by Brad Thor
As they drove up to the canal house, Harvath couldn’t help but notice the reds and golds of so many leaves that were already starting to turn color. Things had been so crazy that he hadn’t had a chance to ask Carlton what Lara was doing down here from Boston and how she had connected with him to get the keys to his house. He hadn’t even texted or called to let her know he was back, though he suspected she probably already knew. If the Old Man had given her the keys, he had probably also provided her with his itinerary. He wasn’t looking forward to the showdown that was coming.
Inside the canal house, Harvath started a fire in the fireplace. Mordechai pulled up a chair to warm his hands. He kept kosher, and so Palmer was sent to a special deli near Dupont Circle. He came back with shopping bags full of food and bottled water.
He grabbed a sandwich for himself and one for Ashby, and then the pair sat outside, discreetly keeping watch. As far as they knew, no one was aware that Mordechai had fallen into their custody, but Dulles was a crowded airport, and there was no telling who saw what. It would be very foolish to underestimate the Israelis.
Two of Ryan’s people had taken Mordechai’s bag to his hotel, had checked him in, and placed it in the room. If anyone came looking for him, there would at least be some appearance that he had made it that far without incident.
Once they had eaten, Carlton conducted the Israeli intelligence operative’s debriefing while Harvath and Ryan took notes. It was like watching a fencing match with clever patinandos and passata-sottos to spare.
Carlton scored points by asking the right questions. When he drifted too far afield or attempted to drill too deep into Mossad operations, the Israeli refused to answer. His duty was to the Mossad and to Israel. He had no intention of divulging any more than he had to. It was how any of those in the room would have acted if caught in a similar situation.
Mordechai described how Damien had landed on their radar, and he pulled no punches in expressing the Mossad’s anger at American Intelligence for refusing to work with them on it.
Ryan listened with interest. She had no idea who had made that call, or why, but she intended to find out.
Carlton asked what Helena was doing with Damien.
Mordechai explained that they had copied his hard drive and one of his cell phones, but that no one at the Mossad had been able to crack the encryption.
“Can you describe the cell phone?”
When Mordechai was finished, Harvath pulled out his own phone and showed him pictures he had taken off Hendrik’s phones, which had been turned over to the CIA for analysis.
“That one,” the Israeli said, pointing. “Where’d you get it?”
“I took it from someone we believe has been working with Damien.”
“Did he give you his password?”
“Not willingly.”
“Did you find anything on it?” Mordechai asked.
“Nothing so far. Nothing was archived,” said Ryan. “Whatever communications there had been were wiped clean.”
“You’re still a password ahead of us,” he replied as he launched into explaining why Helena had been dangled and how Damien had taken the bait. Without his passwords, the mirrored phone and hard drive were useless. Everything was riding on Helena.
“I don’t understand,” Harvath said once he had finished. “Why has it taken her so long?”
Mordechai took a deep breath and briefly recounted who Helena was, as well as the incentive they had given her to speed her progress.
When he finished, the Old Man let out a long, low whistle.
Ryan looked at him and asked, “Whoever this Enoch is, do you even have him?”
“We do,” Mordechai replied. “He doesn’t work for us per se, but we know where he is and have used him from time to time.”
He could sense the distaste in the room and added, “His is a horrible business, but he has value. Significant intelligence has been gleaned via his network.”
Harvath shook his head. “I’m sure that’s a comfort to all of the women he’s forced into the sex trade.”
Mordechai knew it was pointless to respond. Israel was at war. It did what it had to do to survive. He would never apologize for that.
“The Mossad has known about Enoch all along, but nothing has ever been said to Helena, correct?” asked Ryan.
The Israeli nodded solemnly. “Correct.”
“And despite his alleged intelligence value, once Helena gives you what you want, the Mossad is just going to hand him over?”
The Israeli thought of his boss, Nava, and shook his head. “I think once they catch their fish, they will also want to keep their bait.”
“In other words, they’re not going to give Enoch to Helena.”
Mordechai nodded.
Ryan figured as much. Theirs was a world of games, a world of half-truths and empty promises. It required lies, but some lies were beneath a nation—even when it believed its own survival hung in the balance. There was always another way. And one of the biggest problems with those lies was that they often created enemies, mortal enemies.
“She’s going to blame you,” said Harvath. “You’re the one who made the promise.”
“I’ll make it up to her.”
Harvath smiled. “That’s what we all tell ourselves.”
Mordechai fixed him with his gaze. “Except I actually mean it.”
Harvath studied the man’s eyes. There was something between him and the woman that went beyond asset and handler. It was written all over the Israeli’s face.
Harvath resisted chalking it up to sex. Helena Pestova was indeed striking, and her beauty wouldn’t have been lost on Mordechai, but he appeared to be above that. He struck Harvath as some sort of holy warrior, unwaveringly committed to the purity of his cause and the code that guided him.
