by Tom Clancy
So his family was gone, and the mob was his new family? No. Kovalenko brought his chin up and his shoulders back. “Ida na hui,” he said. It was a Russian vulgarity, untranslatable into English but akin to “Fuck you.”
The mobster rapped his knuckles on the partition to the front seat, then he asked, “Do you think that somehow the bitch that left you and took your kids would react pleasantly to you showing up at her door, a man on the run from the police for murder, a man who had been targeted for termination by the Kremlin? She will be happy to learn of your death tomorrow. She won’t have the continued embarrassment of a husband in prison.”
The BMW came to a slow halt. Valentin looked out the window, wondering where they were, and he saw the long yellow-and-white walls of Matrosskaya Tishina prison once again.
“This is where you can get out. I know who you used to be, a bright young star of Russian intelligence, but that is no more. You are no longer someone who can say ‘Ida na hui’ to me. You are a local criminal and an international outlaw. I’ll tell my employer that you said ‘Ida na hui,’ and he will leave you to fend for yourself. Or, if you prefer, I will deliver you to the train station; you can go home to your whore wife, and she will turn you in.”
The door to the BMW opened and the driver stood by it.
With the thought of returning to prison, Kovalenko felt a new cold sweat on his neck and back. After several seconds of silence, Valentin shrugged. “You make a compelling argument. Let’s get out of here.”
The man with the square head just stared at him. His face perfectly impassive. Finally he looked out to the driver. “Let’s go.”
The back door closed, the driver’s door opened and shut, and then, for the second time in the past five minutes, Valentin Kovalenko was driven away from the detention facility.
He looked out the window for a moment, trying to get hold of himself so that he could take control of this conversation and positively affect his destiny.
“I will need to leave Russia.”
“Yes. That has been arranged. Your employer is abroad, and you will serve outside of Russia as well. You will see a doctor about your health, and then you will continue your career in the intelligence work, after a fashion, but not in the same location as your employer. You will be recruiting and running agents, executing your benefactor’s directives. You will be remunerated much better than you had been while working for the Russian intelligence service, but you will, essentially, work alone.”
“Are you saying I will not meet my employer?”
The burly man said, “I have worked for him for almost two years, and I have never met him. I do not even know if he is a he.”
Kovalenko raised his eyebrows. “You are not speaking of a national actor. So this is not a foreign state. This is… some sort of illegal enterprise?” He knew that it was; he was only feigning surprise to show his distaste.
His answer came in the form of a short nod.
Valentin’s shoulders slumped a little. He was tired from his sickness and the adrenaline waning in his blood after the murder of the man and his own thoughts of death. After several seconds he said, “I suppose I have no choice but to join your band of merry criminals.”
“It’s not my band, and they are not merry. That is not how this operation is run. We… you, me, others… we get orders via Cryptogram.”
“What is Cryptogram?”
“Secure instant messaging. A system of communication that can’t be read, can’t be hacked, and immediately erases itself.”
“On the computer?”
“Yes.”
Valentin realized he’d have to get a computer. “So you are not my handler?”
The Russian just shook his head. “My job is done. We’re done. I suppose you will never see me again as long as you live.”
“Okay.”
“You will be taken to a house where documents and instructions will be delivered to you by courier. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe later. Then my people will get you out of the city. Out of the country.”
Kovalenko looked back out the window, and he saw they were heading into central Moscow.
“I will give a warning, Valentin Olegovich. Your employer — I should say our mutual employer — has people everywhere.”
“Everywhere?”
“If you attempt to flee your duties, to renege on your compact, his people will find you, and they will not hesitate to hold you to account. They know everything, and they see everything.”
“I get it.”
For the first time, the square-headed man chuckled. “No. You do not get it. You cannot possibly get it at this point. But trust me. Cross them in any way at any time, and you will instantly come to know their omniscience. They are like gods.”
It was obvious to the urbane and educated Valentin Kovalenko that he was far worldlier than this criminal scumbag sitting next to him. It was likely this man had no experience working with a well-run outfit before going to work for this foreign employer, but Valentin was hardly stressed about the scope and reach of his new boss. He’d worked in Russian intelligence, and it was, after all, a tier-one spy agency.
“One more warning.”
“I’m listening.”
“This is not an organization from which you will someday resign or retire. You will work at their bidding as long as they want you to.”
“I see.”
The square-headed Russian shrugged. “It was this or die in prison. You’ll be doing yourself a favor by keeping that in your head. Every day of life is a gift given to you. You should enjoy your life, and make the most of it.”
Kovalenko looked out the window, watching predawn Moscow pass by. A motivational speech from a blockheaded mobster.
Valentin sighed.
He was going to miss his old life.
SEVEN
Jack Ryan woke at 5:14 a.m., a minute before his iPhone was set to rouse him. He turned off the alarm before it disturbed the naked girl sleeping tangled in the sheets next to him, and he used the light from the screen to look her over. He did this most mornings, but he never told her.
