by Brad Thor
“A homicide? What homicide?”
“According to this guy Sheppard, a Maryland assistant medical examiner and one of his investigators were approached by two men posing as FBI agents who told them to leave the case alone. Shortly thereafter they were killed in a traffic accident.”
The president was livid. “Why the hell wasn’t I told about this?”
Anderson shrugged his shoulders and said, “I assume you’ll have to ask Director Vaile that.”
“Get him over here right now,” ordered Rutledge. “And after I get to the bottom of this with him, I want to talk to Geoff. We absolutely cannot let that story run.”
“Do you still want me to assemble the NSC?”
The president thought about it for a moment and replied. “I want the confirmation on Najib directly from Vaile. Then I’ll decide what our next move should be.”
The chief of staff nodded and disappeared.
Once he was gone, Rutledge drilled his thumbs into his temples. He could feel a monster migraine coming on. Things were spinning so wildly out of control that they were starting to fly off the track. He didn’t want to even think of what might happen next. Deep down, though, he knew that things were going to get much worse before they even had a prayer of getting better.
CHAPTER 72
On Twelfth Street, just south of Logan Circle, Harvath doubled back once more to make sure he wasn’t being followed and then crossed the street and entered the bank.
The bank officer was professional and polite. After checking Harvath’s ID and signature, she gestured for him to follow her to the vault that contained the safe-deposit boxes.
Harvath produced his key and in a synchronous fashion that he felt certain was designed to impress, the bank officer followed his lead, inserted her key, and turned it at exactly the same moment as if they were about to unleash a nuclear weapon.
Once the box was withdrawn, he was shown to a small, private room where the door was shut behind him and he was left alone.
Harvath lifted the lid off the box and removed the normal things one would expect to find—stock certificates, bonds, and legal papers. Beneath them was what Harvath had really come for.
As he stared at the items, he felt a strange sense of reluctant contentment for having had the foresight to be prepared for such an event. Actually, who was he kidding? It wasn’t foresight. He was just practical. His own government had turned on him repeatedly. What prompted him to keep the stash of items was a keen instinct for survival, plain and simple.
There had been the president’s kidnapping years ago, the more recent setup in Iraq with Al Jazeera, and now this. Each time the people he served had left him on the outside looking in. They had branded him a criminal and now, a traitor.
He had always known he was expendable. It was part of the territory, but to lump his family and friends in that category was unacceptable.
Every time he’d been forced to the outside, Harvath had had to muscle his way back in. He’d had to make the powers that be see that he was right and that they were wrong. This time, though, he didn’t know if things were that black-and-white. He wasn’t going to just sit back while someone stalked the people in his life. And for the first time ever, Harvath thought he might actually burn for what he was doing.
He’d always been about doing the right thing. He had pursued the correct course of action repeatedly throughout his career, often at his own peril, but with the knowledge that as long as he did what he felt was right, he’d be able to look at himself in the mirror and that was all that mattered.
Now, he was confronting something new—two versions of what was right: the president’s version and his own. The decision Harvath had to make, though, went much deeper than simply what was right. It was about protecting the people he cared about who had been put in harm’s way for no reason other than their love or friendship with him.
In Scot Harvath’s mind, there could be no bigger betrayal, no larger disloyalty than to allow these innocents to be harmed. Whatever the cost to himself, he had to stop that from happening.
CHAPTER 73
Harvath gathered the things he needed from his safe-deposit box and left the bank.
As he stepped outside, his eyes rapidly scanned everything—rooftops, parked cars, the people on the street. The president had put an Omega Team on his trail, and Harvath knew that they would use all necessary means to stop him.
The team could be anywhere at this point, and he needed to be prepared for what he would do if they found him.
Harvath made it back to his SUV without incident and headed northwest out of D.C. As he drove, he removed another cell phone from the bag on the backseat and dialed.
He wanted to check on his mother and Tracy, but it was too risky. If the CIA was looking for him, they’d be watching for calls that came in to either of the hospitals. Instead, he dialed the outside access number for his BlackBerry’s voicemail system to check for messages.
There were several from Gary Lawlor. Having just spoken with him, Harvath deleted them. The only other message was from Ron Parker. He was urging Harvath to call as soon as possible and left a different number than usual to contact him.
Harvath punched the digits into the phone and waited. The quality of the ringing changed halfway through and it sounded as if the call was being routed. Harvath started to grow uneasy. If the CIA had used Tim Finney’s pilots as well as Rick Morrell against him who might be next?
Realizing that any CIA interference would be virtually undetectable, he decided against hanging up. A moment later, Parker answered.
“Are you someplace safe?” he said.
“Safe enough for now,” replied Harvath. “Is this line secure?”
“Our mutual fly-fishing friend set it up. As long as we stay away from specifics, I think we’ll be okay.”
