Shadow of Doubt, page 32
On the table was a tall plastic bottle of water and a stack of cups. “Thirsty?” Harvath asked.
Elovik nodded.
Harvath poured a cup and then held it to the Russian’s lips so he could drink. The man nodded again when he’d had enough and Harvath set the cup back on the table.
“Thank you,” the military attaché replied.
“You’re welcome,” said Harvath, keeping his demeanor relaxed.
Having control over an interrogation required, first and foremost, control over oneself. Psychologically, it was important that the Russian understand that Harvath held his fate in his hands. The outcome, good or bad, would depend on how Elovik comported himself.
“It appears Mr. Powell was happy to play us both,” the Russian offered. Looking up at the heavy steel hook hanging from the hoist, he added, “Is that meant for me?”
Harvath smiled. “That’s up to you. But to be honest, I hope it won’t be necessary. If that’s where we arrive, then this conversation has really gone off the rails.”
“Agreed,” the Russian replied, stealing one more glance at the winch. “Where would you like to start?”
“Normally, we’d be talking about your background and things like that.”
“Building rapport.”
“Exactly,” said Harvath. “Except that I’m not that interested in your background.”
“From what Powell told me, I understand you are interested in Colonel Ivan Kapralov, the commander of unit 29155.”
“That’s correct. What can you tell me?”
“Quite a bit, I would imagine. More to the point, however, I can tell you where to find him.”
“Then we’re off to a good start,” Harvath replied. “Where is he?”
This time it was Elovik’s turn to smile. “Perhaps we can first discuss what a successful outcome of this conversation looks like. Beyond us not having to employ anything suspended from the ceiling.”
“Such as?”
“Such as, what does my life look like after we’re done chatting? Do we shake hands and I return to my embassy?”
“That depends,” said Harvath. “Is that how you want this to end?”
“Maybe. What did you promise Powell?”
“I promised that he gets to keep breathing.”
The Russian smiled again. “At a minimum, I would expect the same.”
“If you prove helpful to me, I might be able to arrange that.”
“What if I could prove helpful not just to you, but also to your government?”
“Are you looking for some sort of an overall deal with the United States?”
The military attaché nodded.
The man definitely had Harvath’s attention. But Harvath had his own agenda. “To work out a deal, we’d need a station chief. And all things considered, I don’t think Powell is in a position to help anyone. Why don’t we start with why I’m here. We’ll call it a mutual gesture of good faith. You tell me where Kapralov is, and I’ll agree to let you keep breathing. Fair enough?”
“Do I have a choice?”
Harvath couldn’t have been more serious as he looked at the man and replied, “No.”
“Colonel Kapralov and his men are in Norway.”
“Where in Norway?” Harvath asked, working to conceal his surprise.
He had entertained the possibility that the assassination unit might be on an assignment and that he’d either have to wait for their return, or chase after them. What he hadn’t foreseen was that they would be in Norway.
“Near Oslo,” Elovik answered.
“Why? What are they doing there?”
“Several days ago, a high-level Russian intelligence official, named Grechko, defected. A team was sent to kill him. They failed. Kapralov and his men were dispatched to finish the job.”
“And you know precisely where I can find them?” Harvath asked.
“Of course. I helped set up their safehouse.”
“That’s helpful,” said Harvath, who, knowing what he had in the palm of his hand, began pressing for more information. “I’ve got to imagine, though, that the Norwegians have this guy Grechko locked down tight. They’re not going to leave a high-value defector sitting on a park bench somewhere. How is Kapralov supposed to find him?”
“We have someone inside Norwegian Intelligence. An asset I developed myself,” the Russian responded proudly, before shifting gears and adding, “But something’s wrong. The Norwegians have misplaced him.”
“Misplaced?”
“After the first team tried to kill him and were all wiped out, Grechko and the agent debriefing him disappeared. They’re assumed to still be in Norway. No one, however, knows where. Kapralov and his team are on hold until the location is uncovered.”
“Interesting,” Harvath replied, feigning indifference. Switching gears, he posed a new question, a plan forming in his mind. “Why don’t you run me through what intel you have that you think my country might be interested in.”
“I assume since Powell is no longer viable, that you have another station chief in mind we could speak with?”
Harvath nodded, itching to get outside and place the call. “I think I have someone who will be very interested.”
