Tom Clancy - Command Authority

The entire rally was pitched into chaos as the dead and maimed littered the ground and thousands ran for their lives, even crushing the fallen in their path.

Within minutes of the attack, a call came in to TRK Ukraina, a local news television station. The caller claimed to be a Ukrainian nationalist, and he took credit for the attack on behalf of the Ukrainian people and their allies in the West. He said any attempts by Russia to take over the Crimea would result in the wholesale slaughter of Russian citizens and anti-nationalists, effectively throwing down the gauntlet and ensuring more unrest between Ukraine’s two sides.

The caller was actually an FSB agent phoning from the Fairmont Grand Hotel in Kiev. The FSB had already decided that once the city of Donetsk was retaken by Russian forces, the pro-Russian marchers who died today would have a plaque erected in their name in the square next to the National Academic Ukrainian Musical and Drama Theater.

CIA analyst Jack Ryan arrived in Zurich, Switzerland, with the six-man team of MI6 counterintelligence officers late in the day. The men had traveled separately on the same aircraft, and they all had passports declaring themselves to be English businessmen. Ryan sat nervously through the flight. Like many, he was an anxious air passenger, although unlike most, Ryan had an excuse. The helicopter crash he’d narrowly survived a decade earlier came back to haunt him every time he flew through the air, held up by invisible forces he did not completely trust.

But the flight was unremarkable, and by late afternoon they breezed through Swiss customs and walked to the train station.

The train trip to Zug was just over a half-hour in duration; the men sat in different cars, then each made his own way to a large business-class hotel near the Bahnhof . Here, three of Eastling’s men rented cars, while Nick and the rest of his team turned his top-floor suite into a makeshift command center for the investigation.

Ryan was all but forgotten by the SIS counterintelligence officers for the duration of the afternoon, but he made his way into the command center for a scheduled evening conference.

When everyone was assembled, Eastling addressed his team and, by default, the American tagalong on his operation.

“Right. Tonight Joey will go to the morgue and collect the body. We’ve straightened it out with the embassy in Zurich. Joey will be presented as the brother of the deceased, he’ll get a look at it there in the morgue, just a quick once-over to make sure there’s not something obviously queer about the situation.”

“Like what?” Ryan asked from the back of the room. He’d decided he was going to be a part of this investigation whether Nick Eastling liked it or not.

Eastling shrugged. “Dunno. Like a suicide note in his pocket. An arrow in the back of his head. Shark bite on his arse. Things that might tip us off there is more to this than a bus accident.”

Ryan got the impression Eastling didn’t believe this was anything more than an accident, and this entire investigation was just some sort of pro forma Kabuki theater.

Eastling turned back to Joey. “There should be no problem getting it shipped back to the UK straightaway.”

“Why do I have to be the sod to blow half his per diem on dry ice?” Joey asked, and this comment elicited a few chuckles in the room.

“Save your receipts, my boy. You’ll be compensated for all expenses once we’re back in London.”

Ryan clenched his jaw. He barely knew David Penright, but these men were so flippant about his death it infuriated him.

Eastling continued, “Next, Bart and Leo will go to the local safe house to start checking it top to bottom. You are to tear the place apart. The rest of us will join you to help as soon as we are finished with our tasks.”

“Right, boss,” the men said.

“Stuart, you go to Penright’s hotel. Talk your way into the room. I checked before we left London, the room is paid for until next week, so they haven’t touched a thing. They are waiting on next of kin, so if you can sell that, go ahead and scoop everything up and bring it back here. Eyes out for any corrupting material.”

“Right, Nick.”

Ryan held up his hand. “I’m sorry. I’m a little confused. I thought Penright was a victim either of an accident or of foul play. You are treating him like he is some sort of a suspect in a crime.”

Eastling half rolled his eyes. “Sir John.”

“Please call me Jack.”

“Right. Jack. From all we’ve learned about Penright, he was an able enough operations officer. But we’ve got a little experience in this sort of thing, and his dossier raises certain questions.”

“Such as?”

“He was a bleeding drunk,” the man named Joey said.

Eastling nodded. “The pattern with these types is always the same. They run risks, not just with their bodies, but with their relationships, and their protocol with secret materials is the first weak link in the chain.

“I expect to find that Morningstar has been compromised by the opposition due to David Penright’s actions here in Switzerland. He bedded the wrong girl, he spilled his guts to the wrong bartender, he picked the wrong taxi stand to drop the contents of his briefcase. His death, I am sure we will find, was accidental, but we need to keep a critical eye on the fact the Morningstar operation might have been compromised by the drinking of the officer in charge of the operation.”

Ryan said, “I’m really impressed, Eastling. You have been in Switzerland for three hours, you haven’t left the hotel, and you’ve already come to all these conclusions.”

Eastling and Ryan stared each other down across the suite. The counterintel man said, “I tell you what, old boy. Why don’t you stick with me? First stop tonight will be the tavern where Penright had his last drink. Or, I will hazard to guess, his last ten drinks. We’ll poke around and see what we find.”

“That sounds fine with me,” Jack said. The staring contest continued for a moment, but soon the meeting resumed, and within a half-hour the men began moving out in pursuit of their objectives.

The bar where David Penright drank his last drink was on Vorstadt, right across the street from picturesque Lake Zug. It was nine o’clock in the evening when Eastling and Ryan arrived, which seemed to Ryan to be a lousy time to go poking around, because the establishment was all but packed.

The beer hall was dark and smoke-filled, and the waitresses were young and attractive, dressed in traditional clothing: red tights and puffy white blouses with floral embroidery, although the blouses were cut a little lower than Ryan presumed would be the tradition in a country as cold as Switzerland got in the winter.

Even before they made their way to the bar, Eastling took one look at the waitresses and then leaned over to Ryan. “This looks like our boy’s type of place. Care to wager that we’ll find his fingerprints on half the rumps in the house?”

Ryan ignored the comment.

At the bar, Ryan saw that even though Eastling seemed like a smug prick, he clearly knew his job. The bartender spoke perfect English, and within seconds of ordering a round of plum schnapps for himself and Ryan, the British counterintelligence officer was chatting with the round, bald-headed bartender as though they’d known each other for a long time.

He introduced Jack in passing, then said they worked for the same bank as the man who died the evening before, and they had been sent down from Zurich by his family to collect his things.

“Mein Gott,” said the bartender. He leaned close to Ryan and Eastling to talk over the loud music. “He died right out there on the street. The newspaper said his name was Herr Michaels.”