AUTUMN WAS HERE. You could tell from the wind and the ice pack, which had begun pulling away from the coast to reveal the black water of the Arctic Ocean. It could not be colder without turning to ice, and there was plenty of that still in sight, just to remind one that summer up here was fleeting at best. Mother Nature remained as grim and heartless as ever, even under a sky of crystal blue and a few cotton-ball white clouds.
This place was not unlike his first Navy posting to Polyyarniy twelve years before, just as the Soviet Navy was starting to shut down. Oh, sure, they had a few ships left, most of them tied at the working ports of the Kola Fjord, manned by men who stayed in the Navy because they either had to or had nothing to go home to. There were a few ships with crews composed almost entirely of officers who actually got paid a few times a year. Vitaliy had been among the last men drafted into the former Soviet Navy and, to his astonishment, found himself liking the work.
After the mindless basic training he’d been made a junior starshina, or petty officer, and a bosun’s mate. It had been hard, backbreaking work but satisfying, and it had ended up giving him a useful trade. He’d profited personally from the demise of the Soviet Navy by buying at a discount an old but well-maintained T-4 amphibious landing craft that he’d nominally converted into a passenger craft. Mostly he took scientific parties, exploring the region for obscure reasons beyond his interest, while some were hunters looking to convert a polar bear into an expensive rug.
His charter for the week was waiting for him down the coast at a small fishing village. Two days ago he’d preloaded their equipment-a GAZ truck with all-wheel drive, new tires, and a fresh paint job, equipped with a heavy-duty A-frame, taking delivery from an anonymous driver who, like him, had probably been paid in euros. As any good captain did, Vitaliy had inspected the cargo and had been surprised to find the truck stripped of all identification codes, right down to the one on the engine block. While such a task wasn’t particularly complicated, and neither did it require a mechanic, something told Vitaliy that his charters hadn’t done the work themselves. So they’d come here, bought a GAZ in good condition, paid someone handsomely to strip it, then hired a private charter. Plenty of money to spread around and overly concerned with anonymity. What did that mean?
But there was no point in being too curious. Smart cats knew the danger of curiosity, and he liked to think he was smart enough. The euros would also take care of his memory, something in which his party seemed supremely confident; the leader of the group, clearly of Mediterranean descent, had told Vitaliy to call him Fred. It wasn’t so much an artifice as it was a moniker of convenience, almost a private joke between them, and Fred’s smirk during their initial meeting had confirmed it.
He watched his charter party come aboard and wave at him, and with that done, he signaled to Vanya, his engineer/deckhand, who cast off the lines. Vitaliy started the diesel engines and pulled away from the dock.
Soon enough he was in the fairway and headed out to sea. The black water didn’t exactly beckon, but it was where he and the boat belonged, and it felt good to be heading back out. All he needed to make the morning perfect was a tranquilizer, and that Vitaliy handled with an American Marlboro Lights 100 cigarette. And then the morning was perfect. The local fishing fleet had already cleared the harbor-such dreadful hours they worked-and the water was clear for easy navigation, with only a slight chopping breaking on the marker buoys.
As he passed the breakwater, he turned to starboard and headed east.
Per his instructions, Adnan had kept his team small, himself and three others that he trusted implicitly, just enough bodies to do the heavy lifting but not enough to present a problem when the inevitable conclusion to their mission arrived. He didn’t mind that part of it, actually. He would, after all, suffer the same general fate as his compatriots. A sad necessity, he thought. No, his biggest worry was that they might fail. Failure here would undoubtedly have a resonant effect on the larger operation, whatever that might be, and Adnan would do everything in his power to make sure that didn’t happen.
