by Brad Thor
Though he didn’t want to, Harvath worked all of the events, introducing himself and shaking hands. The Old Man had been very clear that he expected Harvath to assume control over his business, as well as his network of contacts.
Whether he ended up going the management route or staying in the field didn’t matter. To have this many powerful, connected people in one place was an opportunity he needed to take advantage of.
Unlike Lydia’s wake, the Old Man’s wasn’t one he could sneak out of. He was the heir apparent and everyone wanted time with him. So he had stayed till the end and till every last guest had left.
Wandering the empty house felt strange. It was hard to believe Carlton was gone. He had been a legend and an institution, someone people both turned to and aspired to. They had broken the mold when they had made him.
Harvath walked into the study. It was like a mini museum, filled with reminders of the Old Man’s exploits, many of which most Americans would never be aware of. For a long, long time, he had been the person the nation had quietly turned to in order to solve its most pressing and dangerous problems.
That era, though, had passed. Many politicians, as well as many citizens, were willing to trade liberty in exchange for security. But as Ben Franklin was alleged to have said, Those who would trade a little liberty for a little security deserved neither and would lose both. The world was still a dangerous place, and it was growing more so.
The price of freedom had been and always would be vigilance. It required hard, nonstop, dangerous work. But the work was worth it.
And as long as there were men and women willing to give everything to preserve it, America could retain its freedom and continue to be the greatest beacon for hope and opportunity in the history of the world.
Deciding how to divvy up the Old Man’s personal effects was going to take weeks. There were a handful of things he knew the CIA’s historian would want to have, but there were others he felt should go to the International Spy Museum in D.C. It was important, in Harvath’s opinion, that America be given a glimpse into what an amazing man Reed Carlton was and how much he had given his nation.
Of course, if the Old Man were still alive, he’d resist such a thing and beat Harvath to within an inch of his life for suggesting it. That was simply who he was. He believed in America and what was required to protect it.
As executor, Harvath was responsible for the entirety of the Old Man’s estate—a large part of which was his legacy. He was an inspirational figure and the good he had done could live well beyond his violent death at the safe house in New Hampshire. That was Harvath’s plan. But it would have to wait.
Reed Carlton would have wanted him to do something else first. And, he would have been very specific about how he had wanted it done.
CHAPTER 78
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MOSCOW
TWO WEEKS LATER
Harvath had used a combination of intelligence assets to help him get all the way to, and into, Russia undetected.
A contact of his, Monika Jasinski at Polish Military Intelligence, had met him at the airport in Warsaw, then scrubbed clean all records of his arrival and transported him to the border with Belarus.
At the border, a team of smugglers loyal to the Old Man, who had also been handsomely rewarded on a recent operation by Chase and Sloane, picked him up and transported him across the country to the border with Russia.
There, he was met by an old acquaintance. Before the murders in New Hampshire, he had been developing her as an intelligence asset inside the FSB—Russia’s equivalent of the CIA. She was a patriot who loved her country, but despised its system of government.
Bob McGee, Lydia Ryan, and even President Porter had all been aware that he had slowly been attempting to bring her over. This was the one part of the plan that Nicholas hated the most. He saw Alexandra Ivanova as its weakest link—an untested pillar they would be resting all of their weight upon.
Though she and Harvath had a long history, and despite the fact that he had even killed a major Russian mafia figure in the Caribbean the previous year to help advance her career, there was no telling how she would handle his request. He was putting his neck in a noose, handing her the other end, and closing his eyes.
The hardest part for Nicholas was that, while he loved the plan in general, there was no one he could go to help him push back on Harvath and the specifics. McGee and the CIA had no idea what they were doing. And that went double for the President. This was completely off-book, and therefore off anyone’s radar.
The little man had argued as intensely as he could, but Harvath’s mind had been made up. There was only one thing they had agreed with each other on—if Ivanova double-crossed them and Harvath ended up captured, the Russians would go to extraordinary lengths to guarantee there would be no rescue this time.
It was a risk that Harvath had been willing to take. In fact, “willingness” had nothing to do with it. After running it through his mind a thousand and one times, this had been the only path he could see available.
He knew it had to be the right course because the Russians wouldn’t see it coming, and it was also exactly what the Old Man would have done. It was a plan that required a pair of the biggest balls anyone had ever seen.
Once he had the address he had been waiting on in Moscow, he prepped an envelope and sent it on its way. Inside was a letter to Russian president Fedor Peshkov. It was signed by Harvath and explained, in excruciating detail, everything he was going to do to him. It brought chilling new meaning to the words “hate mail.”
Hiding in a farmhouse near the border between Belarus and Russia, Harvath had fieldstripped, cleaned, and reassembled Reed Carlton’s 1911 pistol so many times that it gleamed in the darkness.
Putting together his kit for the operation, it had seemed appropriate to carry the legendary spymaster’s favorite weapon. Even if Harvath never drew it, the mere fact that he had brought it along for protection would be a profound way of honoring him.
