Tom Clancy Duty and Honor (A Jack Ryan Jr. Novel)

by Grant Blackwood

  Effrem looked over at Jack and shrugged; Jack reciprocated. He doubted it was the show’s content René enjoyed, but rather the normalcy of the activity.

  Their food arrived and they ate in silence and watched Wheel. When the credits rolled, René used the remote to shut off the television. “Thank you for the meal, Jack.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “What is the plan? Are we going after this Klugmann?”

  As he’d been with Möller, Jack was of two minds about their best course with Klugmann. Grab him and squeeze him for information, or play the waiting game and hope Klugmann led them to something significant?

  “Right now I’m more interested in Bossard’s plane. There’s only one airport aside from Hosea Kutako—Eros. It could have landed there—”

  “Actually, if you count airstrips, there are dozens of places within fifty miles of here,” Effrem said. “I couldn’t sleep. I did some research. The Wi-Fi here is excellent.”

  “Dozens of airstrips,” Jack repeated.

  “But only six with runways long enough to accommodate a Pilatus PC-12. Subtract from that three that lie within state-controlled game preserves, and you’re left with three airstrips Bossard’s plane could put down at—Midgard, Pokewni, and Osona.”

  “I’m impressed,” Jack replied.

  “It was either this or Minesweeper.”

  “You made the right choice. Okay, we’re going to split up. René, I want you to stay here—”

  “Why?”

  “Because I need someone to stay close to Klugmann’s hotel.”

  This was a white lie. Even if Klugmann was there, without the exact location of his room they had no way of knowing whether it was visible from their suite. Jack was more interested in giving René more decompression time.

  “If we get word that he’s moving, you’ll have to follow him,” Jack added.

  René nodded. “I can do that.”

  “Effrem, you’re checking Eros Airport. Take a taxi there and have a look around. From what I could tell, all the on-site hangars are reserved for repairs. If the Pilatus is at Eros, chances are decent it’s sitting outside.”

  “And what’s my excuse for loitering about?”

  “You’ll think of something. I’ll take the Land Cruiser and check the other three airstrips. Can you send me their locations—”

  “Done,” Effrem said, thumbing keys on his cell phone.

  —

  Of the three airstrips in question, Osona and Midgard not only were the closest to Windhoek, but also were within thirty miles of each other and a straight shot north from Windhoek, so Jack chose to investigate these first.

  Knowing his phone’s signal coverage was likely to be nonexistent much beyond Windhoek’s outskirts, Jack took several screenshots of his phone’s navigation screen, then used these to get on the four-lane Western Bypass highway toward the town of Okahandja.

  It was night by the time Jack put the capital’s lights in his rearview mirror. As before, the sky was a cloudless black backdrop sprinkled with pinpricks of light. The moon was so bright Jack almost found his headlights unnecessary.

  Forty minutes later the Land Cruiser’s headlights illuminated mile marker 17 and Jack began coasting. According to his map, there were no official signs for Osona Airstrip, but rather a faded wooden one pointing toward the now abandoned Bergquell Farm about a half-mile northwest of the runway.

  The sign was so small that Jack overshot it and had to do a U-turn. He guided the Toyota off the highway, down a dirt driveway, then onto a broad frontage heading east. He had covered several hundred yards when he realized that he was actually on the airstrip’s mile-long runway. He killed the Toyota’s headlights and drove on using only the moonlight to guide him.

  There was nothing here, Jack realized. The head of the airstrip was nothing more than a large cul-de-sac, a turnaround for departing aircraft. When he reached this he turned left onto another dirt road, which led him to Bergquell Farm, nothing more than a cluster of rusting sheet-metal huts, none of them large enough to hide even the smallest of planes.

  One down.

  —

  The second airstrip, Midgard, was thirty miles east of Osona, but the only route there took Jack first north to Okahandja, then on a looping road that followed the edge of Swakoppoort Dam Reservoir. On Jack’s phone the satellite view of Swakop looked like a giant starfish crushed flat, the reservoir’s waters a startling blue against the otherwise brown landscape.