CHAPTER 69
Brunelle had gone to see the Bois de Boulogne crime scene for herself and had been standing next to Gibert when word came in of another gunfight. This time in the 13th arrondissement.
According to the dispatch officer, there were two dead Russian Embassy employees in a car near the Café Apate and a dozen more inside a medical building across the street.
Having seen enough in the Bois de Boulogne, she hopped in Gibert’s car and they rolled, lights and sirens, to the 13th.
The two Russians shot to death in the front seat of their embassy car were shocking to behold. The brazenness of it reminded her of mafia killings in Italy. Barriers, to shield the scene from view, were only just being erected when they arrived.
Inside the building was even worse. Much worse. It looked like a war zone—especially the victims of what appeared to be some sort of homemade, shrapnel-laden bomb. Brunelle couldn’t even begin to imagine how painful it would have been to die that way. One of the men had not only absorbed a ton of shrapnel, but also appeared to have been shot multiple times before retreating down the stairs and succumbing to his wounds.
Another man had received neither shrapnel nor bullets but had had his throat cut from ear to ear and had bled out on the floor. The scene was one of pure, unadulterated carnage.
What wasn’t obvious, however, was who had done the killing. Similar to the site of the first gun battle, where only the fake police vehicles had been left behind, there was basically no additional evidence that might help identify the other shooters.
None of it made any sense. And it was about to get even weirder.
As the first detective on the scene, Gibert had authority to examine the bodies. He and Brunelle were bent over their third corpse when the cop pulled a stack of passports from the man’s pocket. Opening each of them, he showed them to Brunelle.
“My God,” she said. “Those are from the dead Russians in the Bois de Boulogne. Why does this guy have them?”
“I have no idea. The deeper this goes, the more bizarre it gets.”
“What is going on at that embassy? Some kind of internecine warfare?”
Gibert shook his head. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it. Two different groups of Russians, both slaughtered, and no sign of who did it.”
“What’s your gut telling you?” she asked, genuinely meaning it this time, rather than tossing it off as a flippant barb as she had two mornings ago in Jadot’s kitchen.
“It looks like these guys have evolved. They sent a lot more personnel this time.”
“Doesn’t appear to have made any difference.”
“No, it doesn’t,” the cop replied. “Whoever they’re up against are good. Very good.”
“I agree,” said Brunelle. “But who are they? Other Russians? French? Why the gangland-style combat? What the hell are they fighting over? And what does any of this have to do with Jadot’s murder?”
Gibert shrugged. They were all good questions. He just didn’t have any good answers. He didn’t even have any bad answers.
“And why the medical clinic?” she asked, throwing more questions on the pile. “What’s the connection with the Bois de Boulogne?”
“That one,” the cop replied, “I think I can answer. Or at least I can make a relatively well-informed guess. The Russians came here in search of one, or more, of their enemies who was injured at the last gunfight. They bulked up the size of their force and came in hard, smashing through the lobby door and charging up the elevator and both stairwells.”
“But their opponents were waiting for them,” Brunelle continued. “They set up IEDs and, along with their guns, were able to take down twelve men and disappear.”
Gibert nodded. “We’ll want to send a bulletin to every hospital in the city. We’ll also want to start pulling CCTV footage. Nobody simply disappears.”
“I’ll get MoMo going on the footage right away,” she said as her phone started to ring. Pulling it from her pocket, she looked at the caller ID. “Speak of the devil.
“Agent Brunelle,” she stated, activating the call and raising the phone to her ear.
She listened for several moments as MoMo filled her in on the startling information he had just learned.
“Are you sure?” she stressed. “I’m talking, absolute, one hundred percent, watertight certainty. Because if you’re wrong, we’re worse than fucked. President Mercier is going to bring back the guillotine.”
After a few more words back and forth, Brunelle said to MoMo, “Send it to me. I want to see it for myself.”
With that, she ended the call.
“What was that all about?” Gibert asked.
“I’ll tell you in the car.”
“Where are we going?”
Taking out her pistol and making sure a round was chambered, she replied, “To conduct the biggest bust of our careers.”
CHAPTER 70
BETHESDA
It was a briefing President Porter would have preferred to have had in person, but given Maggie’s condition, he agreed to do it via encrypted video link.
