Point of Contact

  Ri lit a Gitanes to calm his nerves. The chairman had sent him a carton yesterday. Choi Ha-guk was a reasonable man, unlike his crazed cousin, who murdered failed subordinates and their entire families with ravenous dogs, flamethrowers, or antiaircraft weapons. The chairman was a professional man. He understood that operations sometimes failed, no matter how well prepared and executed they were.

  Ri rolled the burning Gitanes between his fingers, watching the twisting tendrils of smoke in the lamplight. He smiled.

  Yes, Choi Ha-guk was reasonable.

  If he failed, Ri would only face a simple firing squad.

  He crushed the cigarette out in his ashtray and picked up the phone. The operator connected him with the RGB station chief at the DPRK embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria. The man heading up the unit was a cousin, loyal and efficient. He gave orders to stand ready and be prepared to move against Zvezdev within the next thirty minutes if needed.

  Unlike Choi, Ri was not a reasonable man at all.

  64

  SINGAPORE

  Jack killed the lights and slammed on the brakes. The Range Rover came to a splashing halt thirty yards from the Dalfan building, lit up like a Christmas tree in the middle of the blacked-out neighborhood. The Toyota van was parked on the sidewalk near the door.

  “Emergency generator,” Lian explained. “We need to keep the power on or else the security locks all fail. We also need the mainframe to keep running—a system crash would be fatal.”

  “Mainframe’s on the fourth floor, right?”

  “The control station is on the fourth, directly across from the emergency stairwell. It’s the only place now where you can install a USB drive.”

  “That’s where they’ll have Paul.”

  Jack pointed through the flooded windshield. Between the momentary blink of wiper-blade swipes they could make out two men in the lobby.

  “I can use my security pass to enter through an emergency exit in the back,” Lian said. “I’ll make my way—”

  “No time.”

  Jack slammed the throttle into the floorboard. The Range Rover rocketed forward, leaping the curb. Jack used the parked Toyota van to cover his approach. Lian slapped the airbag switch, killing the safety devices.

  The silver SUV came out of the night like a steel shadow. The two men in the lobby saw it at the last second and scattered as the front end smashed through the front glass doors.

  Jack popped the brights back on and jerked the wheel hard left, tracking with one of the men running for cover. The left bumper caught him at the hip and slammed him against a concrete pillar, crushing his pelvis. He screamed.

  Lian was out the door and firing her weapon, putting four rounds in the other man’s chest as he raised his weapon to fire. He dropped like a rag doll, his pistol clattering to the floor. She turned in time to see Jack put a round in the head of the man crushed against the pillar, somehow pointing his weapon at Jack just before he ate one in the face.

  There was no way to know if the men upstairs heard the racket downstairs, and at this point it didn’t matter. They bolted up the emergency stairs two at a time, boots clanging on the metal stairs. Jack’s heart raced with adrenaline and a death-metal soundtrack crashed in his throbbing skull. They reached the fourth-floor landing and stopped at the emergency door. Jack pressed his ear against it.

  Screaming.

  Paul.

  No way to know the tactical situation. Could be twenty guys. Could be two. Jack didn’t care. His friend was in trouble.

  Jack hand-signaled a plan—clear the room of tangos, assault the control room—then counted off with the nod of his head.

  Three.

  Two.

  One.

  Go!

  —

  Jack leaned hard against the locked emergency door so that when Lian swiped her security card it pushed open without a bang. He drove straight across the floor toward the glass-walled control station while Lian cut low and right, using the workstations for cover. Jack assumed if they were guarding the floor they’d expect someone to come in through the front and not the stairwell.

  Jack was half right.

  Two steps in, Jack saw a Caucasian man startle in front of him. He raised the pistol in his hand toward Jack. Too slow. Jack’s gun was already up. He put a round through the man’s throat. The lead passed clean through and smashed in a bloody spiderweb against the control-room glass, alerting a second killer standing next to a third man in a flat cap towering over Paul, blade in hand.

  Two shots rang out on his right, one large-caliber and the other small, followed by the sound of tinkling glass.

