Newport, Rhode Island, sits on the southern tip of Aquidneck Island, some thirty miles south of Providence. As well as being the home of Naval Station Newport and more surviving colonial buildings than any other city in the United States, it also retains a number of gargantuan nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century mansions built by many of America’s wealthiest industrial and financial tycoons of that time period. John Jacob Astor IV, William and Cornelius Vanderbilt, Oliver Belmont, and Peter Widener of U.S. Steel and American Tobacco, as well as others, all constructed palatial summer retreats on the tony island during the Gilded Age of the post-Reconstruction period.
Most of the billionaires are gone; their homes now owned by trusts or by family estates or by museums or foundatio
This homeowner’s name was Paul Laska, he was seventy years old, he was currently number four on the Forbes list of wealthiest Americans, and he was of the opinion that a second presidential term of John Patrick Ryan would probably mean, within a couple of years, the end of the world.
Sitting alone in the library of his opulent mansion, Paul Laska watched Jack Ryan kiss his wife at the end of the debate. Then Laska stood, turned off the television, and walked alone to his bedroom. His pale, aged face flushed red with anger and his slumped shoulders reflected his sour mood.
He had hoped tonight’s debate would be the moment when Ed Kealty’s fortunes turned. Laska had hoped this, had all but expected this, because he knew something almost no one else in the world knew until thirty minutes ago.
The aging billionaire already knew that the Emir was in U.S. custody. This nugget of information had kept his spirits up while Ryan’s lead in the polls remained through the summer and into the early fall. He’d told himself that when Ed made the “big reveal” in the second presidential debate he would put to bed that tired adage about Jack Ryan that said he was the “tough on terror” candidate. Then, with a few weeks of heavy campaigning in key battleground states, Kealty would shoot ahead for the home stretch.
Now, as Laska took off his slippers and climbed into bed, he realized that his hopes had been fanciful.
Somehow Jack Ryan had still won the damned debate, even with the rabbit Kealty had pulled out of his hat.
“Hovno!” he shouted at the cold, dark house. It meant “shit” in Czech, and Paul Laska always fell back on his native tongue when cursing.
Paul Laska was born Pavel Laska in Brno, in the present-day Czech Republic. He grew up behind the iron curtain, but he’d not suffered particularly for this misfortune. His father had been a party member in good standing, which allowed young Pavel to go to good schools in Brno and then Prague, and then to university in Budapest and then Moscow.
After obtaining advanced degrees in mathematics, he returned to Czechoslovakia to follow his father into banking. A good communist, Laska had done well for himself in the Soviet satellite nation, but in 1968 he came out in support of the liberal reforms of First Party Secretary Alexander Dubček.
For a few short months in 1968, Laska and other Dubček supporters felt the reforms of the Czechoslovakian decentralization from Moscow. They were still communists but nationalized communists; their plan was to break away from the Soviets and apply Czech solutions to Czech problems. The Soviets didn’t like that plan, needless to say, and KGB operatives flooded into Prague to break up the party.
Pavel Laska and a radical girlfriend were picked up with a dozen others at a protest and held for questioning by the KGB. Both were beaten; the girlfriend was sent to prison, but somehow Laska returned to work with the leadership of the uprising, and he stayed with them until one night in August when Warsaw Pact tanks rolled into Prague, and the fledgling rebellion was crushed on orders from Moscow.
Unlike most of the leadership, Laska was not killed or imprisoned. He returned to hisetud o bank, but soon emigrated to the United States, taking with him, as he’d told the story thousands of times, only the clothes on his back and a dream.
And by most anyone’s standards his dream had been realized.
He moved to New York in 1969 to attend NYU. Upon graduation, he went into banking and finance. First he had a few good years, then he had a few great years, and by the early eighties he was one of the wealthiest men on Wall Street.
Though he bought properties including his homes in Rhode Island, Los Angeles, Aspen, and Manhattan, in the 1980s he and his wife used much of their money on their philanthropy, throwing their huge financial resources behind reformers in Eastern Europe in an attempt to enact the changes that had failed to materialize during the Prague Spring. After the fall of world communism, Paul started the Progressive Nations Institute to assist grassroots change in oppressed countries around the world, and he funded development projects across the globe from clean-water initiatives in Central America to land mine eradication efforts in Laos.
