Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5

Tilting his seat back, Harvath had tried, without much luck, to get comfortable, and they had passed the rest of the drive making small talk.

Hayes was a fascinating woman. She was exceedingly bright and exceedingly ambitious. In an arena still dominated by the old boys' network, she had carved out quite a career for herself. She had even come to the president's attention and there was talk of her jumping from CIA to the State Department for an ambassadorship after the next election.

He also knew that S?lvi really admired her—especially as Hayes had succeeded despite her good looks, not because of them. No one had given her anything. She'd had to fight for every single thing that she had achieved.

Arriving at the ten-acre embassy campus, Harvath was reminded of the attention to detail that had gone into its design. Horizontal roofs were meant to honor traditional Norwegian longhouses, while boulders placed throughout mimicked the landscape of the Norwegian fjords. The most impressive design element, however, was the copper cornices, which were identical to the copper used for the Statue of Liberty, which was also mined in Norway. The entire project was a testament to the enduring friendship between the two nations.

Hayes badged Harvath in and after leaving his bag in her office, they headed for the sensitive compartmented information facility, also known as the SCIF. It was an ultra-secure room, about the size and shape of a shipping container, designed to foil all manner of high-tech eavesdropping. As such, they were required to leave their cell phones in a cubby outside.

Once in the SCIF, with the door securely closed behind them, the CIA station chief pulled out the chair at the head of the conference table. Harvath took the chair to her right.

"You did an exceptional job in Ukraine. Langley, the White House… everyone's very happy."

"Good. That's what I'm paid for," he replied, following up with the first of many questions he had. "What was all of that back at the airport? Why pick me up? In fact, how'd you even know I was going to be on that flight?"

Hayes smiled. "I'm CIA."

"Don't jerk me around, Holidae. I'm not in the mood. Not today. Okay?"

"Fair enough," she responded. "I apologize."

"So what happened? The pilots called in the disturbance, the Norwegians ran the manifest, and what? They contacted the embassy to let you all know there was at least one Amcit on board?"

The station chief shook her head. "I wasn't aware of the disturbance until I got to the airport and Chief Inspector Borger filled me in. He was the officer who escorted you off the plane and got your customs and immigration expedited for me."

Now Harvath was even more confused. "If you didn't show up because of what happened during the flight, what were you doing there?"

"I needed to see you before you saw S?lvi."

In the back of his mind, alarm bells began to go off. "Holidae, if you've got something to tell me, tell me."

Hayes took a breath and cut to the chase. "The Norwegians have a Russian defector. Came across a couple of days ago. S?lvi's in charge of him."

"I know."

She looked at him. "You know?"

"Yeah. She told me."

"What else did she tell you?"

"Nothing else. It's none of my business."

Hayes removed a folder and pushed it across the table to him. "His name is Leonid Grechko," she said as Harvath opened the man's jacket and began flipping through it. "High-ranking operative in Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service. He was in charge of their Active Measures Department. His job was to shape world events via political warfare. Espionage, sabotage, assassination, propaganda… he had every conceivable tool in his toolbox and he used them all. With a frightening level of precision."

Harvath closed the folder and slid it back to her. "This guy's a walking, talking golden ticket. He could have defected anywhere. You guys at CIA would've showered him with so much money, he'd have drowned. So with all due respect to the Norwegians, why defect here?"

"That's what we want to know."

"So ask your counterpart over at Norwegian Intelligence. You and Vice Admiral Iversen are friendly enough, right?"

"The Norwegians don't know that we know that they've got him."

Harvath reached into his pocket and pulled out another packet of pain pills. Hayes was beginning to give him a headache. "Sounds to me like a you problem."

"All we want you to do is to keep your ears open. Maybe ask a few questions—"

" We. Meaning the CIA."

The station chief nodded.

"And by ‘keep my ears open and ask a few questions,' what you want is for me to spy on S?lvi—the woman I'm about to marry."

"We've picked up intelligence that suggests the Russians are up to something."

"For fuck's sake, Holidae. It's the Russians. They're always up to something. Sorry. I'm not your guy. I'm not going to spy on my fiancée."

"You're the only person we've got."

"Technically speaking, you don't have me. I work for a private agency that contracts with you guys. I get to say ‘no' anytime I want. And for the record, the CIA should've known I'd say ‘no,' especially to something like this."

"To be honest," she replied, "they actually anticipated that would be your answer." There was something about her tone that unsettled him, but before he could respond, she produced another folder and slid it across the table.

"I want you to know that this wasn't my idea. In fact, I was against it."

More alarm bells.

He opened the folder and looked inside. There were only a few sheets of paper. The executive summary made clear what he was looking at. Slowly, he flipped through it.

When he was finished, he closed the folder and gently slid it back. "I have no idea what this is."

"Now who's jerking who around?" she asked.

Harvath looked at her, his expression flat, unreadable.

"Since we're getting things about the CIA on the record," Hayes continued, "I want you to know that I pushed for using a carrot. It was Langley that decided to go with the stick."

"Well, wrong stick."

"That's not the way the seventh floor sees it. They think the evidence is pretty compelling."

"What evidence?"

"After your wife was murdered, you launched a far-reaching revenge campaign. Right up to and including the drug-addled, psycho son of President Peshkov of Russia. But what you hadn't banked on was the boy's oligarch godfather putting a one-hundred-million-dollar, winner-take-all bounty on your head.

"Of course you being you, you ignited another kill chain and took out everyone involved with that plot too. Everyone, that is, except for the man who put up the bounty—the boy's aforementioned godfather, Nikolai Nekrasov. For some reason, you let him live. And that's where it starts to get interesting.

"After running Nekrasov to ground, you left your team in a parking garage while you went into the building, alone, ostensibly to finish him off. But for some reason you changed your mind.

"Shortly thereafter, Nekrasov's long-suffering wife, Eva, gets a magic deposit of fifty million dollars, half the value of the bounty, in an account in Bermuda. Then that same day, another account, this one buried in a web of shell companies in Switzerland, its ultimate beneficiary unknown, also receives a fifty-million-dollar deposit."

"That's amazing," Harvath deadpanned.

"What? That the CIA tracked it all down?"

"No. That you don't know who the second account belongs to."

Hayes smiled. "We didn't know bin Laden would be in that house in Abbottabad either, but we had a high enough level of confidence to move on it."

"You took your shot and it paid off."

"As this could for you. Fifty million is a hell of a nest egg. And no one is blaming you."

"Blaming me for what? I told you, I don't know what you're talking about."

The station chief put up her hands in surrender. "Maybe you and Mrs. Nekrasov came to some sort of an understanding. I don't know and I don't care. The Russians are butchers. They killed your wife. And you made them bleed, big-time. If that bleeding also meant keeping the bounty Nikolai had placed on your head in exchange for letting him live, even better. All I want you to do at this point is think about it. Okay? It's a big ask. I get it."

"What's the carrot?"

"Excuse me?"

"You said Langley opted for the stick, but you wanted to offer me a carrot. What was it?"

Hayes smiled again. "It doesn't matter. That Swiss account, stuffed with fifty million dollars, isn't yours."

"But," said Harvath, pausing for effect, "if it was."

"If it was, then I'd do you two favors. First, I'd let you know that an elite unit at the U.S. Treasury has it ringed with tripwires."

He rolled his eyes. "Sounds dangerous."

"They don't mess around at Treasury."

"And the second favor?" he asked.

"The second favor is the carrot. I'd help make all those tripwires, in fact the entire file, disappear."