Locked On

32

Valentin Kovalenko was nothing like his father. Where Oleg had been big and fat, thirty-five-year-old Valentin looked like a gym rat. He was thin but muscular; he wore a beautiful tailored suit that Laska had no doubt cost more than the car Oleg drove back in Moscow. Laska knew enough about luxury items to recognize that Valentin’s fashionable Moss Lipow eyeglasses cost more than three thousand dollars.

Another stark departure from the demeanor of his father, especially the version of his father that Laska remembered from Prague, was that Valentin seemed quite friendly. Upon his arrival in Laska’s suite just after ten p.m., he’d complimented the Czech on his tireless philanthropy and support for the causes of the downtrodden, then he’d taken a chair by the fireplace after politely turning down the offer of a snifter of brandy.

When both men were settled in front of the fire, Valentin said, “My father says he knows you from your days in Prague. That is all he has said, and I have made it a point to not ask him for any more information than that.” His English was spoken with a noticeable British accent.

Laska shrugged. Valentin was being polite, and it might even be true, but if Laska’s plan was to go forward, there was not a chance in the world that Valentin Kovalenko would not look into the past of the famous Czech. And there was no chance he would not find out about Laska’s duties as a mole. There was no point in hiding it. “I worked for your father. Whether or not you know that yet, you will soon enough. I was an informant, and your father was my handler.”

Valentin smiled a little. “My father impresses me sometimes. Ten thousand bottles of vodka down the hatch and the old man still can keep secrets. That is bloody impressive.”

“He can,” agreed Laska. “He did not tell me anything about you. My other sources in the East, via my Progressive Nations Institute, were the ones who told me about your position in SVR.”

Valentin nodded. “In my father’s day we’d send men and women to the gulag for revealing that information. Now I will just send an e-mail to internal state security mentioning the leak and they will file the e-mail away and do nothing.”

The two men watched the fireplace in the huge suite for a moment. Finally Paul said, “I have an opportunity that I think will interest your government greatly. I would like to suggest an operation to you. If your agency agrees, I will only work with you. No one else.”

“Does it involve the United Kingdom?”

“It involves the United States.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Laska, but that is not my area of operations, and I am very busy here.”

“Yes, being assistant rezident. But my proposal will make you rezident in your pick of nations. What I am offering is that important.”

Valentin smiled. An affectation of amusement, but Laska could see a glint in the boy’s eyes that reminded him of his father in his younger years.

Valentin Kovalenko asked, “What is it you are proposing, Mr. Laska?”

“Nothing less than the destruction of the American President, Jack Ryan.”

Valentin’s head rose. “You’ve given up hope for your friend Edward Kealty?”

“Completely. Ryan will be elected. But I have hope that he will not set foot in the Oval Office to begin his second term.”

“That is a great hope you have there. Give me reason to share this hope.”

“I have a privately acquired file … a dossier, if you will, of a man named John Clark. I am sure you know who he is.”

Valentin cocked his head, and Laska tried but could not read into the gesture. The Russian said, “I might know that name.”

“You are just like your father. Not trusting.”

“I am like most all Russians in that regard, Mr. Laska.”

Paul Laska nodded in recognition of the truth of the comment. In reply he said, “This exercise will not require your trust. John Clark is a close confidant of Jack Ryan. They have worked together, and they are friends.”

“Okay. Please continue. What does the file say?”

“Clark was a CIA assassin. He did the bidding of Jack Ryan. Ryan signed a pardon for this. Do you know what a pardon is?”

“I do.”

“But I think Clark has done other things. Things that, if brought out into the light of day, will implicate Ryan directly.”

“What things?”

“You need to get your service’s file on Clark and put it with my file on Clark.”

“If we had such a document already, that is to say, a file on this John Clark that had incriminating evidence, do you not think we would have exploited it by now? During the first Ryan presidency, perhaps?”

Laska waved away the comment. “Very quickly and quietly your service should reinterview anyone, anywhere, with knowledge of the man or his operations. Make one large dossier, with every truth, half-truth, and innuendo.”

“And then?”

“And then I want you to give it to the Kealty campaign.”

“Why?”

“Because I cannot let it be known who my source of this information is. The file must come from someone else. Someone out of the USA. I want your people to dress it up with what you have to disguise the source.”

“Innuendoes do not convict men in your adopted country, Mr. Laska.”

“They can destroy a political career. And more than that, it is what Clark is doing right now that must be revealed. I have reason to believe that he is operating for some extrajudicial organization. Committing crimes around the world. And he would not be out committing these crimes if not for the full pardon given him by John Patrick Ryan. We get enough on Clark to Kealty, Kealty will force the Justice Department to investigate Clark. Kealty will do it for his own selfish reasons, no question. But it doesn’t matter. What matters is that the investigation will find a house of horrors.”

Valentin Kovalenko looked into the fire. Paul Laska watched him. Watched the firelight flicker off of the lenses of his Moss Lipow glasses.

“This sounds like an easy operation for my side. A quick thumbing through of a dusty old file, a quick investigation using men from some third-party group as a cutout, not SVR or FSB. More cutouts to pass the results on to someone in Kealty’s campaign. We will not be overexposed. But I do not know that there is much chance for success of the operation.”

“I can’t believe your country has any interest in a strong Ryan administration.”

Kovalenko had done little to tip his hand at any point in this conversation, but to Laska’s last comment he shook his head slowly, staring the older man in the eye. “None whatsoever, Mr. Laska. But … will there be enough to bring him down through Clark?”

“In time to save Ed Kealty? No. Perhaps not even in time to prevent his inauguration. But Richard Nixon’s Watergate took many months to germinate into something so big and bountiful that it resulted in his resignation.”

“Very true.”

“And what I know about the actions of John Clark makes the events of Watergate look like some sort of fraternity prank.”

Kovalenko nodded. A thin smile crossed his lips. “Perhaps, Mr. Laska, I will take one small snifter of brandy as we chat further.”