Tom Clancy - Command Authority

“President Volodin, even though Talanov will be destroyed by this, there is a way forward for you, if you so choose. We will reveal our findings of the polonium investigation. They will point to the Seven Strong Men. That, and the fact that Talanov just became as toxic as Golovko was, gives you an opportunity to publicly distance yourself from him before your affiliation destroys you.”

Volodin asked, “What is your objective in all this?”

Jack knew what he meant. Volodin was asking what it was that the United States wanted in return for not exposing the Russian government’s payment to the Seven Strong Men.

Ryan said, “It is very simple. Your armor stops where it is, and returns to the Crimea. You will have won a small victory, but any victory at all is more than you deserve. If that happens, we will not connect the dots between yourself and Zenith.”

“I cannot be blackmailed!”

“But you can be destroyed. Not by me. I don’t want war. But you can be destroyed from within. Russia needs to know who is at its helm. No one in Russia will believe me. But there is evidence. Evidence from Nesterov and Castor and other men, and the evidence will speak for itself, and it will get out there.”

“If you think I am afraid of your propaganda, you are mistaken.”

“President Volodin, the old guard still alive in the KGB will look into the dates. The bankers will look into the account numbers. The bureau of prisons will look into information on Talanov. Several European nations will reinvestigate old crimes. If it is my propaganda that starts the snowball, it will only be for a moment, at the top of the hill. Everything I say will be proven now that everyone knows where to look.”

Valeri Volodin hung up the phone.

An aide came on the line a second later. “Mr. President, shall I try to get him back?”

“No, thank you,” Ryan said. “I delivered my message. Now we have to wait to see his response to it.”

Roman Talanov resigned from the FSB two days after Russia ceased offensive operations in Ukraine and pulled forces back to the Crimea. Typical of his career in government service, Talanov made no announcement himself; instead, Valeri Volodin went before his favorite news presenter, and after accepting high praise for his successes in stamping out terrorism in eastern Ukraine, he said he had a very unfortunate announcement to make.

“I have decided I have lost confidence in Roman Romanovich Talanov. Disturbing facts have come to light about his dealings with organized crime, and as the person responsible for the integrity of all Russian citizens, I recognize Talanov is not the right man for the job.”

Volodin appointed a man no one had ever heard of—he himself picked him from a cabal of trusted advisers, though the man had no intelligence experience—and he ordered Talanov’s name removed from all official correspondence.

Roman Talanov knew what it meant to be a disgraced vory . There was no more dangerous position in all of Russia, because everyone he had surrounded himself with became, in the blink of an eye, the very people most hazardous to him. He retreated to his dacha in Krasnodar Krai, on the Black Sea coast, with a security staff of twenty trusted men, and he armed them all from an armory of weapons stolen from a KGB Spetsnaz unit.

Valeri Volodin sent an emissary—he would not speak with Talanov himself—and assured him he would have government protection and all the proceeds from selling his Gazprom shares, in exchange for making no public announcements.

Talanov agreed. He had been following the orders of Valeri Volodin for more than thirty years; he really didn’t know how to do anything else.

It was a member of his own staff who killed him. Six days after Talanov was outed as a KGB officer who misrepresented himself to earn vory v zakonye status, one of the junior members of his guard force, a civilian who secretly aspired to great things in the Seven Strong Men, waited for Talanov to step out of his shower and then stabbed him through the heart with a dagger. He took pictures of the body with his cell phone, and posted them on social media to brag of the event.

There was a special irony in the fact that the first image most Russians ever saw of the former intelligence chief was of his bloody naked body lying faceup on a tile floor, his eyes wide in death.

Jack Ryan, Jr., called his father from the back of the Hendley Associates jet when he was over the Atlantic. His dad had been worried about him for the past week for the simple reason that Jack had gone to London to move out of his flat, and even with Dom and Sam to help him, it still took a little time.

Jack didn’t want to call his dad while he was still in the UK. Instead, he called his mom and sent e-mails, assuring them both that he’d be home soon.

Dom and Sam loved the UK, and Jack had to admit he was going to miss it greatly. He recognized it was his own melancholy when he arrived that had made his time here tough going at first, long before the Russian mob made the experience even less cheery.

But now he was on his way home, which meant he could talk to his father without having to hear all the concern in his voice that Jack had heard so much of the past few years. He realized he made his dad’s tough life even tougher by his choice of profession, but he also realized one other thing.

If there was anyone on earth who understood the need to serve a greater good despite personal danger, it was his own father.

After establishing the fact that his son’s next stop would be the United States of America, Jack Senior said, “Son, I haven’t had a chance to thank you for passing me all the intel last week. You turned the tide. You damn well saved a lot of lives.”

Jack Junior wasn’t patting his own back, though. “I don’t know, Dad. Volodin is still alive and in power. They are dancing in the streets in the parts of Ukraine where he is now the head honcho. Doesn’t quite feel like a victory.”

Ryan said, “It’s not the ending any of us wanted. But we stopped a war.”

“Are you sure you didn’t just delay it?”

Jack Senior sighed. “No. I’m not sure at all. In fact, in some ways a weakened Volodin is even more dangerous. He might be like a wounded animal. Ready to lash out at anything. But I’ve been at this sort of thing for a while, and I feel like we maximized benefit and minimized detriment. A lot of good people lost their lives over this: Sergey, Oxley, men in and out of uniform serving in Eastern Europe. It’s okay to wish we got more out of this, but the real world bites back.”

“Yeah,” Jack Junior said. “It does.”

Jack Senior said, “We didn’t lose, Jack. We just didn’t win.”

That sank in after a moment. “Okay.”

Ryan asked, “What’s your plan now, son?”

“I want to come home. I’ve talked to Gerry already. He found a new building in Fairfax County, and Gavin has come up with some new technology to help us move forward.”

Ryan said, “That’s good. I know you miss working with the team. I can’t say I don’t wish you would live a safer life, though.”

Jack Junior said, “You saw what happened when I took a boring job with no chance for danger.”

“Yeah, I did. I sent you off after some of that danger, didn’t I?”

“You trusted me. I appreciate that. Thanks.”

“You bet, sport. Drop by as soon as you can when you get home. I miss you.”

“I will, Dad. I miss you, too.”

CIA analyst Jack Ryan climbed out of the taxi in front of his house on Grizedale Close. He’d borrowed a coat from a colleague at Century House, and he was glad he had, because it was a cold night here in Chatham. The street was empty, and he figured it had to have been after midnight, but he’d taken his watch off in Berlin when the doctor treated his injury, and he’d thrown it in his suitcase after that.