Black Ice

by Brad Thor

  Next was the entrance to the Andersgrotta, a World War II–era bunker that could hold up to 2,500 people. Because of its proximity to the Russian border and high concentration of Nazi troops, Kirkenes was the most heavily bombed city in all of Norway, suffering 328 air raids.

  Harvath found it ironic that the locals hated the Nazis so much, they erected a monument to the people who had bombed the hell out of their village—even though one such attack had included Soviet high-explosive and phosphorus bombs that burned 170 houses to the ground.

  They passed the Kirkenes Church, surrounded with its white picket fence, and then did a drive-by of the Russian Consulate. Mercer made sure to point out the statue of a little bear humping a flagpole just outside.

  “Is that for real?” Harvath asked.

  “Norwegians,” the man replied with a shrug. “There’s another one right across the street.”

  Harvath shook his head. He had no idea if it had been done as a quiet insult to the Russians or not. It reminded him of when he had stepped out of the train station in St. Petersburg years ago to see a dog whizzing on a statue of Lenin. Both sights had made him smile.

  Doubling back toward the church, Mercer found a parking spot, shut off his ignition, and said, “We go the rest of the way on foot.”

  Amundsens was a quaint restaurant and bakery with an outdoor patio, located on a pedestrianized thoroughfare.

  “Inside or out?” asked Mercer.

  “Up to you.”

  The man gazed up at the overcast sky. “Let’s sit outside. Not many pretty days like this left.”

  Harvath chuckled and followed him onto the patio.

  A waitress greeted them and told them to pick any table they wanted. They chose one in the corner where they could chat undisturbed.

  Harvath ordered eggs and coffee. Mercer ordered coffee and French toast.

  As soon as the waitress had gone, Harvath asked, “What do you know about the Russian Consul General?”

  “Sarov? Not much. According to Holidae, he used to be a spook. In fact, knowing the Russians, he probably still is.”

  “Anything else?”

  Mercer shook his head. “He keeps a pretty low profile.”

  “The man you followed from the airport this morning has been traveling under the alias of Zhang Wei. His real name is Han Guang. He’s a Chinese Intelligence officer working for the Ministry of State Security.”

  “Another spook.”

  Harvath nodded. “What do you think they’re up to?”

  Mercer thought about it for a moment. “The only time the Russians get in bed with the Chinese is when they need something. It could be money. It could be technology. You name it.”

  “But why not leave that to diplomats? People who can meet unobstructed in Moscow or Beijing. Why risk clandestine, spook-to-spook meetings in Oslo?”

  It was a good question. “Maybe,” Mercer replied, “Han wants to defect and Sarov is in charge of vetting him. Maybe they have a history together. Maybe they don’t. Either way, Norway may have been the only country Han could travel to without raising alarm bells back home.

  “And if I’m Sarov, I’m not going to interview him in my own backyard. I’ve been trained better than that. Oslo would have been the smarter choice.”

  “Until I showed up and crashed the party,” said Harvath.

  “In response to which, they hotfooted it up here—just a stone’s throw from the Russian border.”

  “Only after sending an embassy secretary to the hotel to grab his suitcases and drive them to the airfield. Why go to that trouble? If the situation was dangerous enough that you had to flee right away—in the middle of the night—why not just buy the guy new clothes and a toothbrush when you got him to safety?”

  “Because he was carrying something of value.”

  “Such as?”

  “Maybe just personal effects, mementos of the life he was leaving back in China.”

  “I don’t buy that,” said Harvath. “What intelligence officer would jeopardize his escape by carrying damning evidence? If the Chinese were harboring any suspicions of him and searched his bags before he left the country, it’d be all over. He would have gotten a bullet in the head and the bill sent to his family.”

  “It could be a million other things. Additional passports hidden in the lining. Cash. Gold coins. A micro drive with schematics for a new stealth fighter. A stolen vial of virus. Who knows? All that matters is that it was important enough to Han, the Russians, or both to risk going back for.”

