Command Authority (24 page)

A
fter a full day of work at Century House, CIA liaison officer Jack Ryan was just getting his desk straightened up to leave. As he rolled his swivel chair around to pick his briefcase up off the floor, he looked up to see David Penright standing above him. “Hullo, Jack.”

Ryan lurched back in surprise. “Oh, Penright. You snuck up on me.”

Penright smiled. “Bad habit. Comes with the job.”

“Right. I haven’t heard back on the RPB list I had delivered to Langley yesterday. I expect I’ll have something by tomorrow.”

“Actually, that’s not why I popped in. I was wondering if you had time to grab a drink before you shove off for the day.”

Jack did not have time. He’d planned on meeting Cathy at the station for the ride home. He wanted to get some quality time with the kids in before their bedtime, and the long commute wouldn’t leave much room for that. If he missed the nightly 6:10 train, he’d probably not get home till Sally and Jack Junior were asleep.

But this was his job. Exchanging information with the Brits was why Jim Greer had sent him over here in the first place. He realized he couldn’t very well pass up the opportunity to get to know one of MI6’s operations officers, especially one working on a mission as potentially important as the one going on in Switzerland.

Ryan said, “Sounds great. Let me call my wife.”

Penright gave a slight bow. “Much appreciated, and I’m buying.” He put a hand up. “Check that. The Crown is buying. I have an expense account.” He winked. “I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

Jack assumed they would be heading to the pub there in Century House. It was drab, like the rest of the building, but more important, it was vastly more secure than just venturing out to some alehouse on the street. While they still had to be careful what they said and who they said it around in the Century House pub, they had much more freedom there, surrounded by the men and women of SIS.

Instead, when Jack showed up in the lobby, Penright sent him back to his office for his coat and briefcase, telling him they would be taking a taxi over to Penright’s members-only club.

Twenty minutes later, Ryan and Penright passed over their coats and briefcases to an attendant in the lobby of Penright’s gentlemen’s club in Saint James’s Square. They were ushered through the foyer of a stately building and into an old-world library, where an immaculately dressed and exceedingly polite steward brought them brandies and cigars. There were a few other club members and their guests around; to Ryan they all looked like bankers and politicians, and although there was the odd chortle and even some laughter among the groups of men, most of the goings-on in the club seemed rather hushed and important.

The place was tight and stuffy for Ryan’s tastes, but, he did have to admit, it was exciting to sit in a leather wingback chair and smoke a cigar amid a group of London’s movers and shakers.

He may have been an honorary knight, and he and his family might have spent more time in Buckingham Palace than any other American family, but he wasn’t so jaded that he couldn’t appreciate what a unique experience this was.

They were halfway through their first brandy, and David Penright had talked about nothing but his school days at Eton and his family’s home in the Cotswolds. Jack found the English spy somewhat like his members-only club. A little stuffy and somewhat pretentious, but decent enough and unquestionably fascinating.

Finally, however, Penright moved the topic of the chitchat to the subject of Ritzmann Privatbankiers.

Penright said, “I wanted to let you know I’ll be shoving off tomorrow for Zug. It might take me a couple of days to survey the landscape and talk to my man in RPB. I’ll have to give you the number of my hotel. When you get word back from your service about the names on the list, do give me a call.”

“Okay,” said Ryan. “But the line won’t be secure.”

“Certainly not. We’ll need to set up a simple protocol. If your friends in Washington find anything in those names, just tell me that you need me to check in at the office in Zurich.”

“And you’ll go to the embassy in Zurich and call me back?”

David Penright smiled, giving Jack a look as though he was a bit naive. “No, Ryan. I have a secure location right there in Zug. I’ll go to our safe house and call you back.”

“Okay,” said Ryan. “I don’t know what you’ll find from the CIA list, but you have to know that the fact this Gabler was working with the KGB is going to be the most likely reason for his demise.”

Penright smoked his cigar in silence for a moment. “I can’t tell you much about our penetration into the bank—Basil can be a bit uptight about that sort of thing—but I can tell you that I do not believe for a second that KGB knows we are aware of their accounts. Gabler was not killed by the opposition to silence him.”

“So why do you think he was killed?”

“That’s why I wanted to talk to you.” He leaned forward, and Ryan did the same. “Basil isn’t totally on board with filling you in on all the details.”

Jack held up his hand. “Then don’t tell me.”

