Spymaster

by Brad Thor

  “What’s the bad news?”

  “The bad news,” said Vella, “is that you’re handing me a subject with multiple bullet wounds, who has maybe been stabilized.”

  “So?”

  “So remember what happened in Syria?”

  Harvath did remember. He had tried to remotely conduct an interrogation using Vella’s techniques. The subject had an underlying heart condition and had died during it.

  “What about it?” Harvath asked.

  Vella rolled his eyes. He knew Harvath wasn’t this obtuse. “Come on, Scot. You know why we do a full medical workup before we start one of these things. Heart rates spike, adrenal production goes into overdrive, cortisol levels skyrocket. The stress response is just off the charts. Kuznetsov might not be able to handle it.”

  “What are you proposing?”

  “I’m going to have to dial it back—a lot. At least initially, until I see how much he can handle. In other words, there’s going to be a delay.”

  “How much of a delay?” asked Harvath.

  “Depending how much of the formula I can administer, it could be days. Maybe a week.”

  “That’s not going to work.”

  “I’m giving you a worst-case scenario,” replied Vella, who caught himself and said, “Actually, death is the worst-case scenario. What I’m giving you is a potential timeline.”

  Harvath knew that a lot of what Vella did was still in its infancy. It wasn’t something that could be widely studied and peer reviewed. It was, in essence, a dark art that wasn’t talked about or shared.

  He had brought the man in to speed things up, not to coddle their prisoner and slow things down. But at the end of the day, Vella was here because he was a professional, with a very specific set of skills, which Harvath respected. What’s more, Kuznetsov’s death would certainly bring things to a halt.

  “Do what you have to do,” he told the doctor. “But do it as fast as you can. We’re running out of time.”

  • • •

  When they pulled back into the compound, Harvath called the team out to help Vella unpack and to move all of his equipment into the main building. They then drew up a shift schedule for guarding the property and assisting in the interrogation.

  With those tasks complete, he returned to the guesthouse to check on Nicholas and give him the limited dossier that Vella had prepared on their prisoner, Ivan Kuznetsov.

  “Did you bring any of the things I asked for?” said Nicholas without turning around.

  “They were out of time and money at the store, but I was able to find you a lead,” he replied, setting the folder on his desk.

  The little man stopped what he was doing on his computer to take a look at it. “This isn’t a lot to go on.”

  “We’ve got a real name. That’s more than we had a half hour ago. See what you can do.”

  Saluting, Nicholas turned back to his computer, opened a new screen, and went to work.

  Harvath grabbed one of the encrypted laptops the little man had set up and carried it to his room. It was early afternoon back in the States and he thought he would try to reach Lara.

  He shot her an email, then plugged his earbuds in and opened the video conferencing program The Carlton Group used.

  Moments later, a screen appeared with her face in it. She was at home, in their study, wearing one of the low-cut sweaters he loved. Her long hair was swept to one side. She looked gorgeous.

  “Hey,” he said. “What are you up to?”

  Lara adjusted her laptop so he could see the TV and the news coverage of the Istanbul bombing.

  “Should I even ask where you are?” she said, turning the laptop back around.

  He smiled. She not only understood him, she understood what he did, and that he couldn’t always talk about what he was up to.

  “Nowhere near Turkey,” he replied. In the background, he could see that she had a fire going in the fireplace. “That cold back home?”

  “Cold enough. And overcast. How about where you are?”

  “Could be worse. How are things at home?”

  “Good,” she replied. “We miss you.”

  Harvath smiled again. “I miss you, too. Where’s Marco?”

  “Taking a nap. He woke up way too early this morning.”

  “What’d you do for breakfast?”

  “I offered to make pancakes, but he said he didn’t want ‘mommy’ pancakes, he wanted ‘Scot’ pancakes. So we had eggs instead.”

  “Tell him I’ll cook up a huge stack when I get back,” he responded.

  “Any idea when that will be?”

  Harvath shook his head. “Hopefully, soon.”

  Lara appeared about to reply when she heard something and turned to look over her shoulder. “Speak of the devil,” she said, turning back to the camera. “Guess who I think just woke up.”

  Harvath laughed. It wasn’t the first time Marco had interrupted an intimate moment. “Go check on him. I’ll catch up with you later.”

  “Before I let you go, I talked with Lydia last night.”

  “About what?”

  “I called to catch up and she told me Reed isn’t doing well, that he’s getting worse.”

  The gravity of the situation was evident in Harvath’s voice. “I know,” he replied. “She told me, too.”

  “Promise me we’ll go see him when you get back.”

  “I promise.”

  Marco could be heard in the background calling for her.

  “I love you,” she said, blowing him a kiss. “Stay safe.”

  “I will. I love you, too,” he answered, as she logged off.

  For a moment, he sat there, just looking at the blank screen. In his mind, he pictured her path from the study to the small guest bedroom they had converted for Marco. He really did miss them both. He missed the Old Man as well. He felt the guilt again of not being there for him, but he also hoped the Old Man would understand the importance of what he was doing and why he needed to do it.

  Over the next couple of minutes, he allowed his thoughts a little freedom before putting them in a far corner of his mind and walling them off.

