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  Rehan beamed with pride and made a mental note that when he became president of Pakistan he would have a statue built in honor of Abdul Ibrahim, but he also realized the attack had actually done more damage than he wanted. LeT would be targeted with renewed vigor by not only the Indians but also the Americans. The pressure on Pakistan’s government to root out LeT would be twice what he’d expected. Rehan knew that the US/Pakistani Intelligence Fusion Center would be working overtime now and shifting their workload toward LeT.

  Rehan did not panic. Instead he reached out to his LeT contacts and told them he would take over as project manager for the next operation, and it would need to be moved up on the calendar. Forces opposed to LeT in his government, forces who were allied with the United States, would begin rounding up the usual suspects after this attack, and Rehan knew that every day before phase two of his plan to bring Pakistan and India to the brink of war woink of wuld increase the chance that Operation Saker would be somehow compromised.

  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 haope 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 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 pr
ank.”

  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, near the former home of George and Martha Washington, on a portion of the street that was still paved with pre — Revolutionary War cobblestones. Ryan looked around at the beautiful old homes, surprised that a government employee in her mid-twenties could afford to live here.

  He found her door and understood. Melanie lived at the address of a beautiful brick Georgian home, yes, but she lived in a carriage house in the back through the garden. They were still pretty nice digs, but he saw from the outside that her place was just larger than a one-car garage.

  She invited him in, and he confirmed that the apartment was, indeed, tiny, but she kept it neat.

  “I love your place.”

  Melanie smiled. “Thank you. I love it, too. I’d never be able to afford it without help.”

  “Help?”

  “An old professor of mine from AU is married to a real estate guy; they own the home. It was built in 1794. She rents the carriage house to me for about what I’d pay for a regular apartment around here. It’s tiny, but it’s all I need.”

  Jack glanced over at a card table in the corner. On top of it sat a MacBook Pro and a massive stack of books, notebooks, and loose printed pages. Some of the books, Ryan noticed, were printed in Arabic script.

  “Is that NCTC south?” he asked with a smile.

  She chuckled, but quickly grabbed her coat and her purse and headed for the door. “Shall we?”

  Jack figured that was it for the grand tour, but other than the bathroom, he could see it all from where he stood, anyway. He followed her out the door and into the cool evening.

  It was a ten-minute stroll to King Street, and they chatted about the old buildings as they walked. There were a lot of other people out, walking to and from dinner at this hour on a Saturday night.

  They stepped into the restaurant and were led to a romantic table for two overlooking the street. As they settled in with their menus, Jack asked, “Have you been here before?”

  “Honestly, no. I hate to admit it, but I don’t eat out much. Twenty-five-cent wing night at Murphy’s is a big time splurge for me.”

  “Nothing wrong with wings.”

  Jack ordered a bottle of pinot noir, and they perused the menu while they chatted.

  “So you were at Georgetown.” Melanie said it as a statement.

  Ryan smiled. “Do you know that because Mary Pat told you, because you Googled me, or because you are in the CIA and you know everything?”

  She blushed slightly. “I was at AU. I saw you a few times at things around town. You were a year ahead of me, I think. You were hard to miss with that big Secret Service guy around you all the time.”

  “Mike Brennan. He was a second dad to me. Great guy, but he scared off a lot of people. He’s my excuse for having a boring social life in college.”

  “Good excuse. I’m sure being a celebrity has its drawbacks.”

  “I’m not a celebrity. Nobody recognizes me. My parents had money, but I sure as hell wasn’t raised with a silver spoon in my mouth. I had a summer job through high school and college, I even worked construction for a while.”

  Melanie said, “I was just talking about the trappings associated with being famous. I wasn’t suggesting you don’t deserve to be successful.”

  “Sorry,” said Jack. “I’ve had to defend myself more than once on that front.”

  “I understand. You want to be accepted for your own talents, not for who your parents are.”

  “You are very perceptive,” Jack said.

  “I’m an analyst.” She smiled. “I analyze.”

  “Maybe we should both analyze the menus before the waiter comes back.”

  Melanie’s smile widened. “Uh-oh. Somebody is trying to change the subject.”

  “Damn right.” They both laughed now.

  The wine came, Jack tasted it, and the waiter poured for them both.

  “To Mary Pat.”

  “To Mary Pat.” They clinked their wineglasses and smiled at each other.

  “So,” Jack asked, “tell me about CIA?”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “More than you can tell me.” He thought for a moment.

  “Have you spent any time overseas?”

  “You mean with the Agency?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have.”

  “Where?” He caught himself. “Sorry. You can’t tell me where, can you?”

  “Sorry,” she said with a shrug. Jack saw that although she’d lived the life of an intelligence analyst for only a couple of years, she was comfortable with secrets.

  “Do you speak a foreign language?”

  “Yes.”

  Jack started to ask her if that was classified, too,
but she filled him in.

  “Level-three Masri — Egyptian Arabic — level-two French, level-one Spanish. Nothing to write home about.”

  “How many levels are there?”

  “Sorry, Jack. I don’t get out much.” She laughed at herself. “I don’t have many conversations with people outside government service. It’s called the ILR scale. Interagency Language Roundtable. There are five levels of proficiency. Level three means, basically,s, basic that I have normal rate of speech function in the language, but I make small mistakes that don’t affect the comprehension of a listener native in the language I am speaking.”

  “And level one?”

  “It means I’m sloppy.” She laughed again. “What can I say? I learned Arabic living in Cairo, and I learned Spanish in college. Nothing quite like needing to speak a language to get fed to promote the learning of it.”

  “Cairo?”

  “Yes. Dad was an Air Force attaché; we spent five years in Egypt when I was in high school, and two more in Pakistan.”

  “How was that?”

  “I loved it. It was tough moving around as a kid, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Plus I learned Arabic, which has proven very helpful.”

  Jack nodded. “I guess in your line of work it is.” He liked this girl. She did not put on airs at all, she neither tried to be overly sexy or a know-it-all. She was obviously highly intelligent, but she was self-deprecating about it at the same time.

  And she was very sexy, and it was all natural.

  He did notice, more than once, that she seemed to direct the focus of the conversation back on him.

  “So,” she said with a playful smile. “I’m going to go out on a limb and guess you don’t live in a four-hundred-square-foot carriage house subsidized by your ex-professor.”

  “I’ve got an apartment in Columbia. It’s near work. And near my parents in Baltimore. What about your family?”

  The waiter brought their salads, and Melanie began talking about the restaurant. Jack wondered if she just possessed one of those minds that had a tendency to branch off into different subjects during conversations, or if she was trying to avoid the subject of her family. He couldn’t tell which it was, but he let it go.