“Oh, please,” Penright said. “It’s gamesmanship, nothing more. You and I both know you have gone to your masters for the RPB client information, and they will look into it, then only agree to provide it if we involve them in the operation. That will take days. Basil is an executive, protective of his programs. But I’m the bloke on the ground, fighting in the trenches, and I don’t have time for games.”

Jack was concerned. He wasn’t going behind Basil on this, but this other guy certainly was.
What the hell,
Jack thought.
I can’t stop this guy from talking, and I’m not going to run out of the room with my hands covering my ears.

Jack just sipped brandy and looked into the fireplace.

Penright said, “It looks to me like the large account Tobias Gabler managed, exactly two hundred four million U.S., is actually money stolen from the KGB.”

Jack looked away from the fire. No pretense that he didn’t care about what the English spy had to say. “Stolen? Stolen
how
?”

“That I don’t know. What I
do
know is this: Last month, RPB had some surprise visitors. A group of men who claimed to be Hungarians showed up unannounced and produced the codes necessary to prove they held accounts with the bank.”

“Numbered accounts.”

“Yes. These were small accounts, owned by shell companies. We suspect it was KGB money. Nothing much to speak of, but it did get the men in the door.”

“Go on.”

“They had a lot of questions, but not about their accounts and balances. They were, instead, trying to find out if any other money was following the same route as theirs.”

“From Hungary?”

“From any state-owned bank behind the Iron Curtain, and then into Switzerland. They also wanted to know about money leaving RPB in the form of cash, bearer bonds, gold, that sort of thing.”

“What response did they get from the bank?”

“They got the polite shove-off.” Penright held his snifter up high. “God bless Swiss secrecy.”

“And the Hungarians just left?”

“No. These were desperate men. My inside man said the more angry they got, the more Russian they sounded. They were most likely KGB. Just think about the chance these blokes were taking. They just walked into the bank all but waving around their Soviet flag. They threatened to close their accounts and take their money somewhere else. They accused the bank of colluding with someone who was shaving from their accounts in the East. They stamped their feet and then made some veiled threats. And then they made some not-so-veiled threats.”

“And your man held his ground?”

“He did. They left, and now another man at the bank, Tobias Gabler, the actual manager of the two-hundred-four-million-dollar account, is lying on a slab in the morgue.”

Jack leaned forward in his chair. “If they already knew about Gabler and the two hundred million, why the hell did they go to the bank asking questions?”

“I suspect money isn’t their biggest concern. I think they want answers. They want the head of the person who stole it from them. Our man at the bank is bloody petrified by all this, and I don’t blame him. But I can’t pull him out. I do that and the Russians will close everything up, move their numbered account somewhere else, and we will lose any opportunity to exploit them.”

Penright added, “For some reason, the entity that is amassing all this money needs it to be in the West, easily accessible and transferable.”

“Why?” Jack asked.

“I don’t have a clue, Jack. I was hoping you could figure that out.”

Penright checked his watch. “Bloody hell, I’m running late for dinner. Previous engagement, as they say. I don’t get to London as much as I’d like, and there’s this girl. One in every port, two in London.” He laughed. “You understand.” He stood up. “Sorry, Ryan, but all guests must leave with the members here.”

Jack was still stuck on Penright’s last comment. He finished his brandy quickly—it would be a shame to waste it, after all—and he climbed out of the oiled leather chair.

“Wait a second. Why do you need me on this?”

Penright headed into the lobby; Jack trailed behind him. “Just mull it over. Basil says you were a Wall Street whiz kid.”

Their coats and briefcases were brought to them.

“I wasn’t on Wall Street. I traded through the Baltimore Stock Exchange.”

Penright slipped into his coat. “Whatever. I know you were with Merrill Lynch, I know you made some moves in the markets on your own, and I know that even though my tie costs more than that suit you’re wearing, you earned enough money in commodity trading to buy this club and throw every old geezer out onto the street on their arse. You have the mind for this sort of thing. Plus, I think our cousins at Langley can be of great help to us on this operation.” Penright winked at Jack as he headed out to the street to call himself a cab. “Just think about it.”

Jack put his own coat on and followed the English spy to the pavement, arriving just as David Penright climbed into a taxi.

Penright looked up at Ryan before closing the door. “And call me in Switzerland as soon as you hear anything.”

Jack stood on the pavement while the black cab rolled off into the traffic moving around Saint James’s Square.