Commander-In-Chief (18 page)

J
ack Ryan, Jr., met Christine von Langer, née Hutton, at a café on the Rue Notre Dame. When she first walked in the room, he was happy to see she absolutely looked the part of a woman of means. Mature, stately, and attractive, she wore chic clothes that looked expensive, and she held a fur coat over her arm that must have cost a fortune.

As she shook Jack’s hand and sat down, placing her Hermès bag on the chair next to her, she gave him a wide smile like she’d known him his whole life.

“Sorry, Mrs. von Langer, but can I ask why you are looking at me like that?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. You just remind me so much of your father.”

“I guess it makes sense that you would know my dad, but John didn’t mention it.”

“Can’t say I knew him well, but I had occasion to work with him from time to time.” She lowered the wattage of her beaming smile a little. “I don’t do politics, it’s never been my bag. Working in the government, under administrations of all different
persuasions, I just found it better that way. But I knew your dad to be a hardworking man of impeccable character. That’s good enough for me.”

“Thanks. I hear that a lot, but I can’t help but just think of him as Dad.”

With a serious eye she said, “They beat him up in the press over here, you probably already know that.”

Jack gave a half-shrug. “They beat him up at home, Mrs. von Langer. I’m pretty sure it bothers my brother and sisters and me more than it bothers him.”

“Please. Call me Christine. Okay. Down to business. John says you are private sector, this is financial forensic accounting, but this might lead to something that traces back toward Moscow.”

Jack said, “It most definitely traces back to Russia, probably to Moscow, perhaps even to a specific building in Moscow.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Kremlin or Lubyanka?”

“Either/or.”

With a smile she said, “I love it already, Jack. I’m in.”

He told her exactly what he needed her to do; she asked a few questions about her target. He could tell she was a little disappointed she didn’t have more to her role, but she was certainly game, and he had no doubts she’d do one hell of a good job.

When he was finished she said, “This lawyer . . . do we think he’s corrupt?”

Jack thought about that a moment. “He definitely knows the kind of money he’s working with, and I doubt he’s into the art for the sake of art. He is an adviser for this offshore trust, so he’s funneling money into the art, paying inflated prices, obviously either as a kickback to a Russian or as a way to replace dirty money for clean money. So, in that respect, he’s corrupt but . . .” Jack’s voice trailed off.

Christine von Langer said, “But we’re talking about a lawyer here in Luxembourg, where ethics are . . . murky.”

“Right,” Jack said.

The fifty-six-year-old woman said, “I will have to be honest with you, though, I left the company twenty years ago. I’m not exactly up on the newest tech.” She started to ask about the technology she’d be using for the operation, but before she got very far, Gavin Biery entered the café. Ryan motioned him over and made the introductions.

He immediately opened his backpack and revealed a black box the size of a hardcover book, with a digital screen and a few buttons.

Gavin said, “This is an RFID emulator.”

Von Langer’s eyes flitted around the room nervously while Ryan reached over and put his hand on the backpack, closing it. “That’s okay, Gavin, we can do that later.”

“Oh . . . okay. Sorry.”

It was an uncomfortable moment, more for Christine than for Jack, because he was used to Gavin doing awkward things when out in the field. Jack dispelled the awkwardness by saying, “I want you to know how much we appreciate your help, Christine.”

“I am happy to be involved. I hope if your . . .
organization
needs me in the future they won’t hesitate to ask. My husband is gone and my kids are doing their own thing. I’ve got hobbies and diversions, but . . . nothing as cool as this.”

They all went back to Jack’s rented apartment on Place de Clairefontaine. Here Gavin set up his equipment and gave Christine a primer on how the scanner worked. After a few minutes of this—Gavin would have spent all day on the details if Jack didn’t hurry him along—Jack walked Christine through the best way to use the skimmer to steal the information off Frieden’s building access badge. She’d merely have to get it within three feet of Frieden’s
access card, and keep it in the same position for at least three seconds while the antenna of the little device passively stole the coded information on the card.

With the technical and physical aspects of the job behind them, Jack and Christine worked together on a backstory that would have Frieden excited to meet with her. She would tell the attorney that she needed to set up an offshore, and was looking for an attorney to serve as the director. Frieden regularly represented such clients, Jack knew from his investigation into the man, so they both agreed that, despite the fact he was already making money working with a Russian oligarch, the prospect of taking on a client like Christine von Langer would be very appealing to him.

