Locked On

60

Judith Cochrane watched Saif Yasin get up from his concrete bed and make his way toward the Plexiglas wall. A small writing table and a chair had been placed on his side of the glass, and here his phone sat, along with his notepad and pens. On the table next to his concrete bed a tall stack of American law books and other papers were arranged so that he could help the PCI prepare his defense.

The Justice Department had been loosening the strict rules it had set up for the Emir’s defense. It seemed like every day Judy got an e-mail or a call from someone at DOJ allowing her or her client access to more information, to more contact with the outside world, to more resources, in order for the PCI to put on a respectable defense. As soon as the path was cleared for Yasin to move to a federal cell in Virginia, then Judy would petition the court for even more access to classified material she and Saif would need to prove that he had been captured illegally and should therefore be allowed to go free.

Paul Laska had confided in Judy weeks ago that he’d learned from the CIA that the men who took the Emir off the streets of Riyadh were ex — CIA men, working in no official capacity with the U.S. government. This complicated things for both sides of the federal case, but Judy was doing her best to leverage this information to her advantage. Laska had said that Ryan himself had some association with the criminals who kidnapped her client, so Judy was planning on threatening the new administration, promising to bring this relationship into the light to embarrass the President of the United States.

She felt she had Ryan dead to rights, and this would make him want to sweep the Emir back under the rug by fulfilling his campaign promise to turn the man back over to a military tribunal.

But she had a plan to stop that.

“Good morning, Judy. You look wonderful today,” Yasin said as he sat. His smile was attractive, but Judith saw a hint of melancholy in it.

“Thank you. Before we start, I know you might be feeling down today.”

“Because Jack Ryan will be the next President? Yes, I admit it is distressing news. How can your country allow this criminal back into power?”

Judith Cochrane shook her head. “I have no idea. I do not have a single friend or coworker who voted for him, I can promise you that.”

“And yet still he wins?”

Judy shrugged. “Large portions of my country, I am sad to say, are in the hands of racists, warmongers, and ignorant fools.”

“Yes. This must be true, as there seems to be no justice for an innocent man in America,” said the Emir, with a hint of sadness.

“Do not say that. We will find justice for you. I came today to tell you that Ryan’s victory is actually a good thing for your case.”

The Emir cocked his head. “How so?”

“Because Ryan’s friend, John Clark, was one of the men who kidnapped you. Right now the man is a fugitive from justice, but once Kealty’s people capture him, he will be offered immunity to tell everything he knows about who he was working for when you were captured. Jack Ryan will be implicated.”

“How do you know this?”

“Because it is possible Ryan was directly involved. And even if he was not directly involved or aware of your kidnapping, we will use back channels to threaten him. To tell him that, if you are sent to military custody, we will have no other course of action but to try your case in the media, and we will use the fact Ryan gave a secret pardon as evidence Ryan himself wanted John Clark to be free to kill and kidnap innocents. Ryan might win in the court of law, but in the court of public opinion, with the vast majority of the world media on our side, it will be as if President Jack Ryan himself shot you and kidnapped you. He and his administration will have no choice but to acquiesce to our demands.”

“And what are our demands?”

“Minimum security. A reasonable sentence. Something that has you behind bars for the length of his administration, but no longer.”

The Emir smiled. “For someone so pleasant and attractive, you are certainly a very shrewd individual.”

Judy Cochrane blushed. “I am just getting started, Saif. Mark my words. You will win your case or we will destroy President Ryan in the process.”

Now the Emir’s grin showed no evidence of his earlier melancholy. “Is it too much to hope that both of these things happen?”

Judy herself grinned. “No. Not too much to hope at all.”

It had been ten days since Clark found Manfred Kromm in Cologne. The wanted American had spent the majority of that time in Warsaw, Poland. Clark had no operational reason to go to Warsaw, but his visit became operationally prudent when it became clear his body would need some recovery time after the evening fleeing the men chasing him in Germany. His right ankle had become swollen and purple, the cut on his hand needed time to heal, and every joint in his body ached. His muscles were exhausted, his low back went from a dull ache the morning after the activity to complete spasms on the morning of day two.

Warsaw was not just a town on his way from Germany to Estonia. It was a much-needed pit stop.

Clark used a phony ID to rent a one-star en-suite room at a no-name hotel in the city center. He filled the porcelain bathtub with Epsom salts and water nearly hot enough to boil a lobster, and he lowered every bit of his body in it, save for two extremities. His right foot, which was wrapped tight with a bag of ice and compression bandages, and his right hand, which held his SIG Sauer P220 .45-caliber pistol.

The hot bath and over-the-counter anti-inflammatories slowly helped him tackle his spasmed muscles.

