Foreign Agent: A Thriller

by Brad Thor

  “At the moment,” his Chief of Staff replied. “But I guarantee you all the Sunday shows subscribe to his newsletter as well.”

  “Right now, Sunday is a lifetime away.”

  “It may feel like that, but it isn’t. Trust me.”

  “And you need to trust me, a lot can happen between now and Sunday.”

  CHAPTER 12

  FRANKFURT, GERMANY

  Tracking Sacha Baseyev wasn’t easy. Nicholas had done an amazing job. He had begun by searching all of the CCTV footage around the neighborhood where Salah Abaaoud kept his love nest. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary, until he added an additional layer to his search.

  He next pulled the footage from around Salah’s home and the clinic. His assumption was that the killer would have conducted cursory surveillance before making his move. His assumption was correct. But Nicholas had almost missed him.

  He was running a series of algorithms in the background of his search. One was an emerging piece of biometric technology called gait recognition, which measured how subjects walk.

  Baseyev was indeed a pro. He had altered everything about his appearance. The man watching the clinic was unrecognizable from the assassin who entered the apartment building. Even the walks were different. But it was the walk that had turned out to be Baseyev’s undoing.

  Faking how you walked was one thing. Faking it consistently was something entirely different. Gait recognition technology was able to spot even the smallest changes. It was also able to look for patterns. If you were captured on camera with an inconsistent walk, it flagged you. That was how Nicholas realized the two figures he had spotted were one and the same.

  He had tracked a disguised Sacha Baseyev to a mid-sized hotel in downtown Brussels. When Baseyev emerged on camera hours later, he was dressed in a Lufthansa uniform and accompanied by five other flight attendants.

  They placed their luggage in a minibus and were driven to the airport. Baseyev moved through security with the other flight crew, was in and out of a couple of shops, and boarded a plane for Frankfurt.

  When the plane landed, Nicholas was able to reacquire the passengers and the other flight attendants, but not Baseyev. He had disappeared.

  People didn’t just disappear, especially not at a major international airport like Frankfurt. At least not without help. And so, Nicholas had dug in.

  Posing as a flight attendant was excellent cover. It was better than posing as a businessman. Flight attendants often received expedited screening, could hide in plain sight, and were viewed by airport staff everywhere as “one of us.”

  When the United States had learned of Baseyev’s existence, there’d been no mention of his cover. It was possible that the Russian intelligence defector hadn’t known. Or that the cover had been established later.

  As far as Nicholas was concerned, it didn’t matter. He was onto him. He wouldn’t stop until the noose was pulled so tight that Sacha Baseyev couldn’t breathe.

  To begin, he needed a name. He watched the Brussels airport footage again. Baseyev had bought something in one of the shops before boarding his plane. He had paid with a credit card. It took Nicholas less than ten minutes to get inside their system.

  The assassin appeared to have a sweet tooth. He had purchased six bars of Belgian chocolate with a Visa card. The unassuming name on the card was Peter Roth.

  With that name, he was able to set his sights on Belgium’s customs and immigration database. Two hours later, he had a full scan of Peter Roth’s German passport. Then he went to work on Lufthansa’s systems.

  Lufthansa owned one of the largest passenger airline fleets in the world. They served nearly 200 destinations across 78 countries worldwide. Each year, they transported more than 100 million passengers.

  Over 100,000 people worked for Lufthansa. Four of them were named Peter Roth. All were based out of Frankfurt, Lufthansa’s main hub of operations.

  Once Nicholas had access to the employee files and their photos, he was able to narrow the four Peter Roths to the exact one they wanted—Sacha Baseyev. The noose had just tightened.

  He appeared to be very part-time and flew only a handful of routes, mostly international.

  What income Baseyev did earn from Lufthansa was direct-deposited into an account in Frankfurt. The address he gave as his residence was a match with five other Lufthansa employees. Nicholas passed it on to Harvath.

  It was a crash pad, or “stew zoo,” as it used to be called. Having dated a string of Scandinavian Airlines flight attendants as a SEAL, Harvath had been in and out of several of them.

  It was a house or an apartment rented by a group of flight attendants who either didn’t live in the city their flights were based out of, or who traveled so much they wanted to save money by spreading the rent across multiple roommates.

  For Baseyev, though, it would have helped layer his cover and function as a quasi safe house.

  According to Lufthansa’s scheduling system, he didn’t have another flight on the books until next month. Was he hiding out in the apartment until then? There was only one way to find out.

  Parking his car at the end of the block, Harvath turned off the ignition and popped the trunk.

  CHAPTER 13

  According to Nicholas, the other Lufthansa flight attendants who shared the apartment were all on active trips outside the country. None of them were expected back tonight.

  Harvath had been given a street address and an apartment number. That was it. He had no idea what the interior layout looked like.

  He did a discreet reconnaissance, noting the entrance, exits, and which apartments had lights on. When he was ready, he picked the lock of the rear door at the parking lot and snuck inside.

  Pausing in the lobby, he checked the mailbox for the apartment. It was empty. Someone had recently picked up the mail.

