“People who scare me more than you, American.”
“Then you do not know me.” Clark thumbed the hammer back on his .45.
Ruul’s eyebrows rose, but he asked, “Are we standing in bathroom much longer?”
Clark backed up, letting the man into his office, but Clark’s gun remained trained on Ruul’s chest. Ruul kept his hands up slightly, though he ran them through his spiky blond hair as he looked toward the window to the fire escape. “You came in through my window? It’s two stories up? You need to find rocking chair, old man. You behave like child.”
“If they told you I got nothing from Kromm, they probably did that because they are using you as bait. My guess is they have been watching you, waiting for me to show up.”
Ruul had not thought of this. John saw a sense of hope in the man’s eyes, as if he expected someone to come to his rescue.
“And if they killed Kromm, they won’t have any problem killing you.”
Now John saw this realization register in the Estonian mobster’s eyes. Still, he did not break easily.
“So … Who sent you to Kromm?”
“Kepi oma ema, old man,” Ruul said.
“That sounded like some sort of a curse. Was that a curse?”
“It means … ‘Fuck your mother.’”
“Very nice.” Clark raised his weapon back to the Estonian’s forehead.
“If you shoot me, you have no chance. I have ten armed men in building. One bang from your gun and they come kill you. And if you are right about more men coming, then you should think about your own …” He stopped talking and watched Clark holster the pistol.
The older American stepped forward, took Ardo Ruul by his arm, spun him around, and shoved him hard against the wall.
“I’m going to do something that will hurt. You will want to scream bloody murder, but I promise you, if you make a sound, I will do it to your other arm.”
“What? No!”
Clark bent Ruul’s left arm back violently, then drove his elbow into the back of the Estonian’s hyperextended elbow.
Ardo Ruul started a shriek, but Clark took him by his hair and slammed his face into the wall.
Close in his ear, John said, “Another pound of pressure and your joint snaps. You can still save it if you don’t scream.”
“I … I tell you who sent me for Manfred Kromm.” Ruul said with a gasp, and Clark let up the pressure. “A Russian fuck, Kovalenko is name. He is FSB or SVR, I do not know which. He sent me to see what Kromm knows about you in Berlin.”
“Why?”
Ardo’s knees went slack and he slid down the side of the wall. Clark helped him to the floor. There the man sat, his face pale, his eyes wide with pain as he held his elbow.
“Why, Ruul?”
“He did not say me why.”
“How do I find him?”
“How do I know? His name Kovalenko. He is Russian agent. He pay me money. This is all I know.”
From downstairs at Klub Hypnotek, the crack of a gunshot, then screams from women and men.
Clark stood quickly and headed toward the window.
“Where you going?”
Clark raised the windowpane and looked outside, then turned back to the Estonian gangster. “Before they kill you, remember to tell them I am coming after Kovalenko.”
Ardo Ruul pulled himself up to his feet with his one good arm and the corner of his desk. “Don’t leave, American! We fight them together!”
Clark climbed out onto the fire escape. “Those guys downstairs are your concern. I’ve got my own problems.” And with that he disappeared into the cold darkness.
Both men, American and Estonian, were roughly the same age. They were within an inch of the same height. Not more than ten pounds separated them in their weight. They both wore their salt-and-pepper hair short; both men had lean faces lined with age and hardened by life.
There the similarities ended. The Estonian was a drunk, a bum, prone on the cold concrete with his head propped against the wall and a see-through plastic crate holding his life’s possessions.
Clark was the same build, the same age. But not the same man.
He’d been standing here in the dark under the train tracks, watching the bum. He regarded the man a moment more, with only a brief hint of sadness. He did not waste much energy feeling sorry for the guy, but that was not because John Clark was coldhearted. No, it was because John Clark was on the job. He had no time for sentimentality.
He walked over, knelt down, and said in Russian, “Fifty euros for your clothes.” He was offering the destitute man seventy bucks in local currency.
The Estonian blinked over jaundiced and bloodshot eyes. “Vabandust?” Excuse me?
“Okay, friend. You drive a hard bargain.” Clark said it again. “You take my clothes. I give you one hundred euros.” If the homeless drunk was confused for a moment, soon it became clear. It also became clear that this was no offer.
It was a demand.
Five minutes later, Clark strolled into the main rail station in Old Town Tallinn, staggering like a bum from shadow to shadow, looking for the next train to Moscow.
61
Jack Ryan Jr. spent the morning in his cubicle at Hendley Associates reading through reports generated by Melanie Kraft at the National Counterterrorism Center. Melanie’s analysis dealt with the recent spate of attacks in India, and speculated that all the disparate cells involved had been run by the same operational commander.
Ryan did feel some shame that he was, figuratively speaking, looking at the work over the shoulder of the girl he was dating, but this shame was offset by the knowledge that he had a crucial job to do. Rehan’s escalation of violence, both in North Waziristan and in Dubai, indicated to everyone at The Campus that he was a dangerous and desperate man. Now, looking at Melanie’s analysis that indicated similarities in the recent terrorist carnage across India, Ryan could imagine that PDF Brigadier General Riaz Rehan, the director of foreign espionage in the ISI, could well be this character Melanie referred to as Forrest Gump in an e-mail to Mary Pat Foley.
Jack so wished he could take her to lunch right now and fill her in, fill in the blanks missing in her analysis, and pull from the raw intel that she possessed what might answer some of the questions he and The Campus had about their principal targets.
But telling Melanie about his work at The Campus was verboten.
His phone rang, and he reached for it without taking his eyes from the screen. “Ryan?”
“Hey, kid. Need a favor.” It was Clark.
“John? Holy shit! Are you okay?”
“I’m holding together, but just. I could use your quick help.”
“You got it.”
“I need you to look into a Russian spook named Kovalenko.”
“Russian? Okay. Is he FSB, SVR, or military intelligence?”
Clark said, “Unknown. I remember a Kovalenko in the KGB, back in the eighties, but that guy would be long out of the game by now. This Kovalenko could be a relative, or the name could just be a coincidence.”
“All right. What do you need to know about him?” Ryan was scribbling furiously as he talked.
“I need to know where he is. I mean physically where he is.”
“Got it.” Ryan also thought, but did not say, that if Clark wanted to find this Kovalenko, it was probably because Clark wanted to put his hands around the man’s throat. This Russian dude is a dead man.
John added, “And anything else you can get me on the guy. I’m flying blind at this point, so anything at all.”
“I’ll assemble a team to go through CIA data, as well as open source, and we’ll pull out every last thing we can on him. Is he behind this smear on you?”