Line of Sight

  “Anything else, Jack?”

  Jack held up a finger, asking Topal to wait. He touched the Bluetooth in his ear. “Gavin? Yeah. Now? Good. I’ll tell him.” Jack rang off.

  “You like social media, don’t you?”

  “It has its uses,” Topal said.

  Jack stood. “You might want to check your Twitter feed, and any other platform you like.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Try it.”

  Topal reached into his pocket and pulled out his smartphone. He opened up his Twitter account. He frowned, then glanced up at Jack, frightened.

  “Play it.”

  Topal tapped a button. His own voice played over the speaker, then Jack’s.

  “Truthfully? Yes, I was using Aida and Brkić, but only to disrupt the upcoming Unity Referendum . . . I supplied . . . resources to . . . foment civil strife.”

  “You mean civil war.”

  “Yes, I suppose that was the goal . . . But my government would have intervened before things got out of hand.”

  Topal’s face turned ashen. “How?”

  “My man Gavin. Did I tell you how good he was?”

  Topal leaned back in the couch cushions, utterly distraught.

  Jack snatched up Aida’s phone from the table as he headed for the door. He turned, grinning.

  “Better watch your six.”

  72

  Jack and Kolak stood in a small city park not far from OSA-OBA headquarters.

  They were both silent, staring down at a small, weathered headstone marked AIDA CURIĆ 1989–1993. It was one of hundreds in the park, though not nearly as noticeable as most and, perhaps, the most pitiful.

  “Here is your mother’s Aida,” Kolak said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The woman you knew as Aida Curić was actually named Sabina Kvržić. She was the only child of Samir Kvržić, the local head of the Bosniak Mafia. Aida’s family ran a profitable and well-respected tour company before the war. Kvržić was high on the Interpol wanted list at the time. He saw his opportunity to steal the business and change identities when the war broke out.

  “Aida was killed during the war after her eye surgery, and the rest of her family was murdered by Kvržić. The Kvržić family assumed the Curić family’s identities, including Sabina, who took Aida’s. When Samir Kvržić died of cancer, his only child, Sabina Kvržić, took over.”

  “The Aida I know didn’t strike me as a jihadi radical.”

  “She wasn’t. She was a criminal, pure and simple. She used the tour company to run drugs, guns, and illegals all over the region for years. Topal and Brkić were just her most recent customers. She was making millions serving both of them. It was brilliant.”

  “But she knew about the plan to start the war between NATO and Russia. Why would she do that?”

  Kolak shrugged. “Scarcity is profitable. Mafias thrive in wartime.”

  “And still no sign of Brkić?”

  “None. He’s probably out of the country by now, but we’ve issued an Interpol Red Notice. That should turn up something eventually.”

  Jack pulled out his smartphone and took a picture of the grave for his mother.

  “I never did thank you for taking out the garbage for me.”

  Kolak shrugged. “It was a small thing.” The dead assassin had been incinerated along with the rest of the trash in the dumpster. “Anything else I can do for you, Jack?”

  “You can thank Lidija again for saving my bacon. I was sure we were going to crash.”

  “She is my best helicopter pilot. I will pass your commendation along to her.”

  “And I’ve been meaning to ask you. How’d you know that Aida and I had been stopped by the Russians? Were you following us?”

  Kolak lifted Jack’s wrist and tapped his iWatch. “The same way I found you at the launch site. When I first interviewed you, I had my people put a software bug in here, forcing it to broadcast your GPS position to me at all times even though your watch indicated it wasn’t doing so.”

  Jack fingered his iWatch. “Guess I’m going back to analog.”

  “Do you have any plans before heading back home?”

  Jack nodded at Midas, Dom, and Adara, recently arrived from Croatia, where their Gulfstream had been diverted after the airport attack.

  “I’m taking them to experience their first plate of ćevapi. Care to join?”

  Kolak flashed his crooked smile. “Most definitely.”

