“That is a great hope you have there. Give
“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 n Kealtycampaign. 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.”
33
On a frigid October night in Makhachkala, Dagestan, fifty-five fighters of Jamaat Shariat met in a low-ceilinged basement with Suleiman Murshidov, the elderly spiritual leader of their organization. The men were aged between seventeen and forty-seven, and together they possessed hundreds of years of experience in urban warfare.
These men had been handpicked by operational commanders, and five of their number were cell leaders themselves. It had been explained to them that they would be sent to a foreign base for training, and then they would embark on an operation that would change the course of history.
To a man they thought their operation would involve a hostage situation, likely in Moscow, with their ultimate goal being the repatriation of their commander, Israpil Nabiyev.
They were only half right.
None of these grizzled fighters knew the clean-shaven man with Murshidov and his sons. To them he looked like a politician, not a rebel, so when Abu Dagestani explained that he would be their leader for their operation, they were stunned.
Georgi Safronov spoke passionately to the fifty-five men in the basement; he explained that their ultimate goal would be revealed to them in due time, but for now they would all be flying in a cargo plane to Quetta, Pakistan, from where they would venture northward to a camp. There, he explained, they would undergo three weeks of intense training by the best Muslim fighters in the world, men with more operational experience in the past decade than even their brothers in nearby Chechnya.
All fifty-five men were pleased to learn this, but it was hard for them to look at Safronov as their leader.
Suleiman Murshidov saw this, and he’d expected it, so he spoke again to the group, promised them all that Georgi was Dagestani, and his plan and his sacrifice would do more for the North Caucasus in the next two months than Jamaat Shariat could do without him in the next fifty years.
After a final prayer, the fifty-five men loaded into minibuses and headed toward the airport.
Georgi Safronov wanted to travel with them, but this was deemed too dangerous by General Ijaz, his Pakistani partner in this endeavor. No, Safronov would fly commercial to Peshawar, under documents made by Pakistani intelligence, and there he would be picked up by Ijaz and his men and flown directly to the camp near Miran Shah.
At the camp, Georgi was expected to train with the other men. He would not be as skilled with a weapon, as physically fit, or as battle-hardened in his heart. But he would learn, he would strengthen, and he would toughen.
He hoped he would earn the respect of the men who’d lived their adult lives resisting the Russians in and around Makhachkala. No, they would never look at him like they did Israpil Nabiyev. But they would obey Abu Dagestani and follow Safronov’s orders. And if he could learn the martial skills in Pakistan that would be necessary during their struggles ahead, Safronov thought that perhaps they would see him as a true commander, not just a sympathizer of their cause with a plan.
Jack Ryan Jr. parked his yellow Hummer in front of Melanie Kraft’s address a few minutes after seven. She lived on Princess Street in Alexandria, right up the road from the boyhood home of Robert E. Lee,