His life. Adnan smiled at the notion. Nonbelievers saw all this-trees and water and material possessions-as life. Nor was life defined by what you ate and drank and defiled with your bodily lusts. The time you spend on this earth is but preparation for what comes after, and if you are devout and obedient to the one true God, your reward will be glorious beyond imagining. What was less certain, Adnan realized, was his fate should he succeed here. Would he be given greater missions, or would his silence be more valuable to the jihad? He would prefer the former, if only to continue serving Allah, but if the latter was to be his destiny, then so be it. He would meet either outcome with the same equanimity, confident he’d lived his earthly life as best he could.
Whatever was to come, he thought, was in the future, and he would let that worry about itself. In the here and now he had a job to do. An important one, though he wasn’t sure how exactly it fit into the larger picture. That was for wiser minds.
They’d arrived at the fishing village the day before, after parting company with the driver who was to deliver their truck to the docks and into the hands of the charter captain they had hired. The village was largely abandoned, most of its occupants having moved on after the waters had gone barren from years of overfishing. What few villagers remained kept to themselves, scraping by as best they could as autumn moved toward winter. Adnan and his men, bundled in parkas and their faces covered in scarves against the cold, had drawn little attention, and the hostel manager, who was only too surprised and happy to have paying customers, asked them no questions-neither about where they had come from nor about their future travel plans. Even had the manager asked, Adnan couldn’t have answered if he’d wanted to. The future belonged to Allah, whether the rest of the world knew it or not.
It was dark in Paris, and there was a chill in the air that affected the two Arabs more than the Parisians. But that was an excuse for more wine, which was welcome. And the sidewalk tables had thinned out enough that they could talk more openly. If anyone was observing them, then he was being very careful about it. And you couldn’t be afraid of everything all the time, even in this business.
“You’re waiting for another communication?” Fa’ad asked.
Ibrahim nodded. “It’s supposed to be en route. A good courier. Very reliable.”
“What do you expect?”
“I’ve learned not to speculate,” Ibrahim said. “I take my directions as they come. The Emir knows what to do, doesn’t he?”
“So far he has been effective, but sometimes I think he’s an old woman,” Fa’ad groused. “If you plan your operation intelligently, then it will work. We are the Emir’s hands and eyes in the field. He picked us. He should trust us more.”
“Yes, but he sees things which we do not see. Never forget that,” Ibrahim reminded his guest. “That is why he decides on all the operations.”
“Yes, he is very wise,” Fa’ad conceded, not entirely meaning it but having to talk that way even so. He had sworn his allegiance to the Emir, and that, really, was that, even though he’d done it five years before, still in his enthusiastic teens. People believed much at that age, and swore loyalty easily. And it took years for that sort of oath to wear off. If ever.
But that didn’t entirely stop doubts. He’d met the Emir only once, while Ibrahim could claim to know the man. Such was the nature of their work. Neither Ibrahim nor Fa’ad knew where their leader was living. They were familiar with just one end of a lengthy electronic trail. That was a sensible security precaution: American police were probably as efficient as the European sort, and European police were men to be feared. Even so, there was much old woman in the Emir. He didn’t even trust those who had sworn to die in his place. Whom, then, did he trust? Why them and not… him? Fa’ad asked himself. Fundamentally, Fa’ad was too bright to accept things “because I said so,” as every mother in the world said to every five-year-old son. Even more frustratingly, he could not even ask certain questions, because they would imply disloyalty to certain others. And disloyalty in the organization was tantamount to a request for self-immolation. But Fa’ad knew that this actually made sense, both from the Emir’s point of view and for the organization as a whole.
It wasn’t easy doing Allah’s work, but Fa’ad had known that going in. Or so he told himself. Well, at least in Paris you could look at the passing women, dressed as whores, most of them, showing their bodies off as though advertising their business. It was good, Fa’ad thought, that Ibrahim had chosen to live in this area. At least the scenery was pretty.
“That’s a pretty one,” Ibrahim said in agreement to the unspoken observation. “She’s a doctor’s wife, and sadly she does not commit adultery, in my experience.”
“Mind reading.” Fa’ad laughed. “French women are open to advances?”