Of course, the greatest way to honor Carlton would be to avenge him, which was exactly why he was here.
When Alexandra Ivanova finally showed up, they had a brief exchange before he climbed into the cutout in her trunk. She covered him with a custom piece of carpeting, and shut the lid.
He felt every bump, jostle, and pothole in the road. The ride was absolutely brutal. But it was also absolutely necessary.
Ivanova was one of the smartest intelligence operatives Harvath had ever met. It was one of the reasons he had labored so hard to get her to come to work for him. She didn’t have ice in her veins; what she had was molten steel.
She had agreed to the operation with one caveat: Everything that happened inside Russia was her call.
Naturally, Nicholas had balked at this condition and had told Harvath that he’d be better off cutting his own throat in D.C. At least then it would save SPEHA Rogers the trouble of negotiating the repatriation of his body.
Harvath, though, had agreed to all of her demands. He trusted Alexandra. If she had wanted to burn him, she could have done so long before now. As far as he was concerned, she was someone he could trust.
Riding in the secret compartment in the trunk, he expected to feel the car slow down at some point, if nothing else then for the border. The slow-down, though, never came. She kept the pedal to the metal.
Ivanova had assured him that as long as he could make it to the border, she could get him across. And apparently, she had been right.
When she pulled her less-than-new sedan off the highway, they were halfway to Moscow.
Opening the lid and pulling back the carpet, she let Harvath out of the back.
“Welcome to Russia,” she joked.
Even though he wasn’t in the mood, Harvath smiled. “Thank you,” he said. “I ordered an in-flight meal, but never received it.”
Without missing a beat, Alexandra responded, “I’ll make sure to let my supervisor know. We value every passenger atte
mpting to sneak into our country.”
“Speaking of which,” said Harvath, “how is it we didn’t stop at a border checkpoint?”
“I bribed the guards. On the way out, I flashed my credentials and gave them all cartons of cigarettes. On the way back, I told them I’d be coming with live lobsters on melting ice destined for the Kremlin. None of them argued. They opened a lane for me and I drove straight through.”
It was a good start. Harvath hoped it would last.
They spent the first night in a suburb on the outskirts of Moscow. Alexandra had done all of the advance work. She knew the routines of each target, where they would be and when. For the first one, though, Harvath wanted to see for himself.
The next morning, after a cold shower and a bad cup of coffee, she took him to the target’s apartment building. Then they watched him emerge and followed him to work.
“Satisfied?” she asked.
Harvath nodded. The real satisfaction, though, would come the next morning. That’s when the rubber would meet the road and Ivanova would have to prove her commitment to the operation.
Smuggling him across the border was a good start. But helping him to scratch the first name off his list was the real test. If she proved herself fully onboard tomorrow, it would be one less thing he had to worry about.
CHAPTER 79
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They had spent the rest of that day checking in on the other targets and visiting the other locations. Everything was set, or at least as set as it was going to be.
That night, they stayed in and ate takeout that she had brought back to the apartment. She asked him what had happened, and he told her, all of it.
Alexandra’s heart, which had always had a soft spot for him, broke. It was one of the worst stories of loss she had ever heard—possibly even worse than her own.
When the words stopped coming and he could no longer speak, she offered him the bed. Ever the gentleman, he took the couch.
She slept in her bedroom, the door open in case he changed his mind.
They rose well before dawn and made ready. He had brought money for Alexandra, which she tried to refuse, but he insisted. She was taking an enormous risk. She deserved to be compensated.
There were four more envelopes, also filled with cash. She had promised that she would make sure they were quietly delivered to Sini and her husband Mokci, as well as the families of Jompá and Olá in Murmansk Oblast.
With everything cleaned up and put away, they went through the apartment once more, wiping it down for fingerprints. Harvath doubted the Russians would ever make the connection, but he didn’t want to leave any proof that he and Alexandra knew each other and had ever been at the same location. She was too valuable an asset to lose.
Despite the cold, the car started right up. The moment it did, Harvath set the heater to High. He knew it wouldn’t do any good until the engine had warmed up, but psychologically it made him feel better.
It was still dark as they made their way out onto the snow-covered suburban streets. Only a few cars were about, people getting a jump on the morning shift traffic.
Normally, Harvath wouldn’t have involved Alexandra in this part of an operation, but he needed her language skills. It was critical that he extract absolutely unambiguous intelligence from their target. The less time he spent inside, the less chance of his getting caught.
Nicholas had been key to the entire operation. With only Teplov’s journal, and what Harvath had been able to share with him, he had gone to work. It was astounding what he had been able to put together in just two weeks.
Pulling up behind the apartment building, Alexandra found a place to park and then, after she had killed the engine, they both exited the vehicle.
“Ready to go?” Harvath asked.
Alexandra pulled up the scarf, covering her face. “Ready to go,” she replied.
