by Brad Thor
There would be no going back to the way things were before. That wasn’t how Carlton operated. He was incredibly stubborn and single-minded when it came to the business and what he thought best served the needs of the country.
You either followed his advice, or he advised you to hit the road. Things were black, or they were white. There was no gray.
But while there was no gray with the Old Man, there was with the Agency. In fact, there was green—and in more ways than one.
Harvath was reminded of his conversation with Helen Cartland in the pub back in Berlin. She had asked him what kind of green badger he was. Was he a private contractor or corporate?
In his time working with the CIA, he had learned about a hybrid type of contractor. Something called SpecTal, a combination of someone who was sometimes a private contractor and sometimes a corporate contractor.
But for that to happen, Carlton would have to want to keep him around. If Harvath said no to moving into a leadership role at the company, he doubted that was going to be an option. The Old Man would cut ties. That was just the way he was.
If he wanted to stay in the field, going the private route might be the answer. He would be giving up a lot by leaving The Carlton Group, but he stood to gain so much in return.
The CIA wouldn’t care if he lived in Boston or Bangladesh. All they would care about is that when they called, he picked up the phone.
Becoming a private contractor for the Agency would allow him to do what he loved to do, and do it from Boston.
He’d have to give up his house. And there was also the chance that the President wouldn’t be happy with his decision, but how much would that matter?
He wasn’t hanging up his cleats. He’d just be using a different locker room. If the President wanted him for something, he could still find him. He just wouldn’t be right down the road.
The more he thought about it, the more the pieces started falling into place. For a moment, he had to stop himself and ask if this was really what he wanted to do. Was he actually going to leave The Carlton Group?
He was tired. His head wasn’t on straight. It was a crazy idea. Certainly not something he should be thinking about in the middle of an operation. Pondering the future wasn’t something he could afford to do right now. He needed to focus on the present.
He turned his mind back to all the questions that had been piling up like a chain-reaction car crash in his brain. He pulled at a thread here, a thread there, trying to unravel what it all meant.
He was on his third cup of coffee and no closer to any answers when the plane began to descend and Harvath looked back out the window.
They were over the water, just south of Sicily. Double-checking the prisoners, he returned to his seat and buckled up.
It felt odd to be returning. His last visit had marked a low and very dark time for him. He had stayed drunk for days and had even taken a shot at the man he was about to see.
Hopefully, he’d already put that behind him. If Harvath had wanted to kill him, he would have. It had been only a warning shot.
Some people, though, had a way of carrying a grudge. Especially those who had been shot at.
CHAPTER 43
The interrogation facility was located about a half hour outside the town of Valetta. It had been built to resemble a rural Maltese farmhouse. The guts of the operation were belowground in a series of tunnels and windowless cells that had been nicknamed the Solarium.
A man named Vella ran the program. He had PhDs in psychiatry and neurochemistry, and was considered one of the best interrogators in the business.
He was the one Harvath had shot at. Vella and his team were waiting as the jet landed and taxied inside the private hangar.
As soon as the pilots shut down the engines and lowered the stairs, Vella and his team came aboard.
“Flight okay?” Vella asked, as his men got the prisoners ready to deplane. “Any trouble?”
Harvath shook his head.
“Good. My car’s outside,” he replied, waving Harvath toward the cabin door.
He was a couple of inches shorter than Harvath, lean, with dark hair and glasses. He didn’t look like some mad scientist. He looked like an accountant.
Harvath grabbed his bag and followed him out to the car.
“Hungry?” he asked as they climbed into his silver Jaguar.
He was. “Can we pick something up on the way? I want to get started with the interrogation as soon as possible.”
“Don’t worry. We’ve got time.”
When Harvath had been given permission to transport Sergun and the other two to the Solarium, the Old Man had explained that Vella would be running the show. Harvath was expected to follow his lead.
“Breakfast or lunch?” he asked as they left the airport and pulled out onto the main road.
“Lunch,” Harvath replied.
Vella nodded, pressed the button to open the sunroof, and pushed down on the accelerator.
Harvath lowered his window. The sun was bright and it was warm outside. He could smell the ocean. It felt good being close to the water.
Twenty minutes later they pulled off onto a dirt road and kept going. There were no houses, no shops, nothing. They were in the middle of nowhere. Harvath’s antennae were beginning to stand up. Then he saw it.
It was half beach cottage, half shack, surrounded by a faded picket fence. A brightly colored rowboat was pulled up onto the beach in front. Two old men worked repairing a large fishing net.
Vella parked his car and motioned to follow him inside.
The front of the restaurant was open to the ocean. They were shown to a small table and offered menus.
“Is there anything you don’t eat?” Vella asked.
“Brains and intestines,” Harvath replied.
Vella laughed and ordered in Maltese for both of them.