“Some are. The hard part is reading their minds. Few men have that ability, even here.” And he had a good laugh. “In that sense, French women are no different from our own. Some things are universal.”
Fa’ad took a sip of coffee and leaned closer. “Will it work?” he asked, meaning their planned operation.
“I see no reason why it would not, and the effects will be noteworthy. The one drawback is that it will give us new enemies, but how will we notice the difference? We have no friends among the infidels. For us, now, it’s just a matter of getting the tools in place for our strike.”
“Inshallah,” Fa’ad replied.
And both clicked their glasses, just like Frenchmen after an agreement is reached.
There was nothing like home court advantage, former President Ryan thought. He’d gotten his doctorate in history at Georgetown University, so he knew the campus almost as well as he did his own home. All in all, he’d found the lecture circuit surprisingly agreeable. It was easy duty, being paid an embarrassing amount of money to talk about a subject he knew well: his time in the White House. So far there’d been only a smattering of audience loonies, eighty percent of them conspiracy nuts who’d been quickly shouted down by the other attendees. The other twenty percent were lefties who held the opinion that Edward Kealty had pulled the country back from an abyss Ryan had created. It was nonsense, of course, but there was no doubting their sincerity, a reminder Ryan took to heart: There was reality, and then there was perception, and rarely the two shall meet. It was a lesson Arnie van Damm had tried-mostly in vain-to pound into Ryan’s head during his presidency, and a lesson Ryan’s stubborn pride did not allow him to swallow easily. Some things were just true. Perception be damned. The fact that a majority of the American electorate seemed to have forgotten this fact by electing Kealty still boggled Ryan’s mind, but then again, he was no objective observer. Should have been Robby in the Oval Office. The trick was to not let this disappointment taint his speech. As much as he might like to, criticizing a sitting President-even a jackass-was bad form.
The door to the greenroom-in this case a small lounge adjoining McNeir Auditorium-opened, and Andrea Price-O’Day, his principal Secret Service agent, stepped past the agents at the door.
“Five minutes, sir.”
“How’s the crowd?” Ryan said.
“Full house. No torches and pitchforks.”
Ryan laughed at this. “Always a good sign. How’s my tie?”
He’d learned early on that Andrea was far handier with a Windsor knot than he was-almost as good as Cathy, but the good doctor had left early for the hospital that morning, so he’d tied the knot himself. A mistake.
Andrea cocked her head and appraised it. “Not bad, sir.” She made a slight adjustment and gave a curt nod of approval. “I feel my job security slipping away.”
“Not gonna happen, Andrea.” Price-O’Day had been with the Ryan family a long time, so long, in fact, that most of them rarely remembered she was armed and ready to kill and die for their safety.
There came a knock on the door, and one of the agents poked his head through the gap. “SHORTSTOP,” he announced, then opened the door to admit Jack Junior.
“Jack!” the elder Ryan said, walking over.
“Hey, Andrea,” Jack Junior said.
“Mr. Ryan.”
“Nice surprise,” said the former President.
“Yeah, well, my date canceled on me, so…”
Ryan laughed. “Man’s gotta have his priorities.”
“Hell, I didn’t mean it like that-”
“Forget it. Glad you came. You got a seat?”
Jack Junior nodded. “Front row.”
“Good. If I get into trouble you can throw me a softball.”
Jack left his father, walked down the hall, took the stairs down one level, then headed toward the auditorium. Ahead, the hall was mostly dark, every other fluorescent ceiling fixture turned off. Like most educational institutions, Georgetown was trying to be more “green.” As he passed a conference room he heard a metallic scraping sound from within, like a chair being dragged across a floor. He stepped back and peeked through the slit window. Inside, a janitor in blue coveralls was kneeling down beside an upturned floor buffer, poking at the polishing pad with a screwdriver. On impulse, Jack pushed open the door and poked his head inside. The janitor looked up.
“Hi,” Jack said.
“Hello.” The man appeared to be Hispanic and spoke with a heavy accent. “Change pad,” he said.
