CHAPTER 44
Y
ou’ve got to be kidding me,” said Harvath. “All the top tier management? The PASC through the SES?”
It was Washington-speak for Presidential Appointed Senate Confirmed staff through Senior Executive Service staff.
“They’re not sure it’s all of them yet, but it’s enough. And it’s not just at Homeland Security.”
“Let me guess,” Harvath replied. “HHS, OPM, DOT, USAID, Treasury, the FCC, DOJ. What am I missing?”
Carlton filled in several others. “Department of State. Department of Defense. Department of the Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Housing and Urban Development, DOE, FBI, the VA . . . It’s everywhere.”
“All of them have lost their upper management?”
“No. Some have, some haven’t, but all are starting to report attrition up and down the chains. I just asked Nick to work up a spreadsheet.”
“A
spreadsheet
?” Harvath replied, separating himself from Lara and standing up from the table. “We need him focused on digging into Main Core. Have Sloane work up your spreadsheet.”
He hated throwing Ashby under the bus like that, but there was no reason why she couldn’t sit in Harvath’s study with the Old Man, keeping one eye on Mordechai, and using her other to build a spreadsheet.
Looking at Lara, he said, “Tell your parents to get packed. Winter clothes. Have them put together a bag for you and for Marco too. I’m
sending a plane to Logan to pick them up. Do you have somebody who can get them to the airport?”
Lara nodded. “I can call someone from Boston PD.”
“Good.”
She wanted to discuss it further, but before she could find the right words, Harvath had already left the kitchen and was headed back down the hall to his study.
The first person he locked eyes with when he walked in was Mordechai. “Anything?”
The Israeli shook his head. “The password Helena provided for the hard drive doesn’t work. I think Nicholas was correct. Damien has probably changed it since we made our copy.”
“So where does that leave us?”
“We obviously need to talk to Helena.”
Obviously
, thought Harvath, but she was over an hour’s drive away. “What about the cell phone?”
“At least there, we have good news. When Damien met with Linda Landon, we believe he gave her her own, private cell phone. In the process of getting her set up, he turned his on and entered his password. The keystroke recorder caught it.”
“So you were able to open the mirror you have back in Israel?”
Mordechai nodded. “Unlike his laptop, Damien hasn’t changed the password on his mystery phone.”
“What does it contain?”
The man turned his laptop around so everyone could see the screen. It showed a map of the world with throbbing red dots in a number of countries. “The phones are part of a small, highly-encrypted digital network.”
“Can you zoom the map onto the U.S.?”
The Israeli obliged, hovering just above a red dot near Winchester, Virginia, and another in the District of Columbia.
“Damien and Linda Landon.”
“Your people should be able to confirm,” he said, “but yes, that’s who we believe we are looking at.”
“And the other dots?” Harvath asked.
“If I had to put money on it,” replied Mordechai, “I would guess the other phones represent the other members of Damien’s Plenary Panel.”
Harvath looked at Carlton who had already been tumbling the technicalities and diplomatic consequences in his mind.
“The good news,” Carlton slowly stated, “is that the Agency has operatives in each one of these countries. The bad news is that the countries are all American allies.”
“So what?”
“So, this isn’t like taking out some jihadist, or rolling up a terror financier. This is a different ballgame, a completely different set of rules. We’re talking about citizens of allied nations who are diplomats, ranking members of the UN.”
It was the President’s Pierre Damien argument all over again.
Looking at the Old Man he said, “Let’s pass this phone data to Ryan and let the Agency decide what they want to do. At least it should help them ID the Plenary Panel.”
“We’re going to want to be involved with that too,” Mordechai responded.
Of course they would. And at this point, that was fine by Harvath. The more hands on deck the better.
His bigger issue, though, was what to do next. With the President at Bethesda and the virus taking off, they needed a break—a big one.
He was tempted to ignore Porter’s orders and go snatch Damien right now. Landon too. They didn’t have time to sit around and hope that something turned in their favor.
