by Brad Thor
“SVR,” added Harvath absentmindedly as he focused on the dossier in front of him. “Following in the family footsteps.”
“Indeed. She has been posted in several international cities, including Hong Kong, London, and Istanbul. She speaks English, Arabic, and Mandarin in addition to her mother tongue and when her back is against the wall, has shown herself to be an extremely deadly assassin. Don’t let her looks fool you, this lady should be treated with the utmost caution.”
“She doesn’t look that bad to me,” replied Harvath.
“Be that as it may, you’re to be extra careful with her. Do not underestimate her at any time. Now, her father used her from time to time for some of his more delicate assignments and she was known to be a confidant of sorts to him. He was obsessed with this plot by the generals, and it eventually cost him his job, though the Soviets could never prove that he was trying to tip us off. Apparently, Ivanov was very Hoover-esque in the files he kept on people and that fact alone was probably the only reason he was never bumped off. He probably scared too many people with what he had buttoned down. We believe he most likely passed along some, if not all, of his files to his daughter before he died. At least that’s what our analysts think from the short amount of time they had to look at his dossier.”
“And what makes you believe that if this woman does know something, that she’ll share it with me?”
“The father was no Communist. He was more of a nationalist who put the good of his country, often to the detriment of his career, ahead of the self-serving desires of his government. From what we’ve seen, the daughter embodies a lot of that same ideology. If she has any information, the president has the utmost confidence that you will do whatever it takes to get it out of her.”
“What does that mean?” asked Harvath, who after taking one last look at Alexandra Ivanova’s photo, set the file down on the coffee table.
“Those are the president’s words, not mine, so you take them to mean whatever you want.”
“I bet I know what it means,” said Carlson, who had picked up the folder and was looking at the photo. “God, this chick is hot. You know, when this is all over, Harvath, maybe you could—”
“Put that folder down,” snapped Morrell. “You’re not cleared to see what’s in there.”
“If that’s what a ‘hard’ assignment looks like,” said Carlson, setting down the folder, “I’ll trade jobs with you right now, Harvath.”
“Thanks, but no thanks,” replied Harvath. “I think I can suffer through this one.”
“What’s that girlfriend of yours going to think about you cozying up to a nice Russian hottie like that?” asked Avigliano, who had picked up the folder and was now looking at the picture.
“As far as I’m concerned,” answered Scot, “she’s not going to know.”
“Good for you,” said Carlson peeking over Avigliano’s shoulder to get another look at the photo. “What happens behind the Iron Curtain, stays behind the Iron Curtain.”
“Goddamn it! Nobody touches this file again, am I understood? In fact,” said Morrell, as he snatched the folder away from Avigliano and turned to Harvath, “have you seen everything you need to see in here?”
Harvath nodded his head.
“Good,” replied Morrell. “DeWolfe, toss me a burn bag.”
“Do I get to see the photo first?” asked the communications expert.
“What the fuck is this,Let’s Make a Deal ? No you don’t get to see the photo first. You get to hand me a burn bag and you get to keep your fucking job. How about that for a deal?”
“Hey, everybody else got to see what this Russian chick looks like. I don’t know why I—”
“All right, goddamn it. If it’ll get you to shut the hell up, give me the burn bag and I’ll let you see the fucking picture. Jesus, you guys are a pain in the ass.”
DeWolfe winked at Harvath as he brought one of the special, heavy, lead-lined bags over to Morrell. True to his word, Morrell allowed DeWolfe a quick glimpse of the photo before dropping the entire file into the bag. Unlike diplomatic burn bags, into which shredded classified documents were placed and then taken to an incinerator room to be burned later, the modified field burn bag Morrell and his team were carrying provided one-stop shopping for destruction of sensitive materials. After sealing the top of the bag, Morrell set it on the floor and brought his foot down on top of it, breaking the vials of corrosive chemicals inside which quickly ate away at the file and left nothing behind in the bag but a soggy pulp.