They were using burner phones from Vladivostok. They might as well have been from Mars. Even if they were discovered, local police were never going to expend any manpower tracking down how they had come to Moscow.
Taking out his lock pick tools, Harvath unlocked the back door and waited for Alexandra to text that she was in place. Their target lived on the ground floor.
When the text came, he pressed his ear against the glass, waited until he heard the doorbell, and then let himself in.
The man lived alone and had no girlfriend that Nicholas had been able to ascertain based on his emails, texts, and social media pages. He also didn’t have any pets. There was nothing else special about him other than he was about Harvath’s height and weight and worked on the floor they needed.
As Alexandra fed him a line of bullshit at the front door, Harvath crept up silently on him from the back of the apartment. Once he was in range, he deployed his Taser and took him down.
Kicking his legs out of the way, Alexandra stepped inside and closed the front door.
The fluidity with which Harvath flex-cuffed him and threw a hood over his head demonstrated that he had done this before.
Grabbing a chair from the kitchen, Alexandra helped Harvath drag him into the bedroom and sit him down. There, as she pulled the barbed Taser probes out of him, Harvath tied him up.
The man couldn’t see his attackers, but he could hear them. Harvath asked if he understood English. When the man claimed not to, everything else went through Alexandra.
They grilled him for over two hours until, looking at his watch, Harvath indicated that it was time to go.
After Alexandra had left the room, Harvath removed the man’s hood, but only long enough to gag him and wrap several passes of duct tape around his mouth before replacing his hood.
Per Harvath’s instructions, Alexandra returned with a gas can from the car and placed it beneath the chair. Even under the hood, the fumes were instantly recognizable. She explained in Russian that a bomb had been placed under him and that if he attempted to move, or made too much noise, it would explode.
She also relayed that as long as he cooperated, they would be back within twenty-four hours and would set him free. Who they were, where they were going, or why any of it involved him, they never revealed.
Going through his closet, Harvath found the clothes he needed and quickly got dressed. Then, in the living room, Alexandra handed over the man’s ID badge and repeated how security at the entrance to the facility worked. Alexandra would go in first, and be nearby in case anything went wrong.
Harvath hoped that wouldn’t be necessary. If there was one thing he knew, it was that nightshift workers were practically zombies once it was time to go home. The morning shift that replaced them was almost as bad, needing a lot of coffee—and most important, sunlight—before they were fully awake and functioning. It was the perfect time to make their move.
Leaving the man bound and gagged in the apartment, Harvath pocketed his cell phone and they headed out.
It was a short drive to their next stop and Alexandra parked out on the street, rather than in the employee parking lot, so that they wouldn’t be impeded in making their escape.
By the time they got to the front entrance, there was already a line of employees slowly shuffling inside. Alexandra went first, followed by Harvath.
Completely wrapped up against the cold, all he was required to do was show an ID. The security guards never even asked him to show his face. Without looking at Alexandra, who had taken one of the public chairs just inside the entrance, he pressed on into the building.
Eschewing the employee locker room, he found a utility area where he dumped the man’s coat, gloves, and scarf. From there, he was only one stairwell away from his target.
With his eyes downcast, he maintained the plodding, uninterested pace of the average Russian worker, while every cell inside him wanted to charge to his destination. He knew from experience, though, that sure and steady was what would win the race and get him what he wanted.
Because he moved the way that he did, no one gave
him a second glance. He looked exactly as he had hoped he would. He looked as if he belonged there.
Arriving at the door, he took a deep breath and tried to steady his heart rate. Breathe, he reminded himself. So he did.
Reaching out for the cold, stainless steel handle, he opened the door and stepped inside.
The room was dark, its blinds closed. One of the things the man tied up back at the apartment had said was that upon entering, his job was to prep the room for the morning. So, that was exactly what Harvath did.
Opening the blinds, to allow the early rays of the sun to shine in, he heard something behind him. The patient was awake.
Turning, he smiled and said in English, “Good morning, Josef.”
CHAPTER 80
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Before the man could cry out, Harvath was on him.
Josef had been admitted to Moscow City Hospital Number 67 for a complicated spinal surgery due to injuries had had suffered in the crash. He was paralyzed from the waist down and could only move his upper body.
Stunning him with a blow to the head, Harvath disconnected his patient call button, slapped a piece of duct tape over his mouth, and then removed a syringe.
Reaching for Josef’s IV, he injected it with succinylcholine and then, grabbing him by the throat, he pulled the piece of tape from his mouth.
“I told you back in New Hampshire I’d find you,” said Harvath, “and that when I did, I’d kill you. So now, guess what?”
“Fuck you,” gasped Josef.
“Don’t talk,” Harvath instructed. “Just listen. You killed my wife and you also killed two of the most important people in the world to me. You dragged me all the way over here to your shithole country to interrogate and then kill me. It didn’t work, though. You want to know why? Because you’re a failure. You have always been a failure. And now you will die a failure.”