In the late 1990s Laska turned his sights inward, toward his adopted nation. He’d long felt the America of the post — Cold War period to be no better than the Soviet Union of the Cold War days; to him the United States was an oppressive brute in world affairs and a bastion of racism and bigotry. Now that the Soviet Union was no more, he poured billions of dollars into causes to fight American evils as he perceived them and, along with spending enough effort engaging in the capitalistic shrine known as the New York Stock Exchange to benefit himself, Laska spent the rest of his time and money supporting the enemies of capitalism.
In 2000 he formed the Progressive Constitution Initiative, a liberal political action organization and law firm, and he staffed it with the best and the brightest radical lawyers from the ACLU, academia, and private practice. As well as taking on states and municipalities, the main function of the organization was to sue the U.S. government for what it considered to be overreaches of power. It also defended those prosecuted by the United States, and worked against any and all state or federal capital punishment cases, as well as many other causes célèbres.
Since the death of his wife seven years before, Laska had lived alone, save for a team of servants and a security detail, but his homes were rarely lonely places. He threw lavish parties attended by liberal politicians, activists, artists, and foreign movers and shakers. The Progressive Nations Institute was run out of midtown Manhattan, and the Progressive Constitution Initiative out of D.C., but ground zero for the overarching belief system of Paul Laska was his home in Newport. It was no joke when people claimed that more progressive punditry had been doled out on Paul Laska’s pool deck than in most liberal think tanks.
But his influence did not stop at his organizations or his garden parties. His foundation also financed many left-wing websites and media outlets, and even a confidential online clearinghouse for liberal journalists to gather and pass on story ideas and agree on a cohesive progressive message. Paul funded, sometimes covertly, sometimes not, many radio and television networks across the country, always with a quid pro quo that he and his causes would be given positive press. More than once an organization had had its financial spigot shut off, either temporarily or permanently, because its reporting did not match the political beliefs of the man who financed the entire operation from behind the scenes.
He had contributed to the campaigns of Ed Kealty for fifteen years, and many political junkies gave Paul Les es.aska much of the credit for Kealty’s success. In interviews Paul shrugged at these claims, but in private he fumed. He did not deserve much of the credit for Kealty’s success. No, he felt he deserved all of the credit. Laska thought Kealty to be a blow-dried dolt, but a dolt with the right ideas and just enough of the right connections, so Laska had thrown his extensive support behind the man years earlier.
It would be unfair to sum up the political beliefs of the billionaire immigrant into one headline, but the New York Post had done so recently after a Laska speech at a Kealty fund-raiser. In typical Post fashion, they filled the inches above the fold with “Laska to Ryan: You Suck!” Just hours after the paper came off the presses, Ryan was photographed mugging for the cameras, smiling and holding the newspaper in a “Dewey Defeats Truman” pose.
Laska, not to be outdone, was also shown holding the paper, but in typical humorless Laska style, he was not smiling. He held it up for the camera, his eyes framed by square glasses on a square head, and he stared expressionless at the lens.
Needless to say, this picture did not convey the lighthearted moment that Ryan’s photo did.
It was true, Laska hated Jack Ryan, there was no other way to describe the feelings he had for the man. To Laska, Ryan was the perfect embodiment of everything evil and wrong with America. A former military officer, a former head of the dreaded CIA, a former operative himself whose evil deeds around the world had been swept under the rug and replaced with a legend that made him appear to the fools in flyover country like some sort of rugged and handsome paladin.
To Laska’s way of thinking, Ryan was an evil man who had stumbled into incredible fortune. The plane crash at the Capitol just as he was awarded the vice presidency was evidence of a cruel God as far as Laska was concerned.
Paul had suffered through the first Ryan presidency, and he’d supported Ed Kealty in his campaign against Ryan’s underling Robby Jackson. When Jackson had all but sewn up the victory and was assassinated, leaving Kealty to win the election by default, Laska began to have hope for God after all, though he never said such a thing anywhere other than on his pool deck.