  He found the stairs and walked up to the second floor. Looking at the number plates, he figured out which one he wanted. The only units he had seen from outside with lights on were at the other end of the hall. But just because he hadn’t seen any lights didn’t mean nobody was home.

  Jet lag was an occupational hazard for pilots and flight attendants. The airlines were also very strict about how many hours of sleep they were required to have before flights. Many employees invested in blackout curtains.

  Approaching the door, Harvath used his right hand to adjust the .40-caliber Glock 22 tucked in the Sticky holster at the small of his back. The CIA had arranged for it to be left for him at a small hotel near the airport. In his left hand was a bouquet of flowers.

  Looking at the flight schedules of the roommates, he noted one who had been assigned at the last minute. After a quick review of her Facebook and Instagram accounts, it was obvious the attractive young woman liked to party and had a lot of male friends. It wouldn’t have been a stretch to believe that she had forgotten to cancel a date before leaving on a trip.

  Standing outside the door, he listened for a moment. There were no sounds from inside. He knocked and waited. No one answered. He tried once more. Nothing.

  He tried the knob, but the door was locked. Removing his picks, he let himself in.

  The apartment was lit by the faint glow of the streetlamps outside. He gave his eyes a moment to adjust.

  Setting the flowers down, he removed his Glock and began moving from room to room.

  The decor was sleek and minimalist. The artwork tasteful, but inexpensive. It looked like an IKEA ad. The only place where any real money had been spent was in the kitchen.

  From the Le Creuset cookware to the expensive Japanese chef’s knives displayed like museum pieces, it was obvious that someone took their cooking seriously.

  There was a row of cookbooks with titles in German, French, and English. In one drawer he found a stack of food magazines. The fridge and cabinets were filled with a wide array of gour
met food items, including caviar, truffles, and foie gras.

  There was clothing in the closets and a smattering of personal items scattered about, but other than that, the apartment was much more hotel than home.

  On his second sweep, Harvath looked for places Baseyev could have hidden an emergency cache. Any operative worth his salt would have kept one nearby. They usually included cash, a burner phone or clean SIM cards, and a weapon. Medical supplies, disguises, and even fake identification might be a part of it as well. It was all based upon what the operative or his organization thought was needed.

  Harvath was incredibly thorough in his search, but turned up nothing. If Baseyev did have an “oh shit” kit, it wasn’t in the apartment.

  The entire trip to Frankfurt was a bust. It pissed Harvath off. He hated dead ends and wasted time. The best the CIA could do at this point was to wire up the apartment and sit on it. If Baseyev came back, they’d need a team ready to put a bag over his head and transport him to a black site for a nice long chat.

  In the meantime, the CIA would also want to approach the roommates to see what they knew. Even the best operative could make a mistake. Baseyev might have screwed up at some point and let something slip that might be helpful.

  Putting everything back exactly as he had found it, Harvath retrieved the flowers and left the apartment. He needed to report in. The chain of command, though, was a bit murky.

  Technically, he worked for a private organization called The Carlton Group. Reed Carlton was an iconic spymaster who had established the Central Intelligence Agency’s counterterrorism center. He put the old in “old school.”

  After decades of faithful service, he had gotten out. He couldn’t stand the careerists and the bureaucracy anymore. He saw a real future for an organization able to operate without red tape and beyond the reach of Congress. The Defense Department and the CIA turned out to be two of his best customers. They, in turn, always wanted his best operative.

  Carlton had taught Harvath everything he knew about the espionage business. Coupling that with his SEAL background, Harvath had vaulted to the top of the food chain. He was an apex predator, a hunter without equal.

  Tucked away, compartmentalized, was the man himself. He liked his work. He probably liked it too much.

  It cast a shadow over everything else in his life. And the problem with shadows was that it was very hard for anything to grow in the shade.

  He wanted the American Dream, but he had been called to protect it. There were wolves and the wolves needed to be hunted. He had a lot of hunting left in him.

  What he didn’t have a lot left of was time to start a family. It was slipping away. He had spent his entire adult life being loyal to everyone. Everyone but himself. At some point, the torch had to be passed. At some point, he had to let someone else take his place on the wall.

  Not today, though. There was way too much at stake.

  Back in his rental car, Harvath used his encrypted phone to text the CIA’s Deputy Director, Lydia Ryan. Ryan was Bob McGee’s right hand at Langley and, like McGee, had been an outstanding field operative, handpicked by the President to help rebuild the Central Intelligence Agency from within.

  By using The Carlton Group, the CIA was able to push the boundaries of what they were legally allowed to do. It also presented them, and, more important, the President, with plausible deniability if any of those actions came to light.

  Dry hole, he typed. No sign of Pitchfork.

  Pitchfork was the code name they had assigned to Baseyev.

  Stand by, Ryan replied.

  Several seconds later, his phone rang.

  “Was it empty?” she asked when Harvath activated the call.

  “No. It’s furnished and in use.”

  “How long since he was last there?”

  “No clue. We could do a search for CCTV cameras and pull the footage if you want.”

