Commander-In-Chief (39 page)

J
ack Ryan, Jr., sat at his desk facing three large monitors full of information. His eyes scanned back and forth, and then he lowered his head into his hands and rubbed his eyes.

It had been a long and completely fruitless day, yet it had begun with so much promise. He’d been given good-looking intelligence from many different sources, but so far nothing had panned out.

The video feed of the cameras on Tarpon Island had led him nowhere. These two obviously white, obviously tall people who’d kidnapped the Walkers knew how to simply and effectively obscure their faces. They both wore hats and sunglasses, probably because they knew some asshole was going to sit at his desk, pore over every frame searching for clues, and push images through the best facial-recognition suites in the world.

Jack was that asshole and he’d come up with nothing.

As Jack watched them conduct their brazen act, he was struck by just how calm and nonchalant they appeared to be. The woman followed her would-be victims into the home with a big smile.
Then the man, her co-conspirator, appeared up the walkway from the beach, strolling into the big villa like he owned the place.

This couple weren’t newcomers to this sort of work. They appeared to be in their element during the kidnapping.

This gave Jack the idea to investigate other unsolved kidnappings around the world using intel from Interpol and SIPRNet. He watched surveillance videos of sixty crimes, read the reports on a hundred more, but he saw no other kidnappings that matched the MO of this one.

He’d skipped lunch to keep searching for information about the Walkers’ kidnappers, but he attained nothing other than a lot of doubt. His supposition that this couple were experienced kidnappers was contradicted by the fact no kidnappings he could find anywhere involved suspects matching their description.

Still, Jack knew, they were experienced in
something
that gave them a hell of a lot of confidence while snatching a kid and his mom out of their home.

After spending the morning working on the kidnappers, he spent the afternoon working on Andrei Limonov, spending hours trying to track the man’s aircraft before it arrived in Luxembourg, to see where else he might have gone and who else he might have spoken with. This too had been a fruitless hunt. The Bombardier owned by Limonov’s shell had spent most of the previous month, from what Ryan could tell, sitting in a fixed-base operator at Biggin Hill, an executive airport twenty minutes southeast of London.

The plane flew nowhere, which probably meant Limonov was in London during that time, but that didn’t tell Ryan anything of value.

Another failure.

He’d also made several calls to Christine von Langer throughout the day. Ysabel had been taken out of her medically induced
coma and upgraded to good condition, and this was obviously great news, but she would remain in the hospital for at least another two weeks.

Christine had remained by Ysabel’s side, even though the two did not know each other. The American millionaire widow had slept on a tiny vinyl couch and eaten hospital food, which admittedly was better in Luxembourg than it was in the United States, but still was a far cry from what she was accustomed to.

Jack thanked her profusely, and she said she only wished she could do more.

Jack thought she was doing plenty; in fact, he was certain Christine had accomplished a hell of a lot more today than he had.

•   •   •

I
t was exactly the moment when he felt like giving up for the day, as he sat there with his elbows on his desk, rubbing his eyes, when Gavin Biery leaned his head into his cubicle.

“How is she?”

Jack looked up to find Gavin looming over him. “Oh, hey. Ysabel? She’s going to be fine. Eventually. I can’t figure out if she’s really lucky or really unlucky.”

Gavin sat down in the one other chair by Jack’s desk. “Lucky to be alive. Guess that’s all that matters now. The rest is over and done.”

“Yeah.” Jack noticed Gavin had a folder in his hand. “
Please
tell me there’s something in that folder I want to see.”

“Okay. There is something in this folder you want to see.”

“What is it?”

“The phone records of one Luigi Vignali.”

“Who the hell is”—Jack stopped himself and sat up straight—“Salvatore?”

“That’s right. Salvatore isn’t his real name. Big shocker there.”

“What did you learn about him?”

Gavin chuckled. “This guy is a piece of work.”

“You found something incriminating on him?”

“Yeah, but I don’t really know where to start. Maybe with the drug charges, or the petit larceny stuff.” Gavin glanced down at the file. “Lots of arrests for disturbing-the-peace kind of things, all over Europe. Most involving his paparazzi harassment of celebrities, but he also has been heavily involved in the environmental and antiglobalization movements. He’s been arrested in Paris for protesting nuclear power, in Frankfurt for a sit-in at the European Central Bank, and he had an attempted-arson charge in Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum.”

“
Attempted
arson? What does that mean?”

“He threw a Molotov cocktail at a bus full of rich conference attendees, but didn’t douse the rag with gasoline, so the thing burned out in the air.”

“Genius,” Jack said. It didn’t sound relevant to his investigation into the man, but it still showed him something of both the Italian’s character and his aptitude. Jack was disappointed. He wanted to see collusion between this man and Russian intelligence. “That’s it?”

