Clark offered to pay for her groceries if she would sit down with him for a quick interview.
Svetlana Gasanova was thrilled with the opportunity for company with a handsome young foreigner, and she insisted on taking him back to her flat — she lived right up the street, after all — and making him a cup of tea.
The watchers in the park were not looking for a couple entering the apartment, and Clark was bundled up in his coat and hood to the point where they could not have identified him without standing six inches from his nose. He even carried a bag of groceries to give the impression he belonged in the building.
John Clark spent a half-hour chatting with the old pensioner. His Russian was strained every minute of his time in her flat, but he smiled a lot and nodded a lot, and he drank the jam-sweetened tea she made for him while she talked about the gas company, her landlord, and her bursitis.
Finally, after four p.m., the woman seemed to grow tired. He thanked her for her hospitality, took down her address, and promised to send her a copy of the newspaper. She led him to the door of her flat and he promised to return for a visit on his next trip into Moscow.
He headed to the stairwell, tossed the woman’s address in an ashtray, and went upstairs instead of down.
Clark did not knock at Oleg Kovalenko’s door. He had noticed when he entered Ms. Gasanova’s flat that the heavy oaken doors in this old building were secured with large, easy-to-defeat pin tumbler locks. John had created lock picks days earlier by buying a small set of dental instruments at a pawnshop here in Moscow and then bending them to approximate lock picks he had used in the past in Russia.
From a pouch in his coat pocket he retrieved his homemade facsimiles of a half-diamond pick, a rake pick, and a tension wrench.
Checking up and down the wooden-floored hallway to make certain no one was around, he put the picks in his mouth, then manipulated the tension wrench inside the keyhole, turning it counterclockwise slightly and holding the tension on the wrench with his right pinky finger. Then, with his left hand, he took the rake pick from his mouth and slid it above the tension wrench, inside the keyhole. Using both hands while maintaining the pressure on his pinky finger he slid the pick in and out over the spring-loaded pins, pushing them down into place.
After he’d defeated all but two of the pins, he replaced the rake pick in his mouth, then took the half-diamond pick, slid it into place in the lock, and slowly manipulated the last two pins, pushing them down from back to front.
With a satisfying click that he hoped had not made much noise inside the flat, the tension wrench turned on the open cylinder and the bolt opened on the door.
Quickly John placed everything back in his pocket and drew his pistol.
He pushed open the door and slid into the kitchen of the tiny flat. Past this he found himself looking into a darkened and tiny living room. A couch, a tiny coffee table, a television set, an eating table with several liquor bottles on it. Big Oleg Kovalenko sat in a chair at the window looking outside through dirty blinds, his back to the room.
In English Clark said, “How much time before they know I’m here?”
Kovalenko started, stood from the chair, and turned around. His hands were empty, otherwise Clark would have pumped a .45-caliber round into his fat belly.
The big Russian grabbed at his chest, his heart pounding after he was startled, but soon he sat back down. “I do not know. Did they see you enter?”
“No.”
“Then do not worry. You have more than enough time to kill me.”
Clark lowered the pistol and looked around. This place wasn’t even as nice as Manfred Kromm’s little flat. Shit, the American thought. So little thanks for all our years of service to our countries. This old Russian spy, the old East German spy Kromm, and John Clark, himself an old American spy.
Three fucking peas in a pod.
“I’m not going to kill you.” Clark nodded toward the empty vodka bottles. “You don’t look like you need any help.”
Kovalenko thought this over. “Then you want information?”
Now Clark shrugged. “I know you met Paul Laska in London. I know your son, Valentin, is involved as well.”
“Valentin follows orders from his leaders, as do you. As did I. He has nothing personal against you.”
“Who are those guys out there in the park?”
Kovalenko said, “They were sent by Laska, I think, in order to capture you. They work for the French detective Fabrice Bertrand-Morel. My son is back in London, his part in this affair was political, and it was benign, he had nothing to do with men chasing after you.” The old Russian nodded toward the gun low in Clark’s right hand. “I would be surprised if my boy has ever touched a gun.” He chuckled. “He is so fucking civilized.”
“So are you in contact with the men in the street?”
“In contact? No. They came here. They told me about you. Told me you would come here, but they would protect me. I knew nothing of you before yesterday. I only set up the meeting between Valentin and Pavel. Sorry … Paul. I was not told what was discussed.”
“Laska worked for the KGB in Czechoslovakia.” Clark said it as a statement.
Kovalenko did not deny it. He only said, “Pavel Laska has been an enemy of every state he has ever lived in.”
But John did not render judgment on Laska. The American ex — CIA man knew that the ruthless KGB could have destroyed the spirit of a young Paul Laska, turned him into something not of his own choosing.
The Cold War was littered with broken men.
Oleg said, “I am going to make myself a drink if you promise you won’t shoot me in the back.” Clark waved him toward his bottles and the big Russian lumbered over to the table. “Would you like something?”
“No.”
Kovalenko said, “So what have you learned from me? Nothing. Go back home. You will have a new president in a few weeks. He will protect you.”
Clark did not say it, but he wasn’t looking for protection from Jack Ryan. Quite the opposite. He needed to protect Ryan from exposure to him, to The Campus.
Kovalenko stood at his table and poured himself a tall straight vodka into a water glass. He walked back over to the chair with the bottle and the glass in his hands.
“I want to talk to your son.”
“I can call his office at the embassy in London. But I doubt he’d call me back.” Kovalenko swigged half the glass and put the bottle down on the windowsill, rattling the blinds in the process. “You would have better luck calling him yourself.”
The Russian seemed, to Clark, like he was telling the truth. He did not have much of a relationship with his son, and his son definitely was not here. Could Clark get to him in London, somehow?
He’d have to try. Coming to Moscow to bleed Oleg Kovalenko for information had been a dry hole.
Clark slipped his gun in his pocket. “I’ll leave you with your vodka. If you do talk to your boy, tell him I would like a word. Just a friendly conversation. He’ll be hearing from me.”
The American turned to leave through the kitchen, but the Russian pensioner called after him. “Sure you won’t join me for a drink? It will warm you from the cold.”
“Nyet,” John said as he reached the door.
“Maybe we could talk about old times.”
Clark’s hand stopped on the door latch. He turned, walked back into the living room.
Oleg cracked a little smile. “I do not get many visitors. I can’t be choosy, can I?”