Code of Conduct

CHAPTER 29

A Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, commonly referred to in intelligence parlance as a “SCIF,” was an enclosed space, fortified against all forms of eavesdropping and electronic surveillance, and used for processing sensitive information. The sign on the outside of the door read, DIGITAL OPS.

Harvath punched his code into the pad and stood still as biometric reader scanned his face. There was a hiss of air as the locks released, the light changed from red to green, and he was able to open the door.

Inside were three of the greatest players in the world of intelligence, and two enormous white dogs that looked like wolves on steroids.

The dogs belonged to Nicholas, the Carlton Group’s digital guru. He was an amazingly talented little man who suffered from primordial dwarfism and stood less than three feet tall. Argos and Draco, as the dogs were named, were Russian Ovcharkas — the breed favored by the Russian Military and the former East German border patrol. They were highly intelligent, incredibly fast, and fiercely loyal. The dogs made excellent companions and even better protectors. That last part was especially important for a man who had spent his previous career buying, selling, and hacking black market intelligence used to blackmail some of the most powerful figures in the world.

In global intelligence circles, Nicholas was known only as “The Troll.” Not much was known about his upbringing. Even less was known about where he was now, and whom he was working for. The fact that the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency was sitting in a chair next to him, petting one of his dogs, said a lot about how far Nicholas had come. It also said a lot about how far Carlton and his relationship with the CIA had come.

The Old Man had worked at the Central Intelligence Agency for three decades. One of his proudest accomplishments during that time had been establishing its Counterterrorism Center.

But over the years, he had watched as the CIA had become more bloated and bureaucratic. Middle managers more concerned with protecting their own careers rather than the country they had sworn to serve fueled a risk-averse culture that was more focused on avoiding failure than securing success.

There were great men and women at the CIA, tons of them, but desk jockeys better suited to IBM than the world of international espionage were hamstringing them. When the Agency began paying foreign intelligence agencies to run ops for them, Carlton had had enough.

Tendering his resignation, he left and created his own company. Based on the CIA’s precursor — the OSS, the Carlton Group hired the best intelligence and special operations people it could find. They broke all the rules with only one goal in mind — to keep America and her citizens safe, no matter what the cost.

Thanks to the frustration with the CIA’s broken culture and the Agency’s inability to conduct effective espionage, government contracts rolled in, especially from the Department of Defense.

But when a new President entered the White House, things at the CIA began to change. He named two highly respected operatives to take the number one and number two slots. Along with the Oval Office, they had begun to repair that broken culture and turn things around.

It was an amazing snapshot to see Nicholas, Reed Carlton, and Lydia Ryan all sitting there in the SCIF together.

Harvath liked Ryan. The product of an Irish father and a Greek mother, she was a tall, beautiful woman in her early thirties with dark hair and intense green eyes, but that wasn’t why Harvath liked her. He liked her because she was smart; off-the-charts smart and a hell of a field operative.

The fact that she was good-looking didn’t hurt, but Harvath had always found intelligence incredibly attractive. It was what drew him to Lara, and was part of what had created a spark with Decker. He could never be with a stupid woman. As a rule, though, he worked hard to keep his business and personal lives separate.

Stepping into the SCIF, the dogs leapt up to greet Harvath first, and he scratched both of them behind the ears. He had not only fought to get Nicholas his job, but he had also fought to get Carlton to allow him to bring the dogs to work. It was obvious from the start that Harvath had appointed himself the little man’s guardian.

When the Old Man had resisted Argos and Draco coming to the office, Nicholas had threatened to sue him for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act, claiming they were “service animals.” It was patently ridiculous, and they all got a good laugh out of it. In the end, Carlton relented and made a special exemption for Nicholas. The dogs quickly became unofficial mascots of the company.

That wasn’t to say that Nicholas’s transition into the Group had been without incident. Before Harvath had brought him in, Nicholas had been a full-on criminal. He had dealt in the theft and black market sale of highly sensitive, often classified information. From heads of corporations to heads of state, he had developed an impressive list of both clients and enemies.

The day after he started work at the Carlton Group, the sign identifying his SCIF as Digital Ops had been replaced with one that read THE LOLLIPOP GUILD, an insulting reference to the munchkins from The Wizard of Oz. When Harvath had heard about it, he went ballistic.

It had taken him less than fifteen minutes to track down the man who had done it. Harvath cornered him in the men’s room, and it took every ounce of restraint he had not to beat him to a pulp right there.

The man was indignant and made it clear what a mistake he thought it was to bring a criminal like Nicholas into their midst.

Harvath didn’t care and told him that if he ever got near Nicholas again, he would put a bullet in his head and dump his body where his family would never find it.

Immediately after Harvath had left the men’s room, the man had bolted to his superior to register a complaint. A no-bullshit Iraq war vet, the superior director told him that if he didn’t shut up and get back to work, he’d save Harvath the bullet and shoot him himself.

Word quickly got around that anybody who screwed with Nicholas would have to answer to Harvath, and that Harvath had carte blanche to do whatever he wanted.

“Look who’s here,” Nicholas exclaimed as Harvath coaxed the dogs back so he could shut the door.

“About time,” remarked Carlton in his heavy New England accent. “What do we got, Nicky?”

Theirs was another relationship that had come a long way — a really long way. The Old Man had originally been dead set against hiring Nicholas. Now they sounded like bowling buddies.

“Why don’t we start with the drone footage?” Nicholas replied.

“What drone footage?” asked Harvath as he grabbed a seat.

“Clifton Farm. Virginia. Northwest of D.C.”