Gavin looked back down. “Pretty much. He punched out his mom once, put her in the hospital, and did a couple of days in the slammer for that, but Mommy dropped the charges.”

“Jeez,” muttered Ryan.

“Aren’t moms the best?” quipped Gavin. “There is also some interesting logistical stuff. I geolocated his phone and found out he’s not in Rome.”

“Where is he?”

“He flew to Brussels today, went to a hotel in the European Quarter and spent the night. I pulled up the hotel’s guest info, and
he’s staying there under the name Salvatore. Reservation for a week at the Stanhope Hotel.”

“What’s going on in Brussels?” Jack asked.

“What do you mean?”

“He takes pictures of celebrities for a living. Is there something happening in Brussels that would be of interest to a paparazzo?”

Gavin just shrugged. “I wouldn’t really know, Ryan.”

Jack thought about it. “Yeah, me either.”

The computer geek and the intelligence analyst both sat in silence for a moment. Neither of them was exactly dialed in to the pulse of celebrity goings-on these days, if ever.

Gavin said, “I could do some research.”

“How?” Jack asked.

“Dunno. Turn on a TV or something.”

Jack broke into a smile, his first one since Luxembourg. “Wonder if Gerry would let us expense a
People
magazine for research purposes.”

Gavin said, “He let Clark expense a freakin’ sailboat, so I bet he’d be okay with it.”

Jack spun around in his desk and started looking at goings-on in Brussels in the next few days. There were concerts and plays and political conferences and corporate conventions, but with no idea what he was looking for, it was hard to know how to narrow down his search.

He shrugged. “The only way to find out what he’s up to is to go over there and watch him. Or else go over there, grab him by the throat, and throttle the information out of him.”

Gavin said, “I know which method you’d prefer.”

“Yeah. He was involved with the people who hurt Ysabel. I don’t know if he knew what was going on or if he was just a patsy.”
Jack shrugged. “I’m not sure I give a damn. I’ve got to use him to find them.”

Gavin leaned forward a little. “There is no way in hell Gerry is going to let you go back to Europe alone.”

Jack knew this was true.

Gavin surprised him by saying, “Tell you what. I’ll talk to him, maybe he’ll let me go along with you to watch your back.”

Jack smiled affectionately at Gavin. If Gerry wouldn’t let Jack go alone, he sure as hell wouldn’t let Jack go supported by an overweight IT director pushing sixty whose experience in the field in the past few years had been extremely hit-and-miss. He patted Gavin on the shoulder. “I appreciate it. But I need to handle this on my own for now. I’m going to walk into Gerry’s office and tell him how important it is.”

“Good luck.”

•   •   •

T
en minutes later Jack walked out of Gerry’s office, his face a mask of utter frustration. Gerry had said just exactly what Jack feared he would: His request to return to Europe to conduct physical surveillance of Salvatore had been denied. He returned to his desk, opened up the security feeds at the Stanhope Hotel in Brussels, and began to scroll through the different cameras.

He told himself he’d sit here all night if he had to, but he was going to learn something.

J
ohn Clark sailed his fifty-two-foot sailboat around Monkey Point, at the southern tip of Guana Island, just after noon. He wasn’t sure of the exact location of the cove mentioned by the captain in the bar, but it wasn’t a large island at all, so Clark knew he could circle the entire landmass in under an hour.

But he didn’t have to. Within five minutes he found exactly what he was looking for. A massive but sleek catamaran, bigger and more impressive than anything in the waters of the BVIs that he’d seen to date, bobbed at anchor in a little cove on the south side of the island. It was tucked away, but not that hard to see from the main sailing route.

Clark was a quarter-mile from the other vessel as he passed by, but he didn’t use his binoculars to look it over. Instead, he just sailed on, standing by the helm with the wheel in his hand, doing his best to keep his eyes on the water in front of him. He knew if this was the boat the kidnap victims were being kept on, there was a good chance someone on that catamaran—on the deck, in the cockpit, or up on the flying bridge—was watching him right now
with optics that could easily see every move he made. As long as he appeared nonchalant and concentrated more on sailing than on searching the coves for hidden boats, he’d arouse no suspicions.

An hour later Clark’s boat lay at anchor itself, three coves over from where he had noticed the
Spinnaker II
, and Clark was in his dinghy, motoring toward a remote secluded beach on the southwestern side of Guana Island.

When he came ashore he pulled in his outboard and heaved the ten-foot-long craft onto the sand, then he threw a small backpack over a shoulder and began to walk.

The island was all but deserted other than a single resort hotel, and it was covered in high and sometimes steep hills, but there was a decent network of rustic hiking trails. Clark followed one such trail across the southern end of the island, taking almost an hour to bisect the little landmass sticking out of the perfect water before finally coming close to the crest of a steep hill. Here he checked his GPS carefully, then left the sandy trail and pushed into the mangroves alongside.