“Sorry to bother you,” Jack said, then shut the door behind him. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed Andrea’s number. She picked up on the first ring. Jack said, “Hey, I was on my way to the auditorium… There’s a janitor down here-”
“Conference room two-b?”
“Yeah.”
“We cleared him, and we’ll sweep again. We’re taking the basement route anyway.”
“Okay, just checking.”
“You looking for a second job?” Price-O’Day asked.
Jack chuckled. “How’s the pay?”
“Lot less than you make. And the hours are hell. See you later.”
Andrea disconnected. Jack headed toward the auditorium.
Showtime, sir,” she told former President Ryan, who stood up and shot his cuffs; the gesture was uniquely Jack Ryan Sr., but Price-O’Day saw a bit of the son in the father, and SHORTSTOP’s call about the janitor had told her something more: The son hadn’t fallen far from the intellectual tree, either. Was there such a thing as a spook gene? she wondered. If so, Jack Junior probably had it. Like his father, he was intensely curious and took few things on face. Of course they’d swept the building, and of course Jack knew this. Even so, he’d spotted the janitor and immediately thought, Anomaly. It had been a false alarm, but the question had been valid-something Secret Service agents learned to ask through training and experience.
Andrea now checked her watch and replayed their route in her mind, seeing the map in her head, timing the turns and distances. Satisfied, she knocked twice on the door, signaling to the agents there that SWORDSMAN was ready to move. She waited a moment for the cordon to form up, then opened the door, checked the hall, and stepped out, signaling for Ryan to follow.
In his auditorium seat, Jack Junior absently flipped through the night’s program, his eyes taking in the words but his brain failing to register them. Something was itching at his subconscious, that nebulous feeling of something left undone… Something he’d meant to do before leaving The Campus, perhaps?
The president of Georgetown appeared on the stage and walked to the podium, accompanied by polite applause. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. As we have only one item on tonight’s program, I’ll be brief with my introductions. Former President John Patrick Ryan has a long history of government service-”
Janitor. The word popped, unbidden, into Jack’s mind. He’d been cleared, Andrea had said. Even so… He reached for his cell phone, then stopped. What would he say? That he had a feeling? From his seat, he could see the left side of the stage. Two black-suited Secret Service agents appeared; behind them, Andrea and his dad.
Before he realized what he was doing, Jack was on his feet and headed for the side exit. He trotted up the stairs, turned left, headed down the hall, counting conference room doors as he went.
Screwdriver, he thought, and suddenly the subconsious itch he’d felt two minutes earlier snapped into focus. The janitor had been using a screwdriver to remove a pad that had been secured to the buffer by a center locknut.
Chest now pounding, Jack reached the correct conference room and stopped a few feet short. He saw light coming through the slit window but could hear no sounds from within. He took a break, walked to the door, and tried the knob. Locked. He peeked through the window. The buffer was still there. The janitor was gone. The flathead screwdriver lay on the floor.
Jack turned and started jogging back to the auditorium. He stopped at the door, collected himself, then gently pushed open the door and eased it shut. A few people looked up as he entered, as did one of Andrea’s agents standing in the center aisle. He gave Jack a nod of recognition, then returned to his scan of the auditorium.
Jack started his own scan, looking first for any sign of blue coveralls but quickly abandoning this; the janitor wouldn’t have gotten into the auditorium. Backstage would be clear as well, locked down by Andrea’s team. Who else? he thought, picking through the sea of faces. Audience members, agents, campus security…
Standing beside the east wall, his face partially in shadow and his hands clasped before him, was a rent-a-cop. Like the agents, he, too, was scanning the crowd. Like the agents… Jack kept scanning, counting campus security officers. Five in total. And none of them scanning the crowd. Untrained in personal protection, their attention was not focused on the audience- the most likely area of threat-but rather on the stage. Except for the guard on the east wall. The man turned his head, and his face passed briefly into the light.