There had been some discussion as to whether the National Security Council should be summoned for the meeting, but in the end it was decided to limit it to the president, his chief of staff, the national security advisor, the Director of National Intelligence, and Maggie.
Her boss, Andy Conroy, had pushed her latest findings right to the top. As soon as the CIA Director read them, he pushed them further up the ladder. It was clear to everyone that POTUS was not going to want to wait to read them in tomorrow morning’s PDB. He would want to be informed immediately.
Once all of the participants were on the call, President Porter said, “Maggie, it’s all yours. You have the floor. Take it away.”
“Thank you, Mr. President,” she replied. “In your digital briefing books, you can see the photos and read the update on Balthazar, the horse belonging to President Peshkov’s mistress, which was found just up the coast from Peshkov’s Black Sea complex.
“More importantly, I have included secure links to portions of Norway’s debriefing of ex–Russian intelligence official Leonid Grechko. Per our arrangement with the Norwegian agent conducting the debriefing, we’re allowed to monitor the proceedings and to ask questions via our station chief in Oslo, Holidae Hayes.
“In Grechko’s most recent session, we asked that he be pushed on the Russian nuclear weapons that had been placed in Belarus, as well as Moscow’s intentions. You can listen to Grechko’s responses yourself, but the gist of it is that his office was charged with developing intricate false-flag operations, as well as highly sophisticated propaganda in the run-up to a tactical nuclear weapon being detonated.”
“So, they’re definitely going to do it,” the chief of staff stated.
“It’s an option,” Maggie clarified, “but it’s continually looking like one they plan to exercise.”
“What are the false flags and propaganda about?” the national security advisor asked.
“Moscow,” Maggie replied, “wanted Grechko to have plans ready to paint NATO and its Western allies as increasingly more aggressive and belligerent actors set on destabilizing Belarus and collapsing their government.”
“To what end?” the advisor asked.
“According to Grechko, the idea was to feed the narrative that the West planned to invade Belarus and force it into NATO.”
“That’s absurd.”
Maggie nodded. “Agreed,” she said. “But it gets worse. As the false-flag operations and fire hose of propaganda were rolled out, the Belarusians would understandably be nervous and on edge. It’s against this backdrop that a missile launched into NATO territory could ultimately be characterized as ‘accidental.’ ”
“What?” the chief of staff replied. “As in ‘Whoops, we didn’t mean to press that big red button’?”
“Essentially, that’s the concept,” said Maggie. “However, there are several steps that would have to happen before that. Belarus would need to raise its posture, the warheads would have to be unstored from their depots and loaded onto missiles, those missiles would have to be loaded onto launchers, et cetera.”
“But all of that could happen in a matter of hours,” the Director of National Intelligence observed.
“That is correct.”
“Those are Russian missiles, they’d be tipped with Russian nuclear warheads, and there’d conceivably be Russians somewhere in the launch chain,” said the chief of staff. “How does President Peshkov think he’d escape accountability?”
“He doesn’t,” Maggie responded. “At least not fully. But there’s a big gray area that he believes he can manipulate. Instead of taking all the heat, he’ll blame-shift to Belarus, which’ll be seen as having actually launched the missile. In essence, it would allow Russia to dodge a significant amount of the international condemnation while, Peshkov believes, scaring Western populations into pressuring their governments into dropping their support of Ukraine.”
“Unbelievable,” the chief of staff angrily stated. “The guy’s going to use a cutout to do his nuclear dirty work.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” President Porter replied. “Did Grechko mention any possible targets?”
“Only one,” said Maggie. “J-Town.”
As she had in her meeting with the full National Security Council, Maggie once again stunned her listeners into silence.
J-Town was shorthand for NATO’s key logistical hub near Jasionka Airport, outside Rzeszów, Poland, just sixty miles from the Ukrainian border.
Billions of dollars in Western military equipment and ammunition passed through J-Town on its way to Ukrainian forces. The site was critical to the war effort. If this indispensable gateway was struck, it would dramatically turn the tide in Russia’s favor.
President Porter was first to break the silence. “That leaves us with just one question,” he said. “How do we guarantee this attack does not happen?”
Looking into the camera on her monitor, Maggie responded, “Having listened to all of Grechko’s interview, I have a couple new ideas. But they’re potentially very dangerous and come with a lot of risk.”
