by Brad Thor
“Needless to say, this has been very damaging to their respective political parties, but it has also raised questions about the legitimacy of his election, as the woman resigned after it was learned her brother-in-law had been involved in vote tampering. That stain has now spread to our President.”
“I see,” mused Strum. “Is there any indication, other than the affair, that your President has done anything untoward?”
The Latvian Ambassador shook his head. “Not that I know of, but ever since the story broke, Riga has been in damage-control mode. They are very nervous, and the suggestion that there’s more to come is only fueling the scandal. If our election is seen as illegitimate, there will be a true crisis of confidence. The government is worried about the real possibility of street protests, maybe even violence.”
“In addition to a potential health crisis, with doctors and nurses locked out of medical records, we’re also concerned about a bank run,” the Estonian Ambassador said. “After Russia’s massive cyberattack in 2007 we promised our citizens that we would do everything we could to make sure it never happened again. If Russia keeps this up, we will also have a crisis of confidence.”
Strum remembered the 2007 attack on Estonia. It had lasted for three weeks and had been absolutely unprecedented.
It had centered on one of her favorite towns in Europe, Tallinn. Situated on the Gulf of Finland, fifty miles south of Helsinki, it was Estonia’s capital and largest city.
In Tallinn’s center had stood a bronze war memorial commemorating the Soviet war dead who had helped liberate the city from the Nazis.
Tired of a Soviet military monument in downtown Tallinn, and feeling it would be more appropriate in a cemetery, Estonia relocated the bronze statue, as well as the human remains underneath, to the Tallinn Military Cemetery.
The Russians had gone apoplectic. It made no difference to them that Estonia was a free and sovereign nation, and could choose what it wanted to do. Relocating the statue had been considered an incredible insult to Russia, and so they had decided to make Estonia pay.
The attacks came in waves, targeting anything and everything Estonia had connected to the Internet.
Though Estonia was careful not to make the situation worse by directly accusing Russia, quietly NATO had flown in highly specialized cyberteams to pinpoint the identity and location of the hackers, as well as to help Estonia beef up its cyberdefenses.
The fact that such an attack was possible, and on such a major scale, had been a terrifying wake-up call to the West in general and NATO in particular.
Now it was happening again, but on a much more precisely targeted basis. The Russians knew where to strike to cause maximum damage, and that’s exactly what they were doing.
“Is it the opinion of the United States,” asked the Latvian Ambassador, “that the time has come for us to mobilize our armed forces? Is this the precursor to the attack that we were warned about?”
“Lithuania asks the same question,” said its Ambassador.
“And Estonia,” added its Ambassador.
Strum knew that it was important to project calm and confidence. “While we share your concern, we think any change in your military posture would be premature at this time—and might even be seen as antagonistic. You don’t want to give the Russians an excuse to match your moves by massing troops and material on your respective borders.”
“Isn’t that what they’re already doing?” asked the Lithuanian Ambassador. “Their claim of an unscheduled military training exercise is nothing more than a fig leaf.”
“We do share that concern as well,” said Strum. “And again, I need to stress that we are asking you not to change your postures. Let’s not give the Russians any more help than we have to.”
“Then in the meantime, what do you propose we do?” asked the Estonian.
“Keep the lines of communication open,” she replied. “We are working on something we think may be helpful in this area.”
“A solution?” asked the Latvian.
Strum tilted her head from side to side, weighing the correct wording. “Something more akin to leverage.”
“When will we have this leverage?”
“We are working on it now. I hope to have something for you very soon.”
“On behalf not just of our nations, but of the entire NATO alliance,” said the Lithuanian Ambassador, “I must ask you to please hurry. I fear we are rapidly running out of time.”
CHAPTER 54
* * *
HAINAUT PROVINCE, BELGIUM
After returning to their compound near SHAPE, Harvath and his team unpacked their gear, cleaned their weapons, and then placed everything where it belonged.
While the team caught up on a few hours of sleep, Morrison and Gage took turns watching over their prisoner.
Dominik Gashi was being kept in a storage room in the basement of the main building. It had been just big enough to get a small bed into.
Harvath had come around before hitting the sack and had checked the dressings. Staelin had put him on an IV and had begun to administer antibiotics, just in case. Bullet wounds were infection magnets.
Satisfied that everything was well in hand, Harvath had gone back across to the guesthouse, dropped into bed, and fallen right asleep.
He awoke several hours later to Nicholas’s dog, Argos, licking his hand. Opening his eyes, he saw the little man standing in his doorway. “What’s up?” Harvath asked.
“You told me to wake you when the plane from Malta was inbound.”
“How far out are they?”
“Touchdown in forty-five minutes.”
“Roger that,” said Harvath, rubbing the stubble on his face and throwing the blankets back. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Nicholas replied. “I’ve got coffee and a late lunch in the kitchen if you’re interested.”
