CHAPTER 32
H
e looked to the Old Man, who nodded his assent, followed by Ryan. Turning to Mordechai, Harvath replied, “African Hemorrhagic Fever.
A-H-F
.”
“Ebola?” the Israeli asked.
“Same family, worse disease. Much worse. It has a dramatically reduced incubation period—we’re talking days, not weeks—and it has allegedly been modified so that it transmits easily from human to human through the air.”
“That’s not modification, it’s
weaponization
. When did you discover this?”
“Only in the last several days. I just got back from Africa this morning.”
“Does your President know?”
“We’re not at liberty to discuss what the President knows or doesn’t know,” Carlton interjected.
Mordechai raised his hands in mock surrender. “All I’m trying to say is that if this is the event Damien and his Plenary Panel have planned, it’s going to be aimed at Israel too. We need to get our governments working together.”
“Agreed, but there’s another problem,” said Harvath. “Last night, Damien held a gathering at his estate.”
“I know,” Mordechai responded. “Helena sent me a report. It was something associated with his philanthropy. Some sort of charity board meeting.”
Harvath looked back over at Ryan and the Old Man. When they nodded, he pulled up several images on his laptop and turned it so the Israeli could see.
“These are the vehicles that were parked in the driveway last night,” he said. “And these are their owners.”
“You had a drone overhead?”
Harvath nodded.
“Ironic,” replied Mordechai.
“Why?”
“Because when Israel asks for your help, Mr. Damien’s civil liberties are sacrosanct, but as soon as
you
suspect something is up, drones get launched. But I suppose to truly be ironic, your drone would have to have been christened
Liberty
, or something like that. Was it?”
Harvath bristled at the remark, as did Ryan. But before either of them could respond, Carlton jumped in. “Don’t be an asshole, Mordechai. Israel has withheld information, slow-walked investigations, and refused to cooperate with us on numerous occasions, and you know it. Let’s not pretend you guys are coming to this with your virginity intact.”
It took a moment, but the man conceded the point. “Fair enough,” he said.
“Good,” Carlton replied. “Now, with the I-told-you-so’s out of the way, do you recognize any of the people who were at Damien’s last night?”
Mordechai pulled his chair closer and scrutinized the images. “No. Should I?”
“Not unless you like watching paint dry.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s an American expression.”
“I know what it means,” Mordechai stated. “How does it apply here?”
Harvath pointed to each one on his screen. “They all work for the government. Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Transportation, Department of the Treasury, Federal Communications Commission, Office of Personnel Management, United States Agency for International Development, Department of Justice, Department of State, and last but not least, the Department of Homeland Security.
“Each one of them is mid- to upper-level management in their agen
cies. Even with a million-dollar prize, you’d be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of people in the entire country who could name any of them.”
“In all fairness,” Mordechai replied, “even with a million dollars, you’d be hard-pressed to find many Americans who can even name your Vice President.”
He was right. Next to the self-preservation instinct of Washington’s political establishment, that was one of Harvath’s biggest hot-button issues.
American citizenship was an honor
and
a responsibility. Americans were stewards of their republic. The politicians weren’t in charge, the citizens were. Yet there were Americans who not only didn’t know a thing about how the government functioned, but there were staggering numbers who didn’t even bother to vote.
Harvath had long since made peace with the fact that many of the people he risked everything to protect were self-absorbed and disengaged. There was no other way to put it. He wasn’t a believer in political correctness. If you didn’t know who the Vice President of the United States was, you weren’t a “low-information voter,” you were a
moron
. Worse than that, you were lazy.
He didn’t expect the average citizen to know the head of every agency, but the second most important government official in the United States? That was by no means too much to ask.
While facts, in Harvath’s opinion, rather than emotion, bore out which political ideas were healthiest for the country, he didn’t begrudge anyone the right to vote for the candidate they believed was best for office. His only desire was for people to do their homework, develop an understanding of the issues, and marry that up to who and what they were voting for. In his heart, he knew every American was capable of leaping over that low bar. The fact that so many were unwilling, though, troubled him.
“So what’s the connection? Why were they all there?” Mordechai asked, bringing Harvath’s mind back to the matter at hand.
It was a question he had asked himself repeatedly since Nicholas had fast-forwarded through the drone footage before he and Ryan had raced off to Dulles to interdict Mordechai.
“We have run them through every database, and we can’t find any
thing,” said Harvath. “They all work for the U.S. Government, but we can’t establish any ties between them, much less to Damien.”
“He’s one of the wealthiest men on the planet,” Ryan added. “Everyone wants access to him. People want access to his money, to his power. Yet, one of the first things he does upon returning to the United States is invite this group of faceless bureaucrats to his estate. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Maybe that’s why he returned to the U.S.,” said Mordechai.
“To meet with
them
?”
The Israeli nodded.
“Why?”
“Well, if you can’t find something they all have in common, some philanthropic activity he was helping them with, then we have to assume that he needs something from them.”
Harvath was skeptical. “Like what?”
Mordechai shrugged. “I don’t know. If we throw African Hemorrhagic Fever into the mix, does it make the relationships more clear?”
“Department of Health and Human Services and Homeland Security? Sure. But an illness like that could conceivably impact
every
government agency. I can’t say any one of them is necessarily special.”
“But those two you just mentioned would be very involved with an outbreak of any sort, true?”
“So would the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.”
“Both of which,” Ryan clarified, “are actually under Health and Human Services and DHS.”
Mordechai looked at Harvath and raised an eyebrow.
“That still doesn’t tell us why they were there,” Harvath asserted. “They’re not agency heads. They’re management. They have limited power.”
“I don’t know about that,” the Old Man intoned. “Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.”