  “Right,” said Ryan, distracted.

  “You should also put a full surveillance package on the building.”

  “Right.”

  Harvath could tell she wasn’t paying attention. “Do you want to call me back?”

  “What? No. I’m sorry.”

  Something was up. “What’s going on?”

  “More intel just came in regarding what happened in Turkey,” she said.

  “Turkey? What happened?”

  There was a pause. “Nobody told you?”

  “Told me what? I’ve been in the field.”

  He could hear her let out a long exhalation. It sounded like air being let out of a tire.

  “Defense Secretary Devon is dead,” said Ryan. “His motorcade came under attack.”

  “Where? When?”

  “Antalya. About four hours ago.”

  Harvath had known Richard Devon and had liked him, a lot. He had also known several of the men on his protective detail. “Did anyone survive?”

  “No,” Ryan replied. “They’re all dead.”

  He couldn’t believe it. “How the hell did this happen?”

  “We don’t know. There’s a lot of moving pieces. We’re trying to get our arms around it.”

  “Who’s behind it?”

  “It looks like ISIS.”

  “Come on, Lydia,” he replied. “First Anbar, and now this? ISIS isn’t that good. And nobody is this lucky. Who the hell is helping them?”

  “That’s the question we’re all asking.”

  There were a ton of things he wanted to say. None of them were helpful, or appropriate. Holding his anger in check, he asked the only question he could: “What can I do?”

  The Deputy Director of the CIA didn’t hesitate. “Find Pitchfork,” she said. “Fast.”

  CHAPTER 14

  OBERURSEL

  17 KILOMETERS NORTHWEST OF FRANKFURT

  If Baseyev was using Lufthansa as cover to move from country to country, the Russians had to have had someone inside. Harvath had charged Nicholas with figuring out who that someone was.

  The biggest obstacle Nicholas faced was wrapping his head around how Lufthansa booked its passengers and scheduled its crews. Once that began to crystalize for him, his search picked up speed.

  As someone who dealt with data, Nicholas was obsessed with patterns. Even when there was no pattern, that was a pattern, he would say. And the more he studied Baseyev’s travel, the more he began to figure the man out. He definitely had someone on the inside. It was someone very good at covering his tracks. Very good, but not perfect.

  Now that they had his employee identification number, they could track all of Baseyev’s Lufthansa travel as Peter Roth. That included not only his work trips but also trips where he was traveling for free as an airline employee or “dead-heading” to another destination in order to work a specific flight. There were even instances where he showed up in a foreign city somewhere and hopped onto a Lufthansa flight without any indication as to how he got there.

  Throughout it all, Nicholas kept looking for a constant, something that repeated itself—something that would point them to whomever the Russians had inside. Finally, he found it.

  Jörg Strobl was a senior IT specialist who worked in Lufthansa’s crew management division. He oversaw one of the many teams that handled crew scheduling. Though he had done an intricate job hiding his involvement, he was the one behind all of Baseyev’s flights.

  But that wasn’t all. Strobl’s wife, Anna, was Bundespolizei—a uniformed federal police officer stationed at Frankfurt airport. It looked like the Russians might have gotten two for one with the Strobls.

  The town they lived in was known as being a hub for tourism and IT companies. Per his file, Jörg Strobl had worked out of the Lufthansa Aviation Center at the airport until four years ago, when he began telecommuting from home.

  Anna’s Bundespolizei file wasn’t particularly
impressive. She had graduated in the middle of her class and had spent several years protecting federal buildings, before being transferred to airport duty.

  What was impressive about her, though, was her service photo. She was an extremely attractive woman, with straight brown hair, high cheekbones, and an enviable body that even her boxy government uniform couldn’t keep hidden.

  She and the handsome, blond Jörg Strobl seemed made for each other. From everything Nicholas could gather, they appeared to have met at the airport. And as far as he could tell, they didn’t have any children.

  The Strobls lived on the outskirts of Oberursel, not far from the A 661 motorway. Their home was easy enough to find.

  The neighborhood of single-family homes was quiet. Privacy hedges separated the yards. Some houses had garages. Others had carports.

  Under the Strobls’ carport was a new Mercedes van. The spot next to it was empty.

  The van seemed an odd choice until Harvath saw a ramp next to the stairs. He wondered if they were caring for an aging parent.

  That might explain why Jörg had begun working from home. What it wouldn’t explain, though, was why he was working for the Russians.

  Crouching below the window line, he crept around the side of the house toward the back.

  There wasn’t much going on. All he could see was the faint glow through one of the ground floor windows of what looked to be a television set.

  At the rear of the house was a small brick patio with three stone steps leading up to a door. Climbing the stairs, he peeked through a window into the kitchen. Suddenly, movement caught his eye and he pulled back into the darkness.

  He was still able to see into the kitchen and watched as a figure in a motorized wheelchair came into view. He was ready to have his assumption about an aging parent proven correct when he realized that it was Strobl himself.

  There had been nothing in the file to suggest he was disabled. Why is he in a wheelchair? And where is his wife?