Jack Ryan Books 7-12

by Tom Clancy

  RYAN THOUGHT about a nightcap at the bar, but on reflection decided against it and walked out. There was somebody there already, and he got in the elevator first. There was a casual meeting of the eyes, as Ryan moved to punch the 3 button but saw it already lighted. So, this well-dressed Brit—he looked like a Brit—was on his floor . . .

  . . . wasn’t that interesting . . . ?

  It took only a few seconds for the car to stop and the door to open.

  The Excelsior is not a tall hotel, but it is an expansive one, and it was a lengthy walk, and the elevator man was heading in the right direction, Ryan slowed his pace to follow from a greater distance, and sure enough, he passed Jack’s room and kept going, one . . . two . . . and at the third door he stopped and turned. Then he looked back at Ryan, wondering, perhaps, if he was being tailed. But Jack stopped and fished out his own key, then, looking down at the other man, in the casual, stranger-to-stranger voice that all men know, said, “G’nite.”

  “And to you, sir,” was the reply in well-educated English English.

  Jack walked into the room, thinking he’d heard that accent before . . . like the Brit diplomats whom he’d met in the White House, or on trips to London with his dad. It was either the speech of someone to the manor born, or who planned to buy his own when the time came and who’d banked enough pounds sterling to pretend to be a Peer of the Realm. He had the peaches-and-cream skin of a Brit, and the upper-class accent—

  —and he was checked in under the name of Nigel Hawkins.

  “And I got one of your e-mails, pal,” Jack whispered to the rug. “Son of a bitch.”

  IT TOOK almost an hour to navigate through the streets of Rome, whose city fathers may not have been married to the city mothers, and none of whom had known shit about city planning, Brian thought, working to find a way to Via Vittorio Veneto. Eventually, he knew they were close when he passed through what may once have been a gate in the city walls designed to keep Hannibal Barca out, but then a left and a right, and they learned that in Rome streets with the same name do not always go straight, which necessitated a circle on the Palazzo Margherita to return back to the Hotel Excelsior, where Dominic decided he’d had quite enough driving for the next few days. Within three minutes, their bags were out of the trunk and they were at the reception desk.

  “You have a message to call Signor Ryan when you get in. Your rooms are just next to his,” the clerk told them, then he waved at the bellman, who guided them to the elevator.

  “Long drive, man,” Brian said, leaning back against the paneled walls.

  “Tell me about it,” Dominic agreed.

  “I mean, I know you like fast cars and fast women, but next time how about a damned airliner? Maybe you can score with a stew, y’know?”

  “You friggin’ jarhead.” Followed by a yawn.

  “This way, signori,” the bellman suggested, with a wave of his arm.

  “The message at the desk, where is he?”

  “Signor Ryan? He is right here.” The bellman pointed.

  “That’s convenient,” Dominic thought aloud, until he remembered something else. He let himself get moved in, and the connecting door to Brian’s room opened, and he gave the bellman a generous tip. Then he took the message slip out of his pocket and called.

  “HELLO?”

  “We’re right next door, ace. What’s shaking?” Brian asked.

  “Two rooms?”

  “Roger that.”

  “Guess who’s just down from you?”

  “Tell me.”

  “A British guy, a Mr. Nigel Hawkins,” Jack told his cousin, and waited for the shock to subside. “Let’s talk.”

  “Come right on over, Junior.”

  That took no more time than Jack needed to slip into his loafers.

  “Enjoy the drive?” Jack asked.

  Dominic had poured his minibar wine into a glass. There wasn’t much left. “It was long.”

  “You did all the driving?”

  “Hey, I wanted to get here alive, man.”

  “You turkey,” Brian snarled. “He thinks driving a Porsche is like sex, except better.”

  “It is if you have the right technique, but even sex can wear a man out. Okay.” Dominic set his glass down. “Did you say . . . ?”

  “Yeah, right there.” Jack pointed at the wall. And moved his hand to his eyes. I’ve seen the mutt. The reply was just nods. “Well, you guys get some sleep. I’ll call you tomorrow, and we can think about our appointment. Cool?”

