Command Authority Read online

  Tonight, however, there was a new face in the crowd, and Emily and Yalda’s work talk trailed off quickly as soon as they saw him walk through the door.

  He was a tall man in his late twenties or early thirties, in a stylish gray suit that said money and class, and even the conservative cut of his jacket could not hide the physicality of his body underneath.

  He was alone, and he found a booth in the corner of the bar area, unscrewed the tiny tealight bulb on the table, and sat down in the low light. When the waitress came by a moment later he ordered, and soon a pint of lager was delivered to him. He looked at his beer while he drank it, checked his phone a couple of times, but otherwise he seemed lost in deep thought.

  His disinterest and brooding appearance only increased his stock with Emily and Yalda, who watched him from across the room.

  By the time he started on his second pint, the two women from the Bank of England were halfway through their third. They were no shrinking violets; usually they were up off their chairs immediately when they saw a good-looking chap in the pub unencumbered by either a date or a wedding ring, but neither Emily, a redhead from Fulham, nor Yalda, a brunette of Pakistani descent who had been born and raised in Ipswich, moved in the direction of the tall man in the corner. Though he did not look angry or cruel, there were no cues in his body language that gave any indication of approachability.

  As the evening wore on it became something of a challenge between the two of them; they giggled as each tried to cajole the other into making a move. Finally Emily ordered a shot of Jägermeister for liquid courage and drank it down in one long gulp. After giving the liquor only a few seconds to kick in, she stood up and made her way across the room.

  —

  Jack Ryan, Jr., saw the redhead coming from twenty paces. Shit, he mumbled to himself. I’m not in the mood.

  He looked into the golden lager in front of him, willing the woman to lose her nerve before she arrived at his table.

  “Hello there.”

  Jack was greatly disappointed in his powers of psychic suggestion.

  She said, “I thought I’d come and check on ya. You fancy a fresh drink? Or how ’bout a fresh lightbulb?”

  Jack looked up at her without making much eye contact. He smiled a little, doing his best to be polite without appearing overly friendly. “How are you tonight?”

  Emily’s eyes widened. “An American? I knew I hadn’t seen you before. My friend and I were trying to guess your story.”

  Jack looked back to his beer. He knew he should feel flattered, but he did not. “Not much of a story, really. I’m here working in The City for a few months.”

  She extended a hand. “Emily. Pleased to meet you.”

  Jack looked into her eyes for a quick moment, and determined her to be not quite inebriated, but not terribly far from it.

  He shook her hand. “I’m John.”

  Emily brushed her hair back over her shoulder. “I love America. Went over last year with my ex. Not ex-husband, no, nothing like that, just a bloke I dated for a while, before I realized what a narcissistic sod he was. A right bastard. Anyway, got a holiday out of him, at least, so he was good for something.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Which one of the states do you call home?”

  “Maryland,” he said.

  She looked deeply into his eyes while she talked. Jack saw immediately that she registered a faint sense of recognition, and she was confused by this. She recovered and said, “That’s East Coast, right? Near Washington, D.C. Haven’t been to the East Coast. Me and my ex did the West Coast, quite loved San Francisco, but the traffic down in L.A. was bloody awful. Never did quite get used to driving on the right side of the—”

  Emily’s eyes widened suddenly, and she stopped talking.

  Shit, Jack said to himself. Here we go.

  “Oh . . . my . . . God.”

  “Please,” said Jack, softly.

  “You’re Junior Jack Ryan.”

  As far as Jack knew, he had never been called this by anyone in his life. He thought the girl might have been a little tongue-tied. He said, “That’s me. Junior Jack.”

  “I don’t believe it!” Emily spoke louder this time, just below a shout. She started to turn back to her friend across the room, but Jack reached out and gently took hold of her forearm.

  “Emily. Please. I’d appreciate you not making a big deal out of it.”

  The redhead looked around the room quickly, then at Yalda, who was looking their way. Emily turned back to Jack and, with a conspiratorial nod, she said, “Right. I understand. No problem. Your secret’s safe with me.”

  “Thanks.” Not in the mood, Jack said to himself again, but he smiled.

  Emily slipped into the booth, across from him.

  Damn.

  They talked for a few minutes; she asked him a dozen rapid-fire questions about his life and what he was doing here and how it was that he was all by himself without any protection. He responded with short answers; again, he wasn’t rude, he was simply trying to politely exude lack of interest from every pore of his body.

  Emily had conspicuously not invited her friend to join them, but Jack saw a pair of men had ambled over to the olive-complexioned beauty sitting alone, and she was now in conversation herself.

  He turned his attention back to Emily just as she said, “Jack . . . would it be forward of me to ask you if you’d like to go somewhere else where we can talk?”

  Jack stifled yet another sigh. “Do you want an honest answer?”

  “Well . . . sure.”

  “Then . . . yeah. That would be pretty forward.”

  The young woman was taken aback, not sure what to make of the American’s response. Before she could speak, Jack said, “I’m sorry. I’ve got a really early morning tomorrow.”

  Emily said she understood, then told Jack to stay right where he was. She rushed back over to her table, grabbed her purse, and came back. She pulled out a business card and a pen, and began writing a number down.