  For twenty miles Jack followed the wide gravel road as it wound deeper and higher into the hills, until finally he saw a sign that read MIDGARD AIRSTRIP—KHORUSEPA LODGE. The latter didn’t appear on his map, but he suspected resort lodges came and went around Windhoek, failing under one owner before being renamed and revived by another.

  Jack made the turn, followed the road for another half-mile as it wound its way through a series of ravines to a fork in the road divided by another sign. To the left, Midgard Airstrip; to the right, Khorusepa Resort Lodge. Jack turned left and after only a few hundred yards found himself at the edge of a runway. He shut off the headlights.

  Parked opposite him at the edge of the tarmac was a white single-engine airplane. The tail number read HB-FXT. It was Bossard’s Pilatus. The plane’s windows were dark, its wheels chocked, the side door closed.

  No one was home. Or so he hoped.

  He grabbed his rucksack from the passenger seat, climbed out, and walked across to the plane, where he ducked beneath the nose cone. He rapped his knuckles against the aluminum fuselage. Nothing stirred inside the plane, so he knocked again, this time louder. He then walked to the side door, lifted the latch, and twisted. With a hiss of hydraulics the door swung downward, extending the built-in steps as it went. Jack climbed inside and paused to look around. Did it matter? he wondered. The instructions Mitch had included in the FedEx package made no mention of where to place the GPS tracker.

  Jack found the bathroom just aft of the cockpit. He removed the tissue-paper box from its cubby, dropped the tracker inside, then replaced the box and left.

  —

  Back in the Toyota, he retraced his path to the fork in the road and turned down the road to the resort. Abruptly he rounded a corner and found himself on a palm tree–lined cobblestone avenue at the end of which a thatched entryway spanned the width of the road. Through this he glimpsed a circular driveway, lighted brick pathways, and what looked like individual bungalows.

  He braked to a stop and doused the headlights.

  This was unexpected.

  He checked his watch: It was one-fifteen. He saw no one moving about, no lights in the bungalow windows.

  “The hell with it,” Jack said.

  He drove down the avenue and through the entrance, then eased the Toyota under the lobby awning. Through the windshield he saw flames rising from a circular stone fire pit. Seated around it were eight people. Jack pulled the binoculars from his rucksack and zoomed in on the group. All were men. Three of them had their backs to him; the five facing him he didn’t recognize, and he wondered if one of them was Gerhard Klugmann.

  Something tapped against Jack’s window. He turned his head and found himself looking into the face of Stephan Möller.

  Ah, shit, Jack thought.

  “Kann ich Ihnen helfen?” Möller called. His tone and posture were relaxed. “Haben Sie Sich verlaufen?” Are you lost?

  Jack didn’t give himself a chance to think. He rolled down his window an inch, put a little gravel in his voice, and replied in Spanish, “Estoy perdido. Hablas español?”

  “Nein, Deutsch.”

  Jack said, “Onjala Lodge?”

  Möller was shaking his head now, getting annoyed. “Nein. Sie sind an der falschen Stelle. Gehen Sie weg!” Go away!

  “Lo siento, lo siento,” Jack replied.

  He put th
e Toyota in reverse, did a U-turn, and drove off.

  —

  It was almost four a.m. when Jack pushed through the door to their hotel suite. Effrem was sitting cross-legged on the floor, the only illumination coming from the glow of his laptop screen.

  “Hey,” he whispered.

  Jack turned on a table lamp and plopped down in an armchair. “Hey.”

  Without looking up from his screen, still typing, Effrem said, “I struck out at Eros. You?”

  “The plane’s sitting on the tarmac at Midgard. I found Stephan Möller staying at a lodge nearby.” Jack gave Effrem the details of his night, then added, “There were about eight of them, all German I’d be willing to bet.” And all with a similar skill set, Jack guessed. “Möller was the only one I recognized.”

  “I’ll be damned,” said Effrem. “Good job. Mitch hit the motherlode with the Bossard portal, by the way. I forwarded you the link to the server. I’ve been going through the documents for the last couple hours.”