Harvath knew immediately what Parker was talking about. Tom Morgan had set up the communication link and the need to stay away from specifics was because as good as Morgan was, the CIA and NSA were better. If they wanted Harvath bad enough, which apparently they did, the CIA and NSA could have programmed the Echelon eavesdropping system to monitor all calls for certain keywords relating to Harvath and what he was embroiled in.
Therefore, Harvath needed to choose his words very carefully. “Did you know about the change of plans on my trip home?”
“Not until after you had already deplaned. If we had known, we would have told you.”
Harvath knew Parker well enough to know that he was telling him the truth. “How’d they find out?”
“They learned about our little trip south of the border. But not until you were already on your way back from overseas. How’d everything work out?”
“It was quite enlightening. Apparently our little buddy has not been completely forthcoming.”
“About what?” asked Parker.
“His list was light by one name.”
“Do you think it was a mistake?”
Harvath laughed. “Not a chance. He knew what he was doing. We just need to find out why.”
There was a long pause before Parker responded. “We need to talk.”
Those four words had never meant anything good when uttered to him by a woman, and Harvath felt even less confident about their being anything but a prelude to bad news right now. “What’s up?” he asked.
“All of our contracts have been canceled,” said Parker.
“Canceled? What are you talking about?”
“We received calls from our special clients back east and they all invoked the same cancellation clause. No discussion, no explanation.”
Harvath didn’t know what to say. The contracts for Site Six and the Sargasso Program were their bread and butter. They represented a tremendous amount of money. “I guess that’s the big boys’ subtle way of telling you that I’m persona non grata.”
“Actually,” replied Parker. “It wasn’t so subtle. One of the larger dogs in the five-sided kennel called to let us kno
w that all of the contracts could be immediately reinstated.”
“If you only agreed to sever all ties with me.”
“Pretty much.”
Harvath didn’t like having put his friends in this position. They’d already done more than enough for him. With the Pentagon offering them a way out, Harvath decided he’d make it easy on them. “Thank your boss for everything and tell him to consider all contacts between us severed.”
“You can thank him yourself. He told them all to go to hell.”
That was very much like Finney. With all the betrayals Harvath had suffered lately, it was nice to know he still had some real, true friends, which was all the more reason not to let Finney devastate the business he’d worked so hard to build and so loved operating. “He’s a charmer. He’ll bring them around.”
“What about you?”
“I’m going to finish what these people started,” said Harvath.
“They can cancel our contracts, but they can’t stop us from helping you.”
“Yes, they can. The contracts are only the tip of the iceberg. The pressure only gets more intense as your heads get pushed beneath the water. You guys don’t want that. You’ve already helped me a ton and I’m grateful for it.”
Parker didn’t like being cut out of the loop any more than Harvath. “So we won’t actively do anything else unless you ask us. The babysitters will remain in place, though, and that’s not an item open for discussion.”
Harvath smiled. “I appreciate that.” It was good to know that Tracy and his mother would continue to be looked after.
“If you change your mind about additional help,” continued Parker, “you’ve got my number. In the meantime, I’ve got a couple of housekeeping items for you. They’re not much, but they should help sharpen your focus a bit. I’ll drop them off shortly.”
“Thanks,” replied Harvath, who knew that Parker was referring to the internet-based electronic dead drop they had developed in case they needed to communicate while Harvath was away from Elk Mountain. Considering recent developments, he was glad they’d established it.
“Anything else we can do?” asked Parker.
“There is one thing,” replied Harvath.
“Name it.”
“I need you guys to help me arrange a tee time.”
CHAPTER 74
BETHESDA, MARYLAND
The Congressional Country Club was one of the most exclusive country clubs in the nation. Opened in 1924, its Blue and Gold courses had been later redesigned by Rees Jones, with the Blue course repeatedly named one of the country’s hundred best.
The course was a challenging tableau of rolling green hills and tall trees. It embodied the best characteristics of the world’s finest courses and was the only thing demanding enough to take James Vaile’s mind off the crap that went along with his job as director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
He had a standing Sunday tee time, which he kept even more religiously than Sunday services at Holy Trinity in Georgetown. It was like therapy, and he truly believed it was one of the few things that kept him both sane and civilized in an undoubtedly insane and uncivilized world.
The Congressional Country Club was the playground of Washington’s elected aristocracy, and Vaile found it invigorating to be treading the same links that William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, and Dwight D. Eisenhower had.
The eighteenth hole of the Blue course was normally Vaile’s favorite. The view from the tee alone was incredible, as it looked toward the rear of one of the most majestic and imposing clubhouses in the world.
The drive itself took all the concentration Vaile could muster. From the elevated box, it was 190 yards over water. If you were lucky, your ball landed on the peninsula-like green and rolled to the edge of the cup, or better yet straight in.