“So how do I meet this Russian SVR agent?” asked Harvath, getting the conversation back on track.
“We’re working on that right now, but first we need to focus on getting you into Russia,” responded Morrell.
“And how do we plan on doing that? More bull?”
“Kind of. You’re coming with us to pick up Frank Leighton.”
“Where is he?”
“His op was a bit different than the others. We know his was Maritime. He was to sail his nuke right into St. Petersburg harbor, so unless he’s moved from where his nuke was hidden, which there’s no reason to believe he has, right now he’s on a small, uninhabited island off the coast of Finland. With the Russians knowing as much as they do about him, he’s no good to us anymore. The plan is for us to get him and his device to safety on the mainland, while you sail his boat out into the Baltic toward St. Petersburg.”
“Right into the arms of the Russian Navy. This doesn’t feel so good.”
“Don’t worry,” said Morrell, “You’ll have help.”
“Help from whom?”
“You’ll be working with a SEAL Team stationed aboard theUSS Connecticut .” Morrell saw the sudden shift in Harvath’s expression. “Feeling a little bit better about it now?”
“Maybe, but how are you planning on getting to Leighton if the Russians have him under surveillance?”
“We’ll be using the Navy’s new Advanced SEAL Delivery System.”
Having been part of the Navy’s Special Warfare Development Group—a SEAL think tank in Little Creek, Virginia, where new weapons, equipment, communication systems, and tactics are developed, Harvath was very familiar with the 65-foot long mini-submarine known as the ASDS, which could covertly deposit operatives practically within spitting distance of any shoreline anywhere in the world.
“That might get you in under the Russians’ radar,” said Harvath, “but what about Frank Leighton’s? This guy is former Army Intelligence. You can’t just walk right up to him and say, ‘Surprise! We’re the good guys and there’s been a change of plans.’ If he doesn’t know you’re coming, who knows what he’ll do.”
“We know,” said Morrell. “He’s on a do-or-die mission, and if taken by surprise, his options would be very limited. None of the potential scenarios are ones we’re willing to accept. That’s why you need to reestablish communication and prep him on our arrival.”
“Why me?”
“Because you’ve already spoken with him once. If we throw anyone else in the mix at this point, it could blow everything out of the water.”
In light of the fact that they were discussing a waterborne operation, Harvath didn’t very much care for Morrell’s choice of words.
“We’ve got one very serious problem,” replied Harvath. “Leighton expects our next contact to be via the emergency contact plan established by Gary Lawlor, and I have no idea what that is.”
There was less than four hours left and Harvath wondered what the hell his next move was going to be. Pulling out his cell phone, he dialed Herman Toffle at the hospital for an update on Gary.
“He’s still in surgery,” said Herman, “but it looks like the doctors are getting ready to close. I was going to wait until they had finished and wheeled him into recovery before calling you.”
“How long?” asked Harvath.
“From what the nurse said, about forty-five minutes to an hour, but that’s just for completion of surgery. He’s under general anesthesia. Th
ere’s no telling how long it will take until he comes around and when he’ll be able to communicate.”
“I’m on my way,” said Harvath, hanging up the phone. Turning to Morrell he said, “I need your car keys and DeWolfe.”
“What’s up?” asked Morrell, as he tossed Harvath the keys to his rental.
“I’ve got an idea of how we might be able to put some lipstick on this pig. If I’m right, maybe we can stop things from getting too ugly, too early.”
Chapter 30
A s Harvath engaged the rental car’s onboard navigation system and selected his destination—the Virchow-Klinikum campus of Berlin’s Charité Hospital, located along the banks of Berlin’s Spandau Canal, DeWolfe toyed with Gary’s burst transmitter, trying to find a way into the encryption program.
“You talked about numeric codes,” said Harvath, speeding through an intersection to avoid a changing light. “In the SEALs we’d normally have a four-digit code with a backup in case the first one was ever compromised. For our system to work, we would take whatever the current code was and subtract that day’s date. That was it.”