When the waitress left to place their order, Harvath said, “Listen, I owe you an apology.”
Vella held up his hand. “No, you don’t.”
“I shot at you.”
“If you had intended to hit me, would you have?”
Harvath nodded.
“Then you didn’t shoot at me. You shot near me. There’s a difference. In your case it was a subtle difference, but a difference nonetheless.”
“I apologize.”
“It’s in the past,” Vella replied. “Let’s talk about the present.”
“What do you want to know?”
“How you broke Eichel and Malevsky. And then what, specifically, it is you want me to get from Sergun.”
“Did they send you my reports?” Harvath asked.
Vella nodded. “I read everything. I just wanted to see what else you could provide. Even small things, things that may seem inconsequential, can sometimes help me.”
Harvath began speaking, but paused as the waitress returned with their drinks. Once she had gone again, he continued. Vella didn’t write anything down. He simply listened, only breaking in when he wanted clarification.
By the time their food arrived, he had told him everything he could remember about all three prisoners.
The lunch was fantastic. Fresh prawn carpaccio, “aljotta,” which was a traditional fish soup, and for their main course a rib eye of veal with wild mushrooms.
By the time Harvath was done eating, he felt even more tired than he had on the flight in. Vella ordered espressos—a double for Harvath—and paid the bill.
When they were done with their coffees, they returned to the car and continued on to the Solarium.
Even with his knowledge of Arabic, the road signs were difficult to read. Maltese was an interesting language, to say the least.
Arriving at the farm, Vella checked Harvath in, issued him a security card, and showed him to his room.
“I’m going
to start with Malevsky first,” the interrogator said. “I want to gather as much intel as I can before I sit down with Sergun. Okay?”
“Your house. Your rules,” Harvath replied.
Vella smiled. “Give me two hours and then come down.”
“Will do.”
As the man left and closed the door behind him, Harvath tossed his bag on the end of the bed and began unpacking. He then texted a quick update to Lydia Ryan and took a long, hot shower.
After shaving and changing his clothes, he set the alarm on his phone and lay down on the bed. Within seconds, he was asleep.
An hour later, his alarm went off. Though he could have used a lot more sleep, he at least felt a little refreshed.
Pulling a bottle of water from the small fridge in the room, he drank half of it and headed downstairs. He knew his way from the last time he had been here.
It was at the end of his last assignment. He had been given a list of kills to carry out. They were elites, untouchables scattered across Europe. They had been responsible for the terrible pandemic that had swept the globe.
The last person on his list had been a South African. A prisoner at the Solarium. Harvath had brought him to Malta himself.
The South African had worked for the elites. He had helped make their plan possible. He had killed scores and scores of innocents. He was the last link in the chain and Harvath had killed him with his bare hands.
Then he had chased everyone out of the Solarium and had gotten drunk. He had stayed drunk for days. It was the only way he could deal with what he had seen and what he had done.
When Vella came to check on him, that’s when he had fired a shot at him. Thirty-six hours later, a friend walked into the cell Harvath was camped in and sat down. They drank and they talked. They sat there until Harvath was ready to leave.
It was indeed one of the lowest points of his life. He had done what he had needed to do, what he had been assigned to do. Once he felt ready, he had flown back home.
He and Lara, along with her parents and little boy, had retreated to Alaska. Harvath had friends there who had a fishing lodge. It was a good place to ride out the next four weeks, a safe, remote place to hide from the infection.
Then, as quickly as the disease had appeared, it disappeared—all but burning itself out.
Every nation had suffered, some worse than others. The amazing thing was how quickly “normal” life had returned. No matter what nature threw at mankind, mankind always seemed to find a way to rebound.
Nevertheless, Harvath still carried the demons with him. He saw the faces of the dead and the dying. He felt responsible, as if somehow he could have changed the outcome. Somehow stopped it.
But based on what he had known, and how far he’d had to go to get answers, he couldn’t have stopped it. The wheels had already been in motion. The virus had been set loose before anyone knew what was happening. The men behind the attack didn’t send out polite announcements drawing attention to what was coming. It wasn’t his fault.
What about Anbar, though? The SAD team was there because of the intelligence Harvath had received from Salah. They were so convinced it was solid, they had bet everything on it. Then the team and the helicopter contingent had gotten wiped out.
Next came the assassination of the Secretary of Defense, his security team, and the suicide bombing at the White House. All of that led from Salah to Sacha Baseyev, and now to the man in a cell downstairs, Colonel Viktor Sergun. He was the man with the answers Harvath wanted.
In light of that, it probably made sense that Vella was in charge of this interrogation. Harvath wouldn’t have been subtle. He would have been brutal.
The death of Valery Kumarin had been an accident. Harvath hadn’t intended to kill him when he showed up at Malevsky’s estate, but that had been the result. Perhaps D.C. was trying to safeguard against any more accidents.