  Jack didn’t have time to turn around and look—he was drawing a sight on the man charging out of the control room with a gun already pointing at him.

  “LIAN!”

  “CLEAR!”

  Jack fired two rounds into the man’s broad chest, spinning him like a top, but not before he got a round off. Jack swore his upper right arm got hit with a blacksmith’s hammer. It turned him a quarter-step—and it saved his life.

  The man with the blade standing over Paul had turned calmly and raised a small-caliber pistol in a confident, one-handed draw. Jack swore there was a smile beneath the man’s thin pencil mustache when he fired. But the hit that turned Jack took him out of the path of the smiling man’s bullet—a headshot. The slug zooped past Jack’s ear like an angry hornet.

  Jack returned fire. Two rounds shattered the man’s forehead just beneath his flat cap as a third punched in just below his nose. The man flew backward, crashing into Paul, then tumbled to the ground.

  Jack charged forward and kicked the dead man’s pistol out of reach, then secured his own weapon. He saw Lian clearing the weapons and checking the pulses of the two others Jack had shot.

  “Paul! Where are you hurt?” Jack instantly regretted the question. Paul’s forearms were duct-taped to the chair, and the tips of the fingers of his left hand oozed blood.

  “Jack, I’m sorry—”

  “Where’s the USB?”

  “It’s loaded!”

  Jack glanced at the monitor behind Paul. EXECUTED flashed in red. The virus was launched.

  Jack ripped apart the duct tape with his fingers as Paul burbled, red-eyed and snotty. “He made me give him the passcode . . . I tried . . . I couldn’t . . .”

  “It’s all right.”

  Lian dashed into the room. “All clear.” She saw Paul’s hand. She gasped. “I’ll get the medical kit!” She ran back out of the room.

  Jack checked his watch. Two minutes until midnight.

  Two minutes until the end of the world.

  65

  Jack freed Paul’s other arm and tried to help him to his feet, but the big man’s knees buckled. Paul’s good hand gripped Jack’s forearm like a vise to keep from falling. His hand strength surprised Jack, but he filed that away as he helped Paul lie down on the floor.

  Lian bolted back into the room with a medical kit on her shoulder. She dropped down next to Paul and examined each of his wounded fingers. Even though she’d been a cop for several years, the gruesome sight sickened her.

  Jack saw the damage, too. The bastard with the pencil mustache had pulled out Paul’s fingernails. Jack felt guilty as hell that he didn’t get there sooner.

  “I’m sorry about all of this,” Jack said.

  Paul shook his head and moved his mouth but nothing came out.

  “I’m worried he might be going into shock,” Lian said, cleaning the wounds and stanching the blood.

  Jack flipped the office chair over and raised Paul’s legs, setting them on the support strut about twelve inches off the floor, then pulled off his coat and laid it across his heaving chest. Wind rattled the windows.

  “Jack—”

  “Buddy, just take it easy.”

  Paul’s face be
aded with sweat. “We’ve got to stop that virus.”

  “How? It’s already loaded.”

  Paul pointed his good thumb weakly at his dead torturer. “Chuckles the Clown over there told me it wouldn’t activate until Dalfan stock begins early trading at seven a.m. tomorrow. If we can call the CIO at the Hong Kong exchange before then, he can isolate it, clean it out—at least, not activate it.”

  “Phones are down. The storm is beating the hell out of everybody and everything around here until ten a.m. tomorrow, according to the BBC.”

  “What about your embassy?” Lian asked, taping Paul’s fingers. “We can try and drive there.”

  “Even if we reached it, and if anybody in authority is still there, they probably can’t call out, either.”

  “The weather service said the storm was stalling,” Lian said. “There are still flights out of Kuala Lumpur, north of here.”

  “Which means Malaysia cell phones and other services are probably still up.” Jack knew there were a U.S. embassy and a CIA station located there. That’s where he needed to go. “How long is the drive?”

  “On a normal day? Three and a half hours, four with traffic.”