“That’s essentially how this works. Your missions were probably like the ones we’ve been deployed on. We’d only need to do burst transmissions back to the command and control structure, not to other operatives in the field, so you didn’t need lots of additional codes.”
“Exactly.”
“That’s when it’s easy. As the commo guy, I got to set our encryption codes myself. I wanted something significant that I could always remember, so whenever I could, I liked to use important dates from the Revolutionary War. My favorite was 418.”
“April 18th?” asked Harvath.
“Yup. April 18th, 1775. We’d subtract the 418 from 1775 and then add the date of whatever day we were transmitting on. That was our code. As far as communications are concerned, April 18th, 1775 was one of the most historic.”
“April 19th was when the battles of Lexington and Concord happened,” said Harvath, quiet for several moments as he thought before responding. “Then the night before would have been when Paul Revere was charged with taking the message to Concord that the British were coming.”
“Very good” replied DeWolfe. “You know your stuff.”
“Yeah, I only wish I knew Gary’s stuff.”
“You seem to know him pretty well. Like I said, it is probably going to be something that was significant for him and easy for his operatives to remember. Do you have any idea what numbers would have been memorable or significant for Gary? They’d need to be numbers that his men could also relate to.”
Harvath racked his head for strings of numbers that would have meant something to Gary, but which also would have held relevance for his operatives. That meant, though, that anything personal to Gary, like his anniversaries or addresses, wouldn’t qualify and so Scot dismissed those right off the bat. The hard thing was that on top of not being a computer guy, Gary wasn’t much of a numbers guy either.In fact , thought Harvath,it would probably be a toss-up over which he hated more —computers or math.
When it came to logistical and organizational competence, Gary had both of those qualities in spades, but like it or not, the old man would have had to have used some sort of math to organize his burst transmissions. Harvath wondered if maybe he was over-thinking the problem before him.Keep it simple, stupid , he heard from somewhere in the back of his mind.
He spent the rest of the drive trying to free associate, but without very much luck.
When they arrived at the hospital, Herman was waiting for them at the nurses’ station. Harvath quickly introduced DeWolfe and then followed Herman down the hall to the recovery room, where Hollenbeck and Longo were standing guard outside.
“They just brought Gary in,” said Hollenbeck.
“How’s he doing?” asked Harvath. “Has he come around yet?”
“Dr. Trawick’s with him. It’s pretty serious,” replied Longo, stepping aside and holding the door open for Harvath. As Herman and DeWolfe tried to follow, Longo held up his arm. “Too many people inside already. I’m sure you guys can understand.”
Harvath looked back and gave his companions a polite nod that indicated he would be okay by himself.
“Sure,” replied Herman. “We understand. Scot, if you need anything, we’ll be in the waiting area.”
Scot smiled his thanks and pushed through a set of double doors where a nurse promptly blocked his path and pointed to a sink where he was required to scrub in.
His hands and forearms scrubbed, Harvath donned a sterile paper “bunny suit,” along with a hat, booties, and a mask, and then joined Skip Trawick next to Gary Lawlor’s bed.
“How’s he doing?” asked Scot as he heard the rhythmic click of a ventilator and saw the tube protruding from Gary’s mouth. A myriad of monitors, with brightly colored displays, quietly whirred and beeped around the head of Lawlor’s bed as if they had come together to form some sort of protective technological halo.
“Not great,” replied Skip. “The bullet just missed his heart, but managed to do some major arterial damage and nicked his aorta. He went into deep hypothermic cardiac arrest. They had to do a cardio pulmonary bypass.”
“Jesus,” said Harvath. “Is he going to be okay?”
“At this point, nobody’s sure. It’s not looking very good.”
“When do you think he’ll be coming around?”
“It was a pretty long surgery. The anesthesiologist told me he used Isoflurane. It’s an inhalation agent, so we have to wait for Gary’s lungs to excrete it before he comes to.”
“How much time are we talking about here? I have some very important questions to ask him,” replied Harvath.
