by Brad Thor
“Reach behind you and open the rear passenger door,” said Chase.
Unbuckling her seat belt, she leaned back and threw the door wide open. Seconds later, Harvath leaped in.
“Go! Go! Go!” he commanded, slamming his door shut.
Lying on the backseat, he focused on catching his breath as Chase punched the accelerator and got them the hell out of town.
CHAPTER 42
* * *
KALININGRAD
The Rome bombing, despite his concern about moving it up, had gone off perfectly. It was exactly what his superiors back in Moscow had needed to see. It had also garnered wall-to-wall media attention.
The fuse had been lit. Tretyakov could stop right now and everything would probably take care of itself. But that would be leaving too much to chance. He didn’t believe in trusting things to chance—especially for something this important. There were still many more things to be done.
Chief among them was getting to the bottom of what NATO knew, and what their level of preparedness was. Because the haystack fell partially within his jurisdiction, he was one of several people charged with finding those needles.
Any intelligence operatives who delivered intel to Moscow that proved helpful for its Baltic invasion would be able to write their own ticket. They would not only receive rank advancement and state acknowledgement, but they would also be positioned to reap incredible financial benefits. Just as the punishment for failure could be extreme, so could the rewards for success. Sometimes, as much as he hated to admit it, the underpinnings of capitalism made sense.
What didn’t make sense, though, was who the American on the CCTV footage from Visby Hospital was. That was needle number one.
Ivan Kuznetsov had received the footage from one of his assets on Gotland, a police officer named Johansson. The American had identified himself as “Stephen Hall” and had NATO credentials. But based on all of its NATO sources, Russia couldn’t find anything on him. For all intents and purposes, Stephen Hall didn’t exist. Tretyakov was certain the man was an intelligence operative, likely CIA or possibly DIA.
He forwarded the footage to Moscow, where they ran it through all sorts of analysis and facial recognition programs. They thought they had a partial match with a piece of Al Jazeera footage from a few years back. An American soldier had been caught on tape beating a local man in a Middle Eastern market, but the comparison was inconclusive.
Other than that, they had come up empty. The guy was a ghost. That only further served to convince Tretyakov that he was dealing with an intelligence professional—probably one who was very highly skilled.
Flying a team into Gotland on a private jet was a big deal. NATO had money to burn, but not for run-of-the-mill personnel conducting site surveys for alleged training exercises. The local police might have bought a cover story like that, but not Tretyakov.
The fact that the people on the plane were there to meet a Swedish intelligence operative, the same man who had Staffan Sparrman under surveillance, concerned Tretyakov—and rightly so.
Even though the man’s death had looked like an accident, Tretyakov was now worried that they had been too rash. The Gotland cell was too valuable to lose—especially right now.
Kuznetsov, though, had told Tretyakov not to worry. According to Johansson, the local Chief Inspector hadn’t suspected anything.
The worst thing that they could do at this point was to change their routines or to start acting suspiciously. The beauty of the Gotland cell was that it wasn’t trying to hide. It was operating right in the open for everyone to see.
Tretyakov supposed he was right, but he didn’t like it. What bothered him was not knowing what his opponents knew. If they had anything of substance, they would have rolled the entire cell up by now. Putting it under surveillance seemed to suggest that they were still gathering information.
Tretyakov was willing to go along with Kuznetsov and let it ride, for the time being. He didn’t want to be the one to tell Moscow that they needed to shut the Gotland cell down. There was too much riding on them.
The second needle he had to deal with was the alleged Gryphon missile upgrade kits. He used the term “alleged” because like “Stephen Hall,” none of his NATO sources knew anything about the missiles, other than the fact that they were supposed to have been destroyed. By all accounts, there were no Gryphons in NATO’s inventory. But did that mean they didn’t exist?
Tretyakov didn’t trust the Americans, not one bit. Therefore, he was willing to entertain the idea that they secretly, and in violation of the treaty, had either left in place or removed, and later smuggled back in, land-based cruise missiles in Europe. His issue, though, was that the level of secrecy that would be required for something like this was almost outside NATO’s capability.
America and its allies had always been obsessed with following the rule of law and the terms of their treaties. To take such a gamble was so far outside their comfort zone that the missing upgrade kits had started to feel like disinformation to him. Yet Russia’s GRU and FSB had both received solid, separately sourced reporting on it.
That’s what really had made it difficult. If the corroborative reporting hadn’t been there, it would have been much easier to brush the entire idea aside. But they couldn’t ignore what had come in—including the report from the United Nations in New York City. The behavior of the American and Baltic Ambassadors had all but verified the theft of the missile kits.
Based on his sources, the search had moved from Poland into Belarus—Minsk to be exact. The presence, or lack thereof, of the Gryphon missiles in the Baltics was a top-level concern for Moscow. They wanted proof, either way, and they wanted it ASAP.
Tretyakov had activated a team in Minsk to observe the progress there, and had also been shaking down every contact he had in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. The road mobile launchers used for the missiles were not vehicles that were easy to hide, nor were rumors of their existence. Somebody, somewhere, had to know something.
