Command Authority (31 page)

Present day

V
aleri Volodin had a habit of walking at a pace that made others struggle to keep up with him, but this morning he moved even faster than usual. As he stormed out of the elevator and began rushing up the hall on the twenty-second floor of Gazprom’s Moscow corporate headquarters, only the fittest security officers in his entourage were able to stay abreast. Gazprom officials, personal secretaries, and public-relations staff all trailed far behind as he headed toward the building’s state-of-the-art command-and-control center.

Employees of the massive gas giant watched through the glass walls of their offices or peered over cubicles as the president of Russia passed by in a blur. More than five thousand of the nearly half-million Gazprom employees worked here in the corporate HQ, and these employees were well accustomed to big-shot government types skulking in their halls, since Gazprom was partially state-owned, and the part that was not officially owned by the state was more or less secretly owned by the leaders of the state.

Still, Volodin had been here only once before, the day he cut off the gas lines to Estonia.

And everyone who saw him on the twenty-second floor today, especially those who both took note of his intense demeanor and knew anything about what was going on in the world, knew exactly why he was here.

Volodin passed into the command-and-control room, and then he stopped suddenly. Though he was a single-minded and purposeful individual, perhaps to a pathological degree, he still could not help being impressed by the image in front of him. Fifty or so employees were hard at work at their desks, and beyond them at the front wall of the room, a digital map one hundred feet long by twenty-five feet high displayed a lighted maze of pipes intertwined in different colors. This was a graphic representation of Gazprom’s pipeline network, some 175,000 kilometers long, stretching east to Siberia and west to the Atlantic, north to the Arctic and south to the Caspian Sea.

Here, in this nerve center, a few commands into a computer terminal could shut off much of the power across Europe, plunging tens of millions into darkness and cold, and crippling industry and transportation.

And that was the plan.

Volodin had a speech planned; there was a cameraman along with his PR people, and they hustled into the room and began filming.

But Volodin changed his mind on the speech. He decided the less he said, the more impactful his actions would be. He walked to the front of the room, turned around, and faced the controllers. Every man and every woman sat wide-eyed, waiting for the instructions they knew would come.

The president of Russia said, “Ladies and gentlemen, all lines heading to and through Ukraine will be shut down. Immediately.”

Those controlling the flow of the lines to Ukraine had been given a heads-up before Volodin arrived. But no one had said anything about lines flowing
through
Ukraine and into Western Europe.

The director of transfer pipelines sat in the second row. He would comply, of course, but he did not want to make a mistake. With great reluctance, he stood from his desk.

“Mr. President. Just so there is no misunderstanding. Shutting all lines that cross Ukrainian soil will reduce Western Europe’s gas supply by seventy-five percent.”

The pipeline director wondered if his career would end today for questioning the president, but Volodin seemed pleased to be given the opportunity to expand on his declaration.

The president responded, “The current political authority in Ukraine has shown itself to be unreliable as a steward of the resources desperately needed by the people of Western Europe. Natural gas is our resource, and it is in jeopardy as long as Ukraine continues as an unstable state. We here in Russia call on the world community to put pressure on Kiev to do a better job. It is springtime, Europe will not feel the most drastic effects of this action for months, and I am certain Europe will help us alleviate this crisis long before the cold becomes an issue. I am not concerned about Europe’s energy needs as much as I am concerned about Russia’s citizenry both here and in the near abroad. With this decision to cut export pipelines, I expect to see a sense of urgency.”

There was no smile on Volodin’s face. No evil laugh. He delivered the edict that had the power to devastate millions of people as if it were nothing more than a dry administrative decision cooked up by a junior technocrat.

The process to shut the pipeline flows was surprisingly swift and straightforward. Volodin stood there with his hands on his hips and watched the first lines on the massive graphic map change from green to yellow and then to red, signifying a stop in flow.

He did not wait for the entire shutdown process; there were a lot of lines, after all. Instead, he told everyone to keep up the good work, and he stormed out of the command-and-control center just as quickly as he’d rushed in.

—

V
olodin was downstairs and back in his armored limousine in minutes, and as it raced away, shooting north toward the city through a lane reserved for government vehicles, the president looked across the backseat to his chief of staff. “Get Talanov on the line.”