CHAPTER 71
Holidae Hayes landed at Paris Le Bourget Airport in a slate-gray Bombardier Global 8000 business jet. In her hand was an American passport filled with stamps, under the assumed name Elovik had requested.
With everything to his satisfaction, the Russian had thanked her with a smile and boarded the plane. Harvath walked up the steps right behind him, barely acknowledging the Oslo station chief.
Langley wanted her to begin debriefing Elovik right away, but first she wanted to have a few words with Harvath. Directing the Russian military attaché to an enclosed, private area at the rear of the aircraft, she told him she’d be with him in a minute.
Despite the late hour, she looked all business. Her red hair was pulled back tight. She wore a dark pantsuit. To top it all off, she sported a pair of expensive heels.
“This is for you,” she said, handing Harvath an envelope.
He had been pocketing the pain-relief packets in the forward galley. “What’s this?”
“An official letter from the Treasury Department. They’ve released all holds on your Swiss account and have waived any taxes, penalties, or fees.”
Folding the envelope in half, he slid it in the back pocket of his jeans.
“You’re not going to read it?” she asked.
“Do I need to?”
“No, but I figured you’d want to make sure.”
“I’m good,” he said, excusing himself so he could slide past her and grab a bottle of water.
“Are we really going to end things this way?”
“What way?” he asked, fishing a bottle from the fridge.
“You’re choosing to shoot the messenger.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“For fuck’s sake, Harvath,” she replied. “I had a job to do. I took no pleasure in it. I told you, I wanted to go with the carrot, not the stick.”
Setting the water on the counter, he looked at her. “I get it. I just thought we were better friends than that.”
“We are friends.”
“I don’t shiv my friends.”
“Nobody shivved you. In fact, I made Langley scale way back. They wanted twenty-four-hour surveillance on you. Plus, a full listening and video package installed at Sølvi’s apartment. Not only did I tell them to forget it, but I also told them that if they tried to force my hand, I’d resign.”
When Harvath didn’t respond, she continued. “I made it clear that they needed to trust you, like I do. In fact, I figured that if you’re half the man I believe you are, the first thing you would have done was to fill Sølvi in.”
Harvath tried to suppress a grin, but Hayes, who was a master at reading people, caught it. “You motherfucker,” she said with a smile. “I knew it.”
Elovik nodded.
Harvath poured a cup and then held it to the Russian’s lips so he could drink. The man nodded again when he’d had enough and Harvath set the cup back on the table.
“Thank you,” the military attaché replied.
“You’re welcome,” said Harvath, keeping his demeanor relaxed.
Having control over an interrogation required, first and foremost, control over oneself. Psychologically, it was important that the Russian understand that Harvath held his fate in his hands. The outcome, good or bad, would depend on how Elovik comported himself.
“It appears Mr. Powell was happy to play us both,” the Russian offered. Looking up at the heavy steel hook hanging from the hoist, he added, “Is that meant for me?”
Harvath smiled. “That’s up to you. But to be honest, I hope it won’t be necessary. If that’s where we arrive, then this conversation has really gone off the rails.”
“Agreed,” the Russian replied, stealing one more glance at the winch. “Where would you like to start?”
“Normally, we’d be talking about your background and things like that.”
“Building rapport.”
“Exactly,” said Harvath. “Except that I’m not that interested in your background.”
“From what Powell told me, I understand you are interested in Colonel Ivan Kapralov, the commander of unit 29155.”
“That’s correct. What can you tell me?”
“Quite a bit, I would imagine. More to the point, however, I can tell you where to find him.”
“Then we’re off to a good start,” Harvath replied. “Where is he?”
This time it was Elovik’s turn to smile. “Perhaps we can first discuss what a successful outcome of this conversation looks like. Beyond us not having to employ anything suspended from the ceiling.”
“Such as?”
“Such as, what does my life look like after we’re done chatting? Do we shake hands and I return to my embassy?”
“That depends,” said Harvath. “Is that how you want this to end?”
“Maybe. What did you promise Powell?”
“I promised that he gets to keep breathing.”
The Russian smiled again. “At a minimum, I would expect the same.”
“If you prove helpful to me, I might be able to arrange that.”
“What if I could prove helpful not just to you, but also to your government?”
“Are you looking for some sort of an overall deal with the United States?”
The military attaché nodded.