  “Very cool,” Brian agreed. “Ring us up about nine, okay?”

  “You bet. Later.” And Jack headed for the door. Soon thereafter, he was back on his computer. And then it hit him. He wasn’t the only guy here with one of those, was he? That might be valuable . . .

  EIGHT O’CLOCK came earlier than it should have. Mohammed was up, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and on his machine checking his e-mail. Mahmoud was in Rome as well, having arrived the previous night, and near the top of 56MoHa’s mailbox was a letter from Gadfly097, requesting a meeting site. Mohammed thought about that and then decided to exercise his sense of humor.

  RISTORANTE GIOVANNI, PIAZZA DI SPAGNA, he replied: 13:30. BE CAREFUL IN YOUR ROUTINE. By which he meant to employ countersurveillance measures. There was no definite reason to suspect foul play in the loss of three field personnel, but he hadn’t lived to the age of thirty-one in the business of intelligence by being foolish. He had the ability to tell the harmless from the dangerous, he thought. He’d gotten David Greengold six weeks earlier, because the Jew hadn’t seen the False Flag play even when it bit him on the ass—well, the back of the neck, Mohammed thought with a lowercase smile, remembering the moment. Maybe he should start carrying the knife again, just for good luck. Many men in his line of work believed in luck, as a sportsman or athlete might. Perhaps the Emir had been right. Killing the Mossad officer had been a gratuitously unnecessary risk, since it courted enemies. The Organization had enough of those, even if the enemies did not know who and what the organization was. Better that they should be a mere shadow to the infidels . . . a shadow in a darkened room, unseen and unknown. Mossad was hated by his colleagues, but it was hated because it was feared. The Jews were formidable. They were vicious, and they were endlessly clever. And who could say what knowledge they had, what Arab traitors bought with American money for Jewish ends. There was not a hint of treachery in the Organization, but he remembered the words of the Russian KGB officer Yuriy: Treason is only possible from those whom you trust. It had probably been a mistake to kill the Russian so quickly. He’d been an experienced field officer who’d operated most of his career in Europe and America, and there’d probably been no end to the stories he could have told, each of them with a lesson to be learned. Mohammed remembered talking to him and remembered being impressed with the breadth of his experience and judgment. Instinct was nice to have, but instinct often merely mimicked mental illness in its rampant paranoia. Yuriy had explained in considerable detail how to judge people, and how to tell a professional from a harmless civilian. He could have told many more stories, except for the 9mm bullet he’d gotten in the back of the head. It had also violated the Prophet’s strict and admirable rules of hospitality. If a man eat your salt, even though he be an infidel, he will have the safety of your house. Well, the Emir was the one who’d violated that rule, saying lamely that he’d been an atheist and therefore beyond the law.

  But he’d learned a few lessons, anyway. All his e-mails were encrypted on the best such program there was, individually keyed to his own computer, and therefore beyond anyone’s capacity to read except himself. So, his communications were secure. He hardly looked Arab. He didn’t sound Arabic. He didn’t dress Arabic. Every hotel he stayed at knew that he drank alcohol, and such places knew that Muslims did not drink. So, he ought be completely safe. Well, yes, the Mossad knew that someone like him had killed that Greengold pig, but he didn’t think they’d ever gotten a photo of him, and unless he’d been betray
ed by the man whom he’d hired to fool the Jew, they had no idea of who and what he was. Yuriy had warned him that you could never know everything, but also that being overly paranoid could alert a casual tail as to what he was, because professional intelligence officers knew tricks that no one else would ever use—and they could be seen to use them from careful observation. It was all like a big wheel, always turning, always coming back to the same place and moving on in the same way, never still, but never moving off its primary path. A great wheel . . . and he was just a cog, and whether his function was to help it move or make it slow down, he didn’t really know.

  “Ah.” He shook that off. He was more than a cog. He was one of the motors. Not a great motor, perhaps, but an important one, because while the great wheel might move on without him, it would never move so quickly and surely as it did now. And, God willing, he would keep it moving until it crushed his enemies, the Emir’s enemies, and Allah’s Own Enemies.