  Hopping back over to his email, he checked to make sure there were no requests from Ryan. He didn’t see any.

  Opening a new message, he sent her a quick update to let her know that Vella had arrived, that he was proceeding with “caution,” and that Nicholas was running down the name they had gotten from Sergun. He told her he’d update her with more information when it became available. After reading it over, he hit Send.

  Having checked in with his home and office, he had a decision to make. He could go downstairs and check back in on Nicholas, go across to the main building and check on Vella, or leave them both alone and trust them to do the jobs they were being paid to do. He chose the last option and to have confidence in his people.

  “Hire the best and set them loose,” the Old Man had once said to him. “Don’t be a pain in the ass unless you have to be. Let people know what you expect of them, and then get out of their way. Allow them to surprise you.”

  It was good advice. And while some of it had sounded like a string of platitudes from a motivational seminar, the Old Man knew how to manage people.

  Though he could be gruff at times, there wasn’t a single person who wouldn’t go to hell and back for him. That was the kind of loyalty he inspired.

  Committed to leaving his team alone, he set his laptop aside on the bed and picked the book about Hemingway’s being a Russian spy back up from his nightstand.

  Whether it contained any secrets about the Russians that might be valuable today was anyone’s guess.

  What he hoped it would do was take his mind away for a while and give it a chance to rest. He had learned long ago how to make tough decisions under pressure, but sometimes, when he stopped thinking about things was when breakthroughs occurred.

  Operating on only a few hours of sleep, he made it through about two chapters before his eyes got so heavy that
he couldn’t keep them open and he was out.

  CHAPTER 56

  * * *

  When Harvath heard Staelin’s voice, it was just after 4:00 a.m. He was lying, still fully clothed, atop his bed with his book on his chest.

  “What is it?”

  “Vella,” said Staelin. “He told me to come and get you.”

  Shit, thought Harvath as he quickly got out of bed. This couldn’t be good news. “What happened? Is Kuznetsov okay?”

  “Who?”

  Harvath had forgotten that Staelin hadn’t been given the update. “Dominik Gashi’s real name is Ivan Kuznetsov.”

  “Whatever his name is, Vella wants to talk to you about him. It sounds like maybe he wants to make a deal.”

  A deal? Harvath was highly skeptical, but stranger things had happened, especially when it came to the Russians. Many had watched their politicians and ex–intelligence officers become billionaire oligarchs, only to want a piece of the action for themselves. It was worth at least listening to what he wanted and, more important, what he had to offer.

  Grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge, Harvath left his coat behind and followed Staelin across the motor court over to the main building. He took the stairs down to the basement, which had been transformed into a miniversion of the Solarium back on Malta, and was where they were interrogating Kuznetsov.

  There were all sorts of medical equipment, video cameras, monitors, and a computer work station.

  Kuznetsov was hooded and bound to a chair. Harvath recognized the hood. It had a special pocket in front into which Vella placed strips of cloth soaked in his special compound. He had let Harvath take a quick whiff of it once. It was like liquid fear.

  Like the smell of fresh-baked cookies or bread, scent had a way of bypassing the conscious, rational part of the brain and going straight to where our memories were stored. Vella believed a similar mechanism could be used in interrogations. He had spent years studying, and testing, how scent could unlock certain pathways in the brain. In particular, he had been focused on how it could be used to break a subject, so that he was no longer able to resist and would reveal the truth.

  Harvath looked at the bright halogen work lights that had the Russian lit up from the front and the sides.

  “I have headphones on him,” said Vella, “so he can’t hear us right now.”

  “What did you need to talk to me about?”

  “He wants to make a deal.”

  “What kind of deal?” asked Harvath.

  “He’s willing to give up everything he knows.”

  “And you believe him?”

  “Come look at this,” replied Vella as he gestured toward his computer.

  Harvath joined him and watched as he played back a short piece of video. Underneath it were a series of graphics, similar to a polygraph, but more sophisticated.

  Pointing to several of the lines, the doctor said, “If there was even the slightest hint that he was being untruthful, it would show up here. He couldn’t be in this range if it was a ruse. He’s telling the truth. He wants to make a deal.”

  “Maybe he’s just tired.”

  “The more fatigued he gets, the more difficult it is for him to hide from me. That’s why I don’t let them sleep.”

  “Maybe he’s just stringing us along in order to get pain meds. Have you given him any?”

  “He’s definitely in pain,” said Vella, “but I haven’t given him anything for it. You’ve watched me do this before. You know how this all works.”

  “I’m just making sure,” replied Harvath. “This is an option I wasn’t expecting.”

  “This isn’t an option. It’s an opportunity. He’s ready to give you everything he has. I have been going at him for almost eight hours. Believe me, this is legitimate. It’s also why you brought me in; to speed things up.”

  Harvath knew this kind of thing happened, but it wasn’t exactly his area of expertise. He had a lot more experience with turning Muslim terrorists against one another than he did negotiating with Russian intelligence officers to leave their service.

  “Was he promised anything?” Harvath asked. “What did you tell him, exactly? And what did he tell you?”