In addition to his bumps and bruises, Clark also found himself sick with an incredible sinus infection. Running through the icy rain had seen to that. Again, he used over-the-counter meds to fight this, along with a steady supply of tissues.

Hot baths, downing pills, blowing his nose. Clark repeated this process over and over for almost a week before he felt, not like a young man, but at least like a new man.

Now he was in Tallinn, Estonia, walking past the Viru Gate, the entrance to the cobblestoned Old Town. He’d grown a decent beard in the past two weeks, and he’d changed his dress from the look of a late-middle-aged businessman to the look of a rugged world-weary fisherman. He wore a black watch cap low over his head, a black sweater under a blue waxed-cotton raincoat, and leather boots that kept the mobility in his still sore right ankle to a minimum.

It was a Thursday evening, and the November air was frigid, so there were few pedestrians on the streets. As he headed up the narrow medieval Saint Catherine’s Passage, Clark walked alone, feeling also the self-imposed isolation of the past few weeks. When he was younger, much younger, Clark moved in the black as a singleton asset for weeks at a time without noticing a shred of loneliness. He was not inhuman, but he was able to compartmentalize his life so that when he was operational, his mind remained on the operation. But now he thought of family and friends and colleagues. Not so much as to turn around and head back to them but certainly more than he would have liked.

It was weird, Clark thought to himself as he headed closer to his target. More than Sandy, more than Patsy, the one person he wanted to talk to right now was Ding.

It was crazy that his diminutive son-in-law was at the forefront of his thoughts, and he would have laughed at the realization of it if everything going on around him weren’t so damn serious at the moment. But after a moment of introspection, it made sense. Sandy had been there with him, through thick and thin. But not like Chavez. Domingo and John had been in tight spots together more often than either man would be able to count.

But as much as he would have liked to, he did not entertain the thought of checking in with a quick phone call. He had walked by enough public phones — yes, they were still around here and there — that it would have been damn easy to make a quick call.

But no. Not yet. Not until it was absolutely necessary.

No, he was operating in the black, not in the gray. He could not reach out to those who would be the most imperiled by contact from him. He did not doubt for one second that Ding would be taking care of his wife, his daughter, and his grandkids, beyond the reach of photographers and reporters and long-dormant assassins, and any other asshole who would make trouble for the family of the ex-CIA operative.

Even though Ding wasn’t here, standing shoulder to shoulder with him, John Clark knew Chavez still had his back.

And that would have to do for now.

Ardo Ruul was the Estonian mobster who had sent the heavies to interview Manfred Kromm. The Russians had a note in a file from 1981 that the KGB had heard rumblings that a CIA heavy named Clark had come to Berlin the day Stasi agent Lukas Schuman was shot dead in a ghost station under East Berlin. The KGB interviewed Schuman’s partner, Kromm, and Kromm had admitted nothing. But the loose end was still there, in the Russian’s file on John Clark, thirty years later.

So Valentin Kovalenko contacted Ardo Ruul. The Estonian gangster had worked in his nation’s intelligence service in his twenties, and now that he was out of government and operating on his own, he did odd jobs for the SVR here and there. Kovalenko asked Ruul to send men to find this Kromm character, if he was still alive, and get to the bottom of the story. Ruul’s people found Kromm in Cologne, Ruul and his men had the old German lock picker come to a meet, and soon Kromm was telling the story that he had never told a soul, even identifying John Clark from a photo.

It wasn’t a big deal for Ruul. The Estonian passed the intel on to Valentin Kovalenko, then went home to Tallinn after a long weekend in Germany with his girlfriend, and now he sat in his regular seat in his regular nightclub, watching the lights flash and too few Western tourists bounce up and down on the dance floor.

Ruul owned Klub Hypnotek, a stylish lounge and techno dance room on Vana Turg in Tallinn’s Old Town. He came in most nights around eleven, and rarely strayed far from his throne, a corner wrap-around sofa flanked by two armed bodyguards, unless it was to head up to his office alone to count receipts or surf the Internet.

Around midnight he felt nature’s call, and he took a circular staircase up to his second-floor lair, waved his bodyguard back downstairs, and stepped into the tiny private bathroom attached to his office.

He pissed, flushed, zipped, turned around, and found himself facing the barrel of a handgun.

“What the fuck?” He said it in Estonian.

“Do you recognize me?” These words were English.

Ruul just stared at the silencer.

“I asked you a question.”

“Lower gun please so I can see you,” Ruul said with a quake in his voice.

John Clark lowered the pistol to the man’s heart. “How ’bout now?”

“Yes. You are American John Clark that everyone in your country looks for.”

“I am surprised you did not expect me.” Clark glanced quickly back to the door to the circular stairs. “You didn’t expect me, did you?”