  So, he dispatched his message to Gadfly097, and called for coffee to be delivered.

  RICK BELL had arranged for a crew to be on the computers around the clock. Strange that The Campus hadn’t been doing that from the beginning, but now it did. The Campus was learning as it went, just as everyone else did, on both sides of the scrimmage line. At the moment it was Tony Wills, driven by his personal appreciation that there was a six-hour time difference between Central Europe and the American East Coast. A good computer jockey, he downloaded the message from 56 to 097 within five minutes of its dispatch and immediately forwarded it to Jack.

  That required fewer seconds than it took to think it. Okay, they knew their subject and they knew where he was going to be, and that was just fine. Jack lifted his phone.

  “You up?” Brian heard.

  “I am now,” he growled back. “What is it?”

  “Come on over for coffee. Bring Dom with you.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” Followed by click.

  “I HOPE this is good,” Dominic said. His eyes looked like piss holes in the snow.

  “If you want to soar with the eagles in the morning, buddy, you can’t wallow with the pigs at night. Be cool. I ordered coffee.”

  “Thanks. So, what’s up?”

  Jack walked over to his computer and pointed to the screen. They both leaned down to read.

  “Who is this guy?” Dominic asked, thinking Gadfly097 . . . ?

  “He came in from Vienna yesterday, too.”

  Across the street somewhere, maybe? Brian wondered, followed by, Did he see my face?

  “Okay, I guess we’re up for the appointment,” Brian said, looking at Dom and getting a thumbs-up.

  The coffee arrived in a few more minutes. Jack served, but the brew, they all found, was gritty, Turkish in character, though far worse even than the Turks served. Still, better than no coffee at all. They did not speak on point. Their tradecraft was good enough that they didn’t talk business in a room that hadn’t been swept for bugs—which they didn’t know how to do, and for which they did not have the proper equipment.

  Jack gunned down his coffee and headed into the shower. In it was a red chain, evidently to be pulled in case of a heart attack, but he felt reasonably decent and didn’t use it. He wasn’t so sure about Dominic, who really did look like cat puke on the rug. In his case, the shower worked wonders, and he came back out shaved and scrubbed pink, ready to rumble.

  “The food here is pretty good, but I’m not sure about the coffee,” he announced.

  “Not sure. Jesus, I bet they serve better coffee in Cuba,” Brian said. “MRE coffee is better than this.”

  “Nobody’s perfect, Aldo,” Dominic observed. But he didn’t like it either.

  “So, figure half an hour?” Jack asked. He needed about three more minutes to be ready.

  “If not, send an ambulance,” Enzo said, heading for the door, and hoping the shower gods were merciful this morning. It was hardly fair, he thought. Drinking gave you a hangover, not driving.

  But thirty minutes later, all three were in the lobby, neatly dressed and wearing sunglasses against the bright Italian sun that sparkled outside. Dominic asked the doorman for directions and got pointed to the Via Sistina, which led directly to the Trinità dei Monti church, and the steps were just across the street, and looked to be eighty or so feet down—there was an elevator serving the subway stop, which was farther down still, but going downhill was not too outrageous a task. It hit all three that Rome had churches the way New York City had candy stores. The walk down was pleasant. The scene, indeed, would be wonderfully romantic if you had the right girl on your arm. The steps had been designed to follow the slope of the hill by the architect Francesco De Sanctis, and was the home of the annual Donna sotto le Stelle fashion extravaganza. At the bottom was a fountain in which lay a marble boat commemorating a major flood, something in which a stone boat would be of little use. The piazza was the intersection of only two streets, and was named for the presence of the Spanish Embassy to the Holy See. The playing field, as it were, was not very large—smaller than Times Square, for example—but it bustled with activity and vehicle traffic, and enough pedestrians to make passage there a dicey proposition for all involved.

  Ristorante Giovanni sat on the western side, an undistinguished building of yellow/cream-painted brick, with a large canopied eating area outside. Inside was a bar at which everyone had a lighted cigarette. This included a police officer having a cup of coffee. Dominic and Brian walked in and looked around, scoping the area out before coming back outside.

