Black Ice

by Brad Thor

  Taking out his phone, Sarov unlocked the app he used to communicate with Han and texted him a quick message: I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Be ready to move.

  Just as he was slipping the phone into his pocket and getting ready to exit the building, Han responded with a request. The moment Sarov read it, he knew that what the man was proposing was a highly dangerous idea.

  CHAPTER 23

  “The one thing we can all agree on,” said Haney as they gathered around the table in the safe house kitchen, “is that Han is not going back to the Radisson.”

  “Not in a million years,” Preisler agreed, pulling a warmed serving dish from the oven, piling it with mountains of spaghetti carbonara, and carrying it over to his hungry teammates.

  Sloane and Chase had been assigned the next shift and had already turned in. Everyone else waited until Sølvi had been served, then loaded up their plates.

  “He knows he’s been burned,” replied Johnson, shaking a ton of red pepper flakes onto his pasta. “So he’s got to go to ground. But where?”

  Staelin smiled. “Any place he thinks he’ll be safe from Harvath.”

  “Which is nowhere.”

  The team laughed at the joke, but Sølvi felt the need to clarify something. “As far as we know, Han has no idea who was following him. Not exactly.”

  Harvath nodded. “The Russian with the neck tats asking all the questions—he figured I was American and automatically guessed CIA.”

  “But unless he was livestreaming your interrogation,” said Sølvi, “none of that would have left the building.”

  She had a good point, and Harvath turned to Nicholas. “What are the chances of us getting into their phones?”

  The little man shook his head. “All brand-new iPhones. They could take days to crack. Add on even more time if they were using encrypted apps to communicate.”

  “Can we back up a second?” asked Haney. “The lead guy was wearing jeans and had neck tats. The other three were dressed like they were headed to some low-rent disco. Not exactly the picture of typical Russian Intelligence operatives.”

  He was right and it had been bothering Harvath. “If Han is here doing something with the Russians and Yevgeny Sarov is his contact, why not pull a team from the embassy to shadow him? And why wasn’t there a team on him yesterday?”

  “Maybe you didn’t see them,” said Preisler.

  “Or maybe,” Staelin offered, “Han picked up on you and requested protection.”

  Harvath twirled a piece of spaghetti onto his fork and stabbed a piece of pancetta. “I went back and forth through the CCTV footage a million times. You can check for yourselves. There was no team. There’s also nothing to suggest that he knew I was tailing him.”

  “Up until the point where you lost him,” Haney needled him with a smile.

  Harvath ignored the jibe and ate his pasta.

  Nicholas steered the conversation back in a more productive direction. “If these men aren’t from the embassy, which it doesn’t sound like they are, they’re probably from the criminal realm. The question is: Why go that route?”

  “I can think of a couple of reasons,” said Harvath. “Han and Sarov are doing something off-book and they don’t want the embassy to know. Maybe the embassy has been penetrated and they’re worried about a mole. Or, it could be that Han wants to defect or has something to pass to the Russians. If Sarov was put in charge of vetting the opportunity, he might have been told by his superiors, just to be safe, not to involve anyone from the embassy.”

  “Or,” Sølvi interjected, “they know that Norwegian police keep Russian Embassy personnel on a revolving surveillance schedule and didn’t want to risk that this could have been their night.”

  Nicholas touched his index finger to his nose and pointed at her. “Occam’s razor.”

  “The simplest answer isn’t always the right one,” she replied, “especially not in intelligence work, but in this case I think it deserves the most weight.”

  “So how do we use any of this to pick up Han’s trail?” Preisler asked.

  “If he makes another reservation with his alias and current credit card,” said Nicholas, “we’ll have him.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  “Then we’re still at square one.”

  “What about his room at the Radisson?” asked Harvath, the ibuprofen kicking in and his headache starting to ease. “Whether he comes back or not, we still need to see it, right?”

  “Preferably before housekeeping,” said Nicholas, agreeing with him. There was no telling what might be in the garbage or Han’s personal effects that might provide a lead.

  Johnson reached for more red pepper flakes and pointed out, “You’re not getting anywhere without a key card, though. The elevator won’t operate without one. And even then you’ll need to have one coded for the specific floor you’re targeting.”

  “You sound pretty confident,” replied Harvath.

  At that, Johnson slid his phone over to him. On it, a YouTube video was playing. It showed a tourist riding up and down in one of the hotel’s glass elevators. Each time, they had to swipe a key card past a sensor.

  Harvath returned the phone and said, “We’ve also got the issue of the alias Han is using—Zhang Wei. There are two of them registered at that hotel. We don’t know which one we want or which room he is in.”

  “Actually,” Nicholas announced as he checked his email, “I just heard from my people in Belarus. They got access to the property management system. Our Zhang Wei, the one whose passport information you sent me, is in room 803.”

  “Now all we need is a key card. Can you fabricate one?”

  “I can do you one better,” the little man said. “I can book you into the room right next to his.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Harvath didn’t waste a lot of time getting geared up. He selected a Heckler & Koch VP40 pistol, an inside-the-waistband holster, and several extra magazines.

