by Brad Thor
“I’m sure the vice president wouldn’t see it that way,” replied a defensive DaFina.
DaFina was all hot air, a bully. The minute someone stood up to him, he hid behind the vice president’s skirts. Harvath let out an audible sigh of contempt, and DaFina turned on him.
“And you. I wasn’t finished with you, Harvath,” he said, turning his gaze toward Secret Service director Jameson and FBI deputy director Lawlor. “Is it or is it not true that Agent Harvath disrupted and possibly contaminated three separate crime scenes and assaulted a federal officer?”
For some reason, probably his intense dislike for the chief of staff, Lawlor changed his earlier stance and chose to come to Scot’s defense. “We’re looking into it.”
“Looking into it? From what I hear, it was you that had him recalled for it!” DaFina’s feigned anger was growing with each passing second, as was his satisfaction. He knew he had them on the ropes, and he grabbed at the opportunity to regain the control Vaile had taken from him. “Director Jameson, why hasn’t this man been placed on leave until a full-scale investigation can be conducted?”
“I have yet to fully debrief him. This is a Secret Service matter and will be handled as such. I hardly think we need the vice president’s chief of staff telling us how to do our jobs.”
“Well, obviously somebody should.”
“Just like somebody told you it was okay to answer the president’s secure line?” fired Harvath.
Embarrassed, but not letting on, DaFina continued. “Director Jameson, like it or not, Vice President Marshfield is in charge and may be for quite some time. If, and I stress the if, the president does not return safely, the vice president will finish out his term. I need not remind you that your position as director of the Secret Service has already been severely jeopardized. If, and I am stressing the if again, the president does not return to his office, you will retain your directorship only by the consent of Vice President Marshfield. Do I make myself clear?”
Jameson was up against it. As much as he hated to admit it, DaFina was right. Before he could respond, though, DaFina continued his attempt to roll over him. “I want this man,” he said, pointing at Harvath, “suspended immediately, pending a full investigation. I don’t want to see him near the White House or anywhere else for that matter. Am I clear?”
“I’ll take it under advisement. In the meantime, I want to make sure you are completely clear on something. Short of a horrific constitutional crisis that would put you in the Oval Office, I am still the director of the Secret Service. I don’t take orders from you. Got me?” asked Jameson.
“Director Jameson, I warn you that you are walking a very, very fine line. I can assure you that when I speak, I am speaking for the vice president, who, per the cabinet’s invoking of the Twenty-fifth Amendment, is now acting president and commander in chief. Agent Harvath is to be suspended, period. Understood?”
Harvath knew he had nothing to lose and decided he wasn’t going to let this pip-squeak get the last word. “You’ve got more to worry about than me, you know.”
“You just won’t disappear, will you? Of course we have more to worry about than just you,” replied DaFina.
“A lot more. First, you’ve got a leak somewhere. Someone with some pretty substantial access. Those kidnappers had help. High-level help. And then—”
Against his better judgment, Lawlor tried to save him. “Scot, shut it.”
“Agent Lawlor, with all due respect, I’m going to listen to what Agent Harvath has to say, because I guarantee you these will be the last words he ever utters in his capacity as an active Secret Service agent. So,” continued DaFina as he made his way around the table so he could stand right above Harvath, “what else do you have to say? You couldn’t possibly dig your grave any deeper than you have already. Or could you?”
Standing above him was an obvious power play, meant to intimidate, but Scot Harvath wasn’t easily intimidated. In fact, the move pissed him off. He wasn’t an idiot, and he’d been trying to couch what he was planning to say as diplomatically as possible, but his anger was building and quickly getting the better of him. He fought hard to keep it under control.
Harvath had swiveled his chair to the right as DaFina approached and leaned slightly back, assuming a relaxed, nonthreatened posture. “Mr. DaFina—”
“That’s Chief of Staff DaFina to you, Harvath! Get it right. You know, it’s all starting to become clear to me how this whole thing happened. Some of the people around here might be impressed with your SEAL background, but it doesn’t impress me. You fucked up big time as the advance man. The whole Secret Service fucked up, and I don’t give a rat’s ass that you saved the president’s daughter.