Whatever the reasoning, the call had been made. He was an observer now. Vella had full authority. He was the one calling all the shots. Harvath would act accordingly.
As he walked down the stairs, he looked forward to watching the interrogation of Viktor Sergun.
CHAPTER 44
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Almost twenty-four hours had passed since the suicide bombing. The North Portico, which functioned as the front door to the White House, was badly damaged. Scaffolding had been erected to block it from view. Emblazoned across it was a billowing American flag.
In a trend just as disturbing as the Secret Service’s reluctance to apply maximum force to trespassers, the President had refused to be evacuated.
He had been in the West Wing when the bomber detonated. His security detail had immediately rushed him to the underground bunker formerly known as the Presidential Emergency Operations Center. They watched the unfolding pandemonium on the cable and television networks whose cameras were permanently encamped on the North Lawn.
Once it became obvious that it was a suicide bomber and that several minutes had passed with no follow-on attack, President Porter had wanted to leave the bunker to assist the wounded. The Secret Service didn’t need to restrain him. His entire senior staff jumped up to stand in his way.
“Absolutely not,” his Chief of Staff said. “No way.”
When Porter tried to push past, his National Security Director stated, “You know how these people operate. The first bomb draws everyone in. The second takes everyone out.”
“Look at the feeds,” Porter insisted, pointing to all the television monitors in the room. “The first responders are already up there. There isn’t a second bomb.”
“We don’t know that,” the Vice President replied. “Please, Paul. Let’s just wait.”
“Those are our people up there,” he fired back. “I am not going to have it said, ‘The President of the United States cowered in a bunker while they needed help.’ ”
Now it was the Press Secretary’s turn to step in. “Nobody will say that, Mr. President. Right now, though, you need to be kept safe. The nation is going to want to hear from you.”
His lead Secret Service agent, a man named Chudwin, drew the Chief of Staff aside and made his case to evacuate the President to the Continuity of Government facility in West Virginia.
Porter saw them speaking and interrupted. “Agent Chudwin,” he said. “We’re not leaving. That is final. Am I understood?”
Chudwin looked at the Chief of Staff and then to the President. “Yes, sir.”
What he liked even less than cowering in the bunker was abandoning ship. With the issue settled, he looked at his Press Secretary. “I want to give a national address.”
“When?” she responded.
“As soon as possible. Just a few brief remarks to show everyone we’re still here and to reassure the American people that we will respond to this attack.”
The Press Secretary looked at her watch. “Give me twenty minutes to write something up.”
“And I want to do it from the Oval.”
The Press Secretary looked at the President’s lead Secret Service agent.
Chudwin shook his head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, sir.”
“Duly noted,” replied Porter, who looked back at his Press Secretary and stated, “We’re doing it from the Oval.”
An hour and a half later, stations around the world broke into their programming to carry the President’s brief address.
Porter was a gifted speaker and had struck the right tone. He praised the Secret Service for its bravery, extended his heartfelt prayers for the dead and wounded, as well as their friends and families, and then announced his resolute determination to avenge the attack.
It was a very specific choice of words. Some of his predecessors had preferred the phrase bring the perpetrators to justice. Bringing perpetrators to justice was what you did
with purse snatchers or bank robbers.
This attack hadn’t been a criminal act. It had been an act of war. Porter didn’t want to put the perpetrators in prison, he wanted to put them in the ground. If, once America found them, there were enough pieces left to justify using a casket.
When the address was complete, the President joined his National Security Council in the Situation Room. They had been practically living there ever since.
With Washington’s network of security cameras, the FBI had been able to gather a significant amount of intelligence.
They already had CCTV footage of the bomber as she walked several blocks to the White House, though her point of origin was unclear.
The bomber’s walk had started somewhere within an area where there were no cameras. They were assuming that she had exited from either a building or a vehicle.
The two-block area in question had been completely sealed off. FBI agents were combing it methodically, which meant the search was very slow-going.
The Bureau’s biggest concern was that when or if they found a car, a van, or an apartment belonging to the bomber, it might be rigged with explosives. They were using robots, dog teams, and everything else at their disposal, to get to the bottom of it.
In the meantime, the banner the bomber carried had been identified as the flag of ISIS. They had all suspected as much.
The big question now was whether the bomber had been inspired by ISIS or actually directed by them.
For his part, President Porter had grown unforgiving of the distinction. As long as ISIS called for attacks against the West, America in particular, the responsibility was on them.
But what about the Russians? Harvath had been able to draw a line from his murdered informant in Belgium to the GRU. He had even learned that a GRU operative had flown from Frankfurt to Antalya right around the time of the attack on Secretary Devon.
That didn’t mean, though, that the Russians had been involved. In order to allege, much less act on, something that serious, he was going to need proof. Ironclad proof.
