Tom Clancy - Locked On

Alex breathed a dramatic sigh and　d n followed it with a belly laugh. “I have been so worried, Georgi. Of course you could handle the newer technology! Probably better than me. If you like I could take you through some of the new steps to—”

Alex watched Safronov open his laptop again. In seconds he was back at work. While typing furiously he said, “I will leave that part to you while I do what I do best. Perhaps after the triple launch I will have time for tutoring.”

Verbov nodded. Happy that his suspicions had proved totally unfounded. In seconds he himself was back to work, and he did not think of the matter again.

Judith Cochrane watched Saif Yasin get up from his concrete bed and make his way toward the Plexiglas wall. A small writing table and a chair had been placed on his side of the glass, and here his phone sat, along with his notepad and pens. On the table next to his concrete bed a tall stack of American law books and other papers were arranged so that he could help the PCI prepare his defense.

The Justice Department had been loosening the strict rules it had set up for the Emir’s defense. It seemed like every day Judy got an e-mail or a call from someone at DOJ allowing her or her client access to more information, to more contact with the outside world, to more resources, in order for the PCI to put on a respectable defense. As soon as the path was cleared for Yasin to move to a federal cell in Virginia, then Judy would petition the court for even more access to classified material she and Saif would need to prove that he had been captured illegally and should therefore be allowed to go free.

Paul Laska had confided in Judy weeks ago that he’d learned from the CIA that the men who took the Emir off the streets of Riyadh were ex — CIA men, working in no official capacity with the U.S. government. This complicated things for both sides of the federal case, but Judy was doing her best to leverage this information to her advantage. Laska had said that Ryan himself had some association with the criminals who kidnapped her client, so Judy was planning on threatening the new administration, promising to bring this relationship into the light to embarrass the President of the United States.

She felt she had Ryan dead to rights, and this would make him want to sweep the Emir back under the rug by fulfilling his campaign promise to turn the man back over to a military tribunal.

But she had a plan to stop that.

“Good morning, Judy. You look wonderful today,” Yasin said as he sat. His smile was attractive, but Judith saw a hint of melancholy in it.

“Thank you. Before we start, I know you might be feeling down today.”

“Because Jack Ryan will be the next President? Yes, I admit it is distressing news. How can your country allow this criminal back into power?”

Judith Cochrane shook her head. “I have no idea. I do not have a single friend or coworker who voted for him, I can promise you that.”

“And yet still he wins?”

Judy shrugged. “Large portions of my country, I am sad to say, are in the hands of racists, warmongers, and ignorant fools.”

“Yes. This must be true, as there seems to be no justice for an innocent man in America,” said the Emir, with a hint of sadness.

“Do not say that. We will find justice for you. I came tn Aoday to tell you that Ryan’s victory is actually a good thing for your case.”

The Emir cocked his head. “How so?”

“Because Ryan’s friend, John Clark, was one of the men who kidnapped you. Right now the man is a fugitive from justice, but once Kealty’s people capture him, he will be offered immunity to tell everything he knows about who he was working for when you were captured. Jack Ryan will be implicated.”

“How do you know this?”

“Because it is possible Ryan was directly involved. And even if he was not directly involved or aware of your kidnapping, we will use back channels to threaten him. To tell him that, if you are sent to military custody, we will have no other course of action but to try your case in the media, and we will use the fact Ryan gave a secret pardon as evidence Ryan himself wanted John Clark to be free to kill and kidnap innocents. Ryan might win in the court of law, but in the court of public opinion, with the vast majority of the world media on our side, it will be as if President Jack Ryan himself shot you and kidnapped you. He and his administration will have no choice but to acquiesce to our demands.”

“And what are our demands?”

“Minimum security. A reasonable sentence. Something that has you behind bars for the length of his administration, but no longer.”

The Emir smiled. “For someone so pleasant and attractive, you are certainly a very shrewd individual.”

Judy Cochrane blushed. “I am just getting started, Saif. Mark my words. You will win your case or we will destroy President Ryan in the process.”

Now the Emir’s grin showed no evidence of his earlier melancholy. “Is it too much to hope that both of these things happen?”

Judy herself grinned. “No. Not too much to hope at all.”

It had been ten days since Clark found Manfred Kromm in Cologne. The wanted American had spent the majority of that time in Warsaw, Poland. Clark had no operational reason to go to Warsaw, but his visit became operationally prudent when it became clear his body would need some recovery time after the evening fleeing the men chasing him in Germany. His right ankle had become swollen and purple, the cut on his hand needed time to heal, and every joint in his body ached. His muscles were exhausted, his low back went from a dull ache the morning after the activity to complete spasms on the morning of day two.

Warsaw was not just a town on his way from Germany to Estonia. It was a much-needed pit stop.

Clark used a phony ID to rent a one-star en-suite room at a no-name hotel in the city center. He filled the porcelain bathtub with Epsom salts and water nearly hot enough to boil a lobster, and he lowered every bit of his body in it, save for two extremities. His right foot, which was wrapped tight with a bag of ice and compression bandages, and his right hand, which held his SIG Sauer P220.45-caliber pistol.

The hot bath and over-the-counter anti-inflammatories slowly helped him tackle his spasmed muscles.

In addition to his bumps and bruises, Clark also found himself sick with an incredible sinus infection. Running through the icy rain had seen to that. Again, he used over-the-counter meds to fight this, along with a steady supply of tissues.

Hot baths, downing pills, blowing his nose. Clark repeated this process over and over뀀ste for almost a week before he felt, not like a young man, but at least like a new man.

Now he was in Tallinn, Estonia, walking past the Viru Gate, the entrance to the cobblestoned Old Town. He’d grown a decent beard in the past two weeks, and he’d changed his dress from the look of a late-middle-aged businessman to the look of a rugged world-weary fisherman. He wore a black watch cap low over his head, a black sweater under a blue waxed-cotton raincoat, and leather boots that kept the mobility in his still sore right ankle to a minimum.

It was a Thursday evening, and the November air was frigid, so there were few pedestrians on the streets. As he headed up the narrow medieval Saint Catherine’s Passage, Clark walked alone, feeling also the self-imposed isolation of the past few weeks. When he was younger, much younger, Clark moved in the black as a singleton asset for weeks at a time without noticing a shred of loneliness. He was not inhuman, but he was able to compartmentalize his life so that when he was operational, his mind remained on the operation. But now he thought of family and friends and colleagues. Not so much as to turn around and head back to them but certainly more than he would have liked.