Melanie Kraft lay on her side, facing him, but her long dark hair covered her face. Her left shoulder, soft yet toned, glowed in the light.
Jack smiled, then reached over after a moment, and stroked her hair out of her eyes.
Her eyes opened. It took her a few seconds to waken and form a sentient thought into a word. “Hi.” Her voice was a whisper.
“Hi,” Jack said.
“Is it Saturday?” she asked, her tone both hopeful and playful, though she was still wiping the cobwebs from her brain.
“Monday,” Jack replied.
She rolled onto her back, exposing her breasts. “Damn. How did that happen?”
Jack kept his eyes on her as he shrugged. “Earth’s revolution. Distance from the sun. Stuff like that. I probably learned it in fourth grade, but I’ve forgotten.”
Melanie started to fall back to sleep.
“I’ll make coffee,” he said, and he rolled off the bed.
She nodded distantly, and the hair that Ryan had lifted off her face fell back over her eyes.
* * *
Five minutes later they sipped steaming mugs of coffee together on the sofa in the living room of Jack’s Columbia, Maryland, apartment. Jack wore tracksuit pants and a Georgetown T-shirt. Melanie was in her bathrobe. She kept a lot of clothes and personal items here at Jack’s place. More and more as the weeks went by, and Jack did not mind at all.
After all, she was beautiful, and he was in love.
They had been dating exclusively for a few months now, and already this was the longest exclusive relationship of Jack’s life. He had even taken her to the White House to meet his parents a few weeks back; by design, he and Melanie were ushered into the living quarters away from the press, and Jack had introduced his girlfriend to his mother in the West Sitting Hall just off the President’s Dining Room. The two women sat on the sofa under the beautiful half-moon win
dow and chatted about Alexandria, her job, and their mutual respect for Melanie’s boss, Mary Pat Foley. Ryan spent the time looking at Melanie; he was captivated by her poise and calm. He’d brought girls home to Mom before, of course, but they’d usually just managed to survive the experience. Melanie, on the other hand, seemed to genuinely enjoy spending time with his mother.
Jack’s father, the President of the United States, slipped in while the women were chatting. Junior saw his allegedly tough father turn to jelly within moments of meeting his son’s brilliant and beautiful girlfriend. He was all smiles and bright banter; Junior chuckled to himself watching his dad trying to lay on some extra charm.
They had dinner in the dining room and the conversation was fun and flowing, Jack Junior spoke the least, but once in a while he caught Melanie’s eyes and they smiled at each other.
Jack was not surprised at all that Melanie asked the vast majority of the questions, and she spent as little time as possible talking about herself. Her mom had passed away, her father had been an Air Force colonel, and she’d spent much of her childhood abroad. This she told the President and First Lady when they asked, and it was just about all Ryan, Jr., knew about her childhood himself.
Jack was certain the Secret Service detail that approved her visit to the White House knew more about his girlfriend’s past than he did.
After dinner, after they slipped out of the White House just as covertly as they’d slipped in, Melanie confessed to Jack that she’d been nervous at first, but his parents had been so down to earth that she’d forgotten for large parts of the evening that she was in the presence of the commander-in-chief and the chief of surgery at Johns Hopkins’s Wilmer Eye Institute.
Jack thought back on that evening while he eyed Melanie’s curves through her bathrobe.
She saw him looking at her, and she asked, “Gym or run?” They did one or the other most every morning, whether or not they had spent the night in the same bed. When she stayed at his place, they worked out in the gym here in Jack’s building, or else they ran a three-mile course that took them around nearby Wilde Lake and through Fairway Hills golf course.
Jack Ryan, on the other hand, never stayed at Melanie’s apartment in Alexandria. He thought it odd that she’d never invited him to sleep over, but she always explained it away, saying she felt self-conscious about her tiny carriage-house digs, an apartment that wasn’t even as big as the living room in Jack’s place.
He did not push the issue. Melanie was the love of his life, of this he was certain, but she was also a little mysterious and guarded. At times even evasive.
It came from her training at CIA, he was sure, and it only added to her allure.
When he just kept looking at her, not answering her question, she smiled behind her mug of coffee. “Gym or run, Jack?”
He shrugged. “Sixty degrees. No rain.”
Melanie nodded. “Run it is.” She put her mug down and stood to go back to the bedroom to change.
Jack watched her walk away, and then he called out from behind, “Actually, there is a third option for exercise this morning.”
Melanie stopped, turned back to him. Now her lips formed a sly smile. “What might that be, Mr. Ryan?”
“Scientists say sex burns more calories than jogging. It’s better for the heart, too.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Scientists say this?”
He nodded. “They do.”
“There is always the risk of overtraining. Burning out.”
Ryan laughed. “No chance at all.”
“Well, then,” she said. Melanie opened her robe and let it fall to the hardwood floor, then turned and walked naked into the bedroom.
Jack took one last swig of coffee and rose to follow.
It was going to be a good day.