  “Anything interesting?”

  “A lot, actually. For starters, I know why Rostock wants you dead.”

  WINDHOEK, NAMIBIA

  Jack didn’t respond immediately. Though he’d started all this with the sole intention of finding the answer Effrem now claimed to have, Jack realized it hadn’t been on his mind for days. He’d stopped wondering why someone had tried to kill him. It was an odd feeling.

  “Tell me,” Jack replied.

  “Last year you did a financial audit on a German company called Dovestar Industrial Machinery.”

  Jack recalled the job. As part of Hendley Associates’ white-hat cover, he and several other analysts took on consulting contracts, usually having to do with mergers and acquisitions. As Jack recalled, Dovestar was one of five audits he did that year.

  “I think I remember,” he said. “It was routine. A couple days in Aachen, then back home.”

  “There was a little more to it than that.”

  “Refresh my memory.”

  “A Dutch company offered to buy Dovestar. By all measures it was a good offer. But Dovestar declined. For whatever reason, both the Dutch and German press got ahold of the story and started asking questions. The rumors were that Dovestar was in financial trouble, considering layoffs, and maybe on the road to bankruptcy. So why turn down the buyout? everyone asked. That’s where you came in.

  “To assuage fears, Dovestar contracted Hendley to do an audit.”

  It was coming back to Jack now. “It was essentially a financial-soundness report. I don’t recall any red flags.”

  “That’s because they were buried very deep, and it wasn’t that kind of audit. The long and the short of it is this: Through a number of cutouts, Dovestar is ultimately owned by Rostock Security Group. That kind of subterfuge is what Alexander Bossard’s firm specializes in, and as far as I can tell, RSG had been their only client for the past six years. Dovestar’s a legitimate company, but RSG has been using some of its accounts as hidden piggy banks.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “If I had to guess, an off-the-books operational fund. Your audit, routine though it was, triggered an automatic review by BaFin.”

  Jack knew the abbreviation. It stood for Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht—the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority. In essence it was Germany’s version of America’s Securities and Exchange Commission.

  Effrem went on: “The hearing was scheduled for next month. You’re supposed to testify as to your audit findings.”

  Jack shrugged. “I hadn’t heard about it. It might be sitting in my in-box.”

  “Without your sworn testimony the chances that RSG’s relationship with Dovestar and the disposition of those secret funds will be exposed drop to almost zero,” said Effrem.

  “If I go away, the problem goes away,” Jack added.

  “That’s what Rostock was probably hoping for. From what I gather, it’s German boilerplate law: Without you present to certify the audit and be examined by Dovestar’s counsel, the audit is worthless.”

  Jack suddenly realized the solution to all this might be as simple as his showing up for the audit hearing next month. Or maybe not. Everything they had on RSG and Dovestar’s relationship had been obtained illegally. None of it was admissible, and if he tried to get around that, BaFin would find his hands dirty and his audit suspect.

  He asked, “What’s the status of the Dovestar funds now?”

  “According to Bossard’s memoranda, they were cleared out and buried about a month after you filed your audit, but as I said, it’s a permanent legal record. A snapshot, if you will. If BaFin managed to trace Dovestar to RSG, Rostock would end up in the hot seat.”

  Jack smiled. “Effrem, you continue to impress me.”

  Effrem shrugged. “I spent most of my childhood sitting at the kitchen table watching my mother dissect financial and political puzzles. It must have rubbed off on me.”

  “What we need to know is how and where Rostock was spending that money.”

  “According to Mitch, through Dovestar, Jürgen Rostock’s paid Klugmann almost four hundred thousand dollars over the past five years for ‘IT consulting.’”

  “That’s a lot of hacking,” Jack replied. “Or a few select, high-level jobs.”

  Jack now had his long-awaited answer, but as was par for the course, it only led to more questions. Klugmann was in Namibia and Möller was in Namibia. Therefore, by proxy Jürgen Rostock was in Namibia.

