Commander-In-Chief Read online

  His eyes opened quickly. Alone in the dark, he said, “Son of a bitch.”

  • • •

  President Ryan sat in his darkened office in Air Force One with his desk phone to his ear. He looked down at his watch and realized the person he was calling was likely in bed, because it was one a.m. in Washington, D.C.

  “Hello?”

  “Hold the line for the President of the United States. Mr. President, I have Director Foley.”

  “Thanks, Lieutenant.” Getting the communications desk upstairs in the 747 to make his calls for him made him feel a little useless, but the truth was, he couldn’t remember Mary Pat and Ed’s home phone number to save his life. On top of that, Ryan admitted to himself, he didn’t even have a clue how to dial an outside line on Air Force One.

  He guessed it was probably 9.

  “I’m sorry, Mary Pat. You know I don’t do this often.”

  “Is something wrong, Mr. President?”

  “No. Well . . . I don’t know.” He took a second to compose his thoughts. “You know my hunch, right? That Volodin has been behind the spate of attacks on the worldwide energy sector.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And my working theory is that he is doing this to affect energy prices, specifically natural gas and oil, to bolster his economy?”

  “Right.”

  “Well . . . if he was planning on invading Lithuania, wouldn’t that have the same effect?”

  She thought it over. “That’s a question for Les Birnbaum, I guess, but as DNI I feel pretty confident in fielding it. Yes, tanks crossing into a NATO member state will have more effect on energy prices than everything Volodin’s done to date. That is, assuming he has done the things you suspect. In fact, I can’t imagine anything that would have a greater effect than a Russian war with a NATO power.”

  “Exactly. And wouldn’t Volodin know none of this other stuff was important if ultimately he planned to invade?”

  Mary Pat said, “Yes, of course he would. So, you don’t think he actually plans on invading?”

  “Maybe not. The Borei coming to the East Coast, the troops on the border, the chaos in the energy sector. The uptick of attacks in Ukraine. What if he’s not trying to foment war? What if he’s trying to foment fear? Instability.”

  “Interesting theory,” Mary Pat said, but Ryan could tell from her voice she wasn’t on board. “You think he’s bluffing on his attack?”

  Ryan had been thinking about this. He said, “He might be. He can’t win a protracted war and he knows it. The only game he can win is a game of chicken. He keeps upping the stakes incrementally, and at some point we’ll either confront him or stand down. He’s putting all his money on us backing down.”

  She said, “Escalation dominance.”

  Ryan nodded. “Escalation dominance. Yes. He looks like he is the one in control of events, simply by virtue of the fact he is the one making moves. Right or wrong, whether they work out for him or not. It’s been his modus operandi for years.”

  Mary Pat said, “I see it in the media when they talk about Volodin as the chess master. Sometimes, unfortunately, I see it in my own staff. They make a list of everything Volodin has done, and they point to it and say it’s proof of his plan, regardless of the fact that nothing he has done has ultimately worked for him.”

  Ryan nodded in the dark office. “Five snap decisions in a row looks like a plan if you write them down.” He rubbed his eyes. “Maybe if we can push enough NATO into Lithuania he’ll come up with some other measure to declare victory. I don’t know what, but I do know one thing.”

  “What’s that, Mr. President?”

  “I know if we don’t get troops into Lithuania, his tanks will roll right over that border in the next week. If that happens, Volodin will be unstoppable. Lithuania will be just the first domino to fall.”

  40

  Tatiana Molchanova checked her appearance in a handheld makeup mirror and realized the interior lights of the SUV didn’t give her enough illumination to see if she needed to pluck her eyebrows. She sat in the back of the Suburban while the rest of her team climbed out and pulled bags from the back, and she took her time touching up her makeup. Tatiana never went out in public without looking perfect, because she was a celebrity, and airports were nothing if not crowded public spaces.

  This was not to say Tatiana was a complete diva, really; she knew she’d be lugging something on this trip sooner or later, even if it was just her roll-aboard and her purse.

  Finally she slipped out of the vehicle and stood with the others in her crew outside Terminal 1 at Moscow’s Vnukovo International Airport. It was four p.m. and there was a lot of activity around her, but even passengers rushing to catch flights turned to look her way. Many pulled out cameras and took pictures of one of the most famous women in the country.

  Tatiana smiled at the attention without slowing to make eye contact with anyone. Instead, she put her mirror back in her purse and waited for the audio technician to finish stacking up the gear so they could go.

  Her mobile rang and she answered it without looking. “Allo?”

  “Tatiana? It is Lidiya Maksimova, from the office of the president.”

  Tatiana’s eyebrows furrowed with concentration. “Yes, Lidiya. How are you?” Molchanova knew Lidiya well; she was one of Volodin’s top appointment secretaries.

  “I am fine. I am in the vehicle directly behind you. We are to bring you directly to the president for a meeting. Here at the airport. Shan’t take any time at all.”

  Tatiana looked to the street, to the four-door Jaguar directly behind where the Channel Seven car was parked. “The black Jaguar? Well . . . okay, but I do have a plane to catch.”

  “Your plane will go nowhere without you, Tatiana. I can assure you of that.”