•   •   •

T
he next morning a call to the office of Guy Frieden earned Christine an invitation to get together for coffee that afternoon. They met and sat across from each other in an outdoor café. Christine kept her purse on the table with the skimmer on while she told an impressive story about a scheme by a half sister to use the courts in the United States to grab a share of Christine’s European riches. A property deal between the two women went bad, according to Christine, and her sister was sending lawyers to the courts in Germany in an attempt to settle her claim.

The Luxembourger nodded throughout the story with the necessary gravity to express concern, and then he assured the wealthy American that protecting estates from unmanageable relatives was one of the reasons he went into this line of work and one of his most fulfilling duties as an attorney. He talked about the way he would set up a trust to sequester money Christine’s husband had bequeathed to her and keep the German courts from having any access to it.

While Christine sipped her coffee and listened to the attorney, the real work was being done inside her Hermès handbag. The reader pulled the information off the card as if Frieden were swiping it at a security kiosk in his building, but Christine’s reader did it secretly and from farther away.

After coffee Christine said she’d be in touch, and she left on foot. She did a forty-five-minute SDR, passing once through the Gare de Luxembourg, the main train station, where Jack sat drinking espresso at a stand-up table next to a bakery, his eyes out for anyone trailing behind or interested in Christine. He saw nothing that aroused suspicion, and this gave him and Christine one more layer of certainty that she was not being followed.

They met back at the apartment and Christine passed the reader to Gavin, who had his equipment set up in the kitchen. With a kiss good-bye to Christine and more effusive thanks for her help, Jack sat at the kitchen table and watched the Campus IT director work.

He extracted the info from the reader via a digital SD card and he programmed it into an RFID tag machine. Gavin had brought a photo of Jack from a file on the Campus network, and he affixed this on the card, along with the name of the building and other information represented on the cards held by building employees.

Last, he attached a black neck lanyard that perfectly matched the one worn by the employees of Frieden’s building.

All totaled, Gavin finished the job in under thirty minutes. He held it up for Jack to look at.

Jack asked, “How sure are you it will be accepted by the scanner?”

“One hundred percent.”

Jack looked at Gavin with incredulity.

“I’m serious, Ryan, find some other part of this op to stress
about. That was a breeze.” Gavin then handed over an electronic device to unlock Frieden’s office door and asked Jack if he remembered how to operate it.

Jack said, “You’re kidding, right? You put me and the guys through two days’ worth of training on that gadget.”

“And now that training will pay off,” Gavin said, with a hint of satisfaction in his voice. He also handed Jack a completely nondescript thumb drive. “Here’s your RAT. It’s just like the one Ysabel used down in Rome. Get it into a port on any networked device in his office, wait nineteen and a half seconds for the program to upload, and then pull it out. After that, you’re done, I’ll take care of the rest remotely.”

Jack and Ysabel had joked in Rome about Gavin’s precise instructions to wait nineteen and a half seconds. They both agreed the first nineteen seconds went by quickly, but that last half second felt like an eternity.

Gavin returned to D.C. that afternoon on a commercial flight, and Jack spent the evening in a local gym, trying to undo some of the damage he had done over the past weeks wining and dining Ysabel and sitting on his ass all day.

•   •   •

T
he next morning at eleven a.m. Jack stood in a doorway six floors below his rented office and watched Guy Frieden and his secretary leave their building, the same as they had the previous four days. He knew they were headed to a café around the corner from Frieden’s office on the pedestrian shopping street. As soon as they disappeared up Grand Rue, Jack crossed the street, a purposefulness to his walk that gave an air that he did this every day.

He wore a gray suit under a brown Fendi wool overcoat and he carried a black leather Tumi bag. His beard was trim and neat and
he wore Tom Ford clear-lensed eyeglasses with no correction to give him even more of a professional presence.

He entered the building and marched up to the counter, waved the badge Gavin made for him over the reader, careful to glance away from the camera that recorded his entrance while he did so. He was rewarded with a green light and a rotating turnstile. He pushed through and headed for the elevators, continuing the appearance of utter relaxation.