Harvath could have been wrong. It could have been that the Israeli just wanted to bang her brains out, but he didn’t think so. He sensed something better in him. It was rare to meet true believers anymore—and the Israeli struck him as a true believer—someone able to put a greater good, a higher purpose ahead of himself.
Maybe it gave Harvath hope, some small reassurance that there were others out there, that he wasn’t alone in the world. Whatever it was, for the time being he was putting Mordechai in the true believer category.
Now that they knew why Helena was with Damien, Carlton wanted to know what Israel suspected he was up to and what they hoped to find on his laptop and cell phone.
In order to do that, Mordechai needed to describe how the laptop and cell came into the Mossad’s possession in the first place.
Very few people had more than a basic understanding of how the UN worked, so Mordechai unpacked its power structure, likening it to a series of Russian nesting dolls. When he arrived at the Secretary-General’s Senior Management Group and its secret retreat in the Austrian Alps, the only other sound in the room was the crackling of the fire.
Mordechai discussed the anonymous, seven-member “Plenary Panel,” and then, saving the most disturbing information for last, launched into the chilling, ten-point “Outcome Conference” document he had uncovered in Pierre Damien’s hotel room in Alpbach.
He didn’t need notes. The entire, fetid manifesto was seared into his mind. He could recite each and every insane goal in his sleep: decrease human population below five hundred million, steer reproduction through eugenics, bind humanity with a brand-new language, redistribute wealth under the more acceptable term “global public goods,” replace individual rights with the concept of “social duties,” subvert faith and tradition with “reason,” use technologies like the Internet and social media to end-run national governments in order to spread propaganda directly to citizens, convince people that global governance was not only inevitable, but that it was the fair, efficient, and logical next step, discredit and delegitimize the c
oncept of national sovereignty, and finally—take out anyone or anything that got in the UN’s way.
Mordechai explained that the biggest threats the Plenary Panel saw to achieving its goals were Israel and the United States. In order to remove the two democracies from the UN’s path, some massive, mysterious event was mentioned.
He referenced Damien’s handwritten notes, particularly those about the United States, and asked if the letters MC meant anything to anyone in the room.
Several possibilities ran through Harvath’s mind. MC was the international country code for Monaco. It was the last two letters of USMC—United States Marine Corps. It was the abbreviation for Mission Critical and also the abbreviation for NATO’s Military Committee, which helped guide NATO’s defense measures.
But without more context, the letters could have represented anything. Carlton and Ryan were equally at a loss.
“Nothing? How about the letters AHF then?” Mordechai asked. “Damien wrote those followed by several other words, including pathogenicity, absolute risk, and dose response.”
One by one, the color drained from the other three faces in the room.
CHAPTER 32
* * *
He looked to the Old Man, who nodded his assent, followed by Ryan. Turning to Mordechai, Harvath replied, “African Hemorrhagic Fever. A-H-F.”
“Ebola?” the Israeli asked.
“Same family, worse disease. Much worse. It has a dramatically reduced incubation period—we’re talking days, not weeks—and it has allegedly been modified so that it transmits easily from human to human through the air.”
“That’s not modification, it’s weaponization. When did you discover this?”
“Only in the last several days. I just got back from Africa this morning.”
“Does your President know?”
“We’re not at liberty to discuss what the President knows or doesn’t know,” Carlton interjected.
Mordechai raised his hands in mock surrender. “All I’m trying to say is that if this is the event Damien and his Plenary Panel have planned, it’s going to be aimed at Israel too. We need to get our governments working together.”
“Agreed, but there’s another problem,” said Harvath. “Last night, Damien held a gathering at his estate.”
“I know,” Mordechai responded. “Helena sent me a report. It was something associated with his philanthropy. Some sort of charity board meeting.”
Harvath looked back over at Ryan and the Old Man. When they nodded, he pulled up several images on his laptop and turned it so the Israeli could see.
“These are the vehicles that were parked in the driveway last night,” he said. “And these are their owners.”
“You had a drone overhead?”
Harvath nodded.
“Ironic,” replied Mordechai.
“Why?”
“Because when Israel asks for your help, Mr. Damien’s civil liberties are sacrosanct, but as soon as you suspect something is up, drones get launched. But I suppose to truly be ironic, your drone would have to have been christened Liberty, or something like that. Was it?”
Harvath bristled at the remark, as did Ryan. But before either of them could respond, Carlton jumped in. “Don’t be an asshole, Mordechai. Israel has withheld information, slow-walked investigations, and refused to cooperate with us on numerous occasions, and you know it. Let’s not pretend you guys are coming to this with your virginity intact.”
It took a moment, but the man conceded the point. “Fair enough,” he said.
“Good,” Carlton replied. “Now, with the I-told-you-so’s out of the way, do you recognize any of the people who were at Damien’s last night?”
Mordechai pulled his chair closer and scrutinized the images. “No. Should I?”
“Not unless you like watching paint dry.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s an American expression.”