  • • •

  Valeri Volodin’s aircraft always flew out of Terminal 2 at Vnukovo. Tatiana knew he had been up in Saint Petersburg today and would just be returning about now, but she’d had no plans to meet with him.

  As surprised as she was by this, she told the others in her party she’d meet them on board the plane, and she climbed into the Jaguar with only her purse.

  Fifteen minutes later she was brought on board the president’s plane and escorted into Volodin’s office. He had just landed, and much of the staff was already out on the tarmac or in the hangar, but Volodin seemed to be in no rush to leave.

  He stood and crossed the small office, his hands outstretched. He appeared calmer and more at ease now than he was during his interview a few nights earlier.

  “Miss Molchanova, thank you for coming today.”

  “Yes, of course.” Together they sat close on a love seat across from his desk. She could smell his cologne. “I want to thank you for allowing me this opportunity to visit you on your aircraft. This is very thrilling.”

  He smiled like a Cheshire cat, still holding on to her hand. “My duties are so numerous and stressful, I have forgotten the thrill of entering my own aircraft.” He softened his grip, but only a little. “I miss the days when I was just a simple, obedient, hardworking agent of the KGB.”

  Tatiana beamed at him.

  “Any idea why I asked you here?”

  “I am at a complete loss, Mr. President.”

  “You are flying out tonight to Copenhagen. Tomorrow you will interview the President of the United States.”

  “Yes. My producers communicated this with the Kremlin as soon as our request was approved by the embassy. We solicited a list of questions to your office, and I have been given my notes from Lidiya. I believe everything is in order.”

  Volodin smiled a little. Molchanova thought he seemed pleased by her discomfort. “You are not on the firing line, my dear. No reason to be so defensive. On the contrary, I have a favor to ask.”

  She let her relief show. “Of co
urse.”

  “I want you to do something for me. A bit of statecraft.”

  “Statecraft?”

  “Yes. Would it excite you to know that you will be engaging in high-level communications between the Russian Federation and the United States of America?”

  Tatiana Molchanova brought her shoulders back and lifted her chin. “That would excite me greatly, Mr. President. But . . . why me?”

  “Because you have the intelligence and qualities to see this through.” He held up a finger. “And you have proven yourself a reliable conveyer of Russia’s interests.”

  No journalist likes to be called a shill for her government, not even a journalist who is a shill for her government. But she only nodded a little, and made no remark.

  He said, “I am certain you will do a good job, but one thing is important to remember above all. No one can know about this but Jack Ryan. No one.”

  “I understand.”

  Volodin’s smile disappeared. His eyes narrowed. “I really hope you do. I would hate for anything to threaten our good relationship.”

  “I will reveal nothing of my mission,” she said meekly.

  Volodin nodded, smiled again. “You will ask for a private audience with Ryan as soon as your interview is over tomorrow night. I am going to tell you what to say to him. You will repeat my words verbatim to Ryan, that is crucial.”

  “Of course.”

  “He will, no doubt, have a message for me. Perhaps not immediately. He will want to confer with his brain trust. He doesn’t think on his feet like I do.”

  “No. Not at all.”

  “You will stay in Copenhagen until you have his message for me, and then you will return immediately. Once you get back to Vnukovo I will send a helicopter for you, and it will deliver you to me. Either at my home or at the Kremlin, depending on where I am at the time of your return. You will give me his message, exactly in content and tone, as he gave it to you.”

  “I understand everything and will do as you ask. I am proud to serve you . . . serve Russia.”

  Volodin spent the next several minutes telling Molchanova what to say to the American President. When he finished she repeated it back to him several times, as he commanded. He was not happy with her delivery at first, so they went over it for a while. A taciturn schoolmaster and an approval-seeking student. It was not a difficult task, but Tatiana Molchanova had difficulty because it was so incredibly hard for her to fathom that this was, by far, the coolest thing that had ever happened to her, and yet she could never tell anyone about this at all.

  • • •

  John Clark climbed the stairs up into the G550 Gulfstream executive jet. As he reached the top he was greeted by Adara Sherman.

  “Good morning, Mr. Clark,” she said, taking his small pack from his hand and ushering him through the door.

  “Ms. Sherman.”

  Adara served, officially at least, as the Hendley Associates logistics coordinator and flight attendant. In reality, almost all her work revolved around The Campus, where she was not only a coordinator of logistics and a flight attendant, but also a security officer for the aircraft, and something of a fixer for the team to help them get out of the jams they often found themselves in overseas.

  She helped stow Clark’s duffel while he poked his head through the cockpit door to greet the pilot and copilot, and then he took one of the big leather cabin chairs for himself. Adara set him up with a bottle of water, and she quickly discussed the flight plan for the day, along with the menu for lunch.

  When she was finished with this, Adara said, “We’ll be taking off immediately. Can I get you anything else, Mr. Clark?”

  “Yes, actually. I need a sailboat.”

  She nodded, headed up to the galley, and grabbed a book full of cocktail recipes. “I don’t know that one, offhand. It’s probably here in Mr. Boston’s.”