  “We have three hours, people,” Brian observed. “Now what?”

  “We want to be back here—when?” Jack asked.

  Dominic checked his watch. “Our friend is supposed to show up at about one-thirty. Figure we sit down for lunch about twelve forty-five and await developments. Jack, can you ID the guy by sight?”

  “No problem,” Junior assured them.

  “Then I guess we have about two hours to wander around. I was here a couple years ago. There’s good shopping.”

  “Is that a Brioni store over there?” Jack asked, pointing.

  “Looks like it,” Brian answered. “Won’t hurt our cover to do some shopping.”

  “Then let’s do it.” He’d never gotten an Italian suit. He had several English ones, from No. 10 Savile Row in London. Why not try here? This spook business was crazy, he reflected. They were here to kill a terrorist, but beforehand they’d do some clothes shopping. Even women wouldn’t do that . . . expect maybe for shoes.

  In fact, there were all manner of stores to be seen on the Via del Babuino—“Baboon Street,” of all things—and Jack took the time to look in many of them. Italy was indeed the world capital of style, and he tried on a light gray silk jacket that seemed to have been custom-made for him by a master tailor, and he purchased it on the spot, for eight hundred Euros. Then he had to carry the plastic bag over his shoulder, but was this not beautiful cover? What secret agent man would hobble himself with such an unlikely burden?

  MOHAMMED HASSAN left the hotel at 12:15, taking the same walking route that the twins had done two hours earlier. He knew it well. He’d walked the same path on his way for Greengold’s killing, and the thought comforted him. It was a fine, sunny day, the temperature reaching to about 30 degrees Celsius, a warm day, but not really a hot one. A good day for American tourists. Christian ones. American Jews went to Israel so that they could spit on Arabs. Here they were just Christian infidels looking to take photographs and buy clothes. Well, he’d bought his suits here as well. There was that Brioni shop just off the Piazza di Spagna. The salesman there, Antonio, always treated him well, the better to take his money. But Mohammed came from a trading culture as well, and you couldn’t despise a man for that.

  It was time for the midday meal, and the Ristorante Giovanni was as good as any Roman restaurant, and better than most. His favorite waiter recognized him and waved him to his regular table on the right side, under the canopy.

  “THAT’S
OUR boy,” Jack told them, waving with his glass. The three Americans watched his waiter bring a bottle of Pellegrino water to the table, along with a glass of ice. You didn’t see much ice in Europe, where people thought it something to ski or skate on, but evidently 56 liked his water cold. Jack was better placed to look in his direction. “I wonder what he likes to eat.”

  “The condemned is supposed to have a decent last meal,” Dominic noted. Not that mutt in Alabama, of course. He’d probably had bad taste anyway. Then he wondered what they served for lunch in hell. “His guest is supposed to show at one-thirty, right?”

  “Correct. Fifty-six told him to be careful in his routine. That might mean to check for a tail.”

  “Suppose he’s nervous about us?” Brian wondered.

  “Well,” Jack observed, “they have had some bad luck lately.”

  “You have to wonder what he’s thinking,” Dominic said. He leaned back in his chair and stretched, catching a glance at their subject. It was a little warm to be wearing a jacket and tie, but they were supposed to look like businessmen, not tourists. Now he wondered if that was a good cover or not. You had to take temperature into account. Was he sweating because of the mission or the ambient temperature? He hadn’t been overly tense in London, Munich, or Vienna, had he? No, not then. But this was a more crowded—no, the landscape in London had been more crowded, hadn’t it?

  There are good serendipities and bad ones. This time, a bad one happened. A waiter with a tray of glasses of Chianti tripped on the big feet of a woman from Chicago, in Rome to check out her roots. The tray missed the table, but the glasses got both twins in the lap. Both were wearing light-colored suits to deal with the heat, and—

  “Oh, shit!” Dominic exclaimed, his biscuit-colored Brooks Brothers trousers looking as though he had been hit in the groin with a shotgun. Brian was in even worse shape.