, and his arms were bound at the wrists and held high up behind him in a stress position, forcing him to lean all the way forward at the waist. There were men on both sides of him, and they pushed him onward, upstairs, downstairs, in elevators that disoriented him to the point he did not know if he was in the bottom of a nuclear silo or at the top of a TV tower.

Finally he was brought into a room, his hood was removed, and his cuffs were attached to a hook at a table.

He had not spoken a word so far, and he made a decision, right there, that would simultaneously save his life but condemn it to unbearable hardship.

He decided to speak Russian.

He had no identification on him, he’d left everything in his hotel, so he could say whatever he wanted without any direct proof he was lying.

As long as he kept his cover up.

For three days he was kept awake with cold water and electric shocks in an attempt to break him, but he spoke only Russian, told the Germans he didn’t know what they wanted, and they had no right to do this to a citizen of the Soviet Union.

Ox had heard the stories about how Stasi agents had a particularly nasty way of tracking people they had picked up. The Stasi would sit them down in front of what looked to be some sort of large camera, then tell them to wait while they changed film.

But it was not a camera. It was an X-ray machine, and the entire time the unfortunate subjects sat there they were being bombarded with radioactive particles.

The process would ensure that every time the subjects passed through any of the checkpoints with the West, all of which had radiation detectors, they would be flagged as having been previously picked up by the Stasi.

They might have their lives shortened by decades because of cancer from radiation poisoning, but no matter. The Stasi found the tactic convenient.

But Oxley was not radiated by the Stasi, because Oxley was not heading back out to the West.

No, he was headed east.

The East Germans handed him off to the KGB.

President of the United States Jack Ryan realized he was squeezing the side of his desk with his free hand as he listened to the gravel-voiced Englishman tell a story that had turned out so well for Ryan and so poorly for him.

When the story stopped, Jack knew there must have been much, much more, but he recognized the Englishman was waiting to hear something from Ryan, just to know he was still there.

Jack said, “I don’t know what to say.”

“Did you call it in? Did you report what happened?”

“Did I call it in? I was with the German police five minutes after the fact, looking for you. An hour later, I had every U.S. intelligence asset in the city on the hunt. By the next day, I was in London in the office of the director of the SIS. Of course I looked for you. I did not know you were a British operative, but I had everyone hunting for you and Marta nonetheless.”

Oxley said, “Fair enough, Ryan. I’ve got reasons to believe you now, thanks to your boy here, but I spent thirty years under the impression you’d kept your mouth shut about the whole bloody affair. I’ve been holdin’ a bit of a grudge, to be honest. I didn’t know you from Adam at the time. But years later I was sitting in my pub when your face came up on the telly saying you were the American President.”

Jack Junior spoke up now: “Dad, Ox was the man who gave SIS the intel about Talanov being Zenith. He was in a gulag when Talanov was there. He didn’t meet him, but he picked up the story.”

“Is it credible?”

Oxley said, “Seemed so, but it was a long time ago. My memory is not what it once was.”

“I understand, Mr. Oxley.”

Jack Junior said, “We have to go. I’m going to get answers for you on Zenith, but I don’t have them yet.”

“Just tell me you are okay.” Jack Junior could hear the emotion in his father’s voice. He was lost in the past now, and had no idea what his son was involved in at present.

“I’m with Ding, Dom, and Sam in the Hendley jet.”

“The Hendley jet? You aren’t in London?”

“We’re going to check a lead or two on the continent. I’ll call you when I know something. You’ve got enough on your plate right now dealing with Ukraine.”

“It is a difficult situation,” Ryan said, “but as long as I know you aren’t in the middle of it, I’ll feel a little better.”

Jack Junior just said, “I’m a long way from Ukraine, Dad.”

Ryan, Chavez, Caruso, Oxley, and Driscoll arrived in Zurich in the early evening, rented a pair of Mercedes SUVs, and headed south toward Zug. There was heavy rain and fog, which Ryan hoped would work to their advantage, as they had no idea who was looking for them.

The four Americans were armed now. Before they left the G550, Adara had passed out pistols that had been hidden in an access panel on the flight deck. Jack and Ding both chose the Glock 19, and Driscoll and Caruso took SIG Sauer P229s. The men knew if Castor was protected by any sizable security force they would not be able to initiate any sort of real attack with handguns, but at least with the firearms hidden inside their jackets they would be able to defend themselves from most threats.

They had little information about the physical property of Castor’s place, other than some notes Galbraith made for Jack regarding the layout. From this and a careful search of online maps, the men decided their best chance to enter undetected was via the lake at the rear of the property.

They rented a boat and scuba gear in the marina, and by seven p.m. they were a quarter-mile offshore from Castor’s lake house, scanning the two-acre grounds through binoculars. They could see some activity inside through the huge floor-to-ceiling windows, as well as plainclothes security men patrolling with submachine guns around the building’s exterior and down a hill in the rear of the property at a pier and boathouse on the lake.

The security men looked like a professional group, and it gave Ryan confidence that Castor was, in fact, on the premises.

Ding said, “I see eight to ten guys. We are not getting through them undetected, and we aren’t shooting it out with Swiss rent-a-cops.”

Ryan agreed. “We’ll have to figure out another way in.”

The Americans sat on the boat, discussing some way to covertly gain access to Castor without being detected by his security.