Locked On

“Nope.”

“So someone else, not his son, paid his way. Can we get a list of every credit card that held a room for that night?” “Sure. I can pull e, notthat out. Call you back in five?” Ryan said, “I’ll be at your desk in three.”

Ryan showed up at Biery’s desk with his own laptop, which he opened as he plopped into a chair next to the computer guru. Biery handed Ryan a printout, so Ryan and Gavin both could scan through the list of names of those registered at the hotel. Ryan didn’t know what he was looking for, exactly, which made delegating half of the search to Gavin practically impossible. Other than the name “Kovalenko,” which Biery had already said was not here, or the highly unlikely discovery of the name “Edward Kealty,” he didn’t really know what would pique his interest.

He wished like hell he could be sitting with Melanie right now. She would find a name, a pattern, something.

And then, from out of the blue, Jack got an idea in his head. “Vodka!” he shouted.

Gavin smiled. “Dude it’s ten-fifteen in the morning. Unless you’ve got some Bloody Mary mix—” Ryan wasn’t listening. “Russian diplomats who visit the UN in New York are always getting in trouble for drinking all the vodka in their minibars.” “Says who?”

“I don’t know, I’ve heard it before. Might be an urban legend, but look at this guy.” He pulled up a photo of Valentin Kovalenko on his laptop. “You can’t tell me he wasn’t tipping back the Stoli.” “He’s got that big red nose, but what does that have to do with his trip to London?” “Check for a room with minibar charges, or a bar tab charged to the room.” Biery ran another report on his computer, and as he was doing so he said, “Or room service. Specifically, a liquor tab.” “Exactly,” agreed Ryan.

Gavin began going through the itemized credit card charges of the subset of rooms that had ordered room service or charged bar items to their room. He found a few possibles, then a few more. Finally he settled on one charge in particular. “Okay, here we go. Here is a room paid for by an American Express Centurion card under the name of Carmela Zimmern.” “Okay. So?”

“So it looks like Ms. Zimmern, in her one evening at the Mandarin Oriental, enjoyed two servings of beluga caviar, four bottles of Finlandia vodka, and three porno movies.” Ryan looked at the digital receipt on Gavin’s laptop. When he saw the three “in-room entertainment” charges, he was confused.

“How do you know they were pornos?”

“Look, they all ran at the same time. I guess Oleg wanted to channel-flip through the chatty parts.” “Oh,” Ryan said, still putting this together. He started scrolling through the names on his sheet again. “Wait a second. Carmela Zimmern also booked the Royal Suite the same night. That’s nearly six grand. So Kovalenko was in the other room? He was there to see her, maybe?” “Sounds plausible.”

Shit, thought Jack. Who is this Carmela Zimmern?

They Googled the name and found nothing. Well, not nothing, there were several Carmela Zimmerns. One was a fourteen-year-old girl in Kentucky who played lacrosse and another was a thirtnd y-five-year-old mother of four in Vancouver who loved to crochet. They looked them over, one at a time, but there was certainly no one that looked like they’d be spending lavishly on five-star hotels or entertaining Russian spies in the UK.

“I’ll find the address on her card,” Biery said, and he began clicking his keyboard.

While he did this, Jack Ryan Jr. hunched over his laptop, reading through anything he could find on Carmela Zimmerns in social media, on random websites, anywhere in open source. Within a minute of beginning his search, he said, “Holy shit.” “What?”

“This one works for Paul Laska.”

“The Paul Laska?” “Yep. Carmela Zimmern, forty-six years old, lives in Newport, Rhode Island, works for the Progressive Nations Institute.” Gavin finished his check of the AmEx card. “That’s our girl. Address in Newport.” “Interesting. Laska’s PNI is based in New York.” “Right, but Laska himself is in Newport.” “So she works directly with the old bastard.” “Looks that way.”

When Clark phoned back the call came through the speakerphone in the ninth-floor conference room. All the principals were there, some still poring over the information Ryan and Biery had just dug up.

“John, it’s Ryan. I’ve got everyone here with me.” “Hey guys.” Everyone in the room quickly called out to Clark one at a time.

Clark hesitated before speaking. “Where’s Driscoll?” Hendley took this. “He’s in Pakistan.” “Still?”

“He’s a POW. Haqqani has him.”

“Fuck. God damn it.”

Gerry interjected, “Look, we have a viable lead on getting him out of there. There is hope.” “Embling? Is he your lead?”

“Nigel Embling is dead, John. Killed by Riaz Rehan.” Hendley said it softly.

“What the hell is going on?” Clark asked.

“It’s complicated,” Gerry said, putting it extremely mildly. “But we’re working on that end. Let’s concentrate on your situation for now. How are you?” Clark sounded tired and angry and frustrated, all at the same time. “I’ll be better when this gets worked out. Any word on Kovalenko?” Hendley looked at Jack Junior and nodded.

“Yes. Valentin Kovalenko, age thirty-five. He is SVR’s assistant rezident in London.” “And he’s in Moscow?”

“No. He was there, in October, but only for a couple of weeks.” “Shit,” said Clark, and Ryan got the impression from this reaction that Clark was in Moscow.

“There’s more, John.”

“Go.”

“Kovalenko’s father, Oleg. Like you said, he was KGB.” “Yesterday’s news, Jack. He’s got to be eighty.” “He’s nearly that, but listen for a second. This guy never goes anywhere outside of Russia. I mean not as far back as Homeland Security’s records go. But in October he flies to London.” “To see his kid?”

“To see Paul Laska, apparently.”

There was a long pause. “The Paul Laska?” “Yep,” said Ryan. “This is preliminary, but we think it is possible that they knew each other in Czechoslovakia.” “Okay,” Clark said it with a confused tone. “Go on.” “Right after Oleg’s visit to London, Valentin races over to Moscow for two weeks. He gets back to London, and a few days later, the indictment on you drops out of the sky.” Clark filled in what he knew. “When he was in Moscow, Valentin sent a crew of thugs out to get intel on me from sources in my file with the KGB.” “Weird,” said Caruso, who’d been silent until now. “If he is SVR, why didn’t he send his own people?” Clark answered this quickly. “He wanted to use cutouts to insulate him and his service from this.” “So Valentin knows about you through Laska?” asked Ryan.

“Looks like it.”

Ryan was confused. “And Laska knows about you… how?” Sam Granger answered this. “Paul Laska runs the Progressive Constitution Initiative, the group that is defending the Emir. Somehow the Emir fingered Clark, and Laska is orchestrating this all with Russia because he can’t let on that the Emir is passing intel to him.” Hendley ran his fingers through his gray hair. “The Emir may have described Clark to his lawyers. They, somehow, got a picture of you from CIA.” “So Paul Laska and his people are using the Russians, running their version of a false-flag operation,” said Clark.

“But why would the Russians go along with this?” asked Chavez.

“To hobble the Ryan Presidency, or maybe even kill it outright.” “We have to go after Laska,” said Caruso.

“Hell, no,” Hendley said. “We don’t operate inside America against Americans, even misguided sons of bitches like him.” A mild argument broke out in the room, with Caruso and Ryan on one side, and the rest of the men on the other. Chavez stayed out of it for the most part.

Clark stopped the argument. “Listen, I understand and respect that. I will try to get more information on my end that we can use, and then I will report back.” “Thank you,” said Gerry Hendley.