Jack pulled out his cell phone and texted Andrea: GUARD, EAST WALL = JANITOR.
Onstage, Andrea was standing ten feet behind and to the left of the podium. Jack saw her pull out her cell phone, check the screen, then return it to her pocket. Her reaction was immediate. Her cuff mike came up to her mouth, then down again. The agent in the center aisle casually headed back up the aisle steps, then turned right at the carpeted intersection, heading toward the east wall. Now Jack saw Andrea sidestep behind his dad, moving into what he assumed was an intercept angle between his dad and the guard.
The center-aisle agent had reached the east wall’s aisle. Thirty feet away, the guard rotated his head in that direction, paused ever so briefly on the agent, then rotated back to the stage, where Andrea had moved into blocking position. His dad, noticing this, cast a brief glance in her direction but kept talking. He would know, of course, what Andrea was doing, Jack reasoned, but not whether there was a specific threat.
On the east wall, the guard also noticed Andrea’s movement. Casually, he took two steps down the aisle and bent over to whisper in an audience member’s ear. The woman looked up at the guard, surprise on her face, then stood up. Now smiling, the guard took her by the elbow and, stepping around to her right side, guided her down the aisle toward the exit by the stage. As they passed the fourth row, Andrea took another step forward, maintaining her blocking position.
She unbuttoned her suit coat.
The guard suddenly switched his left hand from the woman’s elbow to her collar, then sidestepped, moving sideways past the front row. The woman let out a yelp. Heads turned. The guard’s right hand slipped into the front waistband of his pants. He jerked the woman around, using her as a shield. Andrea’s gun came out and up.
“Freeze, Secret Service!”
Behind her, the other agents were already moving, swarming the former President, pushing him down and hurrying him toward the opposite side of the stage.
The guard’s hand emerged from his waistband with a semiautomatic 9-millimeter. Seeing his target moving out of range, the guard made the mistake for which Andrea was waiting. Gun coming level with the stage, he took a step forward. And a half-foot beyond the protection of his human shield.
Andrea fired once. At fifteen feet, the low-velocity hollow-point bullet struck home, punching into the guard’s head between his left eye and his ear. Designed for close-quarters, crowd-dense firing, the round worked as advertised, mushrooming inside the guard’s brain, expending all its energy in a thousandth of a second and stopping, as the autopsy would later show, three inches from the opposite side of the skull.
The guard dropped straight down, dead before he reached the carpet.
Andrea tells me you saved the day,” former President Ryan said twenty minutes later in the limousine.
“Just sent up the flare,” Jack replied.
The whole thing had been a surreal experience, Jack thought, but somehow less surreal than its aftermath. Though the series of events had been brief-five seconds from the time the guard had gotten the woman from her seat to when Andrea’s head shot had dropped him-the mental replay in Jack’s mind moved, predictably, he supposed, in slow motion. So shocked by the shooting was the audience that it had emitted only a few screams, all of those from the attendees before whom the assassin had fallen dead.
For his part, Jack had known better than to move, so he remained standing against the west wall as campus security and Andrea’s agents cleared the auditorium. His dad, at the center of the Secret Service scrum, had been offstage before Andrea had fired the killing shot.
“Even so,” Ryan said. “Thanks.”
It was an awkward moment that drifted into an even more uncomfortable silence. Jack Junior broke it. “Scary shit, huh?”
Former President Ryan nodded at this. “What made you go back there-to check on the janitor, I mean?”
“When I saw him, he was trying to take off the buffer pad with a screwdriver. He needed a crescent wrench.”
“Impressive, Jack.”
“Because of the screwdriver-”
“Partially that. Partially because you didn’t panic. And you let the professionals do their job. Eight outta ten people wouldn’t have noticed the buffer thing. Most of those would have panicked, frozen up. The others would’ve tried to move on the guy themselves. You did it right, from soup to nuts.”
“Thanks.”
Ryan Senior smiled. “Now let’s talk about how to break this to your mother…”