Tom Clancy - Command Authority

“I probably watch too many movies.”

Sandy Lamont finished his beer, and the two men went exploring the neighborhood. Jack put his Bluetooth earpiece in his ear and hit a record feature on his phone. He didn’t want to be seen taking pictures around here, so he softly read aloud every sign they saw in the business district that looked, in any way, interesting, along with reading off license plate numbers of any of the many expensive cars that rolled through traffic. The Bluetooth would record his notes, and he had speech-to-text software that would put it in his database once he got back to his laptop in his room.

They wandered the streets doing this till nearly eight, then they ate dinner in a harborside restaurant. Just after nine they returned to the hotel, but Jack told Sandy he would download all the data he’d collected into IBM i2 Analyst’s Notebook and run it with the data points he had on the Galbraith Rossiya Energy deal.

Sandy retired to his room, took a long shower, and then changed for bed. He imagined Ryan would have him up at the crack of dawn for another day of skulking around the steamy streets of Saint John’s, and his feet were killing him already.

Just as he kicked his legs into bed, however, there was a knock at his door. He opened it to find Ryan standing there, a laptop under his arm, and dressed in black cotton pants and a black T-shirt.

“It’s not bedtime yet.”

“It’s not?”

“We’re going back out.”

“Where?”

“Let me come in a second and I’ll show you.”

“Do I have a bloody choice?” Lamont opened the door, and Ryan made a beeline for the desk at the far corner of the room. He had his computer open a moment later.

“Look at this,” Jack said. “I got all the new unstructured data in the system and started comparing it to the information I’ve compiled on the Galbraith deal.” He clicked on some buttons and a box came up. Thousands of data points were represented by little dots on a white screen. Lines grew between the different points, and then different colors of points and lines began to pop up. Jack said, “Disparate data points, several degrees of separation.” Then CCS Corporate Services, the Antigua-based registered agent, appeared with both blue and red points over the name.

Seconds later, a name appeared on the chart. Randolph Robinson, attorney-at-law. It had several colored dots on it.

“Who’s this bloke, and what’s his connection?”

“I saw his shingle today on a building on Redcliffe several blocks north of CCS. I popped it in the system, and he shows up as being a lawyer used by CCS.”

Sandy shrugged. “A local company uses a local lawyer. Probably for nominee services. Contracts, and that sort of thing.”

“That’s nothing in itself, and his name doesn’t turn up anywhere else. But I ran him through all social media and business listings, and I found his mobile number. Analyst’s Notebook ties it to two other companies involved in the Galbraith deal, as well as a shell set up by a Saint Petersburg restaurant group.”

“Okay. But what does that prove? That a Russian company has dealings here in Antigua? We know that already.”

“One layer to go,” Ryan said with a smile. “His suite address ties him to a P.O. box associated with a trust that serves as a local executor for Shoal Bank Caribe, which is owned by a holding group in Switzerland. This holding group also owns several other companies, mostly inside Russia and Ukraine. One of these companies has a physical mailing address. That address is the liquor store in Tver, Russia. The one IFC Holdings uses as a drop box.”

Now Sandy was on board. “Bingo.”

Ryan looked at Sandy. “This ties him to the Russian mob.”

Sandy agreed. “This bloke is involved with a bank used to wire funds from IFC.”

Jack was all smiles, but Sandy asked, “What is it you plan to do now?”

“You said it yourself, Sandy: I’m going looking in his trash. He might shred it, but if he doesn’t, then there could be tens of thousands more data points just waiting for me to get my hands on them. I just need you to watch the street for me.”

“You really are a regular double-oh, aren’t you?”

Just days after Gerry Hendley agreed to the reactivation of The Campus, the five operations officers flew to Kiev, Ukraine, on board the Hendley Associates Gulfstream G550. As cover, The Campus used a company created and maintained for the purposes of providing legends to Campus operators in the field. The company, OneWorld Productions, billed itself as a new-media organization based in Vancouver, which reported on world affairs from a left-of-center perspective and distributed its stories to news outlets around the globe via the Internet.

OneWorld Productions had a website, an actual office location with a receptionist in Vancouver, and had even published some pieces of reportage, although very close scrutiny of its online videos would reveal they were actually created by freelance journalists who had no idea all their work was for the purposes of backstopping a private intelligence agency.

In addition to a veteran pilot and copilot, the Hendley Associates Gulfstream operated with help from their director of transportation, a no-nonsense ex–Navy medic named Adara Sherman. When in the air she served as a flight attendant, but she also worked as a team medic in the field, a security officer, and a general facilitator of all things having to do with both the flight and ground transport.

Once Adara cleared the dinner plates out of the way, she helped the men go through some of the equipment they would be using on their mission. Of course they had cameras, iPads, and satellite phones with two-way communications capabilities—all items that any group of journalists wouldn’t be caught without—but they also had brought along several other items that would not hold up so well to close scrutiny by Ukrainian customs personnel.

There was a case full of slap-ons, metallic boxes each not much larger than a box of matches, which held mini–GPS receivers. These gadgets were great for tracking vehicles via apps on the men’s phones and iPads.

Also with them—and these certainly were not contraband, although they would be damn hard to explain—were several hobby-grade electric-powered radio-controlled cars specially designed as delivery vehicles for the slap-ons.

The team had no firearms with them other than Adara’s short-barreled carbine and pistol, and a second of each, all concealed under one of many hidden access panels in the jet, where they would remain. That said, the four operations men of The Campus would have a few other weapons available to them while they were in Kiev. They each carried a multi-tool with a hidden four-inch switchblade. The pens they would carry in their pockets were made of hardened plastic and could easily penetrate clothing and skin, they wore necklaces made out of a covered wire that could be employed as a garrote, and even their satellite phones had an external battery that supplied very little extra juice to the phone, but actually served as a powerful stun gun that could incapacitate someone at contact distance.

With Adara’s help, they hid the more clandestine items in the aircraft’s access panels just so they could pass through a customs inspection on landing. Then the men spent some more time on their laptops reviewing FalconView, a high-tech map system available to military and intelligence, and also available to The Campus, since Gavin Biery had accessed the files back before he’d lost access to the feed between Fort Meade and Langley. But even though their FalconView had not been updated in a few months, Gavin was certain it would still be a hell of a lot more helpful than Google Maps.