  Jack checked his watch. “There’s just under seven hours left.” He glanced back out the window at the raging storm. “I have to try.”

  Lian saw the storm, too. “Of course we have to try.”

  “We? There’s no we here,” Jack said. There was a slim chance of making it in weather like this. Maybe even less chance of surviving it.

  Lian taped Paul’s last finger. “You must stay here and rest. If you go into shock, you can die.”

  “Try and stop me, Ms. Fairchild.” Paul started to rise.

  Jack laid a hand on his chest. “I’ve got this.”

  Paul batted his hand away. “Forget that. You aren’t the one that got played like a ten-cent kazoo. Besides, look at you.”

  Jack’s upper right shirtsleeve was bloody where he’d been hit.

  “Let me see that,” Lian said. She pulled a razor-sharp blade out of the medical kit and cut away Jack’s shirtsleeve.

  “Not too bad,” she said. “Just a graze. Your skin is torn, but there isn’t any muscle or bone damage. Does it hurt?”

  Jack’s adrenaline had worn off. “Feels like someone hit me with a branding iron.”

  “Give me a minute.”

  Lian swiftly cleaned and dressed Jack’s wound. “Besides the antibiotics, I’m applying a topical analgesic. Hopefully that will help with the pain.”

  “It already does. Thanks.”

  “We’ll have to keep an eye on it, but I don’t think it will be a problem.” She held up the cut-away sleeve. “Sorry about that.”

  Paul handed Jack his coat as he sat up with a grunt. “You’ll need this.”

  “I wish you’d stay put,” Jack said, as he helped Paul to his feet.

  “I wish a lot of things, Jack.” Paul examined his bandaged fingers. “And right now I wish I had a cup of tea.”

  “We don’t have a vehicle,” Lian said.

  “Their van was out front. One of these guys must have the keys.”

  “I’m gonna find my pistol,” Paul said, referring to the pistol Jack had given him earlier, as he reached into the coat pocket of his torturer. He found the pint-sized Makarov and a diplomatic passport—Bulgarian. It said the man’s name was Petrov. Paul doubted it. He shoved it into his pants pocket anyway. He saw a smart leather satchel standing in the corner but didn’t think to check it. He didn’t know that after he had passed out from the pain, Wolz had made a call on a satellite phone to Zvezdev, and when he finished, put the sat phone back in the satchel.

  Jack and Lian searched pockets, too. Jack traded his Makarov for the nine-mil Glock Lian’s man had carried. He checked the mag. Thirteen rounds. Luckily, the man carried a second, fully loaded magazine with another fifteen rounds.

  “Found them!” Lian shouted, holding the key ring high.

  “Let’s roll.”

  66

  SOFIA, BULGARIA

  Worry was Zvezdev’s best friend.

  He hadn’t survived KGB handlers, CSS purges, or criminal syndicate killers by being overly optimistic. He always assumed everybody at all times was trying to fuck him.

  Because they usually were.

  Which was why Zvezdev sat in his private office in his expansive estate, drumming his fingers on the gilded desk, worrying.

  His call to Ri fifteen minutes ago was quite satisfying. Thanks to Wolz, the mission was complete. Zvezdev held no illusions about his relationship with the North Korean spymaster. If he had failed, Ri’s agents would have already stormed into his house, killed his guards, and bundled him off to a safe house for some gruesome fate he didn’t even want to contemplate.

  Instead, Ri assured him that the second half of his enormous payment—in gold bullion, no less—would be deposited into a Cayman Islands bank vault within twenty-four hours, per their arrangement. Zvezdev confirmed by phone with his English banker that the transaction was pending. All good.

  What worried Zvezdev was Wolz’s earlier call, asking for permission to kill Jack Ryan, Jr., and Lian Fairchild. Zvezdev told him that killing Jack Ryan would only bring the wrath of his father, a capable and violent man. His orders from Ri were explicit: the mission was to be accomplished on time, and with no way to trace the crime to him. Zvezdev had done the best job he could to cover his tracks, and he assumed that the impending collapse of the world’s stock markets would cause further confusion and delay for any investigators digging into the matter. But murdering the President’s son would bring the full force and attention of the entire U.S. federal government into the case, and that was to be avoided. So Jack Ryan, Jr., lived.