“I know what it means,” Mordechai stated. “How does it apply here?”
Harvath pointed to each one on his screen. “They all work for the government. Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Transportation, Department of the Treasury, Federal Communications Commission, Office of Personnel Management, United States Agency for International Development, Department of Justice, Department of State, and last but not least, the Department of Homeland Security.
“Each one of them is mid- to upper-level management in their agencies. Even with a million-dollar prize, you’d be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of people in the entire country who could name any of them.”
“In all fairness,” Mordechai replied, “even with a million dollars, you’d be hard-pressed to find many Americans who can even name your Vice President.”
He was right. Next to the self-preservation instinct of Washington’s political establishment, that was one of Harvath’s biggest hot-button issues.
American citizenship was an honor and a responsibility. Americans were stewards of their republic. The politicians weren’t in charge, the citizens were. Yet there were Americans who not only didn’t know a thing about how the government functioned, but there were staggering numbers who didn’t even bother to vote.
Harvath had long since made peace with the fact that many of the people he risked everything to protect were self-absorbed and disengaged. There was no other way to put it. He wasn’t a believer in political correctness. If you didn’t know who the Vice President of the United States was, you weren’t a “low-information voter,” you were a moron. Worse than that, you were lazy.
He didn’t expect the average citizen to know the head of every agency, but the second most important government official in the United States? That was by no means too much to ask.
While facts, in Harvath’s opinion, rather than emotion, bore out which political ideas were healthiest for the country, he didn’t begrudge anyone the right to vote for the candidate they believed was best for office. His only desire was for people to do their homework, develop an understanding of the issues, and marry that up to who and what they were voting for. In his heart, he knew every American was capable of leaping over that low bar. The fact that so many were unwilling, though, troubled him.
“So what’s the connection? Why were they all there?” Mordechai asked, bringing Harvath’s mind back to the matter at hand.
It was a question he had asked himself repeatedly since Nicholas had fast-forwarded through the drone footage before he and Ryan had raced off to Dulles to interdict Mordechai.
“We have run them through every database, and we can’t find anything,” said Harvath. “They all work for the U.S. Government, but we can’t establish any ties between them, much less to Damien.”
“He’s one of the wealthiest men on the planet,” Ryan added. “Everyone wants access to him. People want access to his money, to his power. Yet, one of the first things he does upon returning to the United States is invite this group of faceless bureaucrats to his estate. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Maybe that’s why he returned to the U.S.,” said Mordechai.
“To meet with them?”
The Israeli nodded.
“Why?”
“Well, if you can’t find something they all have in common, some philanthropic activity he was helping them with, then we have to assume that he needs something from them.”
Harvath was skeptical. “Like what?”
Mordechai shrugged. “I don’t know. If we throw African Hemorrhagic Fever into the mix, does it make the relationships more clear?”
“Department of Health and Human Services and Homeland Security? Sure. But an illness like that could conceivably impact every government agency. I can’t say any one of them is necessarily special.”
“But those two you just mentioned would be very involved with an outbreak of any sort, tr
ue?”
“So would the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.”
“Both of which,” Ryan clarified, “are actually under Health and Human Services and DHS.”
Mordechai looked at Harvath and raised an eyebrow.
“That still doesn’t tell us why they were there,” Harvath asserted. “They’re not agency heads. They’re management. They have limited power.”
“I don’t know about that,” the Old Man intoned. “Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.”
“We’re not talking about rejecting tax-exempt applications or overpaying for lavish conferences in Vegas,” Harvath insisted. “We’re talking about the subversion of the United States.”
“You don’t think they’re connected?”
“You do?”
“I believe power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” Carlton replied. “At this point in history, there’s no greater power than that of the American bureaucrat.”
“That doesn’t mean they’re actively trying to subvert the country,” said Harvath, stunned he had been forced to take their side.
“They don’t have to be,” the Old Man explained. “Do you think cancer knows it is killing its host? This is exactly why I left the CIA. The bureaucracy was eating it from the inside out, weakening it. It got to the point where we couldn’t effectively do our jobs. Even so, I could give you a list of Agency bureaucrats a mile long who would each flat out deny their efforts had been harmful to the CIA or the country. And each one of them could pass a polygraph test while saying it. But the Agency was different.”
“How?”
“Because as messed up as it was, our stakes were higher. The CIA’s mission involved keeping people and secrets safe. When it screwed up, that screw-up made the front page of every newspaper and every major news broadcast. You couldn’t run away from it. It couldn’t be swept under the rug, not like the rest of the government. And I’m talking thirty years ago. It’s only gotten worse since then.
“My point is that bureaucrats—like everyone else—have a mind-set. The longer they work for government, the more they believe government is the answer, and the less they trust the everyday citizen. In fact, they begin to believe that certain groups of citizens are the root of the nation’s problems. They see them as a threat. If those citizens can be brought to heel, the bureaucracy sees itself as doing the citizenry at large a greater good, actually making their lives better.”
