Tom Clancy - Locked On

“How long will it take?”

“Couple of days, at least.”

Ryan sighed. “Never mind.”

Biery started to laugh. Ryan thought, What a fucking weirdo.

But only until Gavin said, “Just messing with you, Jack. I can have that for you inside of ten minutes. E-mail me the guy’s name and anything else you have on him and I’ll jump on it.” “Umm. Okay.”

Ten minutes later, Ryan’s phone rang. He answered with, “What did you find out?” Gavin Biery, mercifully, recognized the urgency in Ryan’s voice. “Here’s the deal. He was in London, no question. But he didn’t pay for a hotel or a car or anything like that. Just a few gifts, and an incidental or two.” Ryan sighed in frustration. “So it sounds like someone else paid for his trip.” “He bought his own plane ticket, put it on a card. But once he was in London he was on someone else’s dime.” “Okay… Guess that won’t do me any good.” “What were you hoping to find?”

“I don’t know. Just fishing. I hoped this trip had something to do with the Clark situation. I guess I thought if I could track him for the thirty hours he was in town I could get an idea—” “I know where he stayed.”

“You do?”

“He bought a box of cigars in the gift shop of the Mandarin Oriental at seven fifty-six in the evening, then he bought a box of Cadbury chocolates in the gift shop there at eight twenty-two the next morning. Unless he was just really in love with that gift shop, it sounds like he bedded down there for the night.” Jack thought this over. “Can you get a look at all the rooms that night?” “Yeah, I checked. No Valentin Kovalenko.” “Oleg Kovalenko?”

“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?”