“The president is gone, and I don’t need to go looking far and wide for somewhere to lay the blame. It’s sitting right here in front of me.” DaFina punctuated his next remark by poking Harvath in the shoulder with his pudgy finger. “So, if you’ve got something to say, then say it, because your career is finished!”
Harvath snapped. Grabbing DaFina’s finger, he stood up from the chair and gave the finger a good twist, making DaFina’s arm go limp, and then bent it behind him. He raised DaFina’s hand upward toward the back of his neck and leaned forward to speak into his ear. “Yeah, I’ve got something to say. First, your mother should have taught you not to point at people, especially a SEAL. There’s nothing that pisses me off more than when people point at me. It’s not very polite. Second, you and your boss are playing a very deadly game. His no-negotiating-with-terrorists line doesn’t fool anyone, especially me. You know what?”
DaFina winced in pain.
Harvath continued, “Your little call to the Syrians didn’t fool me either. It was plain to everybody in this room. Your boss is going to milk this thing for all it’s worth. And, if the president isn’t returned alive, he’ll have a one hundred percent approval rating when he bombs whomever you guys finger as the ones responsible. There’s nothing the American people like more than an all-out bombing run. Having accomplished that, your boy will be a shoo-in for president in the next election. This whole thing stinks!”
Scot let DaFina go and turned to walk toward the door. As he did, he noticed the chief of staff cock his arm back with an open hand as if he intended to slap him. Spinning, Scot just missed DaFina’s blow and brought his fist up in an uppercut to the man’s jaw. With a crack, the punch landed and blood spurted from DaFina’s mouth as his teeth clamped together, catching part of his lip.
Immediately, DaFina’s hands flew to his face as he staggered backward. Jameson waited a beat and then fished out a handkerchief and handed it to him. When DaFina saw the blood, his rage was for real. “Harvath, if you had even a prayer of surviving before, it’s gone now. You are through!”
Turning to the group, DaFina said, “Do you see what he did to me?”
This time, it was the normally quiet and reserved FBI director Sorce who spoke first. “Yeah, I saw it clear as day. You tried to strike Agent Harvath when he wasn’t looking, and he turned just in time. Looked to me like he was raising his hand to protect himself and your chin got in the way. Simple case of self-defense, as I’m sure everyone in the room will agree.”
“Self-defense? Self-defense! That’s bullshit, and you know it. What about when he grabbed my finger and twisted my arm behind my back?”
“To tell you the truth, I didn’t see that, but poking Agent Harvath is technically assault, and anything he did would have been in self-defense.”
A very pissed-off DaFina glowered at the other men and said, “And I suppose you all agree with Director Sorce?”
No one said anything; they just sat stone-faced.
“All in all,” continued Sorce, “your conduct is very unbecoming for a chief of staff, even a vice presidential one. I’d hate to think what the media would do with this if it got out.”
“Look at my lip! I can feel it beginning to swell. What am I going to say to people?”
“Well, you can say what
we used to say back in Chicago when a suspect got a little roughed up. You slipped.”
DaFina gathered his folder, and when he was a safe distance away and had his hand on the doorknob, he spat, “This is not over, Harvath. You are going down. I promise you.”
34
There was no telling how long he had been lying on the cold concrete floor of Senator Snyder’s basement. What he did know was that he ached all over and couldn’t stop shivering from the waves of cold that tortured his naked body.
André had always considered himself to be in very good shape. Being a junior associate D.C. lawyer who specialized in international finance didn’t exactly require a hard body, but being in superlative health had always been his choice. To balance his regime of weight lifting and cardiovascular exercise, and also to give his mind something positive to focus on during the bleak D.C. winters, he had taken up yoga two years ago. It was a nice way to get his heart rate up when he couldn’t get to the club or it was too dreadful outside to run. He’d never had any idea that it would one day save his life.