  Ryan took a sip of his lager and watched her.

  “I hope you’ll give me a call when you aren’t busy. I’d love to show you around town. I was born and raised here, so you could do worse for a tour guide.”

  “I’m sure.”

  She handed Jack her card in an overt fashion that he knew was designed to show off for her friend, who was now sitting alone again. He took it with a forced smile, playing along for her benefit. She had, after all, played along with his ruse and not announced to the room he was the son of the President of the United States.

  “Lovely to meet you, Jack.”

  “Likewise.”

  Emily reluctantly headed back to her table, and Jack worked on finishing his beer. He slipped her card into his coat; he would get home and then he would toss it onto a shelf with nearly a dozen other cards, napkins, and torn bits of envelopes, each one with the phone number of a female he’d met in similar circumstances in just two weeks here in the UK.

  As he drank, Jack did not look toward Emily’s table, but a few seconds later the redhead’s friend shouted loud enough to be heard throughout the entire establishment, “No bleedin’ way!”

  Jack reached inside his coat for his wallet.

  5

  Two minutes later he was out on the sidewalk—they called it a pavement over here, which Jack found to be one of the more logical of all the discrepancies between British English and American English.

  He walked alone through the night to the Bank underground station, oppressed by the feeling that he was being watched. It was just his nerves—he had no reason to suspect he was really being followed—but each time he was recognized by someone he didn’t know his concerns grew that, despite his best intentions, he was continuing to expose those he cared about to danger.

  He had come to the UK thinking he would slip into the fabric of the city unnoticed, but in his two weeks here at least a half-dozen people—in pubs, in the Tube station, or standing in line to bu
y fish and chips—had made it clear they knew exactly who he was.

  Jack Ryan, Jr., was the same height as his world-famous father, and he possessed the same strong jaw and piercing blue eyes. He’d been on television when he was younger, but even though he’d done what he could to stay out of the public eye as much as possible in the past several years, he still looked enough like his younger self that he couldn’t go anywhere without harboring concerns.

  A few months earlier he had been working for The Campus when he learned Chinese intelligence knew something about who he was and what he really did for a living. This knowledge by the enemy compromised not only Ryan but also his friends and coworkers, and it also had the potential to compromise his father’s administration.

  So far the Chinese had not been a problem; Jack hoped his father’s air strike on China had blown the hell out of anyone who could link him with intelligence work, but he suspected the real reason had more to do with the fact that the new leaders in Beijing were doing their best to make amends with the United States. That their motivations were economically based and not due to any new altruism on the part of the Chicoms did not diminish the fact that—for now, at least—the Chinese were playing nice.

  And Jack knew his breakup with Melanie Kraft, his girlfriend of one year, had also contributed to his feeling of mistrust and unease. He’d met several women in the UK (the single females here didn’t seem to have the shyness gene more common in U.S. women) and he’d been on a few dates, but he hadn’t put enough distance between himself and Melanie yet to consider anything serious.

  At times he wondered if a series of no-strings-attached one-night stands might cure him of his current malaise, but when push came to shove, he recognized that he wasn’t really that type of guy. His parents must have raised him better, he surmised, and the thought of some asshole treating one of his sisters like a consumable product off the shelf made him ball his fists up in anger.

  He’d come to face the fact that although he’d never had trouble attracting members of the opposite sex, he really wasn’t cut out to be much of a Casanova.

  Jack had come over here to the United Kingdom in the first place to put some distance between himself and The Campus after the leak. He expressed to the director of The Campus, Gerry Hendley, that he’d like to take a few months to hone the analytical side of his work. He couldn’t very well knock on the door at CIA or NSA without proper clearances, something Jack Ryan, Jr., would never be able to obtain, considering his clandestine work of the past few years. But Gerry knew how to think outside the box. He immediately suggested Jack delve into international business analytics, promising young Ryan that if he joined up with the right firm he would be thrown neck-deep into the world of government corruption, organized crime, drug cartels, and international terrorism.

  That sounded just fine to Jack.

  Gerry offered to make some introductions on Ryan’s behalf, but Jack wanted to make his own way. He did some research into companies involved in business analysis, and he learned one of the biggest and best out there was a UK firm called Castor and Boyle Risk Analytics Ltd. From everything Ryan had read, C&B seemed to have its fingers in virtually every nook and cranny of the world of international finance.

  Within a week of Ryan reaching out to Castor and Boyle, he was in London interviewing for a six-month contract position as a business analytics specialist.

  Ryan made it clear in that first meeting with the co-owner of the firm, Colin Boyle, that he wanted no leg up due to his lineage. Moreover, he said if he was hired, he would do everything he could to downplay his identity, and he would ask the firm to respect his privacy and do the same.

  Old boys’ networks and college-chum nepotism were virtually the coin of the realm here in The City, so Boyle was both stunned and intrigued to discover that the son of the President of the United States sought to be nothing more than just another hardworking young analyst with a cubicle and a computer.