In the meantime, Moscow continued to tighten the screws on him. They not only wanted answers, but they were also anxious to finish prepping the battlefield so that they could launch their invasion.
They wanted him to capitalize on the success of Rome. More than that, they wanted him to improve upon it. They were focused on civilian casualties. Civilian deaths captured the media’s attention. Once you had the media’s attention, the public’s followed, like a dog on a leash.
The question was how he would follow up on the Rome bombing. That attack had been perfect. It had also been unique, on many levels. Replicating it wouldn’t be easy.
But if easy was what had been needed, there were many untold numbers Moscow could have called. He occupied the position he did because he delivered what others couldn’t. He delivered the impossible.
And, as he cleared his mind and decided which attack would come next, he realized there was no better word for it than impossible.
CHAPTER 43
* * *
GOTLAND
Harvath took a good, hard look at Staffan Sparrman. Haney and Staelin had him tied to a chair in an equipment shed on the edge of the rental property. It smelled like gasoline and rotten wood. They had stripped him down to his soiled white underwear. His hood was still on.
The cold had gotten to him. He had only been in the shed for a while, but he was shivering.
There was a tarp in the corner. Harvath gathered it up and draped it over his shoulders.
“Staffan, listen to my voice,” he said. “The worst of this can already be behind you. It is your decision. If you cooperate with me, you will be home, in your own bed, before the night is over. Do you understand me?”
Harvath watched as the man slowly nodded.
“That’s good. Now, before we get started, I want you to know the ground rules. Only a few kilometers from here, we also have your mother, the Governor, in custody.”
It was a lie, of course, but Sparrman didn’t know that. All
he knew was that he had been taken captive. Why wouldn’t the same people have been able to do the same to his mother? This was Gotland. She didn’t have police protection. There was no need.
Harvath watched as Sparrman’s body tensed. As Harvath had suspected, despite the man’s difficult relationship with his mother, he still cared for her.
“If you answer my questions truthfully,” he continued, “no harm will come to her. Do you understand? If so, nod.”
Again, the man slowly nodded.
“Good. Here’s the flip side. If you lie to me, or if I suspect you are lying to me, whatever pain I make you feel, your mother is also going to feel. Is that clear? If so, nod.”
Even more slowly this time, the man nodded.
“Good,” said Harvath. “Let’s give this a try. We’ll start with something easy. You have Russian Special Forces soldiers working on your farm.”
Instantly, the man shook his head.
Harvath drove the open metal contacts of Chase’s Taser into Sparrman’s ribs and depressed the trigger.
Sparrman’s body went rigid as he cried out and wet himself again, the urine running down his left leg and onto the floor.
Harvath pulled the Taser back and gave the man a chance to regain his composure.
“Did you see what happened in Rome, Staffan?”
The man’s head lolled from side to side. There was a fog detainees could slip into. It was the brain disconnecting from the trauma being inflicted on the body. In essence, it was a psychological safe space. Harvath was having none of it.
Drawing his open hand back, he brought it slicing down and slapped Sparrman hard, on the side of his head.
With the duct tape still over his mouth, there was only so much noise he could make.
Raising the radio to his mouth, Harvath said, “Taser the Governor.”
Immediately, Sparrman attempted to cry out and shook his head from side to side.
Moments later, a distant woman’s scream came back across the radio. Hearing it, Sparrman slumped.
“Are there Russians working on your farm?” Harvath asked.
This time, the man answered with the truth. He nodded.
“Are they Spetsnaz?”
Again, Sparrman nodded.
“Who’s in charge?”
It was the first time he had asked something other than a yes or no question. With the tape over his mouth, Sparrman wouldn’t be able to answer.
Reaching under the hood, Harvath found the duct tape and tore it off. It was painful and the Swede flinched.
“Who?” Harvath repeated.
“Help!” Sparrman screamed in Swedish. “Someone, please! Help me! Help!”
Balling his hand into a fist, Harvath drew it back and hit him so hard in the side of his head that it knocked him, and his chair, over onto the floor.
With the man on the floor, stunned, or maybe even unconscious, Harvath took a moment to examine his hand. No matter how careful he was, hitting someone that hard always hurt like hell.
Why didn’t they ever just cooperate? he wondered. Why did they always resist? What was the point? Until they told him what he wanted to know, there was no escape, no getting out. He was in charge. But how bad things would get was totally up to them. Yet they still fought.
That was fine. Eventually, they all broke. All of them.
Pulling the chair back upright, he gave Sparrman a few light slaps through the hood to bring him back around.
“Can you hear me, Mr. Sparrman?” he asked.
Beneath the hood, the man nodded.
Holding up his radio, Harvath said, “Good. Now listen to what is about to happen to your mother.”
With that, there were a series of what sounded like distant slaps followed by more of the same woman’s screams. Though they were allegedly happening kilometers away, Sparrman winced and felt each one personally. Sloane was doing a very convincing acting job.