The hog-tie position Snyder had left him in would have immobilized most, but not André. From the beginning, his focus had been on controlling his mind and his breathing, trying not to let fear overtake him. The cords around his ankles and wrists tore into his skin, but he put the pain out of his mind and tried to focus on staying calm. The rag stuffed in his mouth threatened to gag him with every breath, but he knew, on a logical as well as a very primal level, that he couldn’t give in to the urge to vomit.
With his arms drawn so tightly behind his back, any movement hurt. After struggling against his bonds several times, only to have his mind race uncontrollably ahead to what lay in store for him when the senator returned, André lay still. He assessed the situation. In his opinion, the greatest thing he had going for him, besides that he was still alive, was that he wasn’t bound even more restrictively. Despite the pain, he could move if he really wanted to. And he did.
He realized that he didn’t need his arms, legs, or his wrists to move. If he used only his pelvis and his chest, he could shuffle in a two-step inchworm process. First, lift my chest and slide it to the right, and then lift my pelvis and follow.
It took André almost three hours to cross the basement floor and get to the washer-and-dryer area on the other side of the room. It has been necessary to stop repeatedly to catch his breath. The exertion increased his respiration, which was already impaired by the gag and the strong odor of shoe polish that filled his nostrils whenever he tried to breathe deeply.
When he reached the laundry area, he rolled onto his side so that the cord on his wrists and ankles faced the metal leg of an old washbasin between the washer and dryer. As he couldn’t stand upright, this was his only chance. He began rocking back and forth, dragging the laundry cord across the leg of the washbasin. The process was agonizingly slow.
A warm, sticky, wet feeling began to spread across his hands, and he knew that he was bleeding, but he pressed on. There was no telling when the senator would return to finish the job, and therefore nothing mattered but getting free. An animal instinct took over, and André rocked harder, sawing his wrists and ankles against the metal. All control he had over his mind had vanished. He kept thinking about wolves caught in traps who chew their own legs off to escape as he swung his body and sawed faster.
Finally there was a muffled snap and the tension on his wrists and ankles let up ever so slightly. The cord was fraying. He closed his eyes to try to shut out the pain. He resumed the fevered pitch of his rocking while he applied outward pressure on the cord from his hands and feet. Another snap. He was almost there. André rocked his body for all he was worth and was greeted finally with the sweet sensation of release. The cord ripped the rest of the way away. His feet fell backward and his arms went limp at his sides. Though he knew he needed to work on getting more circulation to his extremities, he just lay on the floor and wept for several minutes, allowing exhaustion to sweep through him. The only movement he made was to remove the gag. As he spat it out, he saw that Snyder had indeed used a shoeshine rag. He seethed with anger but was too tired to allow it to overtake him. He had won, at least so far, and he took his time savoring the small victory as he lay motionless on the floor.
After giving himself a short rest, André gathered enough momentum for the painful roll onto his back. He held his wrists in front of his face and examined the bleeding from the gashes in his raw, burned skin. Contracting his stomach muscles, he leaned upward and looked down at his ankles, which were not much better. The left side of his body looked as if he had been dragged down three miles of a highway covered in loose gravel and broken glass. It was all painful, but he would live. What was he saying? He wasn’t out of harm’s way yet.
Okay, Mr. Travolta, he said to himself, if the key words here are “staying alive,” then we need to get you out of here. André continued to crunch upward until he was in a sitting position. He rolled his shoulders back and forth and also twisted his ankles in painful circles, helping to improve the blood flow. Stripping off the remaining cord that was clinging to him, he blessed the Lightness of Being Yoga Center for the flexibility he now enjoyed and made a mental note to make a donation when and if he was completely out of this situation.
André pulled himself to a standing position. Twisting the faucet handle, he waited for the washbasin’s rusty brown water to turn clear before submerging his wrists in the cascade. The water burned at first and then felt numbingly sweet. As much as he wanted to stand and let the water run over his wrists for hours, he knew he had to get moving.