  —

  Jack tried to grab a couple hours’ sleep. His mind wouldn’t quiet, so after twenty minutes he got up and returned to the main room. René was in the adjoining kitchen, making coffee. Effrem still sat on the floor, laptop resting on his crossed legs.

  “Good morning,” René said with a smile. “Coffee?”

  “Morning. Sure.”

  “Effrem told me about the plane. You’re sure it was Möller?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was there anyone else you recognized?”

  Translation: Was Rostock there? Jack replied, “No one who looked familiar.”

  Jack walked away from René, sat down in the armchair, and whispered to Effrem, “Did you tell him about Dovestar?”

  “No. It’s your call whether he can handle it.”

  “Let me give it some thought.”

  Jack opened his laptop and downloaded Mitch’s Bossard files from the server. All were searchable PDFs. According to Mitch’s attached note, the only mention of Jack was in relation to the Dovestar audit, but Jürgen Rostock and RSG appeared in the files hundreds of times, which made sense as RSG was Bossard’s only client.

  “Effrem, start a spreadsheet. I want you to track the dates and amounts Klugmann was paid by Dovestar. He was paying Klugmann a lot of money, which suggests whatever Rostock needed him to do was significant. Based on what I’m seeing, Bossard handled a lot of overseas logistics, shipping, and procurement for RSG, but the details are ambiguous. I want to know if any of Klugmann’s payments match them.”

  “Match them how?”

  “Amounts, locations, permit applications, and transport arrangements . . . Anything.”

  Over the next two hours they went about their individual tasks, Effrem building a payment profile for Klugmann, and Jack a history of possible RSG overseas operations. Once done, they compared data. Jack said, “Okay, over the past five years I’ve got four RSG projects Bossard spent a lot of time on: one in Canada, one in Panama, one in India . . .”

  “And most recently Namibia,” Effrem added.

  “Right.” Jack gave Effrem the date ranges. “Any close matches to Klugmann?”

  Effrem traced his finger down his screen. “Six payments from Dovestar. Looks like a couple for each date range you gave me. What do you think? Down payment and final payment for services rendered?”

&n
bsp; “Possibly.”

  “There’re no payments for Namibia, though.”

  “The Dovestar fund was shut down after my audit. They must be paying Klugmann through another source. Let’s look at what was going on in those countries at the time. I’ll take Canada and Panama, you take India.”

  “What am I looking for?” Effrem asked. “The phrase ‘going on’ is a little vague.”

  “Anything that might fall within RSG’s wheelhouse—terrorist incidents, major crimes, assassination attempts. You get the idea.”

  Their task was challenging. Each of these countries had its fair share of problems—fringe political factions, terrorist groups, drug cartels, attempted coups, as well as frequent instances of random violence in the larger metropolitan areas. Even having restricted their searches to Jack’s date ranges, there were hundreds of incidents that might have something to do with Rostock Security Group.

  “I’m not getting anywhere,” Effrem said after an hour.

  Jack sighed and rubbed his hands through his hair. “Same here.”

  They knew Bossard was doing legal work for RSG in these countries at these times, and they knew Gerhard Klugmann had been paid for services rendered during these times. The correlation was there, but not the common thread.

  René, sitting on a stool at the kitchen counter, said, “This Klugmann is a computer expert, a hacker?”

  “Right,” Effrem replied.

  “Then clearly that’s what Klugmann”—René hesitated, then finished—“was being paid to do. What you’re looking for aren’t incidents, but rather incidents related to computer malfunction.”

  Jack smiled. He and Effrem had overlooked the obvious. “Smart, René,” Jack said. He did note, however, that René had shied away from naming Rostock as Klugmann’s paymaster. He wasn’t quite there yet.

  “Effrem, let’s try this again but narrow the search even further.”

  René’s tweak made an immediate difference. Effrem called from his laptop, “I may have something. Two years ago, a waste reclamation plant in Mumbai dumped fifty thousand gallons of sewage into the Ulhas River. Cleanup is ongoing. Multiple lawsuits against the Japanese company responsible for the plant’s operation. Suspected cause: sitewide system malfunction.