Typical Old Man
, thought Harvath. Always at least five steps ahead of everyone else. “Excellent, I’ll make sure they have your favorite bourbon on the plane.”
“Whoa,” Carlton replied, holding his hand up. “I’m not going to Alaska. In fact, I’m not going anywhere.”
“But, sir—”
“No buts. There’s too much work to be done here.”
“Agreed, but you can work from the plane as well as from Alaska. Jon’s lodge is practically a full-on SCIF.”
The Old Man smiled. “If you’ve got something to say, why don’t you say it?”
Harvath worshipped Reed Carlton. And while he didn’t dwell on it, he lamented the day the Old Man would eventually pass. Carlton was not only an American treasure, but he was the Babe Ruth of the espionage game. In a world of soft, unsophisticated men trapped in perpetual adolescence, he was not only a man’s man, he was a patriot who always put his nation before himself.
Pulling no punches, Harvath gave it to him straight. “Babies and old people, that’s who disease grabs first.”
“Are you saying I’m old?”
“Of course not. I’d never say that. How about
other
than young?”
“
Other
than young.” Carlton chuckled at how Harvath had used Arabic phrasing to soften his remark.
“All expenses paid. You can take Marco fishing for salmon. If any bears show up, they’ll go running the minute they see you, so I know he’ll be safe. Everyone wins.”
“Anya does grill the world’s best steak.”
“There you go,” Harvath replied, encouraged. “You don’t even need to pack. Let me know what you need, and I’ll shoot a list to Jon. Everything will be waiting for you.”
“Everything,” Carlton said, “except for Joey.”
Immediately, Harvath felt terrible. It was like a knife had just been punched through his heart.
“Joey” was Reed Carlton’s wife, Josephine. Ten years before Harvath had met Carlton, she had suffered a massive stroke, followed by very serious dementia. Everything had been downhill from there.
Joey now lived in a comfortable assisted living facility in northern Virginia not far from the Carltons’ home.
The man wasn’t going to leave his bride, and it made Harvath love him all the more.
“What if I got her on the plane?”
Carlton smiled. “I don’t know if I ever told you this, Scot, but you’re a good man. I wish I could go, but I can’t. And as there’s no way we’re going to uproot Joey and transfer her all the way to Alaska, let’s just let it lie. Okay?”
No, it wasn’t okay
. Harvath wanted him on that plane.
The Old Man put his hand on his arm. “This isn’t my first rodeo. If God had wanted to take me, He has had more than ample opportunity.”
Harvath didn’t like it, but he understood it, and smiled back. Carlton was integrity personified.
For better or worse
, that was the promise he had made. He was a man of his word, a man of honor—and Harvath admired him to no end.
“There’s something else we need to talk about,” the Old Man said, pointing at the laptop. “Before Nick got caught tampering with your file, he was able to take a brief look around the Main Core database. He took
some screen shots. Apparently, there was a new list, created just over a month ago. I think you need to see it.”
“Why? Who’s on it?”
“I’ll let Nick show you,” said Carlton as the little man came back into the study, his mug filled with hot coffee.
Balancing the mug on the end table, he climbed back up onto the couch.
“Show Scot that last screen grab you showed me,” the Old Man said.
Nicholas keyed in his password and then tilted the screen so Harvath could see it.
Seeing the first name, Harvath exclaimed, “That’s the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.”
“Keep reading,” Carlton advised.
“The next four are United States Senators, followed by a handful of Congress people. What the hell are they all doing on the list?”
“That’s what I was wondering.”
“I thought Main Core was for civilians. Why would you add all these people, and why now?” Harvath asked.
“Somebody, maybe Damien or Linda Landon, sees them as a threat. They’ve been color-coded for detention,
Gold
, same as you.”
“But out of nine SCOTUS justices, why just the Chief Justice? I agree he’s outspoken when it comes to limiting the scope of government power, but what about the other justices who vote with him the majority of the time? Why aren’t they on the list?”
“And why only those particular Senators and Congresspeople?” the Old Man replied, answering a question with a question. “They’re also outspoken, I’ll give you that, but there are others who are just as loud.”
None of it made any sense.
