Ryan fumed. “How the hell did you get this number, Holtzman? This is a private line.”
“John Clark gave it to me, sir. I just spoke with him after having an interesting meeting with a Russian intelligence officer.”
Ryan calmed down but remained on guard. “A meeting about what?”
“Mr. Clark did not want to speak with you directly. He thought that might put you in a compromised situation. Therefore, I am in the odd position, Mr. President, of having to explain some things to you. Mr. Clark told me you had no knowledge whatsoever about the Russian intelligence — Paul Laska plot against you.”
If Jack Ryan Sr. had learned one thing in his many years working with Arnie van Damm, it was this: When dealing with a journalist, never
But Arnie was not here right now, and Jack dropped his veil of self-assuredness.
“What the
“If you have a minute, I think I can enlighten you, sir.” Jack Ryan Sr. grabbed a notepad and a pen, and he leaned back in his chair. “I always have time for a respected member of the press, Bob.”
One week later, Charles Alden slammed the phone down in the office of his Georgetown row house just after eight a.m. This would be his first of several calls to Rhode Island, he had resigned himself to that fact. He’d been trying to get in touch with Laska for the past three fucking days, and the old bastard would not answer or return his calls.
Alden decided to pester the man. As far as he was concerned, Laska owed him for the risks he had taken in the past few months.
The DD/CIA fumed as he left his office and headed downstairs to his kitchen for another cup of coffee. He had not bothered to put on a suit this morning, a rarity for a Tuesday. Instead he would sit in his warm-ups and drink coffee and call Paul goddamned Laska until the son of a bitch answered his phone.
A knock at the front door diverted Alden from his route to the kitchen.
He looked through the peephole. A couple of suits in trench coats stood on his stoop. Behind them, a government Chrysler was double-parked on the snowy street.
He pegged the men for CIA security officers. He could not imagine what these guys wanted.
Charles opened the door.
The men entered quickly without waiting for an invitation. “Mr. Alden, I am Special Agent Caruthers, and this is Special Agent Delacort with the FBI. I’m going to have to ask you to turn around and face the wall, please.”
“Wha… What the hell is going on?”
“I’ll explain everything shortly. For your and my safety, please face the wall, sir.”
Alden turned slowly on legs that suddenly felt weak and slack. Handcuffs were placed on his wrists and then the pockets of his warm-up pants were professionally gone through by Delacort. Caruthers stood back in the doorway, watching the street.
“What the hell do you think you are doing?”
Alden was turned toward his front door and walked back out into the cold. “You are under arrest, Mr. Alden,” said Caruthers as they headed down the icy steps to the street.
“What the fuck? What is the charge?”
“Four counts of unauthorized disclosure of national defense information and four counts of unauthorized retention of national defense information.”
Alden added it up in his head quickly. He was facing more than thirty years behind bars.
“Bullshit! This is bullshit!”
“Yes, sir,” said Caruthers as he put his hand on Alden’s head and guided him into the back of the Chrysler. Delacort had already slid behind the wheel.
Charles Alden said, “Ryan! This is Ryan’s doing! I get it. The witch hunt has begun, right?”
“I wouldn’t know, sir,” said Caruthers, and the Chrysler drove off toward downtown.
The same day, Judith Cochrane left her Pueblo, Colorado, hotel at nine-thirty in the morning, and she began her familiar drive to ADX Florence.
Her client would finally be removed from the Special Administrative Measures and transferred to a better facility on the East Coast; they had not told her where yet for security reasons, but she knew it would be somewhere in the D.C. area, so it would be close to her home.
Without the SAMs, Saif Rahman Yasin would be able to sit in a room with her while they worked together on his case, close over a table. Sometimes there would be other attorneys present, and the guards would be ever present, but there would be a modicum of privacy, and Judith Cochrane had thought of little else for some time.
Too bad that conjugal visits would not be allowed. Judy smiled as that thought came to her.
The rental car began making an odd noise that she hadn’t heard before. “Damn it,” she said, as it got louder and louder. It was a thumping, and she did not know cars at all, other than where to put the gas.
As it grew even louder, she slowed her vehicle. She had the entire road to herself, and there was nothing but flat country around her and huge mountains far to the west. She decided to pull over to the side of the road, but just as she started to do so, she was startled by a huge shadow passing over her car.
Then she saw it, a big black helicopter streaked just overhead, flew up the road another hundred yards, and then turned sideways, blocking her path.
She stopped the rental car in the middle of the road.
The helicopter landed, and men with guns jumped out, ran up to her with their guns pointed at her, and when they got close she could hear their screaming.
She was pulled out of her car, turned around, and pushed up on the hood. Her legs were kicked open, and she was frisked.
“What do you want?”
“Judith Cochrane. You are under arrest.”
“On what goddamned charge?”
“Espionage, Ms. Cochrane.”
“Oh, that’s ridiculous! I’ll drag every last one of you before a judge tomorrow morning and your shitty careers will be over!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Judith screamed at the officers and demanded their badge numbers, but they ignored her. They handcuffed her, and she called them fascists and robots and vermin, and she called them sons of bitches as they led her to the helicopter and helped her on board.
She was still screaming when the helicopter took off, turned to the east, and flew away.
She would not know it for some time, but she had been sold out by Paul Laska in an attempt to save himself.
The Emir sucked fresh air into his lungs for the first time in months. It was dark when he was led out of ADX Florence and into the back of a Bureau of Prisons van, and the heavy snow further obstructed his view.
He had been looking forward to this day for months, since Judy Cochrane had promised him she would get him out of his tiny cell and into a federal prison near Washington. A prison where he could exercise and watch television and have more books and access to other members of his defense who would help him fight the Ryan administration.