Harvath was definitely interested, but first he needed to grab a quick shower.
Standing under the hot spray, he let the water beat on his body. He ached in places he didn’t even know he had. Getting older sucked, but it beat the alternative.
Five minutes later, he threw the temperature selector all the way to cold and measured how long he could stand it. He managed a good thirty seconds before he decided he’d had enough and turned it off.
Though he didn’t fully agree with the K4 operative, Ingesson had a point about SEALs and cold. At some point, you just have had enough.
Harvath imagined a lot of things could have that effect—even field work. He wasn’t ready to concede that point. Not yet at least.
After drying off, he wrapped the towel around his waist and stood at the sink as he lathered up his face and began to shave.
The face staring back at him as he looked in the mirror was the same face that it had always been. And while it may have aged a little, in his mind he was frozen in time at right around twenty-four years old.
There were, of course, at least a good two decades between that fantasy and reality. However, this was who he was. This was what he knew how to do. And despite his preference to operate alone, he had been reminded that he still worked well with a team. He was also pretty good at leading one.
But did that mean he was ready to take over for the Old Man? Rinsing off his razor, he took another look at himself in the mirror.
The idea that he could ever fill the shoes of someone like Reed Carlton was absolutely crazy to him. It was one of the biggest reasons he had said no when the Old Man asked him to become Director of The Carlton Group. He was not only afraid of failing at it, he was also afraid of taking on the additional responsibility, only to let Carlton down. That would probably be the most difficult thing to deal with—his disappointment.
Of course, simply saying no to the position had disappointed the Old Man, but on the scale of letdowns, Harvath figured it was a lot better than his taking over the entire organization only to screw it all up. The Old Man had invested too much of his time, money, and energy int
o it.
For some strange reason, that hadn’t seemed to bother Carlton. “If it goes, it goes,” he had said, like some Stoic philosopher. “But I don’t think you’re capable of screwing it up. At least not that badly,” he had added with one of his wry smiles.
Carlton had a certain confidence in him that Harvath didn’t have in himself, at least not in that way. Harvath was supremely confident in everything that he did. It was the absolute unknown of running an organization like The Carlton Group that he had found so daunting. He wasn’t sure he would have confidence in others.
But the one big plus, the biggest plus actually, would be being home—if he chose and she agreed—with Lara. That was something that held a lot of appeal for him. With Lara and her son, Marco, he could finally put down roots and have the family he had always said he wanted.
But for a guy who told himself that was what he wanted, he really was spending a lot of time in the field.
In a way, he was sowing his operational oats. Some of the jobs had just been too good to turn down. Some had been so difficult and so dangerous that he didn’t feel right giving them to anyone else. It was also a great way to avoid taking that next step at home.
That mindset was going to have to change. He couldn’t keep taking all the most challenging assignments. Even if he was that twenty-four-year-old he saw staring back in the mirror at him, eventually he would break. Nobody could keep going at the pace he was on. It didn’t matter how improved he felt his body to be. He was using injections to stay in the game.
And while the game was one of skill, it also involved a large degree of luck. At some point the odds caught up to you. And when that happened, all the luck in the world wouldn’t be enough to save you.
For now, he prayed the odds would remain in his favor—just until he could complete this assignment and get his team safely back home. Then, he’d have to finally take a good, long look at everything else and decide what he wanted to do.
Splashing cold water on his face, he quickly brushed his teeth, got dressed, and headed to the kitchen.
It smelled as if Nicholas had grilled sausages. He was about to ask, when he noticed the little man paying rapt attention to one of the television monitors.
There were pictures of fire and billowing columns of black smoke. First responders were carrying injured people out into the street.
“What is it?” Harvath asked. “What happened?”
“Istanbul,” he replied. “Multiple bombs at a subway station.”
Turkey had a lot of political problems, but something told him that might not be what this was about.
If this was the Russians, they had picked a perfect target to hit with an anti-NATO PRF strike. No other member of the alliance was more precariously perched. Turkey had one foot out the door already, and Harvath chastised himself for not seeing this coming. It made excellent sense.
It also scared the hell out of him. The death count was going to be enormous. If this was what they had chosen to follow Rome with, what else did they have up their sleeve?
“Looks like a lot of women and children, too,” Nicholas added. “Families. The Turkish government is going to go ballistic.”
As they should, thought Harvath. “How long ago did this happen?”
“Within the last half hour.”
He had known better than to think that nothing could knock the Rome bombing out of the news cycle. The devastation from both attacks would now be run in split screen on news stations around the world.
Watching the carnage only recommitted him to his purpose. Every fiber in his being wanted to walk across the motor court to take a pair of red-hot tongs to Dominik Gashi. He knew that would be the wrong move.