  “That I can buy. What about the sudden uptick in activity by Russia’s Northern Fleet?”

  “At Zaozyorsk and Vidyayevo?” Mercer asked.

  Harvath nodded.

  “Snap military drills are nothing new for the Russians. It’s how they test their readiness.”

  “What kind of boats are at those bases?”

  “Zaozyorsk is home to the 11th Squadron. Typhoon-class submarines as well as Oscars and Yasens.”

  “Which means ballistic missiles on the Typhoon class and cruise missiles on the Oscar and Yasen classes,” Harvath replied.

  “Correct.”

  “And at Vidyayevo?”

  “That’s the 7th Division. Sierra and Victor classes.”

  “Attack subs.”

  Mercer nodded. “Fast and quiet. Meant to protect Russian surface vessels and carry out search-and-destroy operations against American ballistic missile submarines.”

  Harvath didn’t like it. “In the middle of all this, we have the Russians bringing a Chinese Intelligence officer in for a front-row seat.”

  “You think that’s why Han is here? You think it’s connected?”

  “I don’t believe in coincidences.”

  “Neither do I. So what do you want to do?”

  “What I want to do and want I can do are two very different things. I’d like to put bags over their heads—”

  “Han and Sarov,” Mercer clarified.

  “Yes, both of them. I’d like to put them in a very deep, very dark hole and work on them until I get answers. But this isn’t that kind of assignment. We’ve been tasked with conducting surveillance and gathering intel. That’s all.”

  “So your hands are tied.”

  “To a degree,” said Harvath. “But the situation is fluid. Things can change.”

  “They always do,” the ex–CIA man replied as the waitress brought their coffee.

  Once she had left the table, he continued. “For the moment, all you can do is keep Han in your sights and report back on what happens.”

  “Sit and wait,” Harvath muttered. “Two of my least favorite activities.”

  “What about finding a way to smoke them out—to force their hand somehow?”

  “My concern is that they’d take off again, just like they did from Oslo. Except this time they’d bolt straight into Russia and that’d be the end of my operation.”

  “Good point,” said Mercer. “So why haven’t they?”

  “Bolted?”

  “Yeah. I could hit the border with a nine iron from here. What are they waiting for? Why smuggle Han out of Oslo, bring him all the way up to Kirkenes, just to stop short of being home free? They’re untouchable in Russia. Even if this is a defection, they can keep interviewing him on the other side. If they don’t like his answers or whatever item of value he might be offering for his freedom, they can kick him out. Or, better yet, give him the same bullet in the back of the head and shallow-grave treatment he’d get back home. Why bring him this close only to park him in a hotel?”

  “I can think of two reasons,” Harvath replied, tumbling the possibilities in his brain. “The first one is that this is some kind of subtle torture. The border is within reach—Han’s freedom is within reach. But unless and until he gives them what they want, he sits here in a quasi–state of purgatory with the ever-present threat of being abandoned or captured by the other side.”

  “Very possible,” said Mercer. “We used that threat al
l the time at Langley.”

  “Still do. Because it works.”

  “Agreed. What’s the second reason?”

  “The second reason is that whatever the Russians want from Han, it has something to do with Kirkenes. More specifically, it has something to do with Han being in Kirkenes.”

  “Such as?”

  “I’m not one hundred percent on it yet,” he said, taking a sip of his coffee. “I need to work on it a bit more. It’ll come. In the meantime, let’s talk about Reed Carlton.”

  CHAPTER 29

  “Our unit,” Mercer began, “was called Huracan—after the vengeful, population-destroying, Mayan god of wind, storm, and fire.”

  “It’s where the word hurricane comes from, right?”

  “Precisely. You didn’t come to us when you wanted bad things done; you came to us when you wanted worse—worse than what America’s enemies were prepared to do. And at that time, America’s number one enemy was the Soviet Union and all of the proxy forces it supported.