  “I started with the standard stuff. I told him he was a prisoner of the United States and was not going back to Russia, ever. His stress levels at this point were already pretty high and when he asked me where he would be taken, I told him Gitmo. That didn’t do anything to relax him, but when I told him he’d be placed in with the Muslim population, things really started to blast off.”

  Harvath wasn’t surprised. Russia had made a lot of enemies in the Muslim world. Putting Kuznetsov in with hardened Al Qaeda operatives, who remembered all the bad things the Russians did in Afghanistan and elsewhere, would probably be worse than executing him.

  “You’ll be surprised to know that he carries several grudges about the Russian military in general and the GRU specifically,” the doctor continued.

  Right, big surprise. The Russian military was a pretty corrupt organization. What’s more, Russians were spectacular grudge-holders. Harvath liked to tell a joke about an angel appearing to three men—a Frenchman, an Italian, and a Russian. The angel tells them that tomorrow the world is going to end and asks what they each want to do with their last night on earth. The Frenchman says he will get a case of the best champagne and spend his last night with his mistress. The Italian says he will visit his mistress and then go home to eat a last meal with his wife and children. The Russian replies that he will go burn down his neighbor’s barn.

  “Gotland was a huge failure,” said Vella. “He knows he will be blamed for it and that the GRU will take it out on his family, so that it serves as a lesson to other operatives. He wants asylum for himself and his family.”

  “He wants to live in the United States?” Harvath asked.

  Vella shook his head. “No. Italy. Florence, to be exact.”

  “At least he’s not picky,” Harvath said with a grin.

  “I didn’t push back on it. It represents something to him. I figured I would let you make the call. One would suppose that if he could help turn over evidence linked to the bombing in Rome, the Italians might cooperate.”

  The Italians also had a thing about American intelligence operatives who snatched people and rendered them to foreign countries. He didn’t know if that was a road he wanted to go down, but for right now it didn’t matter.

  The Swedes would also need to be massaged. Kuznetsov had killed a Swedish intelligence officer and had sliced open a cop. It would be hard to let a guy like that ride off into the Italian sunset.

  Espionage, though, was a dirty business. Sometimes, unsavory deals had to be struck with bad actors—especially when it meant preventing a war.

  “Anything else I need to know before I talk with him? What are his grudges against the military and the GRU?”

  Vella glanced at some notes he had made. “He was born into a lower-class family. Despite being highly intelligent, he thinks the Russian military, and especially the GRU, have prohibited him from reaching the rank and responsibility he rightly deserves.”

  “So he’s got a Fredo Corleone complex,” Harvath replied, referring to the middle brother in the Godfather saga.

  “He seems to realize that if he’s going to make any sort of a deal at all, now is the time to do it.”

  It made sense, but from what the Old Man had taught him about his days of brokering deals with Soviet defectors in the Cold War, these things usually required a lot of back and forth. The talks were often complicated and prolonged. The veracity of the information the defectors provided had to be confirmed and always checked against multiple sources.

  But those were different times and a much different scenario. Kuznetsov wasn’t some embassy walk-in. He was a prisoner—one with a limited amount of bargaining power and one against whom the clock was ticking.

  By the same token, though, the clock was also ticking for Harvath. He desperately n
eeded information and, like it or not, his best option was to try to cut a deal. As Vella had correctly pointed out, he had been given an opportunity. He needed to make sure he did everything he could to take advantage of it.

  Working together, he and Vella set up the room exactly the way he wanted it. The conversation would still be videotaped, but he didn’t want it done under the harsh glare of the halogen lights. Harvath wanted to sit across from the Russian in order to read him. Vella’s machines were one thing, but Harvath put his ultimate confidence in how he felt in his gut and what he could see with his own two eyes.

  He called upstairs to Staelin and asked him to brew him some coffee and to bring it down along with some bottled water for their captive.

  Kuznetsov, being Russian, might also want a smoke. Harvath knew that Vella used cigarettes as incentives with detainees and sure enough, the man had brought along several packs. He placed one on the table along with a small box of matches.

  When everything was exactly as he wanted, Harvath walked over to Kuznetsov and removed his hood.

  CHAPTER 57

  * * *

  As Kuznetsov blinked, trying to readjust his eyes to the light, Harvath removed the headphones.

  Sheets had been hung from the ceiling to create a small, enclosed space, preventing the Russian from seeing the rest of the room. He was still tied to the chair, but now there was a table in front of him with a pack of cigarettes on it.

  Across from him, drinking a cup of coffee, was the man who had shown up at the beach house dressed as a Swedish policeman—the same man from the hospital security camera footage that Johansson had copied for him.

  “Mr. Kuznetsov, I am here because I understand you are interested in cooperating with us,” said Harvath.

  “I am interested in arranging a deal,” he replied.

  “I must be honest with you, I’m not particularly fond of deals.”

  The Russian forced a painful grin. “Imagine how I feel.”

  “How is it you speak, English?”

  “May I have a cigarette?”

  Harvath tapped one out of the pack and held it up to the man’s mouth. Kuznetsov leaned forward and took it between his lips. Harvath then took out a match, struck it against the box, and lit it for him.