Gashi, like everyone else, would eventually break. As a GRU operative, though, which Harvath highly suspected he was, he would dribble out enough false intelligence to keep them chasing their tails for weeks, if not months. They didn’t have that kind of time.
It was better to leave it to a professional, someone more skilled in the science of interrogation than he. Blunt force would only get them so far.
The Carlton Group’s specialist was landing shortly and would quickly extract the most reliable intel Gashi had. Harvath’s anger, for the time being, would have to be put on hold.
Plating a couple of sausages, he also poured a cup of coffee and sat down at the table. “Can we turn that off?” he asked as he began eating. It wasn’t that he couldn’t stomach it, it was that he needed a break from all of it for five minutes.
Nicholas obliged him and powered down the monitor. “I heard from Ryan,” he said, changing the subject.
Harvath had meant to call her, but had been so tired when they got back in that he had sent her an email instead. “What did she want?”
“She said the U.S. Ambassador to the UN had an emergency meeting with the Ambassadors for Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia this morning. They all came under a variety of cyberattacks on Friday. The attacks have grown much worse over the weekend.”
“That means the Russians are getting ready to invade. We don’t have much time.”
The little man nodded. “Lydia wants a bow around my operation ASAP.”
Nicholas had not only come up with an amazing hack, but with Harvath’s help, had also created a tiny spy network of his own.
There was something poetic about using a man known as the Troll to disrupt the Troll Factory. His plan was to expose all of the Russians engaged in cyberoperations against the Baltics—real names and photos, as well as every fake website and social media account attached to them. It would be the ultimate cyber takedown.
“When do you think you’ll have everything?” asked Harvath.
“My guy in St. Petersburg should have the last of it out tonight.”
It had been a brilliant plan, but a huge undertaking. And it had cost a fortune. Nicholas and Ryan had gone round and round on the expense.
Also, no matter how well he performed, there was a lingering distrust based on his past unsavory deeds. He had made the CIA and the NSA look foolish on more than one occasion.
Harvath also suspected that the Old Man might have put a bug in Ryan’s ear about Nicholas. Not that she needed him to tell her anything about the little man’s history. She had already been well aware of him while she was at the Agency.
It was certainly not her intention to agree to large sums of money being spent, only to discover that he was siphoning off pieces of it for himself.
Whenever he had trouble getting approval, he went to Harvath and Harvath in turn went to Ryan. It was a game she didn’t take kindly to—something akin to a child playing both parents. Harvath, though, was always a vocal supporter and, when necessary, defender of Nicholas. He usually got what he wanted and nothing, so far, had gone wrong.
Be that as it may, Ryan maintained a detached, professional trust-but-verify position when it came to the company’s finances. It was one of the leading reasons Harvath was happy to have her sitting in the corner office. He’d go crazy if he had to deal with those kinds of issues every day.
Looking down at his watch, he saw that it was time to get going. “I’ll be back in a little bit. Need anything while I’m out?”
Nicholas studied the notepad on the table in front of him and replied, “Yes. I could use a lot more time, a lot more money, and a lot more luck than either of us deserve.”
“Couldn’t we all,” he replied, standing up and reaching for his jacket. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Walking outside to one of the team’s vehicles, Harvath said a silent prayer that the man he was going to pick up could provide the one thing they needed the most—a miracle.
CHAPTER 55
* * *
“Do you want the good news first? Or the bad news?”
Harvath hated conversations that began this way. “I’ve had a rough couple of days. I could use some good news. Let’s start with that.”
Dr. Matthias Vella was an unassuming man in his fifties—sli
m, with dark hair and glasses. He buckled his seat belt as they pulled out of the airport. The enormous amount of equipment he had brought with him on the private jet barely fit inside the team’s van.
A PhD in psychiatry and neurochemistry, Vella ran a privately contracted black site. It was located in a windowless, subterranean facility on Malta, nicknamed the Solarium. Their business was top-secret interrogation and high-value detainee detention.
Vella’s specialty was the study of the neurological processes of interrogation. He was particularly interested in what could be done via chemical and biological means to speed it up.
Removing a folder from his briefcase, he opened it and said, “We ran your guy past our Russian friend Viktor Sergun.”
“Did he recognize Gashi?”
“Immediately. But his name isn’t Dominik Gashi and he isn’t a Kosovan refugee. His name is Ivan Kuznetsov. He’s a GRU operative.”
“Anything else?” asked Harvath.
Vella shut the folder. “A little bit of his military background, some of the previous operations he has run for the GRU. Nothing particularly valuable.”
Harvath had been correct. Their prisoner did work for Russian military intelligence. That was an important confirmation. Having a name was a good step forward. He would put Nicholas on it as soon as they arrived back at the compound.
The fact that Sergun could only provide modest background information on Kuznetsov, though, was a disappointment. Harvath knew that the more material Vella had, the better and faster the interrogation would proceed.