The man definitely had Harvath’s attention. But Harvath had his own agenda. “To work out a deal, we’d need a station chief. And all things considered, I don’t think Powell is in a position to help anyone. Why don’t we start with why I’m here. We’ll call it a mutual gesture of good faith. You tell me where Kapralov is, and I’ll agree to let you keep breathing. Fair enough?”
“Do I have a choice?”
Harvath couldn’t have been more serious as he looked at the man and replied, “No.”
“Colonel Kapralov and his men are in Norway.”
“Where in Norway?” Harvath asked, working to conceal his surprise.
He had entertained the possibility that the assassination unit might be on an assignment and that he’d either have to wait for their return, or chase after them. What he hadn’t foreseen was that they would be in Norway.
“Near Oslo,” Elovik answered.
“Why? What are they doing there?”
“Several days ago, a high-level Russian intelligence official, named Grechko, defected. A team was sent to kill him. They failed. Kapralov and his men were dispatched to finish the job.”
“And you know precisely where I can find them?” Harvath asked.
“Of course. I helped set up their safehouse.”
“That’s helpful,” said Harvath, who, knowing what he had in the palm of his hand, began pressing for more information. “I’ve got to imagine, though, that the Norwegians have this guy Grechko locked down tight. They’re not going to leave a high-value defector sitting on a park bench somewhere. How is Kapralov supposed to find him?”
“We have someone inside Norwegian Intelligence. An asset I developed myself,” the Russian responded proudly, before shifting gears and adding, “But something’s wrong. The Norwegians have misplaced him.”
“Misplaced?”
“After the first team tried to kill him and were all wiped out, Grechko and the agent debriefing him disappeared. They’re assumed to still be in Norway. No one, however, knows where. Kapralov and his team are on hold until the location is uncovered.”
“Interesting,” Harvath replied, feigning indifference. Switching gears, he posed a new question, a plan forming in his mind. “Why don’t you run me through what intel you have that you think my country might be interested in.”
“I assume since Powell is no longer viable, that you have another station chief in mind we could speak with?”
Harvath nodded, itching to get outside and place the call. “I think I have someone who will be very interested.”
CHAPTER 69
Brunelle had gone to see the Bois de Boulogne crime scene for herself and had been standing next to Gibert when word came in of another gunfight. This time in the 13th arrondissement.
According to the dispatch officer, there were two dead Russian Embassy employees in a car near the Café Apate and a dozen more inside a medical building across the street.
Having seen enough in the Bois de Boulogne, she hopped in Gibert’s car and they rolled, lights and sirens, to the 13th.
The two Russians shot to death in the front seat of their embassy car were shocking to behold. The brazenness of it reminded her of mafia killings in Italy. Barriers, to shield the scene from view, were only just being erected when they arrived.
Inside the building was even worse. Much worse. It looked like a war zone—especially the victims of what appeared to be some sort of homemade, shrapnel-laden bomb. Brunelle couldn’t even begin to imagine how painful it would have been to die that way. One of the men had not only absorbed a ton of shrapnel, but also appeared to have been shot multiple times before retreating down the stairs and succumbing to his wounds.
Another man had received neither shrapnel nor bullets but had had his throat cut from ear to ear and had bled out on the floor. The scene was one of pure, unadulterated carnage.
What wasn’t obvious, however, was who had done the killing. Similar to the site of the first gun battle, where only the fake police vehicles had been left behind, there was basically no additional evidence that might help identify the other shooters.
None of it made any sense. And it was about to get even weirder.
As the first detective on the scene, Gibert had authority to examine the bodies. He and Brunelle were bent over their third corpse when the cop pulled a stack of passports from the man’s pocket. Opening each of them, he showed them to Brunelle.
“My God,” she said. “Those are from the dead Russians in the Bois de Boulogne. Why does this guy have them?”
“I have no idea. The deeper this goes, the more bizarre it gets.”
“What is going on at that embassy? Some kind of internecine warfare?”
Gibert shook his head. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it. Two different groups of Russians, both slaughtered, and no sign of who did it.”
“What’s your gut telling you?” she asked, genuinely meaning it this time, rather than tossing it off as a flippant barb as she had two mornings ago in Jadot’s kitchen.
“It looks like these guys have evolved. They sent a lot more personnel this time.”
“Doesn’t appear to have made any difference.”