While he waited, he thumbed through some papers in his lap and sipped tea from a filigreed holder.

Soon a mobile phone was passed to him by his chief of staff. Volodin took it. “Roman Romanovich?”

“Da, Valeri.”
Talanov would never have called Volodin by his first name in public, but Talanov was never in public, so this was a nonissue.

Volodin asked, “Has the site exploitation of the CIA compound in Sevastopol taken place?”

“
Da.
The results were not what we had hoped. The CIA group there vacated with most of their equipment and destroyed the rest. They inflicted heavy losses on our Spetsnaz troops, as well as Seven Strong Men irregulars.”

“And we’ve got nothing to show for it?” Before Talanov replied, Volodin said, “Bodies? What about bodies of dead Americans?”

“There was a lot of blood in the compound’s main building. I am told there was enough blood to say with confidence the Americans lost several personnel. But all bodies were retrieved when the American Marines rescued the CIA men.”

“Damn it.”

“
Nyet problem.
It will be fine, Valeri. We will salvage a diplomatic coup.”

“How?”

“We are recording interviews with Ukrainians who worked in the compound. They will say whatever we want them to say. Plus, we have film of American aircraft overhead. The Americans will say they were NATO-flagged aircraft rescuing their Partnership for Peace troops, but you will make the statement that the CIA has been working in the Crimea to destabilize the area.”

“I wanted hard proof.”

“Sorry, Valeri, but if you wanted bodies, you should have given the Black Sea fleet permission to blow the American planes out of the sky. But that’s not my department.”

“No, Roman, it’s not. I did not want to provoke a war with America over Sevastopol. I wanted evidence of CIA provocation in Sevastopol to use against the Americans when the time is right.”

“I understand. But if you—”

“I need more from you on this, Roman. I need an act that can be positively attributed to the CIA in the region.”

There was a short pause on the line. The pause would have been much longer if Roman Talanov and Valeri Volodin did not know each other as well as they did.

Talanov said, “I understand you, Valeri. I will create something, and I will use the evidence we do have from the Sevastopol compound to show incontrovertible proof.”

“Quickly.
Very
quickly. I just stopped gas flow to and through Ukraine.”

“I will get to work, then.
Paka.
” Good-bye.

Thirty years earlier

Present day

I
t had taken Jack Ryan, Jr., days to track down Victor Oxley, the ex–MI5 spy known as Bedrock. He first called James Buck, his hand-to-hand combat trainer back in Maryland. James was a friend of The Campus’s, and was himself an ex-member of SAS, and he happily promised to make some discreet inquiries on Ryan’s behalf.

Jack knew he could have just told his dad about his conversation with Basil, and that would have been the end of it. But the younger Ryan found himself intrigued with the old story. He’d sent an e-mail to his father after his meeting in Belgravia with the ex-head of MI6, and told him simply that he’d learned a few details, but he’d like to look into it a little more.

After Buck did some extensive digging, he told Jack that as far as anyone in the SAS knew, Vick Oxley was still alive. They had no address for him, but by checking some old records, Buck was able to give Ryan his date of birth. This told Ryan that Oxley was fifty-nine. Ryan pulled up UK tax records, a perk of working for a company like Castor and Boyle, and he found exactly one fifty-nine-year-old Victor Oxley on the books. As it happened, the man lived in Corby, two hours north of London. Ryan called the phone number listed and found it out of service, but it was a Friday, and Ryan had banked a few hours of vacation time, so he told Sandy Lamont he’d be leaving after lunch to get an early start on his weekend.

The trip north was uneventful other than the fact Ryan had done very little driving on the left side of the road. More than once he’d winced as he’d passed oncoming traffic passing him by on the right, but after an hour or so his brain started to settle down and get used to this odd sensation.

He arrived in Corby and found the address just after four p.m. Oxley lived in a ramshackle two-story apartment building with a front garden smaller than the living room in Jack’s Earl’s Court apartment.

Ryan walked through the trash-strewn grass to the entryway and took a staircase up to Oxley’s flat.

He knocked, waited, then knocked again.

Frustrated, Ryan headed back to his car, but when he got down to the street, he noticed a pub on the corner, and figured it wouldn’t hurt to check in there in case someone knew the man he was looking for.