  Boyle wanted to hire the lad on the spot for his laudable ethics, but he heeded young Ryan’s wishes and had him sit for a daylong barrage of tests. Accounting, research methods, a personality questionnaire, and an in-depth survey of his knowledge of politics, current events, and geography. Ryan passed them all, he was offered the contract, and he returned to Baltimore only to shutter his condo and pack his bags.

  Ten days later, Ryan reported for duty at Castor and Boyle.

  He’d been on the job for two weeks now, and he had to admit he found his work here fascinating. Although he was a financial analyst, and not an intelligence analyst, he saw the work as two sides of the same coin, not two separate disciplines.

  Castor and Boyle worked in a surprisingly cutthroat and fast-paced industry. While Colin Boyle was the better-known face of the company and the man who appeared in the media regarding C&B’s work, the real operational force of the firm was led by Hugh Castor. Castor himself had served as a spymaster for UK domestic intelligence, MI5, during the Cold War, and he made the successful transition into the field of corporate security and business intelligence after leaving the government.

  Others in the firm specialized in forensic accounting and the auditing of business ledgers, but at this early point in his assignment at Castor and Boyle, Ryan was more of a generalist.

  This wasn’t exactly the same as the analytical work he had done for The Campus. He wasn’t digging through top-secret sensitive compartmented intelligence files to discern patterns in the movements of a terrorist, he was instead digging into the convoluted business relationships of shadowy front companies, trying to master the shell game of international business so that Castor and Boyle’s clients could make informed decisions in the marketplace.

  And he wasn’t assassinating spies in Istanbul or targeting America’s enemies in Pakistan, but nevertheless, he felt his work mattered, if only to the bottom line of his firm’s clients.

  Jack’s short-term plan was to work very hard here in London, to learn everything he could about financial crime and forensic business analytics, and to stay away from Hendley Associates so as not to expose The Campus any more than he already had.

  But again, that was in the short term. In the long term? In the long term, Jack wasn’t really sure what he was doing. Where he would go. He wanted to return to The Campus when it was up and running again, but he didn’t know when that would be.

  When his father was Jack’s age he had already served his country in the Marines, married, earned his doctorate, made a ton of money in the markets, written a book, and fathered a child.

  Jack was proud of the things he had done for The Campus, but being the son of President Jack Ryan meant he would always have some incredibly large shoes to fill.

  —

  Ryan climbed out of the Tube at the Earl’s Court station at 11:50 p.m. and made his way up to street level with the few other travelers out tonight. A steady rain had begun to fall, and as was often the case, Ryan had left his umbrella at the office. He grabbed a free newspaper from a rack at the station’s exit and used it to cover his head as he crossed the street and entered the residential neighborhood.

  Ryan strolled alone down the rainy street. On Hogarth Road he slowed, then turned and looked back over his shoulder. It was a habit he’d picked up working overseas with The Campus. He wouldn’t perform an SDR, a surveillance-detection run; that would entail an hour or more of backtracking, changing his route, and using various forms of transportation. But he was, at least, keeping an eye out for any followers.

  Jack had the presence of mind to alter his daily routine when possible. He made it a point to go to a different pub every evening after work, and with so many choices both in The City, where he worked, and here in Kensington, where he lived, he knew he could be here in town for months before he had trouble finding a new place.

  As well as varying his nightspots, he also did what he could to change up the route he followed each night. The warren of streets in Kensington meant there were several ways he could get to and from h
is flat without always approaching from the same direction.

  But even with these countermeasures, Jack couldn’t shake the feeling he was being watched. He was unable to put his finger on it, and he had no evidence at all to confirm his suspicions, but some mornings on his predawn jog or during his commute from Kensington to The City, some afternoons out to lunch with his colleagues, and most evenings when he headed home on his own, he felt a prickly sensation and an almost palpable sense of eyes on him.

  Was it the Chinese? Had they followed him here to London? Could it be British intelligence, just keeping an eye on him informally? Or might they have picked up a whiff of his former activities?

  Could it even be the U.S. Secret Service, watching over him, making sure he was safe? Jack was the first child of a sitting U.S. President to refuse his Secret Service protection, a fact that had troubled many, and while they would have no mandate to protect him, he could not completely dismiss the possibility out of hand.

  The more he wondered about the reasons for his sense he was being followed, the more he told himself it was nothing more than paranoia on his part.

  He looked back over his shoulder again on Cromwell Road. Just like every other time he’d “checked his six,” there was nothing there.

  A few minutes later Jack turned onto Lexham Gardens, glanced at his watch, and saw it was past midnight. He’d have to fall right to sleep in order to get five full hours before rising for his morning run.

  He entered his building, stopping in the doorway once more to see if he was being followed. As before, he saw no one.

  It was just his imagination.

  Perfect, Jack. When your dad was your age he was saving British royalty from IRA gunmen and commandeering Russian submarines. You can’t even go out to a pub for a pint without getting the heebie-jeebies.

  Shit, man. Get hold of yourself.

  He’d taken some measures to keep a low profile since joining The Campus, but as he climbed the stairs to his flat, he realized his goal should be complete anonymity. He was far from home and alone, and the potential to redesign his physical presence was both possible and necessary.