Just before pulling into his driveway, Harvath had received a text from Ash. He and his team were on the ground in Kinshasa and had hooked up with the STAR team member Colonel White had assigned to them. They were already prepping for how they were going to hit the WHO lab there and recover the samples of Yusuf Mukulu, the mysterious Muslim man who had shown up and collapsed at the Matumaini Clinic.
Other STAR team members, based on the map coordinates Harvath had provided, were searching for the corpse of the rebel commander, while still more had met up with Jambo back in Bunia, in an attempt to track down Leonce and his son to get blood and tissue samples from them to confirm that all the cases were connected.
Even once those had been secured, they would need to be flown back for analysis. There was no telling what condition things would be in by then. USAMRIID was already examining samples secured from the CDC. Unlike in the movies, it took a long time to produce a vaccine. Scientists had been studying some viruses forever and there still were no effective vaccines for them. Harvath, though normally optimistic, wasn’t very hopeful that USAMRIID would come up with something in time.
“Can we speak about Main Core?” Mordechai asked, interrupting Harvath’s train of thought. “We all agree that this is likely what the
MC
in Damien’s handwritten notes referred to?”
Harvath nodded. “Based on what Linda Landon was typing, yes.”
“Back in Tel Aviv, no one thought Main Core actually existed. They believed it was just a conspiracy theory.”
“Well, they were wrong,” Nicholas interrupted as he padded back into the study along with his laptop and his two gigantic dogs.
“You’re already in?” Harvath asked.
“Guess who doesn’t change her passwords as often as Damien?” the little man asked as he tossed his computer onto the couch and climbed up after it.
“Linda Landon.”
Nicholas smiled and set the computer on his lap.
“I still don’t understand the purpose of this list,” said Mordechai. “The United States keeps a list of its own dissidents? Doesn’t this contradict your vaunted Constitutional principles?”
Harvath couldn’t tell if it was a veiled shot, or a sincere question. He decided to give him the benefit of the doubt when Nicholas jumped in and spoke up.
“The Constitution has always been meant as a check on government power. Proponents of larger government have lamented that it enshrines a set of negative liberties, specifically by detailing what the government can’t do to you, rather than what the government should do for you.
“The Founders envisioned a limited government, particularly on the Federal level, but over time it has grown— essentially into its own living, breathing organism, whose prime directive, if you will, is its own continuing survival. That’s where Main Core comes in.
“The name comes from the fact that it was a database designed to
bring together disparate pieces of data from across the commercial, judicial, and law enforcement spectrums and fuse them into a main file, or main core of information if you will. Importance was placed on that information that would help the government immediately track you down if it wanted you.
“The data has evolved from credit card receipts and utility bills in the 1980s to social media relationships and cell phone location data today. The government, under the guise of ‘we’d never use it, but it’s better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it,’ has created several different database systems that very clearly violate the country’s Constitutional principles. Of those, Main Core is one of the most insidious.”
“How does it work?”
“If a state of national emergency is declared, the Main Core database can be activated. Within the database, citizens are ranked as to the level of threat they are deemed to pose. Recommendations ranging from covertly monitoring communications to apprehension accompany each name. Citizens marked for apprehension are color-coded based on the danger they are expected to pose the arrest team.”
Nicholas’s eyes met Harvath’s and remained.
“What?”
“Your name’s on the list.”
“For what?”
The little man shrugged. “It doesn’t say why. But somebody sees you as a serious threat to national security in a time of crisis.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? How many Senators have you pissed off? How many members of Congress? How many intelligence officials? I’m not saying you weren’t right, I’m just saying you have pissed off a lot of people over the years. Apparently, somebody took it very personally.”
“So take my name off the list.”
“I tried.”
“Try again.”
“I can’t,” said Nicholas.
“Why not?”
“Because it flagged your file and locked me out.”
Harvath looked at him. “What’s that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you
don’t know
?”
Nicholas was exasperated and embarrassed at the same time. “I tripped something, and suddenly I was swarmed.”
