Pushechnaya Street
Across from the Atmosphere Bar and Grill
Tverskoy District
Moscow, Russia
2156 local time
Clark shuffled slowly along the sidewalk, glancing at the crowd waiting to get inside the busy hot spot across the street. He held his cell phone to his ear with his left hand, speaking in English, but to no one. A listener would see him as a foreigner, perhaps speaking to his wife or girlfriend, but then, Moscow was full of tourists these days. He laughed at something the fictitious person on his fictitious call said, his right hand inside his jacket pocket, still clutching the Vektor pistol wrapped in a brown sandwich bag he’d taken from the restaurant. Nadia had gone behind her husband’s back to help Clark orchestrate the hit, and Clark suspected she had done it for herself as much as she had to save the world.
He vectored toward a trash can, still talking, and then pulled the brown bag from his pocket and dropped it in the can as he walked past. It landed with a dull thud, napkins packed around the gun inside the bag muting the sound.
“I’m having a great time, but I’m eager to be home,” he said without breaking stride.
“I hope that’s not supposed to be code, Viking One,” Ding said into his earpiece. “ ’Cause if so, I missed it in the pre-op.”
Clark glanced again at the crowd in front of the Atmosphere nightclub. It might as well have been a club in L.A. or New York or Miami. The young people out front laughed and shouted to one another, all on their iPhones, AirPods in their ears. This wasn’t the Russia from his past—or the Russia inside of the dark-wood-paneled Glavpivtorg, where he’d left the dead bodies of men who were shackled to that past. Inside the restaurant he’d felt young. He had plenty of years left in him, but when he looked across the street at the young new Russians, he felt—not old, not yet—but tired.
“That’s right,” he said, still pretending to talk into his phone and heading off now to the west. “I promised my wife I’d spend a week at home with the grandkids.”
Clark could picture Ding at a laptop, open on a desk in his hotel room at the Marriott Royal Aurora a few blocks away.
“We can make that happen. I assume Viking is Jackpot?” Ding said, prompting Clark for actual code-word confirmation that the mission was complete, which Clark had yet to give.
“Jackpot,” he said softly.
He slipped his phone into his jacket pocket as he approached the corner. He was tired of the ruse. Whatever deal President Ryan had made with the feckless thug running things in Russia didn’t apply to Clark and his team. This operation couldn’t be avowed, not by either nation. And, more important, Clark had not sought approval for the assassinations. He liked and admired Jack Ryan and considered him one of the very few true friends he had. But it wasn’t Ryan’s nature—nor his job, he supposed—to operate in the amoral world of gray. Ryan was a black-and-white guy. There were only two buckets: right and wrong.
Clark didn’t know what information the American President had passed to Yermilov through his back channels about the cabal members, but he did know that the world couldn’t afford to give the Russian mastermind, Colonel General Ilyin, and the other cabal members a second chance. He knew in his heart they would try again, and he refused to risk Ilyin pulling the trigger on any contingency plans the man had in place. His job was to tie up the secret loose ends. His job was to give the White House cover and deniability. His job was to safeguard the President’s conscience so Jack could save the world during the day, but be able to sleep at night.
Unless told otherwise, Ryan would assume the cabal members had been eliminated on Yermilov’s order. Betrayal was an unforgivable sin, and Russian justice was what Yermilov did best.
He doubted Yermilov would thank him for doing the deed. In fact, the dictator would probably be incensed that he’d been robbed of the opportunity to mete vengeance himself. Russians were funny that way. Clark and his team wouldn’t be safe until they were airborne and out of Russian airspace.
“Viking One is ready for exfil,” he muttered softly.
“Roger, Viking. You coming back to the roost?”
He thought a moment.
“No,” he said. “No sense risking the team if I’m being followed. Give me a few mintues to check for ticks, then I’ll meet you outside the Bolshoi.”
“Copy,” Ding said. “Packing it up. We’ll pull into the valet at the Ararat Park Hotel across the street from the Bolshoi to the east. Our jet is standing by with a flight plan filed and clearances ready to go.”
“Copy,” Clark said. “Fifteen mikes.”
He didn’t really need fifteen minutes. He was a block from the pickup location and had already checked for tails. He just needed . . . a moment.
A moment for himself.
He stepped out of the shadows of the buildings lining Pushechnaya Street and into the bright lights of the main thoroughfare heading south, toward the Bolshoi. He wanted to sit a minute and take in the sights and sounds of the beating heart of Moscow. He doubted the opportunity would come again. With a tight-lipped smile, he found an unoccupied bench and took a seat.
The world was changing fast.
But so long as he was in it, he’d make the hard choices, and do the hard things, to ensure that change was for the better.