Kealty had not been the savior the progressives had hoped he would be. Yes, he’d had some wins in Congress on issues dear to the hearts of those on the left, but on Laska’s main concern, the American government’s projection of power both at home and around the world, Kealty had proven to be not much better than his predecessor. He’d launched more missiles against countries with whom America was not at war than any president in history, and he’d made only cosmetic changes to federal laws against habeas corpus, illegal searches and seizures, wiretapping, and other issues Paul Laska cared about.
No, the Czech American was not satisfied with Ed Kealty, but he was a damn sight better than any Republican who would run against him, so Laska had begun investing heavily in Kealty’s reelection as soon as he took office.
And this investment had been in danger ever since Ryan had put his hat in the ring. Things looked so bleak earlier in the summer, when Ryan came out strong after the Republican convention, that Laska had made it known to Kealty’s campaign manager that he would be scaling back his fund-raising for the embattled Democratic incumbent.
He didn’t come right out and say it, but the inference was clear. Ed was a lost cause.
This provoked an immediate response from Kealty anfroidn’t cod his people. The next morning, Laska was on his jet from Santa Barbara with a private dinner invitation to the White House. He was ushered in to “the people’s house” quietly, no record of his visit was recorded, and Kealty sat down for a private dinner with the venerable liberal kingmaker.
“Paul, things may look bleak right now,” the President said between sips of pinot noir, “but I have the mother of all trump cards.”
“Another assassination is in the works?”
Kealty knew Laska did not possess a sense of humor, so this was, in fact, a serious question. “Jesus, Paul!” Kealty shook his head violently. “No! I had nothing to do with… I mean… Don’t even…” Kealty paused, sighed, and then let it go. “The Emir is in my custody, and when the time is right, I will pull him out and shut off Jack Ryan’s asinine claim that I am weak on terrorism.”
Laska’s bushy eyebrows rose. “How did you get him?”
“It doesn’t matter how I got him. What matters is that I have him.”
Paul nodded slowly and thoughtfully. “What are you going to do with the Emir?”
“I just told you. Late in the election — my campaign manager, Benton Thayer, says I should do it at the second or third debate — I am going to announce to the country that I—”
“No, Ed. I am talking about his trial. How will you proceed with holding him accountable for his alleged actions?”
“Oh.” Kealty waved an arm in the air as he slid another luscious morsel of prime rib onto his silver fork. “Brannigan at Justice wants to try him in New York; I’ll probably let him do that.”
Laska nodded. “I think you should do just that. And you should send a message to the world.”
Kealty cocked his head. “What message?”
“That America is, once again, the land of justice and peace. No kangaroo courts.”
Kealty nodded slowly. “You want your foundation to defend him.”
“It’s the only way.”
Kealty nodded, sipped his wine. He had something that Laska wanted. A high-profile case against the U.S. government. “I can make that happen, Paul. I’ll get heat from the right, but who gives a damn? Probably more ambivalence from the left than I would like, but nobody on our side of the aisle will squawk too much about it.”
“Excellent,” Laska said.
“Of course,” Kealty said, his tone changed a little now that he was no longer sitting in front of Laska with his hat in hand, “you know what a Ryan victory would do to the trial. Your Progressive Constitution Initiative would have no role in a military tribunal at Gitmo.”
“I understand.”
“I can only make this happen if I win. And even with this big reveal I plan at the presidential debate, I will only win with your continued support. Can I count on you, Paul?”
“You give my people the Emir case, and you will have my continued backing.”
Kealty grinned like the Cheshire cat. “Wonderful.”
Paul Laska lay in bed and thought back to that conversation at the White House. Laska’s PCI legal team had ironed out all the complicated secret detted>P
As Paul listened to the grandfather clock tick in the corner of his dark bedroom, all he could think about was how Ryan would undo it all when he became President of the United States.
When, not if, Laska said to himself.
Hovno. Fucking Ed Kealty. Kealty couldn’t even win a debate where he had the best news the country has heard in a year.
Son of a bitch.
Paul Laska decided, at that very moment, that he would not spend one more goddamned dime on that loser Ed Kealty.
No, he would divert his funds, his power, into one thing.
The destruction of John Patrick Ryan, either before he took his inevitable seat in the Oval Office or during his administration.