After ten minutes of slow-going progress through the bushes, seeing somewhere along the lines of a hundred lizards along the way and poking his hands and legs so many times with cactus needles that he’d stopped responding to the pain, he lowered his body down into the sand and crawled the rest of the way to the crest.

At the top he looked out over a small cove. Tortola was due south in the distance, and on his left a twin-engine Pilatus was lining up on final at the same airport he and Sherman had arrived in three days earlier.

But he wasn’t here to look at Tortola. No, much closer, in the little cove below him, the
Spinnaker II
sat right where Clark had seen it two hours earlier. Putting his binoculars up to his eyes, he first scanned along the beach in front of him. The last thing he
needed was to be discovered by someone from the
Spinnaker II
sitting on the shore.

There.
Two men sat under a tree in small beach chairs. They each had a pair of binoculars in their laps and bottles of beer in their hands. They looked relaxed enough, but Clark wondered if that was just because there were no other signs of life in sight other than lizards and birds.

Confident there was no way the two men could see him, he began looking over the
Spinnaker II
. The deck was empty, but he saw two men in the cockpit and another man up on the flying bridge. They all had their shirts off, and they were big, muscular, and relatively young. The man on the bridge was obviously another lookout; he used his binos to glass the waterway to the south twice in the five minutes Clark watched him.

Clark tallied five men: two on shore and three on the boat. They appeared relaxed, but they all looked like they could switch on quick enough and become formidable. They didn’t appear Russian to him at all. One man was black, and another was darker-complexioned than any Spetsnaz guy he’d ever seen.

He had nothing but circumstantial evidence that these men were holding the Walkers, not even enough to go on. He decided he needed more information about what was happening inside that boat.

At three p.m. he turned around and headed back down the hill, planning on coming back at night to set up surveillance.

•   •   •

C
lark returned to his Irwin and got a few hours’ sleep. When he woke he cooked a steak on the gas grill on the deck and made a salad in the galley. He sat in the cockpit in front of the helm and ate his dinner, knowing he was in for a long night.

At around ten p.m. he started getting his gear together to move to his hide overlooking the
Spinnaker II
. He packed water, food, optics, night-vision goggles, bug spray, and a knife.

He also knew there was a chance he might see something on the boat that would necessitate him hitting it immediately in an in extremis one-man raid. While he didn’t like his chances against five men, he recognized the fact that he wouldn’t be able to just watch if one of the hostages was in jeopardy. He packed his swim fins, his mask and snorkel, and his pistol, on the chance he’d have to use them.

At ten-thirty he was ready to go. He was standing in the cockpit, just finishing a bottle of Gatorade before loading the dinghy with his backpack, when he heard the faint sound of a small engine purring across the water. He stepped out onto his deck, walked around for a moment, then realized it was coming not from land but from outside his little bay. Since there were no more boats moored in the bay, and no rational person would take his dinghy all the way across the water from Tortola, he immediately decided he was hearing the dinghy of the
Spinnaker II
, and it was approaching his boat.

With his mast lights on he couldn’t see well more than fifty feet in any direction, so he pulled a flashlight off a table in the cockpit and stood out on the deck.

His SIG Sauer pistol hung in his shorts on his right side under his T-shirt, a folding knife in the cargo pocket on his left. Extra magazines for both were tucked in his back pocket. He was ready for a fight, but he knew if he stood on the deck in the lights, he’d be exposed to any armed person in the dinghy.

On the other hand, if he ran onto the deck and crouched behind cover, he would quite obviously blow any pretense that he was just some sailboat renter out for a little peace and quiet here in this cove.

When the dinghy came into view he saw two men on board,
and he recognized them both as the men he’d seen on the gray catamaran. One waved a hand in his direction as they neared, and he belted out an accented “Evening, Captain!”

They threw their line up to Clark, who took it, then tied it off on a cleat on the deck.

“Good evening,” he said, doing his best to sound chipper and unsuspicious.

As they climbed aboard, Clark saw they were both in their thirties and they were physically fit. One had short brown hair and an impressive beard; the other was completely bald and his arms were inked from his wrists to his shoulders. The bearded man climbed aboard with the confidence and dexterity of someone very accustomed to his actions, but the bald-headed man didn’t seem particularly comfortable with boats; he took a moment to heave himself up onto the deck from the bobbing dinghy, an action that came naturally to a real sailor.

Clark scanned the tattoos on both men, but he couldn’t derive any intel from them.

“How’s it goin’?” the bearded man asked. He was obviously South African, which surprised Clark some. They all shook hands, and the South African introduced himself as Kip, the bald-headed man as Joe.