Ruul shrugged. “Why would I expect you?”

“It’s all over the news I was in Cologne. That didn’t tip you off that I was looking for Kromm?”

“Kromm is dead.”

This Clark did not know. “You killed him?”

Ruul shook his head in a way that made Clark believe him. “They told me he die before you spoke to him.”

“Who told you that?”

“People who scare me more than you, American.”

“Then you do not know me.” Clark thumbed the hammer back on his .45.

Ruul’s eyebrows rose, but he asked, “Are we standing in bathroom much longer?”

Clark backed up, letting the man into his office, but Clark’s gun remained trained on Ruul’s chest. Ruul kept his hands up slightly, though he ran them through his spiky blond hair as he looked toward the window to the fire escape. “You came in through my window? It’s two stories up? You need to find rocking chair, old man. You behave like child.”

“If they told you I got nothing from Kromm, they probably did that because they are using you as bait. My guess is they have been watching you, waiting for me to show up.”

Ruul had not thought of this. John saw a sense of hope in the man’s eyes, as if he expected someone to come to his rescue.

“And if they killed Kromm, they won’t have any problem killing you.”

Now John saw this realization register in the Estonian mobster’s eyes. Still, he did not break easily.

“So … Who sent you to Kromm?”

“Kepi oma ema, old man,” Ruul said.

“That sounded like some sort of a curse. Was that a curse?”

“It means … ‘Fuck your mother.’”

“Very nice.” Clark raised his weapon back to the Estonian’s forehead.

“If you shoot me, you have no chance. I have ten armed men in building. One bang from your gun and they come kill you. And if you are right about more men coming, then you should think about your own …” He stopped talking and watched Clark holster the pistol.

The older American stepped forward, took Ardo Ruul by his arm, spun him around, and shoved him hard against the wall.

“I’m going to do something that will hurt. You will want to scream bloody murder, but I promise you, if you make a sound, I will do it to your other arm.”

“What? No!”

Clark bent Ruul’s left arm back violently, then drove his elbow into the back of the Estonian’s hyperextended elbow.

Ardo Ruul started a shriek, but Clark took him by his hair and slammed his face into the wall.

Close in his ear, John said, “Another pound of pressure and your joint snaps. You can still save it if you don’t scream.”

“I … I tell you who sent me for Manfred Kromm.” Ruul said with a gasp, and Clark let up the pressure. “A Russian fuck, Kovalenko is name. He is FSB or SVR, I do not know which. He sent me to see what Kromm knows about you in Berlin.”

“Why?”

Ardo’s knees went slack and he slid down the side of the wall. Clark helped him to the floor. There the man sat, his face pale, his eyes wide with pain as he held his elbow.

“Why, Ruul?”

“He did not say me why.”

“How do I find him?”

“How do I know? His name Kovalenko. He is Russian agent. He pay me money. This is all I know.”

From downstairs at Klub Hypnotek, the crack of a gunshot, then screams from women and men.

Clark stood quickly and headed toward the window.

“Where you going?”

Clark raised the windowpane and looked outside, then turned back to the Estonian gangster. “Before they kill you, remember to tell them I am coming after Kovalenko.”

Ardo Ruul pulled himself up to his feet with his one good arm and the corner of his desk. “Don’t leave, American! We fight them together!”

Clark climbed out onto the fire escape. “Those guys downstairs are your concern. I’ve got my own problems.” And with that he disappeared into the cold darkness.

Both men, American and Estonian, were roughly the same age. They were within an inch of the same height. Not more than ten pounds separated them in their weight. They both wore their salt-and-pepper hair short; both men had lean faces lined with age and hardened by life.

There the similarities ended. The Estonian was a drunk, a bum, prone on the cold concrete with his head propped against the wall and a see-through plastic crate holding his life’s possessions.

Clark was the same build, the same age. But not the same man.

He’d been standing here in the dark under the train tracks, watching the bum. He regarded the man a moment more, with only a brief hint of sadness. He did not waste much energy feeling sorry for the guy, but that was not because John Clark was coldhearted. No, it was because John Clark was on the job. He had no time for sentimentality.

He walked over, knelt down, and said in Russian, “Fifty euros for your clothes.” He was offering the destitute man seventy bucks in local currency.

The Estonian blinked over jaundiced and bloodshot eyes. “Vabandust?” Excuse me?

“Okay, friend. You drive a hard bargain.” Clark said it again. “You take my clothes. I give you one hundred euros.” If the homeless drunk was confused for a moment, soon it became clear. It also became clear that this was no offer.

It was a demand.

Five minutes later, Clark strolled into the main rail station in Old Town Tallinn, staggering like a bum from shadow to shadow, looking for the next train to Moscow.