As in many of Georgetown’s ritzier town homes, a laundry chute fed from the top floor of the building, where the bedrooms were, down into the basement. Not far from the washer and dryer, André saw the laundry basket used to catch whatever came down. Mingled with the senator’s clothes were the brown corduroys and turtleneck sweater he had shot down the chute just yesterday. He rummaged further and found a pair of dirty sweat socks and began to get dressed.
As he finished pulling on his socks, he looked down at a bloodied piece of cord. André wasn’t stupid. He knew if he brought any charges against the senator, it would be his word against Snyder’s. For a good part of the time that he had lain naked, cold, and scared on the moldy concrete floor, he had wondered who would ever believe his story. Knowing the senator would do everything in his power to stop it from becoming public, André needed some sort of proof that he had been there. He looked down at the piece of bloody cord again and kicked it as hard as he could under the dryer.
He could no longer control the urge to run, and he moved quickly toward the back of the basement, where a small utility door led up a short flight of steps to the garden. Not wanting to even attempt to use the front door, for fear of bumping into Snyder, André rushed the garden door. He grabbed the cold metal handle and turned. Locked!
He tried again, but no luck. The door was dead-bolted with a lock that needed a key from either side. The glass was no better, as it was covered with a thick wire security mesh. A wave of nausea began to grow in the pit of his stomach. André fought to keep it down. Think. There has got to be a way. He knew that all of the windows in the basement were covered with the exact same security mesh. It seemed hopeless.
Looking up, as if imploring heaven for some sort of aid, he saw his salvation. Above the right-hand corner of the doorframe was a rusted nail with a key hanging from it. Please, let this be the one.
André took down the key and slid it into the lock, his hand trembling. It fit. But as he turned the key to the left it wouldn’t budge. The same thing happened when he turned it to the right. Shit. It’s the wrong key!
Taking a deep breath, he told himself to calm down. The senator could arrive home at any moment; André needed to keep his wits about him. He tried the key again, harder. Careful, don’t break it. Nothing.
Remembering his own trouble with the fifth-generation key for the condo he and Mitch had shared, André appli
ed a little English. He pulled slightly as he twisted. Joyous relief flooded his body as the key finally turned all of the way, drawing back the dead bolt and releasing the door. The moist smell of clean outside air flowed into his nose and mouth.
A steady rain was falling, and a large puddle sat at the base of the concrete steps. While trying to work the lock, he had noticed a set of gardening tools off to his right, including a pair of green Wellington boots. By the looks of them, they were Snyder’s. André had bigger feet, but didn’t think twice as he grabbed a pair of shears and cut the toes off of each boot. He quickly pulled them on and crept cautiously from the basement. The garden was cold and the night air was heavy with the mist of the steadily falling shower. He still had no idea what time it was and didn’t care. Snyder obviously thought he could come back and finish him at any point. He had no reason to suspect André would have been able to get away.
Creeping slowly, using the large trees for cover, he made his way to the end of the garden. The stone rococo fountain gave him enough of a foothold to climb up to the top of the wall. As he pushed with his left leg to get the final thrust he needed, a stone cherub’s head dislodged and clattered down with a roaring splash into the pool of water below.
It made no difference. André Martin landed effortlessly in the neighbor’s yard and was off like a shot, the knowledge of what the senator would do to him if he caught up pushing him forward.
35
Director Jameson saved his admonishments for the ride home, and Scot took each one of them without arguing. Had he been given a chance to get a word in edgewise, he might have admitted that some of his actions had surprised even him, but as it stood, he rode along in the director’s limousine in silence.
As they pulled up to Harvath’s apartment building, it was already after ten o’clock, and Director Jameson ordered him to be at the Treasury Building the next morning for a full debriefing in the presence of the secretary. Jameson also warned him that the secretary of the treasury was not a man to be fooled around with and that Harvath had better be on his best behavior.