What the hell were Damien and Landon up to?
“We need to warn them,” said Harvath. “They need to know about the list and the fact that they’re on it.”
“Then what?”
“Then they can decide what they want to do. But at least they’ll know something may be coming.”
“Who’s going to call them?” Carlton asked. “You? Me? And assuming we could track them down, why would they listen to either of us?”
He had a point. What’s more, none of them was going to like hear
ing they were on the list. They would take it as an incredible affront and be out for scalps and political blood. What would stop them from calling their own contacts at the Department of Homeland Security and elsewhere in order to get to the bottom of it? It was a dangerous gamble that could result in Damien accelerating whatever else he might have planned.
“What if McGee called them?”
“The CIA Director?”
Harvath nodded. “He’ll tell them it’s a matter of national security and that they can’t breathe a word of it to anyone.”
“Okay,” the Old Man said after thinking about it for a moment. “Let’s shoot this information to him.”
“I’m on it,” said Nicholas, as he closed his laptop and prepared to return to his van.
As he slid down from the couch, Harvath heard his driveway alarm chime. Looking up at the TV, he saw Palmer coming onto the property. He was going to have a lot of supplies to unload.
“Do you need any help?” Carlton asked as Harvath stood up.
“No thanks,” Harvath replied. “Why don’t you bring Mordechai up to speed when he gets off his call.”
Stepping into the hall, he caught up with Nicholas and said, “Hold on a second.”
The little man turned. “What’s up?”
“I have a private jet coming in tonight. I think you should put Nina on it. If you want to get on too, I’ll understand. You can take the dogs with you.”
“Alaska?”
Harvath nodded.
“And if I say no?”
“Then you’re stuck with me.”
The little man smiled. “I like those odds.”
Harvath smiled back. There was a time where Nicholas would have already fled, concerned only for himself. Regardless of what Mordechai or anyone else thought, Harvath knew a leopard could change its spots. He had seen it with his own eyes.
“Call Nina,” he said. “Get her packed. We’ll send somebody to pick her up.”
Nicholas extended his small hand. “Thank you. I’ll feel better knowing she’s safe.”
Watching the little man walk away, Harvath felt the weight of the world on his shoulders. Safe didn’t exist anymore—not when it came to a virus. They could hole up in the middle of nowhere, but would they really be safe?
As far as Harvath was concerned, safe was a lie. All it did was make people feel better. He didn’t want to be safe from the virus, he wanted to stop the virus.
Multiple plans of action had been pinging inside his brain, vying for attention. None of them were good. All of them were dangerous and outside the rule of law. They fell into only two categories—bad and worse—and the President would have said no to all of them.
The President, though, was in the hospital, and a tsunami was about to hit the beach. There was only one course of action Harvath could take.
CHAPTER 45
C
LIFTON
F
ARM
P
ierre Damien stood at the edge of the pool in all of his naked glory.
“Very handsome,” Helena stated. “Can you turn for the judges, please? Let’s see what fills out the back of those jeans.”
Smiling, he dove into the illuminated water with a powerful splash.
His muscular arms rose like shark’s fins as he raced toward the glorious, naked woman at the other end.
Stroke after stroke, he pulled himself toward her, getting more aroused the closer he came. He couldn’t wait to ravish her.
She was lounging in the shallow end, and the water barely covered her breasts. Their time together was growing short. He was amazing, and she was going to miss him, but she vowed to think happy thoughts every time she reflected upon her bank balance.
Coming to a stop just in front of her, he stood.
For all of the crappy assignments the Mossad had ever given her, at least this last one had been halfway decent.
Reaching for him, she pulled him close and smiled. Pierre was in rare form. He hadn’t had much to drink, yet. He was still tipsy from lunch, but not much. He wanted to make love, and they would. Probably twice.
He had been good to her, but he was also a monster. What he had planned for mankind was beyond horrible. She was beyond caring, though. She had lost that ability a long time ago. Life was cruel. If it ever gave you an opportunity, you took it. You made something of it or you didn’t.
Once she had pieced together the extent of Damien’s plans, she had made a personal decision. She would ride out the storm with him.