Setting the radio down, Harvath looked at his prisoner. The tarp he had kindly draped across his shoulders lay on the floor. He was bleeding from beneath his hood. If Harvath had to guess, it was from his mouth or his nose—maybe his ear as well. He was shaking again from the cold. He was in bad shape.
“How much more will you put your poor mother through, Staffan?” he asked.
The man didn’t seem ready to answer. That was fine by Harvath. Inside the shed was a large plastic bucket. Crossing over to it, he picked it up and brought it back over to where Sparrman was seated.
Lifting the man’s feet, he placed them inside the bucket. Then he walked over to the corner and retrieved a large gas can.
Bringing it back over, he unscrewed the cap, and held it under Sparrman’s nose for several seconds. After affixing the spout, he began to pour, sloshing plenty of it over the Swede’s legs and thighs.
Some even splashed against the man’s private parts. It stung like hell, and that’s when Sparrman began screaming.
CHAPTER 44
* * *
“Are you going to cooperate with me?” Harvath asked. “Because if this is just another game, I promise you I will not be happy.”
“I will cooperate,” the man shouted from beneath his hood. “Please. It burns.”
Harvath yanked off his hood. “The sooner you tell me what I want to know, the sooner you can get cleaned up. Who is in charge of the Russians on your farm?”
“His name is Dominik Gashi,” replied Sparrman.
Harvath studied him, watching for any of the tics or subtle facial cues that might indicate that he was lying. “And who is Gashi?”
“Will you let my mother go?”
“It depends on what you tell me. Who is Dominik Gashi?”
“He works at an animal-processing plant here on the island. It’s called FörsPak.”
“What was your involvement in the death of Lars Lund?”
“Nothing,” the man insisted. “He was following me, so I told Dominik. He said he and the Russians would take care of it.”
“Why would you report something like that to Dominik?”
Sparrman didn’t answer.
Harvath held up the Taser. “Listen to me, Staffan. You’re sitting in gas, literally up to your balls. In addition to a shitload of electricity, this Taser produces a real beefy spark—nineteen sparks per second, to be exact. What do you think might happen if I have to Tase you again?”
The Swede looked at the device and then down at his underwear, his legs, and finally his feet, submerged in the bucket of gasoline.
“I report to Dominik as well,” he admitted. “We all do. He is in charge of everything.”
“Define everything.”
“He controls the Russians. They only work on my farm as a cover. I assume they are soldiers of some sort. Then there are the rest of us. Local Swedes, sympathetic to the cause.”
“What cause?” asked Harvath.
“The Russian cause.”
“Communism?”
Sparrman didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. Harvath knew that was exactly what he meant.
“How many Russians are on your farm?”
“Eight,” said the Swede.
“Any non-Russians?”
The man shook his head.
“How many locals, sympathetic to your cause or otherwise, are part of your cell?”
“Six,” replied Sparrman.
“I’m going to want their names, occupations, and where they live.”
“Promise me you will let my mother go. I will give you whatever information you want.”
“This isn’t a negotiation, Staffan,” Harvath reminded him. “Every single thing that happens to you is completely within your control. If you cooperate, everything will be fine. If you don’t, then you’ll see what happens. That’s the last time I’m telling you.”
Tucking his Taser in his back pocket, he pulled out his phone, activated the voice memo feature, and, holding it up, said, “Now, let’s have those names.”
Sparrman rattled them off.
“Marcus Larsson. He works for one of the Gotland radio stations and lives in Visby. Henrik Erickson is an auto mechanic. He lives and works in Hemse. Ove Ekström lives in Tofta and is unemployed. Ronnie Linderoth is a handyman and lives in Klintehamn. Hasse Lustig works on the ferry and lives outside Visby. And then there’s Magnus Johansson—”
“Police officer,” a voice interrupted from the doorway of the shed. “I also live just outside Visby.”
Harvath spun. Standing there, with his service weapon drawn, was Johansson—the same cop Harvath had seen driving past in Old Town earlier that night.
“Drop the phone,” the officer ordered. “Hands in the air. Keep them where I can see them.”
Harvath, who had been in the shed alone with Sparrman, did as he was instructed. “How did you know we were here?”
“The car rental agency gave me descriptions of your vehicles,” he replied. “Someone thought they had been seen near the Sparrman farm, but we couldn’t confirm that. Tonight, though, I saw your Camry parked in Visby.
“I placed one of these inside the wheel well,” he said, holding up a small, inexpensive GPS device. “When Staffan disappeared from O’Learys, Nikolai called Dominik and Dominik called me. This was the first place I came. When I heard him cry out for help, I knew I had done the right thing.”
And he probably alerted everyone else in the cell that he was coming, thought Harvath. At least the Spetsnaz team, with their vehicles disabled, won’t be able to back him up anytime soon.
That didn’t change the fact, though, that Johansson had the gun and thereby, the upper hand. Harvath had to think of something, quick.
Sparrman was blabbering at his comrade in Swedish, probably telling him he wanted to be untied so he could rinse all the gasoline off his man parts.
Johansson said something back and then looked at Harvath. “Turn around, slowly, and face away from me,” he ordered.
Harvath obeyed.