“Twenty to thirty minutes probably, but Scot, you have to be prepared for the fact that he might not be able to answer any of your questions.”
“They’re going to extubate him when he wakes up, right?”
“Probably not. They’ll want to watch him for a while and see how he’s doing and then the decision will be made. If they don’t think he’s strong enough, they’ll leave him on the vent.”
“Will he be able to write? I’ll get him a pen and pad.”
“Scot, listen. Gary is not a young man. On top of the bullet wound, he aspirated a lot of blood and they had to insert a chest tube. He also took some very serious blows to the head, which means there is a high probability that he has some acute intracranial injuries as well. His abilities, especially to communicate, could be severely impaired.”
“Skip, if I have to sit here and take notes while the man blinks out Morse code, then I’m going to do it. The information he has in his head is critical to our assignment.”
“I understand that and believe me, I appreciate what’s at stake here. I just want you to be prepared in case he can’t be of any help to you.”
“If he can’t,” said Harvath, drawing up a chair to the side of Gary Lawlor’s bed and sitting down, “we’re all in a lot of trouble.”
It was one of the recovery room nurses who first noticed Gary Lawlor’s eyelids fluttering. She slid past a dozing Harvath and began speaking to Gary in English as she checked his vital signs. Trawick, who had been across the room speaking with one of the other nurses, saw the commotion and quickly made his way over to the bed. Harvath, now wide awake, slid his chair back and stood up as he watched the nurse soothe her groggy patient and urge him to resist the urge to pull out the tube.
When Gary had sufficiently awakened and she was confident that he wasn’t going to try and pull the trach tube from his throat, she nodded to Dr. Trawick and then proceeded to the foot of the bed to annotate his chart.
Dr. Trawick took a look at Lawlor’s vitals and shook his head before turning to Scot and saying, “A couple of minutes at most, Scot. Okay? Take it slow. And whatever you do, don’t upset him.”
Harvath nodded his head, assuring Skip that he understood and then slid his chair back over next to the bed as Skip and the nurse left t
hem alone. Lawlor’s eyes were open, but he didn’t seem to be focusing on anything in particular.
“Gary?” said Scot, trying to get his attention. “It’s me, Scot. Can you hear me?”
It took a moment, but Lawlor’s eyes slowly tracked over until they made contact with Harvath’s face. Scot couldn’t be sure, but he thought he detected a flicker of recognition. Taking the man’s hand he said, “You’re going to be okay. You’re in Berlin’s Charité Hospital. You were shot, but everything is all right now. As soon as you’re stable, we’re going to move you to Landsthul.” Landsthul Regional Medical Center, located five kilometers south of Ramstein Air Base in the German state of Rheinland-Pfalz, was the largest American hospital outside of the United States. There, Lawlor would not only get the continuing medical attention he needed, but also the security, as LRMC was located on a permanent American military installation.
Lawlor released Harvath’s hand and weakly pantomimed writing. He wanted to tell him something.So much for taking things slow , thought Harvath.
He produced the pen and pad he had borrowed from one of the nurses and, lifting Gary’s hand, helped him grip the pen in his fist and placed it on the pad where he could see it.
Each motion of his hand was extremely labored and whatever he was doing seemed to take forever. Finally, he finished and began drawing slow circles around what he had written on the pad. Harvath looked down and saw the lettersHD followed by a question mark. They made no sense to him and he decided to press harder. “I have spoken with Frank Leighton and—”
Lawlor wasn’t listening. He had begun writing again.H.E.L.M.
Harvath wondered if Gary even knew he was in the room talking to him.
When he was finished writing, Gary once again made a circle on the pad. Harvath looked down and saw the nameHelmut with another question mark next to it. He had to have been referring to Helmut Draegar, but why? Why after all these years would he be thinking about him? Harvath stopped for a moment and realized that there probably wasn’t a day that went by that Gary didn’t think of him. He’d killed the man’s wife after all.