The pub was called the Bowl in Hand. Ryan found the place to be a little dark and dingy compared with the watering holes he’d been frequenting in The City. Even the locals seemed to agree that it wasn’t much of a hangout; it was four-fifteen on a Friday afternoon and Ryan counted fewer than ten patrons in the entire pub, all gray-haired men.

Ryan sat at the bar and ordered a pint of John Courage. When the bartender brought him his beer, Ryan put down a ten-pound note and said, “I was wondering if you knew a regular here.”

The burly man said, “I know when someone’s
not
a regular.”

Jack Ryan smiled. He expected this; the bartender didn’t look like he’d gotten his job for his chipper demeanor. Jack reached into his wallet and put down another ten-pound note. He didn’t have a clue what the going rate was for this sort of thing, but he wasn’t going to fan off any more money than he had to.

The bartender took the money. “The name of this chap?”

“Oxley. Victor Oxley.”

The bartender made a surprised face that Jack couldn’t read.

“You know him, then?”

“Aye,” he said, and now Jack saw that any suspicions the man carried before were replaced by a sense of mild curiosity. He got the idea there
were
some shady individuals who frequented this pub that the publican wanted to protect, but Victor Oxley wasn’t one of them.

Still, the man said, “Leave your number. I’ll pass it to him next time he’s in, and if he’s interested in speaking with you . . . he’ll let you know.”

Jack shrugged. It wasn’t how he’d planned it, but it was Friday; he could get a room in a hotel in town and wait a night, because he didn’t have to be in the office in the morning. He pulled his Castor and Boyle business card out of his wallet and handed it to the bartender. Then he said, “There’s another twenty for you when I talk to him.”

The bartender raised his bushy eyebrows and put the card into his breast pocket without looking at it.

Jack turned his attention to his beer and started thumbing through his phone, looking for the closest inn that looked decent enough for one night.

As he did this, the bartender began talking with an old-timer at the end of the bar. Jack paid little attention to them as he concentrated on his phone.

A minute later the bartender returned and dropped Jack’s business card next to the glass of John Courage. “Sorry, lad. Vick isn’t interested in chatting.”

Ryan looked over to the man at the end of the bar, who was lost in his own beer. At first he thought there was no way this man was only fifty-nine. He was wrinkled and heavy; he looked like a slightly thinner version of Santa Claus. But upon closer inspection Ryan thought it possible the man could be younger than he first guessed, and when the man looked up and noticed Ryan looking at him, he gave the bartender a look like he wanted to wring his neck.

This is the guy.

Jack pulled out a twenty-pound note and put it on the bar, then grabbed his beer and headed over.

Oxley shifted his eyes back down to his beer. He had thick, wavy, and slightly long white hair and a full white beard. His bloodshot eyes gave Jack the impression the man had been sitting right here downing pints since whenever this bar opened for business that day.

Jack spoke softly to keep the conversation between the two of them. “Good afternoon, Mr. Oxley. I apologize for coming unannounced, but I would very much appreciate a few moments of your time.”

The older man did not look up from his pint. In a voice as low as a locomotive’s rumble, he said, “Bugger off.”

Great,
Jack thought.

He tried a bribe. It had worked with the bartender, after all. “How about you let me pay your tab, and we go find a booth and talk for a few minutes?”

“I said bugger off.”

Basil had said the man might be trouble.

Jack thought he’d try one more avenue. “My name is—”

Now the bearded man looked up from his pint for the first time. “I know who you are.” And then, “Your dad’s a bloody wanker.”

Ryan gritted his teeth. He noticed the bartender had come around from behind the bar and was talking to a couple of men in a booth. They were all looking his way.

Jack wasn’t worried, just frustrated. His only real concern was that he would feel bad if he had to beat up a dozen or so old geezers.

He stood up from the bar, looking at Oxley. “It was really a small thing I needed from you. You might have been able to do some good, at no cost to yourself.”

“Fuck off.”

Jack said, “You were SAS? I find that very hard to believe. You really let yourself go, didn’t you?”

Oxley looked back down to his beer. He squeezed it with a meaty hand, and Jack saw the sinewy muscles in the man’s hand ripple with the squeeze.

“No response?”

Oxley said nothing.

“I thought Brits were supposed to have manners.” Jack Ryan turned and walked out the door without a look back.