Today, lady luck was not smiling on the DCI. Still upset over the ass-chewing he’d received from the president and having serious doubts about whether his people would be able to recapture Harvath, Vaile airmailed his first shot well over the green. He still couldn’t believe that Rutledge thought he might have had a hand in the deaths of the Maryland ME and his investigator girlfriend. Though the accident was certainly convenient, neither Vaile nor any of his agents had anything to do with it. The idiot had just blown through a red light.
Even so, the president wanted the reporter from the Baltimore Sun taken care of. How the hell Vaile was supposed to do that was anybody’s guess, especially as Rutledge had made it crystal clear that no harm was to come to the man.
With two of the five Gitmo terrorists dead, the biggest point of contention between the president and the DCI was what they should do next. Rutledge was all but convinced that a carefully worded Homeland Security directive needed to be sent to all law enforcement agencies about the possibility of an attack on American school buses. Vaile, though, still had his doubts and fell back on many of the same arguments that he had made before.
One thing was certain, there was no way any alert could go out with the threat of the Baltimore Sun article looming. It would throw everything that the president did from that point forward into question. His credibility would be severely undermined, and every single terrorism directive that came out of Washington would be second-guessed to death.
Vaile already had the beginnings of a plan in the works and welcomed the opportunity for a little peace and quiet out on the links. Many of his best breakthroughs came when he simply quieted his mind and concentrated on his game.
Though the DCI tried valiantly to do just that, his next drive was what was known in golf parlance as an “elephant’s ass”—high and stinky. It came up short and rolled down the shaved embankment into a watery grave.
“Except for the distance and the direction,” quipped Vaile’s golfing buddy, “that was a pretty good shot.”
Vaile wasn’t in the mood. He tee’d up one more, just to prove that he could put it on the green, which he did. It was his putting, though, that proved to be his final undoing.
It should have been a tap-in, but Vaile ended up four-jacking the hole. He was a man of considerable temper, and it took everything he had not to break his club over his knee. Vaile’s chum couldn’t decide what he found funnier, three shots off the tee to get to the green, or four putts to get the ball into the hole.
As the man wound up to bust his friend’s chops once more, Vaile looked at his watch and informed him that he needed to be on his way. The pair shook hands and Vaile’s foul mood notwithstanding, the DCI promised to pick up lunch after their game next week. The CIA director then disappeared toward the clubhouse with his protective detail in tow.
Hitting the locker room, all Vaile wanted to do was take a short steam before heading back to his office in Langley. He prayed to God no one would recognize him, or if they did that they would have the good social grace to leave him the hell alone.
Stripping out of his clothes, Vaile grabbed a towel and headed toward the steam room. His security detail was familiar with his routine and wouldn’t expect him to exit the locker room for at least a half hour.
Though he wasn’t crazy about his people seeing him naked, the real reason Vaile had them wait for him outside was that he just needed time alone. Being the director of the Central Intelligence Agency was hard enough; being constantly surrounded by bodyguards because so many nutjobs wanted him dead only made it harder. Sometimes, even if it was only for half an hour on Sundays, James Vaile wanted to forget who he was and just be anonymous for a while. And considering the day he was already having, he could use a little escape time more than ever.
Yanking open the door to the steam room, the DCI was greeted with a heavy cloud of thick mist scented with eucalyptus. He grabbed a seat on the lowest tier of the white-tiled benches and listened for the beautiful music of the door clicking shut.
When it did, his body began to relax. For the next few minutes he was completely cut off from the outside world, enveloped in b
lissful silence.
Vaile leaned back and closed his eyes. He was finally alone.
His mind began to drift, but as soon as it did, his thoughts were interrupted.
“That was one of the ugliest games I’ve ever seen played in my life,” said a voice from one of the benches above him.
Vaile was a well-known figure at the club, and he wasn’t surprised that his play had been noticed. Still, he had to fight back the urge to tell the hazy figure sitting above him what he could do with his opinions. Vaile simply wanted to tune everything out.
“This hasn’t been one of my best days,” he replied, his voice trailing off—a clear signal that he didn’t feel like talking.
“You can say that again,” replied the man as he leaned forward and cocked his pistol.
CHAPTER 75
Despite the intense heat of the steam room, Vaile’s body turned to ice. “Who are you?” he demanded. “What do you want?”
“You’ll forgive me, director,” said the voice, “if I save us both time and ask the questions.”
“My security people are—”
“Not even in the locker room and won’t expect to see you for a little while still.”
Vaile recognized the man’s voice but couldn’t place it, at least not right away. “I know you.”
Harvath came down off the upper bench and took a seat next to the DCI.
When the curtain of fog parted, Vaile couldn’t believe his eyes. “Harvath. Are you crazy? Aren’t things bad enough for you? Now you pull a gun on the director of the CIA?”
“First,” responded Harvath, “I don’t see how things could get much worse for me. And second, I didn’t pull a gun on you, I cocked one that wasn’t even pointed in your direction.”
“I’ll make sure to note that subtlety when I report this meeting to the president.”