  And that’s what worried him.

  Zvezdev scratched his gray beard. Leave it to a worm like Rhodes to shield himself behind another man. It was actually a smart play to get Jack Ryan, Jr., involved in his scheme, Zvezdev admitted. But Jack Ryan, Jr., was a real pain in his ass now.

  Wolz’s listening devices planted inside the guesthouse revealed that not only did Brown know the real purpose of the USB, but also he had informed Ryan and Fairchild.

  Zvezdev sighed. He should’ve let Wolz kill them both. That was a mistake. Brown was dead, at least. Besides his fee, Wolz insisted he be given free rein with the fat accountant. It was a small price to pay, as far as Zvezdev was concerned. He laughed.

  “But a big price for Brown.”

  Of course, there was nothing that Ryan could do about the situation now. The virus was planted. All Ri had to do was wait for less than seven hours and his plan to collapse the world economy would be realized.

  But Jack Ryan, Jr., would run his mouth. The line would be drawn back from the virus to Rhodes, and then to him, if Rhodes rolled over.

  And he would.

  Even if he killed Rhodes now, he was still in danger of being discovered. Ri wouldn’t like that.

  Now Zvezdev really worried.

  Ryan and Fairchild had to die.

  Zvezdev called Wolz again.

  And again his sat phone didn’t pick up.

  Was the satellite service down because of the storm? No. Sat phones were designed for things like storms. If Wolz and his team weren’t answering, it meant something was wrong.

  And that something was Ryan. He was still alive. Had to be.

  Did Ryan know about the seven a.m. launch?

  No. How could he?

  But what if he did?

  Ryan would call for help. But he hadn’t called the U.S. embassy or the CIA station in Singapore up until now; otherwise, they would be involved.

  Perhaps Ryan couldn’t make the call. And if he couldn’t, what would he do?

  What would I do?

  I’d drive to somewhere where I could get help.
r />   Zvezdev opened up his laptop and pulled up the storm tracker and latest weather report, then opened a second window and pulled up Google Maps.

  Zvezdev swore bitterly.

  He hadn’t told Ri about the presence of Jack Ryan, Jr. The less Ri knew about the affair, the better. But now he had to know. It would be an awkward exchange. But necessary.

  He picked up his phone and called Ri, worried that the American was about to cross into Malaysia and fuck them both hard.

  Ri had to stop Jack Ryan.

  Now.

  67

  SINGAPORE

  Lian explained that the shortest route from Dalfan headquarters to Kuala Lumpur was also the northernmost, and most likely to keep them out of trouble. They needed to take the Seletar Expressway (SLE) to the Bukit Timah Expressway (BKE) and cross the Johor causeway into Malaysia. Without GPS, Jack had no idea where to go and Lian’s knowledge of the roadway system was probably better anyway, so she drove. She told Paul she wouldn’t let him come if he didn’t agree to lie down in the back of the van and keep his feet elevated. He complied without protest.

  It took them more than two hours to traverse the distance. They kept to the SLE as far as they could, dodging dead vehicles, downed trees, power lines, and finally a sinkhole, where they had to abandon the expressway for narrow side streets. On one occasion Jack had to get out of the van to move an air-conditioning unit that had toppled into the road, and on another he and Lian both needed to get out and push a stalled vehicle out of the way.

  They got back on the SLE and finally arrived at the BKE junction, where a battery-powered road sign flashed that the Johor causeway was shut down.

  “Now what?” Jack asked. “Swim?”

  “In this weather? No. There’s another crossing point west of here.”

  “How far?”

  “At this rate, forty minutes.”

  —

  An hour and forty-three minutes later they arrived at the Tuas Checkpoint, the gateway to the only other crossing point over the Johor River from Singapore to Malaysia. The Second Link causeway was almost a mile and a half long.