  73

  The Turkish embassy was a modern but modest four-story building on the leafy Vilsonovo Šetalište, a wide boulevard only recently converted to a pedestrian promenade. No cars or motorcycles allowed.

  While normal citizens of the city were forbidden to drive motor vehicles on the tree-lined street, the Turkish embassy was allowed an occasional car on an “as needed” basis, and today was one of those occasions.

  An armored Audi Q7 SUV pulled up to the curb in front of the white concrete, wood, and glass building. A two-story-tall Turkish flag, red with the white crescent moon and star, hung on the face of the building. It blocked some or all of the views of several street-facing offices. Topal’s office, of course, was on the top floor, enjoying an unobstructed panorama of the promenade and the park across the street.

  Moments after the Audi SUV pulled up, a Turkish security detail emerged, clearing a path to the vehicle. On an agent’s signal, another security detail exited the embassy, surrounding the hunched figure of Ambassador Topal, wearing a Kevlar vest.

  The Bosnian government had kept its promise to keep all traffic and protesters from the promenade and away from the Turkish embassy today. But the ambassador’s security team wasn’t taking any chances.

  The social media firestorm kicked up by Gavin’s edited tape of Topal confessing his crimes went viral—organically—on Balkan social media within hours. Topal was the most hated man in Bosnia at the moment, since Brkić couldn’t be found.

  Under a constant barrage of death threats, Topal’s security team wasn’t taking any chances on his short trip to the airport. He’d been called back to Ankara for immediate consultations with the foreign ministry after the recent social media revelations. Topal was related to the president, so he wasn’t in fear for his life, but certainly his future in government service was in doubt.

  His diplomatic security team ushered him swiftly into the waiting SUV. The team lead rode shotgun, while a grim senior officer from MIT, Turkish national intelligence, sat in back next to Topal. The driver punched the gas and the Audi rocketed forward.

  Three minutes into the sixteen-minute drive, three bicyclists pedaling furiously along the promenade dashed out into the street, three abreast. The driver slammed his horn and his brakes, burning rubber and slowing to a violent stop to avoid killing the idiots. The bikers immediately scattered.

  The Audi’s stop was just long enough.

  Ibrahim—Mr. Clean—had a clear line of sight from the third-story apartment overlooking the quiet street. He pulled the trigger on the RPG-7.

  The heavily armored Audi was no match for the tank-busting HEAT warhead. The vehicle erupted in a cloud of shrapnel and fire.

  Topal died instantly.

  Not so the others.

  74

  SLAVKOV FOREST, EASTERN CZECH REPUBLIC

  The old man’s eyes opened slowly, awakened by the cold steel of a pistol barrel pressed in his ear.

  “Nice place you got here,” John Clark said, admiring the trophy heads and antlers on the walls. “Real rustic. Not all fancy, like some gilded Malaysian whorehouse.”

  Clark sat in a well-worn leather chair next to the Czech’s large but simple bed. His hunting lodge on the wood-studded country estate had been built according to traditional methods, using local materials.

  “Thank you, Mr. Clark.
”

  “You know my name. Impressive.”

  “I know everybody in your line of work.”

  Clark leaned back in his chair. The old man had been hell on wheels in his youth, according to the few files Gavin had been able to dig up on him. But now the senior crime lieutenant was past his physical prime.

  So was he, Clark reminded himself. But even in his eighth decade, the ex-SEAL was still in better shape than this mook had ever been.

  “If you know me, then you know I don’t fuck around.”

  “Indeed, I do. May I sit up?”

  “Sure. But keep your hands where I can see them.”

  “Of course.” The Czech leveraged his long frame up against the pillows and the headboard. “I can’t see without my glasses. May I retrieve them from my nightstand?”

  “We’re not here to watch home movies, chief.”

  “Then to what do I owe the pleasure of meeting the famous John Clark?”

  “We have a little problem we need to sort out.”

  “And that would be?”

  “Your organization has put out a hit on a good friend of mine. A fellow by the name of Jack Ryan, Jr. Sound familiar?”