  “Top to bottom, Huracan was Reed Carlton’s baby. He had not only come up with the idea but he had also convinced the CIA to let him build it and run it. Our mission was twofold: We both countered threats and worked to destabilize the organizations they emanated from.

  “We did that by pissing inside their tents, sowing as much chaos, suspicion, and doubt as possible. We turned members against each other and caused them all to question Moscow. As Reed liked to say, our specialty was putting out fires with gasoline.

  “He was an amazing field operative, a strategist of the highest order. He was like one of those savants who could handle ten simultaneous chess matches. No matter how many boards he was playing, he dominated all of them.”

  “He was one-of-a-kind,” Harvath concurred. “How did you get hooked up with him?”

  “I’d had a good run with the 1st Ranger Battalion, but I was looking for more excitement, a bigger challenge,” replied Mercer. “I had heard a lot about Delta Force and decided I’d give it a shot. During selection, I was pulled off an exercise and told to report to the Delta commander. I thought for sure I had screwed something up and was going to be sent packing.

  “When I arrived at the CO’s office, he told me to sit down, shut up, and do whatever the next person who came into the room told me to do.”

  “And that next person was Reed?”

  “It was. He made me an incredible offer. He wanted me on Huracan. Told me that I’d get to see and do things even the Delta operatives would be envious of. The hitch was that I had to make my decision right there and then. No ‘sleeping’ on it. No ‘Can I get back to you in a couple of days?’ Yes or no.

  “To say he was persuasive would be an understatement. I was beyond intrigued and took the position on the spot. It was one of the best decisions of my life. I couldn’t have asked for a better boss or a more exciting career.”

  “Yet how is it that I’ve never met you?” asked Harvath. “I haven’t even heard of you. On top of that, I didn’t see you at his funeral.”

  “Things didn’t end well between us.”

  “What happened?”

  “Let’s just say I had a good reason to get out,” Mercer answered. “Actually, a great reason.”

  “Your wife?”

  “She was definitely part of it, but I also got offered a different position—one that allowed me to continue working in intelligence and to be based here in Norway. It was a no-brainer—even if Reed didn’t approve. That’s where we differed. He thought I needed his approval. I didn’t.

  “Like I said, he was a great boss and I loved my time with Huracan, but it was time for a change. I didn’t want to live that life anymore. And as persuasive as Reed was, he was also really fucking manipulative. I could always see it coming a mile away and was subsequently immune to it. Deep down I know he respected me for being my own man. I’m also certain it pissed him off.

  “He inferred that my taking another job was a form of betrayal. He’d always seen himself as this father figure and saw me as a sort of son who owed him loyalty and obedience. But I already had a father and was quite comfortable with that relationship.

  “When I left Huracan, I never heard from Reed again. I was disappointed, of course, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles. If he wanted to act that way, that was his choice. He went on with his life and I did the same with mine. What’s the Robert Frost quote? Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by…”

  “And that has made all the difference,” said Harvath.

  “Amen.”

  “I’m sorry your relationship with him turned out the way that it did. He was a very proud and often stubborn man. The words Sorry or You were right didn’t exactly roll off his tongue.”

  “I made my peace with it a long time ago. It’s all water under the bridge at this point,” Mercer sighed.

  “You would have been welcome at the funeral. Had I known all of this, I would have extended you an invitation.”

  “I’m sure there were a few faces I would have enjoyed seeing, but don’t worry about it. I said my own private, personal goodbye from here.”

  “Nevertheless, you missed out on some great stories.”

  “No doubt. He was quite the character.”

  “Speaking of stories,” said Harvath. “How he got his nickname would have been a hit at the Irish wake we threw him.”

  “Depending on who was in the room, I might have had to redact a few details here and there. We broke a lot of rules back then, along with a few laws, but World War Three never happened. I’d like to think it was because of what we did, not despite it.”

  The waitress came over and set their breakfast orders down. After topping off their coffees, she went to attend to another table. As Harvath began eating his meal, Mercer continued his story.