He not only knew what was coming, but how bad it was going to get, and had prepared accordingly. She had been trading her body for so long, what was a little longer? It was about survival, as it always had been. Damien cared for her and she would use that to her advantage.
Wrapping her in his arms, he crushed her against his chest as they kissed. She felt warm all over, even as he had lifted her halfway out of the pool, exposing her to the crisp, autumn air.
Momentarily, she broke from his kiss. “Pool house or guest house?” she asked, a naughty smile on her face.
“Right here,” Damien said, placing her fully onto the edge of the pool. “Alfresco.”
This was how she was going to remember him—passionate, powerful, tender. He had always treated her with kindness, with respect. He had treated her like a lady. There had been many bad men in her life, but Damien wasn’t one of them. She would never forget that.
Wrapping her arms around him now, she tried to burn a snapshot in her mind—the pool, the house, the breeze on her damp skin, the sound of Wilhelmenia Fernandez singing
La Wally
from the terrace speakers.
She didn’t want to forget any of it. She wanted to always remember both how well he had treated her, and how much she had actually enjoyed her assignment. How it hadn’t even seemed like an assignment. How she had given herself freely to him.
Her only regret was that he would never know her—not the real her—and what her life had been. Not that it mattered. Without that life, without the Mossad, she and Damien never would have been drawn together.
All that mattered was that Bentzi and his people, his precious Israel, wanted him. That was what Bentzi cared about. It was all that he ever cared about. And Bentzi would do whatever he had to, including using her, to achieve Israel’s goals.
It was why she had kept Damien’s passwords for herself. She didn’t care if the Mossad was ever able to access the hard drive they had back in Tel Aviv. That wasn’t her fight. It had never been her fight.
Bentzi and Israel had used her, repeatedly. And in planning her exit,
she had found a way to not only secure reparations for herself, but to stick it to the Mossad and everyone else in the process.
She had been an innocent, a good, young woman with her whole life in front of her. Israel could have done the right thing, it should have done the right thing. But it didn’t. Instead of freeing her, returning her home, it kept her in bondage. All they did for her was upgrade her shackles.
They might come after her someday, if there was even an Israel left. It was a possibility. What was a certainty was that they would eventually come after Damien. Though Bentzi hadn’t admitted it, she knew that they were thinking of killing him.
It was the biggest reason why she couldn’t stay with him indefinitely. Men like Pierre Damien were incapable of disappearing.
She, on the other hand,
could
disappear. Like so many other things in life, it all came down to money.
Once she had captured the code to Damien’s safe in Geneva, the password to his computer soon followed.
He kept everything on his laptop. A multitude of the files were also password protected, but patience proved to be its own reward. It was like having the keys to a palace in which locked doors and room after room contained some sort of secret or piles of treasure.
The most important thing she was able to ascertain was how to obtain immunity against the disease that was going to sweep the globe. As long as she survived the tumult and chaos in the immediate aftermath, the rest of her life would be hers to do with as she wished.
She quietly reached out to her parents and explained what they needed to do. Her father, always so stubborn and simpleminded, refused to believe her, instead calling it a grand conspiracy cooked up by the Jews. There was no circumventing his bigotry. She begged her mother to heed her advice and work on convincing her father. If he perished, it would be his fault, not Israel’s.
With her health and that of her family addressed, she began to dig into the information on Damien’s computer.
Knowing the financial markets were going to collapse, he had taken a series of positions in order to profit from the calamity. Some were so esoteric that she dismissed them out of hand. Others were quite simple, and those were the ones she focused on.
But like his passwords, many of Damien’s financial bets kept changing. It made it very difficult to keep up.
She established a relationship with a Zurich-based trading firm with offices in Geneva. Upon setting up her account, they provided access to their proprietary app that would allow her to get real-time market info, establish trades, and conduct business with their banking division. It was like having a miniature Swiss banker in her purse or pocket at all times.
But the most interesting thing of all on Damien’s laptop were his journals.
He had begun them shortly after his wife had passed away as a form of therapy, and had kept them going ever since. The insights deep into his mind and his soul were both fascinating and disturbing.
The transformation of a grief-stricken widower to a man determined to bring about the greatest holocaust in human history was riveting. And the closer the deadly event came, the more Damien’s confidence grew.