“Swarmed by what?”
“I don’t know, but they knew what they were doing. They were all over me. They were doing things I had never seen before. Not only were they trying to capture my information, they were trying to trap me so that I couldn’t get out.”
“Out of a database?” Harvath replied. “Why didn’t you just kick the cord out of the wall?”
“Seriously?”
“Of course not, but you understand what I’m saying.”
“And
you’re
not understanding what
I’m
saying. I have never seen anything this sophisticated. Not with a bank, not with a military, and definitely not with a government.”
Nicholas was upset, and Harvath couldn’t remember ever seeing him like this.
“Relax,” he said. “It’s all going to be okay.”
“I hope so.”
“Hope so?”
said Harvath. “You peeled off your name tag before you wandered into their database, right?”
“I always do. In fact I put on somebody else’s.”
Now it was Carlton’s turn to chime in. Nicholas had a bad habit of where he chose to make it look like his hacks had originated from. “Where this time?”
“Second Director’s office, FSB in Moscow.”
The Old Man thought about it, jutted his bottom lip out, and then nodded. “I don’t have a problem with that.”
“Just as long as it doesn’t link back to you,” Harvath stated.
Nicholas didn’t say anything.
“It’s not going to link back to you, is it?”
“Normally, I’d say no. But these guys weren’t normal. I don’t know what to say.”
Harvath looked at his watch and wondered if it was too early for a drink. He was starting to get a headache. Which reminded him, he needed to take his temperature again and text it to the doctor. Of all the stupid things to have to remember to do, this one took the cake, but the Old Man had insisted and had been riding him like a jockey about it.
Excusing himself, he exited the study and jogged upstairs to his master bath. Removing the thermometer from the drawer where he’d left it that morning, he pulled the cover off and popped it in his mouth. When it beeped, he pulled it out.
He was up just a little over a degree from where he had been.
Interesting
. But as it was just a degree, he wasn’t going to worry about it.
Pulling his phone from his pocket, he texted his temp to the doc and put the thermometer away. After trading texts with Ben Beaman, he returned to the study.
When he came in, Mordechai was on his phone, standing on the other side of the room speaking intensely in Hebrew. Harvath looked over at Sloane who nodded at her own phone sitting nearby. She was recording.
Good
. He liked Mordechai, but you learned quickly in their business not to trust anyone.
The Israeli pulled the phone away from his ear and said to Harvath, “It’s in Israel. Seventy-five cases and counting. Nine people have bled out, and we’re hearing there may be two to three times as many in the West Bank and Gaza.”
The Old Man, who was seated next to Nicholas on the couch, looked up from his laptop and stated, “It’s popping up everywhere now. Indonesia, Australia, and New Zealand. India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay.”
“They’re talking about shutting down commercial air travel,” Nicholas added.
Probably a little late for that
, Harvath thought as he walked over and pulled up a chair next to the Old Man.
“Can you give us a minute?” he asked.
“Sure,” Nicholas replied as he set his laptop down and slid off the couch.
When he had left the study, Harvath leaned in toward the Old Man and said, “I have a jet leaving from Reagan tonight. I’d like you to be on it.”
“Me?” Carlton replied. “Why would I want to do that?”
Harvath loved Reed Carlton like he was his father. And because he loved him so much, often the line between employer and employee got blurred. “I’ve arranged for Lara and her family to be taken someplace safe. I want you to go with them and make sure they’re okay.”
The Old Man chortled. “So you need me for security?”
Harvath didn’t respond.
“Where are you sending them? Up to that fishing lodge in Alaska?”
Harvath shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was.
“It’s okay,” Carlton said. “Your secret destination is safe with me.”
“Except that apparently, it’s not so secret.”
The Old Man smiled. “I’ve been there.”
“When?”
“Before we hired you, we did a thorough background. Jon and Anya provided character references.” He said, leaning in toward Harvath. “They never told you, did they? Good. Trustworthy family. I like them even more now.”