  “Picture Berlin in 1985. It was four years before the wall would come down—something we couldn’t even see coming. Not then. Sure, the Soviets weren’t doing well. Their occupation of Afghanistan had been a disaster, but they had kept it up because they wanted every Soviet soldier to cycle through that meat grinder and come out having seen combat. That was formidable. No other army in the world had that kind of experience at that time. Not even ours.

  “There was, though, another reason they stayed. Quite simply, they had zero idea how to properly extricate themselves and get the hell out. Afghanistan was an anchor tied around their necks. It was dragging them to the bottom of the ocean. We, of course, were putting rocks in their pockets by backing the Mujahideen against them. That, of course, would come back to bite us in the ass big-time, but just like we couldn’t foresee the fall of the wall, we couldn’t see 9/11 coming either—especially not at that distance.

  “Meanwhile, throughout the Soviet Union, the Communist Party was a joke—a mobbed-up bunch of corrupt plutocrats. Sooner or later, the music was going to stop and there weren’t enough chairs for everybody. They were all beginning to sense it, and it scared the hell out of them. Most had begun looking for the exits.

  “A handful thought that maybe they could reverse the Soviet Union’s decline and had begun looking for something that would restore its ‘greatness.’ Something that would put them back on top.

  “One genius at the KGB decided he had a brilliant idea. He wanted to step up to the plate and try to knock one out of the park. Forget for a moment that in the intelligence game your most valuable players hit doubles, maybe the occasional triple. What you do not do is walk up and place everything on hitting a home run. They’re just too damn dangerous. Only the Russians could have been desperate enough to try to pull the kind of operation they did.

  “So, as I said, it’s 1985. September twenty-seventh, to be exact. Wettest day in D.C. history. Almost four inches of rain in twenty-four hours. When we boarded our plane for Berlin, ‘Money for Nothing’ by Dire Straits was the number one song in the United States. When we landed in Germany, they were all going crazy for some guy named Falco and a song call
ed ‘Rock Me Amadeus.’ Not exactly my type of music, but at least it wasn’t raining.

  “The Huracan team had been rushed to Europe because a NATO diplomat and his family had been taken hostage. And not just any NATO diplomat, mind you. We’re talking a deputy chief of staff—with lots of top secret information, particularly as it pertained to force strength and nuclear posture. Not the kind of person you wanted falling into enemy hands.

  “From all of the available evidence, it looked like the German Red Army Faction was behind the kidnapping. But something didn’t feel right to Reed. The entire flight over, he’d been working his sources. Unfortunately, no one knew anything—not even an asset he had within the terrorist organization itself. It was all too clean. Way too clean. Reed smelled a rat. A big Russian one.

  “So Reed being Reed, what did he do? He started strategizing. He was looking at pictures of the family, the house, the location where everything went down, the protective detail who were killed, and he began to reverse engineer what had taken place.

  “Bit by bit, inch by inch, he began to develop an alternative picture of events. Nobody else could see what he was seeing, of course. At least not yet. The whole thing needed more meat on the bone. So Reed kept pushing.

  “As soon as we’re wheels down, he reached out to even more contacts. He had CIA station chiefs throughout Europe—including Berlin—push, pull, and cajole their sources. It was perfectly clear to everyone that he was not going to stop until he found a crack of daylight with which to blow the case wide-open.

  “And then, two days after we arrive, it happened.”

  CHAPTER 30

  “Word got to Reed about a safe house in East Berlin,” said Mercer. “It was allegedly under the control of East Germany’s secret police—the Stasi. But as he continued to dig, it turned out the property belonged to the KGB.

  “It was considered to be their crown jewel in East Berlin. The site was said to be so secure, they operated from within it with impunity. Absolutely no fear. They believed it was impregnable. The Russians had balls the size of church bells. But Reed Carlton’s were bigger.

  “From all of the intelligence he had been able to gather, the safe house was where the KGB conducted its most sensitive assignments. Everything pointed to it being the most likely location of the diplomat and his family.