“No, it doesn’t,” the cop replied. “Whoever they’re up against are good. Very good.”
“I agree,” said Brunelle. “But who are they? Other Russians? French? Why the gangland-style combat? What the hell are they fighting over? And what does any of this have to do with Jadot’s murder?”
Gibert shrugged. They were all good questions. He just didn’t have any good answers. He didn’t even have any bad answers.
“And why the medical clinic?” she asked, throwing more questions on the pile. “What’s the connection with the Bois de Boulogne?”
“That one,” the cop replied, “I think I can answer. Or at least I can make a relatively well-informed guess. The Russians came here in search of one, or more, of their enemies who was injured at the last gunfight. They bulked up the size of their force and came in hard, smashing through the lobby door and charging up the elevator and both stairwells.”
“But their opponents were waiting for them,” Brunelle continued. “They set up IEDs and, along with their guns, were able to take down twelve men and disappear.”
Gibert nodded. “We’ll want to send a bulletin to every hospital in the city. We’ll also want to start pulling CCTV footage. Nobody simply disappears.”
“I’ll get MoMo going on the footage right away,” she said as her phone started to ring. Pulling it from her pocket, she looked at the caller ID. “Speak of the devil.
“Agent Brunelle,” she stated, activating the call and raising the phone to her ear.
She listened for several moments as MoMo filled her in on the startling information he had just learned.
“Are you sure?” she stressed. “I’m talking, absolute, one hundred percent, watertight certainty. Because if you’re wrong, we’re worse than fucked. President Mercier is going to bring back the guillotine.”
After a few more words back and forth, Brunelle said to MoMo, “Send it to me. I want to see it for myself.”
With that, she ended the call.
“What was that all about?” Gibert asked.
“I’ll tell you in the car.”
“Where are we going?”
Taking out her pistol and making sure a round was chambered, she replied, “To conduct the biggest bust of our careers.”
CHAPTER 70
BETHESDA
It was a briefing President Porter would have preferred to have had in person, but given Maggie’s condition, he agreed to do it via encrypted video link.
There had been some discussion as to whether the National Security Council should be summoned for the meeting, but in the end it was decided to limit it to the president, his chief of staff, the national security advisor, the Director of National Intelligence, and Maggie.
Her boss, Andy Conroy, had pushed her latest findings right to the top. As soon as the CIA Director read them, he pushed them further up the ladder. It was clear to everyone that POTUS was not going to want to wait to read them in tomorrow morning’s PDB. He would want to be informed immediately.
Once all of the participants were on the call, President Porter said, “Maggie, it’s all yours. You have the floor. Take it away.”
“Thank you, Mr. President,” she replied. “In your digital briefing books, you can see the photos and read the update on Balthazar, the horse belonging to President Peshkov’s mistress, which was found just up the coast from Peshkov’s Black Sea complex.
“More importantly, I have included secure links to portions of Norway’s debriefing of ex–Russian intelligence official Leonid Grechko. Per our arrangement with the Norwegian agent conducting the debriefing, we’re allowed to monitor the proceedings and to ask questions via our station chief in Oslo, Holidae Hayes.
“In Grechko’s most recent session, we asked that he be pushed on the Russian nuclear weapons that had been placed in Belarus, as well as Moscow’s intentions. You can listen to Grechko’s responses yourself, but the gist of it is that his office was charged with developing intricate false-flag operations, as well as highly sophisticated propaganda in the run-up to a tactical nuclear weapon being detonated.”
“So, they’re definitely going to do it,” the chief of staff stated.
“It’s an option,” Maggie clarified, “but it’s continually looking like one they plan to exercise.”
“What are the false flags and propaganda about?” the national security advisor asked.
“Moscow,” Maggie replied, “wanted Grechko to have plans ready to paint NATO and its Western allies as increasingly more aggressive and belligerent actors set on destabilizing Belarus and collapsing their government.”
“To what end?” the advisor asked.
“According to Grechko, the idea was to feed the narrative that the West planned to invade Belarus and force it into NATO.”
“That’s absurd.”
Maggie nodded. “Agreed,” she said. “But it gets worse. As the false-flag operations and fire hose of propaganda were rolled out, the Belarusians would understandably be nervous and on edge. It’s against this backdrop that a missile launched into NATO territory could ultimately be characterized as ‘accidental.’ ”
“What?” the chief of staff replied. “As in ‘Whoops, we didn’t mean to press that big red button’?”