  “Too familiar.”

  “You don’t sound happy about it.”

  “I’m not. The hit should never have been initiated.”

  “Good, then there won’t be a problem calling it off.”

  “I’m afraid there is.”

  John leaned forward, his cold-blooded scowl turning even more so, though the half-blind Czech couldn’t see it. “Why?”

  “I didn’t place the order. Vladimir Vasilev did. He’s in charge of the organization, in case you weren’t aware.”

  “He’s in some hospital in Paris, dying. We were under the impression you were in charge.”

  “I’m the chief operating officer, yes, but he remains the CEO. And his last, dying wish is that Jack Ryan, Jr., should die before he does. I opposed the hit from the beginning, but alas, I couldn’t prevent it. And I couldn’t stop it, owing to certain organizational dynamics.”

  “‘Organizational dynamics’? Be more specific.”

  “If Vasilev were dead and I were in charge, I would call off the hit in a heartbeat. I would even go so far as to kill Vasilev myself in order to take charge and end the hit, but if Vasilev dies of anything other than natural causes, my life is forfeit. But more to the point, if you kill me now, the next person in line after me would be responsible for carrying out Vasilev’s order, and his life would be forfeit as well, all the way down the line, until Jack Junior is dead.”

  “A dead man’s switch,” John said. “That’s a problem. But I have a funny feeling you might have a solution.”

  “Indeed, I do. But it won’t be easy.”

  “Don’t need easy. But it better damn well be good, or you’ll wake up tomorrow with your brains blown out all over that feather pillow and a suicide note pinned to your pajamas. Those are my ‘organizational dynamics.’”

  75

  STOCKHOLM

  Goran Fazli trudged through the snow crunching beneath his boots, cursing the bitter cold of a record early storm. His gloved hands were shoved into the pockets of his worn-out down jacket, a gift from an aid agency. In fact, everything the Macedonian immigrant wore this evening had come from a Swedish refugee organization, which collected used clothing from the generous souls in the city.

  The fools.

  Fazli had just left a clandestine meeting in a public housing complex in Rinkeby, one of the famous “no go” zones in Stockholm, where police feared to appear at all, let alone intervene, despite the government’s denials to the contrary. He’d been walking for blocks, replaying in his mind the conversations he’d had with the others. It had gone very well.

  The majority of residents in this part of town were foreign-born, as were so many other people in Sweden these days. The liberal government’s generous open-door refugee policy had been particularly welcoming to persecuted Muslims like Fazli.

  Fazli wasn’t his real name, of course. For the past twenty-three years, he’d been known by another.

  Tarik Brkić.

  But, of course, that wasn’t his birth name, either.

  Brkić used forged documents supplied months earlier by Aida’s Peace and Friendship Center to gain refugee status and to climb to the top of Sweden’s immigration list. The center had also provided his credentials certifying him as a victim of persecution with no criminal record or terrorist affiliations. It even listed him as a skilled auto mechanic, which was actually true. This provided him immediate employment at a Volvo dealership in a refugee transition program in one of Stockholm’s affluent suburbs.

  Brkić blended in nicely at work with his shaved head, shaved beard, mustache, and Western clothing, including a pair of cheap H&M sunglasses he wore to hide his distinctively blind eye.

  And when he couldn’t wear his sunglasses? Well, it was evidence of the persecution he had suffered in life, wasn’t it?

  But Brkić hadn’t picked Sweden because it would be easy for him to enter into it or to blend in with the locals. Sweden was a hunting ground for him now—a perfect one, really. It was another Yugoslavia in the making, with hundreds of thousands of Muslim Iranians, Iraqis, Syrians, Turks, Kurds, Somalis, Eritreans, and even Bosnians living in the Nordic country. Arabic was already the second mother tongue of Sweden, surpassing Finnish.

  Brkić merely shrugged when he heard the BBC News report that the Unity Referendum had passed with a startling majority. He no longer cared. He was on a new mission now, and soon his wife and children would join him.