On the fifth floor Jack passed a dozen individual offices, most of them private bankers or attorneys, before he made it to a door with a gold nameplate that read
Guy Frieden, Avocat
. He continued on down to the end of the hall, then he turned and started back toward the door. When he was certain no one was coming, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a white box the size of a deck of cards. This he placed over the card reader lock next to Frieden’s door. Automatically the device began pulling in data from the reader and then decoding it.

It was another one of the Campus team’s inventions, and Jack knew it didn’t always work, but Gavin and company had researched the locking protocols used by this office building, and Gavin assured him he’d get in.

As usual, it took a little longer than Gavin said it would, but, also as usual, it worked as advertised. The door opened thirteen seconds after Jack pushed the lock decoder against the card reader.

Frieden’s office was dark and quiet. Jack looked out the window to his vantage point across the street, then hurried to the computer on the desk, pulling out the RAT as he moved. He plugged the device in, initiated it with the simple movement of the mouse on the desk, and left it there while it worked its magic.

He had a few seconds to snoop around, so he looked through the drawers on Frieden’s desk. He didn’t see anything that looked
very interesting, so he headed back into the lobby to check the secretary’s desk.

Jack saw Guy Frieden’s secretary had a calendar blotter on her desk, so he pulled out his phone and began taking pictures of the handwritten notes on the pages. Each and every day of the exposed month had some sort of notation, but they were all in German.

He carefully checked the following month, but this page, and the two calendar pages representing the rest of the year, were completely blank.

Jack assumed at the beginning of each month Frieden’s secretary took all the appointments off whatever computer program she kept them on for scheduling, and she then hand wrote them on the calendar for quicker reference. It left him with a very incomplete picture, but enough notes were written on the blotter that Jack knew he didn’t want to pass it up.

He gave the RAT a full minute to do its thing, more than three times as long as Gavin said the device needed to install itself, but Jack figured it couldn’t hurt.

Jack was out of the building seven minutes after he entered—he doubted Frieden had managed to finish his biscotti yet—and he was on the phone with Gavin as soon as he was back in his tiny sixth-floor office. Gavin promised to get to work on hacking into the system immediately.

Next Jack called Clark, following the orders of the director of operations to notify him the moment he was clear. Jack felt a little silly checking in, like he was calling his mom to let her know he made it home safely, but Clark had requested the contact. Jack knew Clark didn’t like his men operating in the field, even if it was a low-risk mission in such a serene place as Luxembourg.

One month earlier

R
ussian private equity investor Andrei Limonov assumed he would have his next meeting with Valeri Volodin at the Kremlin, so he’d been surprised when the car that picked him up at his apartment at the prearranged time took him not east to the president’s offices, but west, to Volodin’s private home, the palatial estate of Novo-Ogaryovo.

Volodin was famous for his late-night meetings, often conducted in his offices in Building One of the Kremlin complex, or even in sitting rooms in the Grand Kremlin Palace, normally reserved for ceremonial functions. But meetings in his private residence were exceedingly rare. Limonov had heard a few rumors from his friends working high in the Economic Ministry that the president had changed many of his habits in the past several months, giving them the impression he was becoming more paranoid about those around him. Limonov didn’t know any of this firsthand, of course, but he could well imagine that the Kremlin had become a difficult place to
work since the recent economic downturn and Russia’s military forays of the past year.

The private equity manager was no fool. He had no doubt in his mind that his task of moving Volodin’s secret wealth was directly related to the president’s concerns about those around him.

Limonov was X-rayed and passed through a biometric scanner and his briefcase was searched, then he was led through the entrance to the property, and a few minutes later he sat alone in an ornate sitting room, looking out a window at a massive lawn. His eyes tracked a pair of guards and their dog walking at the edge of the property, and saw the sweep of a spotlight running across a wood line on a hill beyond the property’s outer fence.

Limonov thought once more about his plan, running over details in his mind knowing fully well this would be the last opportunity before he presented it to the president. He committed himself to its implementation, telling himself it was as close to foolproof as he could possibly make it.

Valeri Volodin entered the room, his gait fast and focused as he approached, his eyes locked on Limonov as if he might attack. He made no apology for his late entrance, but Limonov had expected none.

Volodin got right down to it. “When we last met you agreed to a plan to move my holdings to someplace out of the established network and into new secure accounts that will be invisible to not only those in the West hunting for them, but also those at home who might not have my best interests in mind.”

“Yes, Mr. President. I believe I have come up with an infallible strategy to remove your money from existing accounts where they might be monitored by FSB auditors and those who might report to FSB, then move it via a network of companies, banks, trusts, and
special purpose entities to initiate the obfuscation of its disbursal, and then . . . suddenly, to make it altogether disappear.”

Volodin said, “You’ve lost the plot, Limonov. I don’t want my money to disappear.”

“Right, well it will reappear, only to you, and not tied to the chain of previous movements. It will not be money that was shuffled around. It will be money that existed, then ceased to exist. And then, as if by magic, new money will appear in different accounts, known only to you, all over the world.”

“You have my attention, Andrei Ivanovich.”

“The plan revolves around cryptocurrency. Bitcoin. Are you familiar with this?”

“I am familiar with it, but not familiar enough to give you eight billion dollars. Keep talking.”

“Removing your assets from their existing accounts, I will channel them through a network of shells to slow down anyone trying to track the transactions. Then I will use the money to purchase digital currency, which is untraceable. Once we have the digital currency we will use this to purchase fiat currency, that is to say government-backed money, and this money, completely distanced from your original assets, will be deposited in a collection of banks around the world. The beauty of it all, Mr. President, is that no one will know where your money is other than you.”

“This is your
objective
. That is not the same thing as a plan. Tell me how this will happen.”

Andrei Limonov spoke for the next ten minutes, taking small charts out of his stack of papers in his briefcase to use as illustrations. When Limonov was finished with his presentation, Volodin tapped his fingers together several times. It was an affectation that, in others, would likely appear thoughtful, but Volodin was so full of nervous energy it looked utterly manic.

Volodin said, “This man you mentioned. The man you will need the assistance of to ensure our little project’s success, do you think he will work with you?”

“For what we will pay him, he would be a fool not to.”

Volodin sniffed. “The world is full of such fools.”

Limonov was taken aback. He expected to have to defend some of the technical aspects of the plan, but not whether he could employ the services of someone by giving them an incredible sum of money to do the very job they were already doing.

Limonov said, “I will need this man to work with me for two weeks, no more. I will oversee him while he makes the trades, in increments of a few million at a time, so we do not draw more attention than we need. He is a businessman, and this is his business. The only change to his normal business is that I will require being present while he works, and the amount of money will be more than he has ever dealt with. He will be compensated for this alteration in the normal working relationship he uses with his clients.”

Volodin said, “Andrei Ivanovich, I foresee this as being more difficult than you expect. People might want information who don’t need it. People might try to find out about you and your client. I can’t allow that to happen.” Before Limonov could respond, the Russian president asked, “Do you know a man named Vlad Kozlov?”

Limonov’s stomach suddenly began to churn. His voice cracked when he answered. “I am aware of the name.”

Volodin touched a button on his desk. “Send him in.”

Limonov turned to look toward the door of Volodin’s private office. His heart pounded against his ribs.

The real reason Limonov had refused to work with the FSB was because of people just like Vladimir Ivanovich Kozlov. He’d never met the man, had no idea what he looked like, but the name
Vlad
Kozlov
had been breathed by some of his banker friends who worked for the government. As the man entered and approached across the floor now, Limonov stood, suddenly feeling meek and small. The new arrival was forty-nine and athletic. He had gray hair so short it was spiked, and a surprisingly good sense of style. His suit and tie made him look like a Kremlin pol, but Andrei Limonov knew what the man crossing the room was.

He was an ex–operations officer in the FSB. Well known as ruthless and cunning, and also regarded as extraordinarily cold.

He wasn’t the man to pull the trigger himself, not anymore, but Vlad Kozlov was the type of man who got a lot of people killed on both sides.

He had been internal security previous to Volodin’s rise to power, but once the man on the other side of the desk from Limonov took over in the Kremlin, Kozlov had left the intelligence services and gone to work for Volodin personally. People around Moscow whispered that he had orchestrated the assassination of a couple of prominent journalists here in the city in the past few years, and his name had come up in a recent ruthless and effective hit of a popular Volodin opponent on a bridge right outside the Kremlin.

Limonov knew all this through rumors and inside gossip, but looking at the man in the flesh now, he had no reason to doubt any of it. He looked like a cross between a gorilla and a snake.

Limonov stood to shake hands with Kozlov, and when both men sat down, Limonov looked back to Volodin. “I do not understand.”

Volodin nodded. “Which is why Vlad will be your guide through all this. He works for Grankin at the Security Council, but I’ve had him tasked to me personally. You are the private equity manager. He is the facilitator. When you need something, he will get it for
you. When you need some
one,
he will get
them
for you. When you run into trouble, he will spin you around and run you right out of trouble.”

“With due respect, what sort of trouble do you think I will get into? I will be setting up a business network, I will be acquiring digital currency, and I will be establishing offshore accounts. I have been doing this sort of thing for a dozen years without anyone there to guide me.”

“There will be people in Russia who do not want you to liquidate assets, people overseas who will require information you are not allowed to provide. It is the nature of the world that sometimes certain pressures must be applied to influence outcomes.”

Limonov glanced at the man seated next to him. Kozlov looked straight ahead, at his president. “May I ask if Mr. Kozlov is also responsible for keeping watch over me? Exerting this pressure you speak of on me to ensure I do what I am supposed to do?”

Volodin replied matter-of-factly, “I find it is better to trust two men partially than one man wholly.”

He said nothing else. Limonov did not know whether he should follow up that comment with a protest about the arrangement—sitting here with Volodin and Kozlov, he quickly determined the better course of action was to hold his tongue.

But despite himself, words flew out of his mouth.

“What if something should happen to me?”

“Like what?” Volodin asked.

Like you have your man slit my throat as soon as I set up your new accounts,
Limonov thought. But he said, “I fulfill my end of the bargain, and then an accident befalls me.”

“You see monsters in every dark corner, don’t you, Limonov?”

The young financier did not reply.

Volodin said, “If you do not trust our arrangement, I can’t depend on you to fulfill our agreements, can I? You will be paid what I told you I would pay you, and you will have a job for life.”

Limonov knew what Volodin meant. Limonov would know all about Volodin’s money. He would always know, as long as he lived.

“I know you could have me killed.”

“And I know you could have me destroyed in the event of your untimely death. You must already be thinking about your dossier.”

“My
what
?”

“A secret file, hidden, but with an automatic launch mechanism. You die, you are threatened, and my account numbers are handed over to my enemies.”

A clock ticked somewhere outside the room.

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“
I
would,” Volodin said.

Limonov didn’t feel much better about the arrangement, but he let it go. He said, “I need to relocate to London. I will require an office outside of Moscow to be certain I am not monitored by FSB.”

Volodin said, “You don’t think I can reach you in London?”

Limonov said, “Of course you can. But it would be an annoyance for you to do so. I plan on making you incredibly satisfied with my work, and I plan on you putting your trust in me for years to come. I only ask that you assure me of my protection.”

It was a shrewd demand, especially considering the fact that Andrei Limonov was scared shitless at the moment, but once Volodin thought it over for a long time, silently, letting the tension build in the room almost to the point where the equity manager told his president to forget the whole thing, Volodin smiled. “I only hope you treat my money as cleverly as you considered this arrangement.”

“Your money will be safer the moment we shake hands to begin the deal, Mr. President.”

•   •   •

A
minute later Limonov found himself out in the hall, with Vlad Kozlov in front of him.

Kozlov said, “Mr. Limonov, the president has conveyed to me the importance of your task. You can expect to find me at your side throughout the entire process.”

Limonov could not hide his discomfort. “Very well. But . . .” He searched for the right words.

Kozlov helped. “You are in charge. I am here as a problem solver. Nothing more. Will we be traveling soon?”

We?
Limonov’s concern increased even more. “I will need to set up the London office. I will then begin the preliminary work of setting up the network. This will take some weeks, and not a single ruble will move until the entire structure is in place. There are bankers and lawyers and registration officials in several places throughout the world I will need to speak with. There is a man in Luxembourg I know who can make the introductions I need to the Bitcoin expert. I really don’t think it’s necessary for you—”

“I am coming with you. These men you speak of. Do you know them already?”

“Some of them, yes.”

“Find other men. Volodin wants no existing network used.”

“But—”

“He was clear on that, but I can tell him you have doubts about his plan. See what he says.”

“No . . . let’s not do that. I’ll need some time to find suitable replacements, but I will go to London immediately.”

“Of course,” said Kozlov. “I will pack my bags. Then I will meet you at your office in the morning. We will go over the logistics of your plan, and then I will wait until you are ready to go.”