  He tucked a flashbang into each coat pocket and helped himself to a set of lockpick tools. Per the floor plan Nicholas had pulled up, Harvath’s and Han’s were adjoining rooms. That meant they had a common door and, like every other hotel in the world, it was likely secured by a standard lock. Once Harvath was in his room, he’d have it open in no time.

  Grabbing communications gear and an empty carry-on bag, he headed outside and tossed his bag in the cargo area of one of the black SUVs. As Preisler got behind the wheel, Harvath took a seat behind him.

  Sølvi wanted to come up to the room with him, but he preferred to have her eyes and ears downstairs, so she drove separately with Staelin. Haney and Johnson would follow in a third vehicle, while Nicholas remained at the safe house to coordinate the overall operation.

  When they arrived at the Radisson, Harvath gave the lead bellman a large tip, explained that he was headed right back out, and asked if it was okay for his driver to wait. Because of the hour, and more importantly the tip, the bellman was happy to comply.

  The great thing about a big, busy hotel was that it was highly unlikely anyone would remember that only a matter of hours ago Harvath had been sitting in the lobby bar, drinking coffee.

  Crossing to the front desk, he presented a passport and credit card identifying himself as “Jonathan Taylor” and checked in.

  “Mr. Taylor, will you be needing one key card or two?” the attractive young clerk asked.

  “Just one,” he said with a smile. Though she was all the way over in the lobby bar, he could feel Sølvi’s eyes on him.

  Once everything, including how and where breakfast was served, had been explained, he headed for the elevators.

  Waving his key card over the sensor, he pressed the button for the eighth floor. Then, just as the doors were closing, a voice shouted, “Hold the elevator, please!”

  Harvath reached down and hit the Door Open button and Johnson stepped in.

  “Hi there, handsome,” he said. “Is that a flashbang in your pocket or are you just
happy to see me?”

  Harvath subtly flipped him the bird as the elevator doors closed and they rode up to their floor.

  When the doors opened, a woman with two wheeled bags, one big, one small, stood aside so the men could exit, and then she entered the elevator.

  Harvath and Johnson waited for the doors to close and the elevator to head down before checking the emergency stairwells and then approaching their room.

  Harvath unlocked the door with his key card and then stepped inside, followed by Johnson, who hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the knob.

  Inserting their earpieces, they did a quick comms check, swept their room, and got to work.

  It turned out that there were two doors separating the adjoining rooms. Harvath quietly opened the first one and then Johnson slipped a tiny fiber-optic camera under the second.

  Moments later he reported, “All clear. Nobody’s on the other side.”

  With that, Harvath used his picks, opened the remaining door, and stepped inside.

  The TV was on, set to the default hotel welcome channel, but other than that it was quiet.

  The bathroom was empty, as was the closet. And not just empty, but empty empty. There wasn’t a toothbrush, a razor, or a pair of trousers to be seen. Even the garbage cans had been stripped of their plastic trash bags.

  As Johnson checked under the bed, Harvath checked the dresser drawers. They were empty as well.

  Had Han come back? Had he ever even been here to begin with? The bed, while not fully unmade, was mussed—as if someone had moved the pillows around and had taken a nap without getting under the blankets.

  “So much for him never coming back,” said Johnson. “It looks like—”

  He was interrupted by Nicholas’s voice over their radios. “Han just checked out.”

  “What do you mean Han just checked out?” said Harvath.

  “The hotel management system shows he just did an in-room video checkout. Where are you?”

  “We’re standing in his room,” he replied. Then, looking at Johnson, he said, “The woman with the suitcases when we got off the elevator. Let’s go!”

  As soon as he saw how many floors away the elevator was, he directed Johnson to the stairs. As they ran, he radioed a description of the woman to the rest of the team.

  “She just passed us a couple of minutes ago,” said Sølvi. “She went out the main entrance.”

  “I saw her too,” Preisler added. “She got into a black Mazda CX-30. Pulled out of the driveway headed southwest.”

  “Follow her,” Harvath ordered.

  “Roger that. I’m on it.”

  “Haney. Be out front in sixty seconds,” he then said.

  “Roger that,” the man replied. “Haney inbound.”

  “Do you want me to get my car from the valet?” asked Sølvi.

  “Negative,” Harvath answered. “We’ll come back for it later.”

  When they hit the ground floor, Harvath and Johnson stopped and took a breath. Gently opening the door, they crossed the lobby and exited the hotel. Outside, Haney was idling in his SUV. Sølvi was shotgun. Harvath and Johnson hopped in back with Staelin.

  “Go!” Harvath directed, before they had even shut their doors.

  Sølvi activated the navigation and communicated over the radio with Preisler, trying to get a fix on his location.

  He had his nav engaged as well and had been blowing through red lights, trying to catch up with the woman in the Mazda. He did his best to pronounce the Norwegian street names he was passing.

  Eventually, Sølvi had a good idea as to where he was and how they could catch up. She told Haney what she wanted him to do and gave him turn-by-turn instructions.

  Minutes later, they caught up with him. Several car lengths ahead, he had his eyes on the Mazda. They followed as it turned onto National Road 4 and proceeded north.