In his most recent entries, it was as if he knew his diaries would be read and dissected by posterity. He was standing at a pivotal moment in time, calmly laying out his case, explaining what steps needed to be taken, and why. They were quite literally brilliant and mad at the same time.
If history had any sense of decency, it would see Damien through the lens of his macabre devotion to eugenics—his belief that if not for the “overkindness” of the Western world, entire strains of “inferior” lines would have been allowed to die off, releasing pressure upon the planet and its limited resources.
The journals stood in sharp contrast to the man whose bed she so often shared. She had never heard him say a disparaging word about any group or class of people. In fact, he had always seemed devoted to helping those in the greatest need. It was an unsettling dichotomy that made it feel as if a completely different person had written the journals. But there was one thing in particular about them that betrayed his hand—his love of birds.
From the golden faucet knobs shaped like swans on his jet, to the original Audubons hanging in the apartment in Geneva, she had not been surprised to see him reference birds in his journals, but it was the manner in which he had that was so unsettling.
Each phase in the plan he had created was named after a specific type
of bird. The Congo phase was named after the Crow, while the American phase was named after the Hummingbird. It was the Hummingbird reference that she found the most disturbing of all.
While he professed a love for the bird, he also admitted—while intellectually patting himself on the back—a nod to a dark event that had taken place in 1934.
Known as the Night of the Long Knives, or the
Röhm-Putsch
, it was a political purge, a three-day killing spree where Adolf Hitler’s SS and Gestapo were said to have killed hundreds and arrested thousands of his enemies in order to consolidate power. The code name they had adopted was Operation Hummingbird, the same name Damien would adopt almost a century later.
Helena knew that was why he had poured the 1934 sauternes for his dinner guests the other night. She had found the empty bottle in the kitchen trash. Dates mattered to Damien. It was why he had brought the bottles from 1978 to lunch. Wine was his portal to history, both good history and bad.
•••
After making love, they grabbed their thick white robes from where they had left them on the chairs. She took her phone from the pocket, wanting to capture a picture of him, but Damien was famished and hurried them inside.
A tray of charcuterie, his favorite snack, was already waiting for them in the TV room along with a decanted red wine.
Damien held up the bottle and showed it to her. “Romanée-Conti,” he said. “Nineteen forty-five.”
“The last year of World War II,” she replied.
“And the founding of the United Nations. From fifty-one original member states to a hundred ninety-three today.”
He poured glasses for both of them. After admiring the color, the aromas, and the bouquet, he lifted his glass and recited a UN motto, “To peace and security.”
She met his glass with her own. “To peace and security.”
It was another outstanding wine. After taking a sip, she set it down on the table and prepared two plates.
Jeffery had laid out a stunning array of pâtés, terrines, prosciutto, dry sausage, salami, and cheeses. There were three different kinds of breads, pickled vegetables, mustard, olive tapenade, nuts, and fruits.
While she worked on the plates, Damien turned on the TV. On almost every channel, there were scenes of reporters in front of various hospitals.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“I’m not sure,” Damien responded. He was as good a liar as she was.
Handing him his plate, she sat down on the couch next to him and tucked her feet underneath her to keep them warm. Damien turned up the volume.
“. . . a virus public health officials are likening to Ebola,” the newscaster said. “Tonight we have team coverage across the country. We begin in the nation’s capital.”
The pair sat there watching as reporters at hospitals coast to coast tried to put together the breaking story from the pieces of information that were beginning to stream in.
After a while, Damien muted the TV and reached for more wine.
“So,” Helena said. “Looks like it’s not a meteor after all.”
Damien smiled. “We’ll be okay. Don’t worry.”
She was about to respond when Jeffery appeared in the doorway and asked to speak with Pierre. Damien waved him in, but Jeffery requested he step out into the hallway.
Damien excused himself as he stood up and walked across the room. As soon as he stepped into the hall, Jeffery began speaking and reached to pull the door closed, cutting her out of the conversation.
As he did, she noticed pieces of something in his other hand, and her heart leapt into her throat.
Jeffery not only had her cell phone charger, but he had completely disassembled it.