Tom Clancy - Command Authority

Rex said, “I can call some locals for that.”

Bixby shook his head. “Not if the cops are already talking about us. I don’t want anyone in the neighborhood to know we’re about to make a run for it.”

Bixby mulled it over quickly. Who could he call to help? There were some nonofficial cover operators in the country, but they were all near the border, and they checked in only when it was secure to do so. He couldn’t see a way to ask them to come to the Lighthouse without burning more CIA assets.

There were a small number of U.S. forces here in Ukraine, based mostly on Ukrainian military bases. But none were in the Crimean peninsula, and more important, he couldn’t just have a few U.S. Army Humvees roll through the gates without attracting the kind of attention that would make driving out of here quietly an impossibility.

Then it came to him. John Clark and Domingo Chavez.

He turned to Midas. “I’ll make a call and have a couple more trucks here tomorrow morning.”

Midas said, “Good deal. We’ve got guys on the roof watching for any developments in the streets. The rest of us will keep packing up in the meantime.”

John Clark was just climbing into the plush bedding in his deluxe room in the Fairmont Grand Hotel when his sat phone rang.

“Clark.”

“Hey, buddy.”

Clark recognized Keith Bixby. He had to chuckle. It already sounded like the CIA man was going to ask for another favor. “Hey, pal,” he replied.

“I hate to push my luck with you, but I’ve got a problem and I could really use some quick help.”

“Name it.”

“It involves an eleven-hour drive through the night into a situation that is going from somewhat shaky to downright dangerous. You up for that?”

Clark replied, “I’ll notify my guys. I guess I better call room service and get some coffee up here.”

Bixby explained the situation in brief, and within minutes Clark was on the phone with Ding in the safe-house flat across town.

Jack Ryan, Jr., had spent the entire day in his office at Castor and Boyle setting up a new IBM i2 Analyst’s Notebook database. This file pertained to his new assignment, the theft of funds from a Norwegian freighter company that had purchased some ships from a Russian firm but, upon delivery, realized they had been sold rusty hulks. Not only was the case cut-and-dried and uninteresting, but the total value of the crime was several orders of magnitude less than the Galbraith–Gazprom affair. Jack had found himself bored by noon, and by two p.m. he was already sneaking peeks at a Gazprom affiliate mind map he’d made on Analyst’s Notebook the previous week.

His phone rang, and he reached for it automatically.

“Ryan.”

“Hey, Jack. Am I interrupting anything?”

Ryan was surprised to hear from his father. “Hey, Dad! Not at all. Just dealing with the Russians.”

“You and me both.”

Junior said, “Yeah, I heard. Has Dan figured out who poisoned Golovko yet?”

“Yes, but it’s one of those things that creates more questions than answers.”

Jack Junior looked up at his mind map; it looked like multicolored spaghetti noodles in a bowl. “I hear you.”

“Mom said you called the other night. Sorry I didn’t get to talk to you.”

“That’s okay. I know you have been running around dealing with Sergey and Ukraine. I hope you guys are doing okay.”

“We’re fine. We’re back in the residence, and it’s the same as ever. They tore the john out of the living room bathroom. Can you believe that?”

“Unreal. Look, Dad. I’m sorry I haven’t checked in. Just real busy at work.”

“It’s okay, sport. Been pretty busy at work myself.”

The younger Ryan chuckled.

“So how’s life?”

“It’s fine.”

“Living in London is great, right?” Jack Junior could hear the excitement in his dad’s voice, almost as if he was enjoying himself vicariously through his son’s experience, reliving his own time here so long ago.

Junior just muttered out an unenergetic “Yeah.”

There was a pause. Jack Senior said, “It is great, right?”

“I guess I’m still settling in a little.”

“Is something wrong? Is there a problem?”

“No, Dad. Everything is fine.”

Jack Senior paused again. “You know you can talk about anything, right?”

“Of course. And I will. It’s all good. Work is just frustrating.”

“Okay.” The father left it alone, though he could hear tension in his son’s voice. He asked, “I was wondering if you had time to do me a favor.”

Now Jack Junior lightened up. “Name it. It would be good to think about something else for a bit.”

“You remember Basil Charleston, don’t you?”

“Of course. It’s been a long time. He must be well into his eighties by now.”

“And that’s the problem. I have a couple of questions for him, and I would love to talk to him in person, but I have a funny feeling he’s not going to be able to hear me over the phone. The last time I called him it was hit-and-miss.”

“Does he still have his place in Belgravia?”

“He does.”

“I can swing by, it’s not far at all. What do you want me to ask him?”

“About thirty years ago, there was a string of murders in Europe. At the time, some people thought it was a KGB agent called Zenith who was responsible. We’ve discovered some uncorroborated intelligence tucked away in an old file that suggests Zenith and Roman Talanov were one and the same.”

“Holy shit,” the younger Ryan said.

“That’s basically my thought, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself. I need to know more about this. To that end, the code word ‘Bedrock’ came up in the Zenith murders. We don’t know if that relates to a person, a place, or maybe an operation. We’d like to know just what Bedrock is. And if anyone will remember, it would be Sir Basil.”

The elder Ryan explained that it looked like Charleston had handwritten a reference to Bedrock in the file, and he said he’d have his secretary e-mail the file to Jack Junior immediately.

“Surely that’s going to be classified intelligence. Why would he talk to me?”

Jack Senior said, “Basil won’t have a problem talking to you. He knows you used to work for Gerry.”

Jack Junior knew the phone conversation between him and his father was secure, and he knew his father was aware of this fact as well. Nevertheless, his dad was speaking to him with a little code. The fact Charleston knew the younger Ryan had “worked for Gerry” clearly meant he knew about The Campus. This surprised the younger Ryan.

“Really?”

“Absolutely. He knows you were an analyst there, and he knows the sort of work Gerry was involved with.”

“Okay. Next question. Did this take place back around the time we were living in the UK?”

“Yes, exactly that time. I remember this episode well, as a matter of fact. You were in diapers.”

“No offense, Dad, but that was a long time ago. Do you think there’s any chance Basil is going to remember the case, especially since there is no other record of Bedrock at SIS?”

“Jack, you know better than most, not every important operation gets written down for posterity. If Bedrock was important enough to stay off-book, then I think it’s likely Basil will know all about it.”

“You’ve got a point. I’ll ask him. Do you really think there is any chance this Talanov character was involved?”

“No way of knowing. I’ve learned not to rely too much on one single tidbit of intelligence. It takes more to convince me.”

“But you are curious enough to have me track down Bedrock.”