“Essentially, that’s the concept,” said Maggie. “However, there are several steps that would have to happen before that. Belarus would need to raise its posture, the warheads would have to be unstored from their depots and loaded onto missiles, those missiles would have to be loaded onto launchers, et cetera.”
“But all of that could happen in a matter of hours,” the Director of National Intelligence observed.
“That is correct.”
“Those are Russian missiles, they’d be tipped with Russian nuclear warheads, and there’d conceivably be Russians somewhere in the launch chain,” said the chief of staff. “How does President Peshkov think he’d escape accountability?”
“He doesn’t,” Maggie responded. “At least not fully. But there’s a big gray area that he believes he can manipulate. Instead of taking all the heat, he’ll blame-shift to Belarus, which’ll be seen as having actually launched the missile. In essence, it would allow Russia to dodge a significant amount of the international condemnation while, Peshkov believes, scaring Western populations into pressuring their governments into dropping their support of Ukraine.”
“Unbelievable,” the chief of staff angrily stated. “The guy’s going to use a cutout to do his nuclear dirty work.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” President Porter replied. “Did Grechko mention any possible targets?”
“Only one,” said Maggie. “J-Town.”
As she had in her meeting with the full National Security Council, Maggie once again stunned her listeners into silence.
J-Town was shorthand for NATO’s key logistical hub near Jasionka Airport, outside Rzeszów, Poland, just sixty miles from the Ukrainian border.
Billions of dollars in Western military equipment and ammunition passed through J-Town on its way to Ukrainian forces. The site was critical to the war effort. If this indispensable gateway was struck, it would dramatically turn the tide in Russia’s favor.
President Porter was first to break the silence. “That leaves us with just one question,” he said. “How do we guarantee this attack does not happen?”
Looking into the camera on her monitor, Maggie responded, “Having listened to all of Grechko’s interview, I have a couple new ideas. But they’re potentially very dangerous and come with a lot of risk.”
CHAPTER 71
Holidae Hayes landed at Paris Le Bourget Airport in a slate-gray Bombardier Global 8000 business jet. In her hand was an American passport filled with stamps, under the assumed name Elovik had requested.
With everything to his satisfaction, the Russian had thanked her with a smile and boarded the plane. Harvath walked up the steps right behind him, barely acknowledging the Oslo station chief.
Langley wanted her to begin debriefing Elovik right away, but first she wanted to have a few words with Harvath. Directing the Russian military attaché to an enclosed, private area at the rear of the aircraft, she told him she’d be with him in a minute.
Despite the late hour, she looked all business. Her red hair was pulled back tight. She wore a dark pantsuit. To top it all off, she sported a pair of expensive heels.
“This is for you,” she said, handing Harvath an envelope.
He had been pocketing the pain-relief packets in the forward galley. “What’s this?”
“An official letter from the Treasury Department. They’ve released all holds on your Swiss account and have waived any taxes, penalties, or fees.”
Folding the envelope in half, he slid it in the back pocket of his jeans.
“You’re not going to read it?” she asked.
“Do I need to?”
“No, but I figured you’d want to make sure.”
“I’m good,” he said, excusing himself so he could slide past her and grab a bottle of water.
“Are we really going to end things this way?”
“What way?” he asked, fishing a bottle from the fridge.
“You’re choosing to shoot the messenger.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“For fuck’s sake, Harvath,” she replied. “I had a job to do. I took no pleasure in it. I told you, I wanted to go with the carrot, not the stick.”
Setting the water on the counter, he looked at her. “I get it. I just thought we were better friends than that.”
“We are friends.”
“I don’t shiv my friends.”
“Nobody shivved you. In fact, I made Langley scale way back. They wanted twenty-four-hour surveillance on you. Plus, a full listening and video package installed at Sølvi’s apartment. Not only did I tell them to forget it, but I also told them that if they tried to force my hand, I’d resign.”
When Harvath didn’t respond, she continued. “I made it clear that they needed to trust you, like I do. In fact, I figured that if you’re half the man I believe you are, the first thing you would have done was to fill Sølvi in.”
Harvath tried to suppress a grin, but Hayes, who was a master at reading people, caught it. “You motherfucker,” she said with a smile. “I knew it.”