* * *
At seven-thirty Melanie was showered, dressed, and standing in the doorway of Jack’s apartment with her purse on her shoulder. Her long hair was back in a ponytail, and her sunglasses were high on her head. She kissed Jack good-bye, a long kiss that let him know that she did not want to leave and she could not wait to see him again, and then she headed up the hall to the elevator. Melanie had a long morning commute to McLean, Virginia. She was an analyst for the CIA, but had recently moved from the National Counterterrorism Center, across the parking lot at Liberty Crossing, to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, following her boss Mary Pat Foley’s move from deputy director of NCTC to her new cabinet-level position as director of national intelligence.
Jack was only half dressed, but he did not have to worry about a long commute. He worked much closer, just down the road in West Odenton, so he finished putting on his suit and tie, then lingered over another cup of coffee while he watched CNN on the sixty-inch plasma TV in the living room. A little after eight he headed downstairs to the parking lot of his building and successfully fought the urge to look for his huge canary-yellow truck. Instead he climbed into the black BMW 3 Series that he’d been driving for the past six months, and he headed out of the parking lot.
The Hummer had been fun, his own way to show his individuality and spirit, but from a personal-security perspective, he might as well have been driving a three-ton homing beacon. Anyone attempting to follow him through beltway traffic could do so with ease from triple the distance normally needed for a vehicle follow.
This allowance for his own security should have been made by Jack himself, as his profession necessitated watching his back 24/7, but in truth, losing the canary-yellow bull’s-eye was not his idea.
It came in the form of a polite but strongly worded suggestion from the U.S. Secret Service.
Although Jack had refused the Secret Service protection that came standard for an adult child of a current inhabitant of the Oval Office, Jack had been nearly compelled by his father’s protection detail to go to a series of private meetings with agents who gave him pointers on staying safe.
Even though his mother and father did not like him going without protection, they both understood why he had to refuse. It would have been, to say the least, problematic to do what Jack Ryan, Jr., did for a living with a government agent shouldering up on either side of him. The Secret Service was not happy about his decision to go it alone — but they, of course, would have been exponentially more unhappy had they any idea how often he put himself in harm’s way.
During the meetings they peppered him with tips and suggestions on how to maintain a low profile, and on the subject of maintaining a low profile, the first topic had been the Hummer.
And the Hummer was the first to go.
Jack understood the logic, of course. There were tens of thousands of black Beamers on the road, and his new car’s tinted windows made him even more invisible. Plus, Jack recognized, he could switch out his ride a lot easier than he could change his face. He still looked remarkably like the son of the President of the United States; there wasn’t much he could do about that, short of cosmetic surgery.
He was known, there was no getting around that, but he was hardly a celebrity.
His mom and dad had done their best to keep him and his brothers and sisters away from cameras since his father went into politics, and Jack himself had refrained from doing anything that would put him in the limelight other than the semi-official duties required of a child of a presidential candidate and president. Unlike seemingly tens of thousands of B-list celebrities and wannabe reality stars in America, even before Jack went into covert work at The Campus, he saw fame as nothing more than a pain in the ass.
He had his friends, he had his family; why did he give a damn if a bunch of people he didn’t know knew who he was?
Other than the night of his father’s win and his inauguration day some two months later, Jack had not been on television in years. And although the average American knew Jack Ryan had a son everybody called “Junior,” they would not necessarily be able to pick him out of a lineup of tall, dark-haired, good-looking American men in their middle to late twent
ies.
Jack wanted to keep it that way, because it was convenient to do so, and it just might help him stay alive.
EIGHT
The sign outside the nine-story office building where Jack worked read Hendley Associates, which said nothing about what went on inside. The innocuous design of the signage fit the mild-mannered appearance of the structure itself. The building looked exactly like thousands of simple offices across America. Anyone driving by who gave it a passing glance might take it for a credit union bureau, an administrative center for a telecommunications firm, a human resources agency, or a PR company. There was a large array of satellite dishes on the roof, and a fenced-in antenna farm next to the building, but these were hardly noticeable from the street, and even if they were noticed, they would not strike the average commuter as something out of the ordinary.
The one-in-a-million passerby who might do any further research into the company would see that it was an international finance concern, one of many around the greater D.C. metro area, and the one novel feature of the company was that it was owned and directed by a former U.S. senator.
Of course, there were more unique features to the organization inside the brick-and-glass structure along the road. Though there was little physical security outside other than a low fence and a few closed-circuit cameras, inside, hidden behind the “white side” financial trading firm, was a “black side” intelligence operation unknown to all but an incredibly small minority in the U.S. intelligence community. The Campus, the unofficial name given to the off-the-books spy shop, had been envisioned years earlier by President Jack Ryan during his first administration. He’d set up the operation with a few close allies in the intelligence community, and helmed it with former senator Gerry Hendley.
The Campus possessed some of the brightest analysts in the community, some of the best technological minds, and, thanks to the satellites on the roof and the code breakers in the IT department, a direct line of access into the computer networks of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency.