Greg Donlin had barely spoken, but he said, “I keep warning him about the dangers. He keeps overruling.”
Chavez said, “Well, okay, but if you need any help from us involving your PERSEC, just shout.”
Branyon raised an eyebrow. “You guys aren’t carrying weapons, are you?”
“No,” Dom said quickly. “I think my partner is talking about help getting you away from a fight.”
Ding nodded. “Yeah, Dom and I aren’t here to go up against Russia’s Army. I guess we’ll just have to leave that to Greg.”
Greg Donlin sighed. “I’ve got a pistol, but I’m an armored division or two short if I have to fight the Russians.”
The men laughed, a moment of gallows humor, nothing more, because if Russia decided it wanted to move into Lithuania, there wasn’t a damn thing anybody sitting in this little living room could do to stop it.
23
Jack 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.
The 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.