  Clark laughed. “No, Ms. Sherman. I need a real sailboat. And I need it ready for me by the time we get down to Tortola.”

  “Oh.” She moved across the cabin to her laptop and sat down behind it. “I can do that, too.”

  “Nothing too fancy or complicated. I will be staying within the BVIs, but I’ll need to slip quietly right up to an island resort with restricted access.”

  “And make your own access,” Adara said with a little grin.

  “You got it. I’ll need a short list of equipment as well.”

  “I’ll arrange as much as I can while we’re in flight, and if I need to I’ll go out and scrounge up the rest when we land.”

  “Excellent,” Clark said. Sherman had impressed him every time he had worked with her, and he knew she had also proven herself in the field once, when she and Dominic Caruso had found themselves in an in extremis situation in Panama.

  He regarded her for a moment more and thought about how lucky the men were to have her on the team, especially now since Sam was gone. They were a thin operational outfit, so having a force multiplier like Adara Sherman was all the more important.

  Clark went to work going over maps of the area of operations he was going to be working in when he got to the British Virgin Islands. He saw his ingress to the target to be the easy part of this operation. The difficult part would be convincing this virtual currency trader to work with him. He imagined the man wouldn’t be doing what he did, and working in a place like the place he was working in, because he had a great love of authority. Clark assumed Walker was a typical money-laundering crook, so as soon as Jack Junior landed in D.C. and got into the office, the two men would work on Clark’s game plan to encourage, cajole, or even threaten Walker to work against some very powerful and probably very dangerous Russians, and instead work for some very motivated, but not terribly forthcoming, American.

  41

  Terry Walker missed his home country the way many of his fellow countrymen do when they become expatriates, because Australia is a beautiful place, but he had to admit that his temporary digs weren’t half bad. As he looked around his massive bedroom, his eyes slowly adjusting to the early-morning light, he knew he was in the midst of pure luxury, and he wondered why this didn’t make him happier.

  As he lay there in bed, the dawn approaching through the curtains to the balcony, he thought about his life for a moment. It wasn’t lost on him that he had most everything he ever wanted; those who knew him thought he was living a dream. But it also wasn’t lost on him that the dream he’d assembled for himself had come at a great cost.

  He did his best to push all his worries from his mind, and he climbed out of bed quietly. He dressed in workout gear in the dressing room adjacent to his bedroom, then he kissed the mop of chestnut hair sticking out from between a clump of overstuffed pillows. The hair belonged to his wife, Kate, who would sleep for another hour, and when he tiptoed down the hall and looked in on his seven-year-old son, he saw that Noah was sound asleep as well, with a stack of comic books next to him in the bed.

  A minute later Terry was out in the early-morning air, walking through the lush tropical property toward the five-thousand-square-foot gymnasium down at the bottom of a hill lined with jacaranda and coconut palms.

  Tarpon Island was no regular resort hotel; it was an exclusive resort on an even more exclusive private island, owned by a British billionaire and a celebrated bon vivant. The man had purchased the island in the 1980s to use as his own private refuge, but he’d taken to inviting so many of his well-heeled guests to the place in the past three decades his entrepreneurial spirit told him he could simply open a corner of the island up as a resort for the rich and famous.

  Perhaps rich or famous was a better way to frame it.

  Rock stars, movie stars, and fashion icons all stayed here, but these were just the famous guests. More common were men and women like the Walkers, fabulously wealthy but unknown to anyone but a very few within their industry.

 
The Walkers were unique in one respect, however. Where most other guests at the Tarpon Island resort stayed a week or two at most, the Walkers had been living here for the past six months, and they planned on being here for six months more.

  Terry worked out in the gym for nearly an hour, his mind appreciating the focus exercise gave him, and then he headed home, past the smallest units on the island, cottages that could sleep six, and back up the hill to his place, the four-bedroom mansion with floor-to-ceiling views of the Caribbean Sea from almost every single room.

  At eight a.m. a showered, shaved, and fed Terry Walker walked around the breakfast table, kissing his wife and child as he went. He waved good-bye to the cook, then headed down the steep hillside pathway to the beach, just fifty yards from his back door. He wore a suit and tie today because he had a meeting, but on most days he just wore board shorts and a polo. Even with the suit, Terry carried a backpack over his shoulder, a particular affectation of his because his large collection of electronic gadgetry wouldn’t fit into a regular briefcase or messenger bag.

  A candy-apple-red Robinson helicopter landed on a beachside road promptly at 8:05, as it did every day, and Walker climbed aboard as the aircraft’s only passenger. He chartered the helo every day to cut his commute time down from what it would have been if he had taken a launch, and this gave him a little more precious time in the mornings and evenings with his family.

  As he did virtually every morning, Walker sat in the back of the helo and looked out at the villa as he lifted into the air. Then, when he could see it no longer he regarded the resort below, and the rest of the hilly island. And then, when the island twisted out of view, he gazed across the blue-green water that shot below him.

  Terry was blowing nearly ten grand a day on the house, the office, the helo, the food, and the rest of this operation, so it was a good thing he was averaging about $75,000 a day in profit from his work. He was making too much money to shut this temporary gig down yet, but, he told himself, the day was coming.