  In the few short weeks he’d been there, Brkić had already successfully recruited seven members into his new organization, the Islamic Front in Sweden, and tonight’s meeting with the Iraqi brothers would likely result in at least two more.

  But now it was late and he was tired and cold, and it was still a long, miserable slog through the snow-covered streets to the nearest bus stop.

  “Hey, you! White man,” a voice called in Swedish from out of the alley. “Got a cigarette?”

  Brkić didn’t speak Swedish. He had signed up for language classes only last week, since most white Swedes spoke English anyway. Despite the language barrier, the menacing tone of the man’s voice was obvious. Brkić trudged on, hoping that the glowing streetlamp up ahead provided enough light to deter the man who called to him.

  Over the crunch of his own boots he heard the muffled rush of several feet speeding up behind him. Brkić whipped around.

  Eleven lean, dark, angular faces confronted him. Somalis, Brkić guessed. Teenagers, mostly, glaring at him. A few flashed white teeth, like smiling wolves.

  The tallest one of the group approached, his thin skull wrapped beneath an olive-drab Swedish Army winter cap, its flaps tied down around his ears and secured in a bow beneath the triangle of his chin. Thick flakes of wet snow began to fall, collecting on the brim.

  “You don’t belong here, white man. This is our territory. Pay the tax.”

  Brkić shrugged, feigning ignorance and fear. But his sharp eyes were sizing up the order of attack he had to make if he hoped to survive this engagement, starting with the leader first.

  The leader stepped closer, his smile widening, gloved palms open to the sky in a gesture of peace.

  “Just a little money, eh?”

  One of the Somalis standing to his left howled with laughter as another barked like a madman, leaping around in the snow.

  Brkić turned. More Somali voices called out from the upper stories of the buildings around him, shouting and mocking. Brkić glanced behind him. Another group of young men had approached him, equally menacing.

  A heavy object, hard and angular, struck him in the skull, blunted by his thick woolen cap. Brkić reached up to touch his wound, his vision blurring. He turned
around to see who’d thrown it, only to be greeted with a brick smashing into his face.

  Light exploded in his good eye as his knees buckled. He tumbled into the snow, stunned like a steer before the slaughter.

  A cold, narrow hand pressed against his face as a blade drew across his throat, severing arteries and muscle, cutting deep to the bone.

  Brkić gasped for air, thrashing like a landed fish. His hot red blood gushed black and steaming into the snow under the harsh light of the streetlamp. His mind raced to find the words of the shahada, but they escaped him.

  His heart failed as he bled out, surrounded by the frenzied chatter of a foreign tongue he could not comprehend.

  76

  PARIS

  Vladimir Vasilev woke up that morning beside himself with joy despite the freezing rain outside his window. Not only was he feeling better than he had in years, he had also greeted the day with his manhood tenting the bedsheets. He hadn’t done that since he was a teenager.

  The experimental CAR T-cell treatments for his cancer had been wildly successful, even better than the doctors could have hoped, let alone predicted. He had joked with his friend, the Czech, weeks ago that he might live forever. Now he was wondering if it was actually true.

  His health was so good, in fact, that he was scheduled to be released early from his treatment regimen. Perhaps as early as next week, a month ahead of schedule. Yes, of course, regular visits for ongoing treatment and maintenance were necessary, his doctor assured him. But at least he would escape his sanitary life inside the glass aquarium, slurping miso soup and swallowing purified water.

  Vasilev was so happy that he almost didn’t notice the new nurse pulling on her protective suit outside the glass. His rheumy eyes caught the full curve of her breasts, the shapely turn of her fine ass, and the beguiling blond ponytail he’d love to wrap his gnarled fingers around.

  The poor wretch was probably making less than sixty thousand euros a year. He’d offer her ten thousand euros for a quick ten-minute lay right here in the adjustable bed. Why not? And if she refused? He’d promise her a nightmare retribution.