  They continued a safe distance behind until they came to a roundabout where the Mazda branched off onto National Road 22.

  “Where do you think she’s headed?” asked Harvath.

  “The airport,” Sølvi said.

  He was no native, but he had been in Oslo all summer and had made more than a few trips out to drop off and pick up friends and family. This wasn’t a route he was familiar with.

  “It’d be a lot faster if she just got on the main highway. Are you sure she’s headed for Gardermoen?” he asked, using the official name for Oslo Airport.

  “She’s not going all the way out to Gardermoen,” Sølvi said, correcting him. “She’s going to Kjeller.”

  “What’s Kjeller?”

  “A small, one-runway airfield much closer; just northeast of the city.”

  “Did you hear that, Nicholas?” Harvath asked over his radio.

  “Good copy,” the little man affirmed.

  “I want our bird fueled and standing by. If the target is there and goes wheels up, we need to be right behind him.”

  “Negative.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The crew is timed out.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “It’s a seventy-five-million-dollar aircraft. The FAA, not to mention the insurance company, is rather particular about rest periods.”

  Damn it, Harvath thought. “How much longer will they be down?”

  “They’re back on the clock at five a.m.”

  He checked his watch. It was already after midnight. “Any chance we can charter a plane and have it on standby?”

  “At this time of night? It would take hours just to find a crew. And even if we could find one, along with an aircraft, where do we tell them we’re going?”

  Nicholas was right. By the time they pulled together a charter, their jet—along with their crew—would be ready for takeoff. “Forget I asked. We’ll keep you in the loop. Be ready to pack up.”

  “Roger that.”

  At the light for Kjeller airport, the Mazda turned right onto Storgata street and made its way toward the main entrance.

  As it drove into the main parking lot, Preisler and Haney pulled over to the shoulder and killed their lights. The occupants of the two SUVs watched as the Mazda approached a retractable gate. It rolled back, allowing the vehicle to enter, and then closed immediately behind it.

  In front of the hangars, the high-pitched whine of jet engines could be heard coming to life.

  “Okay,” Harvath said over the radio so he could address Preisler and Haney at the same time. “Keep your lights off and let’s head for the parking lot.”

  Putting the SUVs in gear, the men followed Harvath’s instructions.

  They took parking spaces right up against the perimeter fence and climbed out of their vehicles. They had a perfect view of the airfield.

  Less than a hundred yards away the Mazda sat, its headlights extinguished, next to a Cessna Citation CJ3 light business jet.

  The air stairs of the jet were down, but no one was visible on the tarmac. It was hard to tell what was happening.

  At first, Harvath assumed all of the activity must have been taking place inside the aircraft. Then he saw a faint light come on inside the Mazda—as if someone had just picked up their phone.

  Seconds later, the light vanished and the woman from the Radisson stepped out of her vehicle and onto the tarmac.

  After pulling the wheeled bags out of the backseat, she walked them over to the base of the air stairs and waited.

  No sooner had she arrived than the copilot came down the air stairs, accepted the bags from her, and took them back up into the aircraft. Harvath and his team had yet to set eyes on Han or Sarov.

  “Preisler,” Harvath said over the radio as the woman returned to the Mazda. “Did you ever get close enough to get her plate number?”

  “Negative.”

  “Johnson, that’s now your job. I want you to find a concealed spot near the gate and take down her number when she exits. Preisler, get back in your vehicle and be ready to follow her when she leaves.”


  “Roger that,” the men replied.

  “Haney and Staelin,” Harvath then commanded, “I want the tail number of that aircraft.”

  Both men flashed him a thumbs-up.

  Once the copilot had raised the air stairs and secured the door, the pilot applied power to the engines. The jet’s whine increased, and the aircraft rolled out onto the runway. The Mazda headed for the gate.

  Harvath gestured for Sølvi to join him back in their SUV. He needed another favor. A big one.

  CHAPTER 25

  Harvath’s “big favor” was actually a collection of favors. But as much as she loved him, there was only so much Sølvi could do.

  First and foremost, she made it clear that, photos or no photos, she wasn’t going to run background checks on the dead Russians from the construction site. She’d be signing her own arrest warrant. If she started poking around before the bodies had been discovered, she’d wind up as the prime suspect. It was a nonstarter.

  Running the license and registration on the Mazda was another story. That she was happy to do.

  She was also happy to pull any CCTV footage from the airport. And before Harvath had even asked, she offered to reach out to a contact at the Civil Aviation Authority to see if the jet had filed a flight plan.

  Preisler was the first one out of the lot as he followed the Mazda back toward Oslo.

  As the rest of the team hopped into the second SUV with Harvath and Sølvi, she was already working the phone. Johnson wrote down the license number and handed it to Harvath. Staelin, now riding shotgun, did the same with the aircraft’s tail number while Haney fired up the vehicle and started back to the Radisson. The plan was to get Sølvi back to her car and then head for the safe house.

  Despite the late hour, it was amazing how quickly she was able to gather information. Swiss precision and German efficiency had nothing on the Norwegians.

  The first thing to come back was the name and address of the Mazda’s owner—a Russian woman who lived west of downtown Oslo.