He looked at Lydia Ryan. “Whose drone? Yours or ours?”

“Yours,” she replied. “The Central Intelligence Agency is forbidden from conducting domestic surveillance operations.”

Harvath smiled and then looked back at Nicholas. “What were we doing with a drone there?”

“Paying a visit to Mr. Pierre Damien.”

After Harvath had learned about the Ngoa lab, he had pressed Hendrik for information about who he was working for and where his Laissez-Passer had come from. It took a lot more water, but he eventually gave up a name — Pierre Damien.

Before leaving Bunia, Harvath filed his report and asked Carlton about Damien. The Old Man ran his name and came back with his dual Canadian/U.S. citizenship, his business background, the companies he was involved with, his current posting as Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations Population Fund, and then all of his anti-America, anti-Israel, save the planet stuff. There was nothing that pointed to an involvement with bioweapons or terrorism of any sort.

When Harvath had said as much, the Old Man had replied, “They don’t normally take out ads in the paper.”

He was right. It normally wasn’t until after, but a man like Damien would never publically take credit for any sort of outbreak or attack.

“Have you seen this footage yet?” Harvath asked Ryan as it began playing on one of the large flat-panel monitors along the wall.

The Deputy CIA Director shook her head. “We were waiting for you.”

From what he could see of it, Clifton was an amazing estate. Not only was there the manor house and the rolling manicured grounds, there appeared to be a fully functioning farm with lots of animals, pastures, and support buildings. The estate even had its own road system.

“Not bad,” Harvath remarked.

Nicholas toggled a small joystick and sped the footage forward. There was a man standing outside the main house near its long infinity pool. Pulling up a file photo of Pierre Damien, he ran that piece of drone footage through their facial recognition system. A blue digital overlay appeared and announced “Match.” Seconds later the words “Match ID” appeared, and columns of data pertaining to Pierre Damien unspooled.

“This is definitely our guy,” stated Nicholas.

Harvath leaned forward and studied his face. “How did you know where to look for him?”

“As soon as you came up with his name, we started searching. He had flown in the day before and cleared passport control and customs via private aviation at Dulles International. We had a time stamp, so all I did was pull the surrounding CCTV footage.”

Nicholas brought the footage up on another monitor as he continued speaking. “That also gave us the vehicles meeting him at the airport and their license plates. Traffic and other CCTV cameras got us as far as Berryville, Virginia, outside Leesburg. Then we lost him.”

“How did you pinpoint him to Clifton Farm then?”

“Architectural Digest,” the little man said with a smile. “Damien is a publicity hound. He posed for a spread six years ago. It came up in a generic web search. There was a satellite scheduled to be overhead about that time, so we requested some pictures and voila.”

Nicholas punched a few keys on his keyboard and satellite images of the same SUVs that had picked up Damien and his party at the airport were shown parked at the manor house. Close-ups of the license plates confirmed it.

“Wait. Back up a second,” said Ryan. “The woman travelling with Damien. Can you isolate her from the CCTV footage and run it against Passport Control and Customs?”

The little man nodded and got to work.

Moments later he popped several images up on the screen and replied, “Helena Pestova. Thirty-seven years old. Czech national.”

Ryan studied the images and smiled. “She may be a Czech national, but she’s technically an Israeli intelligence asset.”

“You know her?” Harvath asked.

“We crossed paths multiple times in the sandbox. Amman, Beirut. The last time was in Doha. The Mossad uses her for their honey traps.”

Nicholas brought up the drone footage of her and ran all the images through his facial recognition system. The blue overlay popped up instantly declaring “Match ID.” Unlike Damien, there was no publically available information about her. As far as they could tell, she didn’t even have a social media account.

“So the Mossad are looking at Damien as well,” said Harvath. “Same reason? Or something else?”

“There’s one way to find out,” Ryan replied as she opened a new window on her laptop and hopped on the secure network back to Langley. After a few seconds, she had what she was searching for and turned her screen so the others could see it.

“Who’s that?”

“Ben Zion Mordechai. Bentzi for short. He’s part of the Metsada — the Mossad’s Special Operations Division. According to our people, he’s also Helena’s handler.”

“Do we know where he is?” said Harvath.

“Probably in Israel. Most likely Tel Aviv. Unless he’s on assignment somewhere.”

“Can you send his picture to my screen?” Nicholas asked.

Ryan nodded and sent it over.

“Do you have anything else? Date of birth? Military service? Aliases and known associates?”

Ryan scanned the file, copied what she felt comfortable sharing, and sent it to Nicholas who had received Mordechai’s picture and now put it up on the screen.

Harvath looked at Ryan and asked, “Who do you have in Israel who can reach out to Mordechai to find out what’s going on?”

“Knowing the Mossad,” she replied, “they may not want to tell us.”

“If they want to be that way,” Carlton interjected, “tell them we’re going to bounce her. And make sure they know that we’re going to be very loud about it. If they don’t want their op blown, they’re going to have to share. We don’t care if they like it or not.”

“Okay. I’ll have to make some phone calls. The first thing we need to do is find out if Mordechai is in Israel.”

“He isn’t,” stated Nicholas who had been working furiously at his keyboard.

All eyes in the room turned and focused on him.

“What do you think?” he asked, popping up an image from a European airport’s CCTV camera. “Is that him?”

Before anyone could answer, the blue overlay appeared with the words “Match.”

“It looks like you’ll get to ask Bentzi Mordechai your questions in person,” Nicholas stated as he read the information on his screen. “He’s inbound from Switzerland. His flight arrives at Dulles in two hours.”