“Doing fine,” Clark said, still affecting the genial nature of a vacationer. “Welcome aboard. Care for a beer?”

“Always,” said Joe.

Clark went down to the saloon, grabbed three cold Caribe beers, and came back up. As he passed them around to his two visitors, Kip said, “Nice ketch you’ve got here. Out here by yourself, are you?”

“Sure am,” Clark replied. “Just about to shut down for the night, actually.”

The other man looked the boat over slowly. He spoke with an American accent. “You’re renting?”

“Yeah. Just down for a couple of weeks.”

Clark could tell the men were suspicious of him, but only to a small degree. He thought this was odd, because he was certain he’d not been seen earlier on the hill, and he could think of no other way he could have possibly given any indication he was interested in them.

Kip said, “This is a bit of a lonely vacation, wouldn’t you say?”

Clark nodded. “You’re telling me. My girlfriend was supposed to come along, but she couldn’t make it at the last minute.”

Clark was wearing his wedding ring, but a married man with a boat down here talking about his girlfriend wasn’t going to raise suspicions.

The pair just stood there on the deck, facing down Clark without speaking. He realized the men were trying to be intimidating, and to the average man in his mid-sixties, Clark imagined they might have been able to pull it off.

Clark, on the other hand, had a plan to kill them both if necessary. He wasn’t intimidated, just annoyed.

That said, his cover persona, a semi-sleazeball retiree down here for a few weeks of recreational boating, would be easily intimidated by a pair of men looming over him like this, so Clark swallowed hard and let his mouth twitch a little, as if from nerves.

“You know,” said the man called Kip, “there’s a pretty nice marina and yacht club over there at Scrub Island. Only about twenty minutes from here. Seems like a guy down here by himself would do well to pick up a mooring ball over there, wander up to the bar, and meet himself a nice, mature lady.”

Clark said nothing.

The other man spoke now. “Instead of hiding out over here in this little nothing bay.”

Clark shook his head. “I’m not hiding from anything.”

The South African shrugged, took another sip of his Caribe.

Clark knew he needed to ask them about themselves. He said, “You guys come from shore?”

“Us? No. We’ve got a little cat in the next cove.”

They didn’t have a little cat and they weren’t in the next cove, but Clark just nodded and sipped his beer.

The discomfort of the situation was palpable, and Clark played it up, even wiping his forehead a few times, as if to remove the sheen of sweat there. Finally he said, “Look, guys. Like I said, I was just about to call it a night.”

The men finished their beers in silence.

On the main deck the bald-headed man said, “This bay isn’t really that safe in case of a storm. The marina is much safer.”

Kip added, “This sure is a nice boat. I’d hate for anything to happen to it.”

Clark cocked his head, still playing the role of a nervous senior citizen. “What might happen to it?”

“Some weather’s coming in is what I heard,” Joe said, the malevolence strong in his voice.

Clark nodded. He’d checked the weather, of course. There was nothing but clear skies and moderate winds predicted.

Clark said, “Okay. Maybe first thing in the morning I’ll pull anchor and find another place. Something more suitable.”

Kip winked at Clark. “Sounds like a solid plan, old-timer. You have yourself a good one.” He put the bottle down and headed over the side.

Joe followed Kip back into the dinghy and the pair motored off. They disappeared as soon as they were out of the glow of the Irwin’s mast lights, but Clark heard their motor for another minute as he stood there on the deck.

He then went back to the cockpit and sat down, thinking about the exchange. He felt convinced the men had no real reason to be suspicious of him. Likely they were just assholes given instructions to keep all threats away from their operation, and they were being proactive.

These guys weren’t decision makers in this crime. Just muscle given enough responsibility to fuck it up. Of course, Clark knew, that didn’t mean they weren’t able to do their job when it came to using their guns or their fists, or following their boss’s orders.

•   •   •

C
lark waited till midnight to go to shore. The original plan had him taking the dinghy in, of course, but he didn’t know if the two goons from the
Spinnaker II
would come back and look over the boat while he was gone. If they saw the dinghy ashore in the middle of the night, their suspicion would switch to outright certainty that Clark wasn’t what he appeared to be. So instead he stripped to his shorts, jumped in the water with his bag, and donned his fins. In seconds he was kicking in the black water, heading to the beach.

He was out of breath when he arrived, but he’d made good time, and in just minutes he recovered enough to begin the long hike.

An hour after this Clark climbed the rise, dropped down to his knees, and covered the last few feet in a crouch. When he peered over the top of the hill, he took a moment to orient himself. He looked down at the little cove below him, then pulled his night observation device from his pack.

After scanning back and forth through his NODs, he dropped his shoulders in resignation.