“We’re not talking about rejecting tax-exempt applications or overpaying for lavish conferences in Vegas,” Harvath insisted. “We’re talking about the subversion of the United States.”
“You don’t think they’re connected?”
“
You
do?”
“I believe power corrupts and absolute power corrupts
absolutely
,” Carlton replied. “At this point in history, there’s no greater power than that of the American bureaucrat.”
“That doesn’t mean they’re actively trying to subvert the country,” said Harvath, stunned he had been forced to take their side.
“They don’t have to be,” the Old Man explained. “Do you think cancer knows it is killing its host? This is exactly why I left the CIA. The bureaucracy was eating it from the inside out, weakening it. It got to the point where we couldn’t effectively do our jobs. Even so, I could give you a list of Agency bureaucrats a mile long who would each flat out deny their efforts had been harmful to the CIA or the country. And each one of them could pass a polygraph test while saying it. But the Agency was different.”
“How?”
“Because as messed up as it was, our stakes were higher. The CIA’s mission involved keeping people and secrets safe. When it screwed up, that screw-up made the front page of every newspaper and every major news broadcast. You couldn’t run away from it. It couldn’t be swept under the rug, not like the rest of the government. And I’m talking thirty years ago. It’s only gotten worse since then.
“My point is that bureaucrats—like everyone else—have a mind-set. The longer they work for government, the more they believe government is the answer, and the less they trust the everyday citizen. In fact, they begin to believe that certain groups of citizens are the root of the nation’s problems. They see them as a threat. If those citizens can be brought to heel, the bureaucracy sees itself as doing the citizenry at large a greater good, actually making their lives better.”
“But bureaucrats
are
the government,” Harvath insisted. “And the government has to remain impartial. It doesn’t get to pick sides.”
He regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth. Both Mordechai and Carlton chuckled. Ryan was the only one who didn’t find it amusing.
“The tendency of bureaucrats to favor more bureaucracy notwith
standing,” she said, “we’re still a nation of laws, and they take an oath. They don’t get to unilaterally decide what’s best for the country and the rest of us.”
“True,” Carlton agreed, as the smile passed from his face. “What I’m trying to explain is that if your oar-pullers start pulling more in one direction, and nobody—i.e., the American citizens—is up on deck watching, your ship is going to be headed in another direction before you know it.
“Introduce someone belowdecks with charisma and personality and anything is possible. You could introduce the devil himself, and if the oar-pullers felt he was sympathetic to their wants and desires, and had their best interests at heart, there’s no end to what he could achieve.”
Harvath didn’t want to believe it was possible, but to do that would be to ignore the story of history and every palace intrigue, coup, and revolution within it.
“Let’s say you’re right,” Harvath offered. “Let’s say there is some sort of connection between the people at Damien’s house last night and the goals of this Plenary Panel. Do you think he would actually tell a bunch of middle management Federal workers what his grand plan was?”
“I suppose we would have to ask them.”
“Are you serious?”
“Absolutely.”
“Who would you start with?”
“Her,” Carlton said, pointing to the image of Linda Landon from DHS. “The one who stayed after all the others had gone home.”
“And as soon as she knows we’re on to her, the first call she’ll make is to Damien,” said Harvath. “He’ll flee or assert diplomatic immunity. Then he’ll deny he knows Hendrik and claim the documents Mordechai found in his room were planted by the Mossad in order to impugn his integrity because he’s pro-Palestine. That’ll be it. Game over.”
“What if we snatch and render him?” Ryan asked.
It wasn’t a bad question. In fact, Carlton himself had already raised the issue with the President. But contrary to Mordechai’s earlier quip, there were bright, Constitutional lines the President wouldn’t agree to cross, not without a lot more actionable intelligence. For better or worse, Pierre Damien was an American citizen on American soil. They would have to find another way.
Harvath shook his head. “Nobody in our government is going to touch this. Not at this stage. We have to have enough to stop him cold.”
“What do you propose then?”
“Everyone who was at Damien’s house last night needs to be under around-the-clock surveillance. That includes phones, email accounts, all of it.”
Ryan looked at him. “You’re going to go to the Department of Justice and ask them to prepare the warrants?”
Harvath knew they couldn’t do that, especially not when one of their members was on the list. Plus, the Attorney General would want to know how he got the information out of Hendrik and where the South African was now. And when you threw the Israelis in the mix and the fact that they were running an unsanctioned operation on U.S. soil, you were asking for everything to implode on the spot.
He knew, though, that the bad guys counted on America playing by the rules. It allowed them to keep the advantage and stay several steps ahead. Harvath was a big proponent of leveling the playing field by tossing out the rulebook. If the bad guys wouldn’t fight fair, why should the United States?
He had heard countless arguments made about being no better than our enemies if we abandoned our laws and principles. There was merit to that argument. There was also merit to the argument made by Ben Franklin that those who would trade a little liberty for a little added security deserved neither and would lose both. That was why there needed to be a very dark, covert, third way.
Harvath understood that it was a slippery slope. If the United States was willing to color outside the lines when it came to foreign enemies, how long until it justified those tactics on its own citizens? In a sense, it had already happened.
U.S. citizens who had gone overseas to fight with Islamic terrorists had been killed in drone strikes without the benefit of trial. Harvath had no problem with that. If you were seen anywhere near those savages, on the battlefield or off, you deserved what was coming to you. Actively targeting Americans at home, on American soil, though, was where the slope got slipperier.
Over beers and lobster rolls on his dock, he could argue the finer
points of national security policy all day long. As far as he was concerned, the government should be forbidden from looking in people’s windows, recording their phone calls, and reading their emails without compelling probable cause. Government fishing expeditions, in his opinion, should result in the government getting its ass kicked in the parking lot before it can ever make it to the boat ramp.