Code of Conduct

CHAPTER 38

It was a torrent of bad news. “Six more cases have been reported,” said Nicholas.

“Where?” Harvath replied.

“San Francisco, Cedar Rapids, Atlanta, Philadelphia, New York City, and Washington, D.C.”

Washington? Harvath shouldn’t have been surprised. D.C. and Northern Virginia had large Muslim populations. He just hadn’t expected this thing to spread so quickly, much less wind up on his own doorstep overnight. But it was there, and they were going to have to deal with it.

“Has the media gotten ahold of this yet?” he asked.

“Yes,” replied Nicholas. “And in the last two hours, health ministries from eleven other countries have reached out to the CDC. They’re trying to control the information flow in order to prevent a panic.”

Good luck with that, Harvath thought. In his experience, life was predominantly made up of three distinct groups: sheep, sheepdogs, and wolves. And if there was one thing he had learned from a lifetime of hunting wolves and protecting sheep, it was that sheep had two speeds — graze and stampede. Now that word was out that the virus was loose, all bets were off. Very soon, chaos was going to ensue.

“What else do you have?” he asked, bracing himself for more bad news.

“The pharmaceutical companies Damien’s involved with appear pretty benign. One focuses on dementia medication and the other on birth control drugs.”

Go figure.

“I think you were right about the Congolese Muslims, though,” Nicholas continued. “There was a group of thirty. They arrived and departed Saudi Arabia via the same privately chartered aircraft.”

Finally, some good news. “Any passport photos or CCTV footage?” he asked.

“All of it has been transmitted to the Solarium. Vella is personally going to go through it with Hendrik.”

While it wouldn’t move the ball down the field, at least it would confirm his theory. “Anything else?”

“Mordechai’s asset made contact.”

“The woman with Damien?”

“Yes,” Nicholas replied. “She thinks she captured his password.”

“That’s even better news.”

“And it keeps getting better. The keystroke logger captured activity from multiple devices in the room, one of which we were able to ID.”

“Which was?”

“A laptop belonging to Linda Landon from the Department of Homeland Security.”

“Have you reviewed all of the keystrokes they caught?”

“No one has seen them. Not even Mordechai. Without access to secure comms, his asset isn’t transmitting the data. She and Damien are having lunch today at some place called La Niçoise in Winchester. She’s going to pass the actual memory card to Mordechai there.”

With all the tech the Israelis had, he was a little surprised they couldn’t have equipped her with some way to encrypt and transmit the data. But by the same token, this was an incredibly important operation. They were risking a ton just sending her in with the keystroke logger. There was no telling what Damien or his people might have done if they had discovered any of it.

He also needed to keep in mind that Mordechai’s operation had revolved around the City of Geneva, where it wouldn’t have been a big deal to pass off the memory card on her way to work, or to a store, or something like that. Now that she was at Damien’s rural Virginia estate, she was much more isolated.

There was no telling how secure his WiFi was and what possible digital eavesdropping measures he had in place. He was known to entertain wealthy and extremely powerful people. Did he eavesdrop on any of their communications?

The restaurant was a good play. The handoff would be low-tech, old-school Espionage 101. What he didn’t like, though, was that they’d be burning hours in a battle where every second counted.

“Where’s Mordechai now?” Harvath asked.

“Still at the canal house. The team that’s on him is about to rotate off.”

“Who’s up next?”

“Sloane Ashby and Chase Palmer are back on.”

Harvath put the phone on mute, spoke to the Old Man for a couple of seconds, and then returned to Nicholas. “How would you like to get out of the SCIF for a little bit?”

“That depends,” the little man said. “What do you have in mind?”

“Lunch. I’ll buy.”

Nicholas’s gray Sprinter cargo van was a rolling TOC. It had satellite communications equipment hidden in the roof and was packed with racks of electronics inside. Special hand-controls had been added that allowed him to drive the van himself.

They arrived in downtown Winchester well before the lunch rush and found parking half a block down from La Niçoise on the other side of the street. Its awning promised Mediterranean and French cuisine — two of Nicholas’s favorites. Harvath exited the van and came back fifteen minutes later with Thai.

“What the hell is this?” the little man complained.

“Pad See Ew.”

“I’m not eating this.”

Harvath took the container back and set it on the dashboard.

“That’s it?” Nicholas asked. “No Champignons Sauvages? No Pâté de Campagne? No Escargots Bourguignons?”

Harvath looked in his bag from Thai Winchester. “I guess they forgot.”

He shook his head. “Less than fifty yards from a French restaurant and you stumble around until you find Thai food.”

“Who doesn’t like Thai?”

“Don’t play stupid with me,” Nicholas replied. “You’re so much better at it.”

Harvath laughed and reached inside the bag. “That’s what I love about you. You never look down on anyone.”

The little man fixed him with a stare. “Is that a short joke?”

“Maybe,” he replied, handing him a styrofoam container. “Gourmet bison burger, rare, with caramelized onions and blue cheese.”

Nicholas’s stare softened into a smile.

“We good?” Harvath asked.

“It’s not Gigot D’Agneau,” he said, lifting the lid and admiring the sandwich, “but I’ll take it. Did you bring back anything for the boys?”

Harvath looked into the back of the van at Argos and Draco, their noses in the air, taking in the smell of all the hot food. “Sorry, they only took cash and I came up a little—”

“Don’t say it,” Nicholas smiled.

Harvath smiled. “You’re lucky I found someplace to get you a burger.”

“Thanks.”

In between bites of his food, Harvath said, “A TV was on in the Thai place. They broke from national news for a local report about another patient who had bled out at Georgetown University Hospital.”

“They’ll never contain this.”

“The illness or the story?”

Nicholas took a bite of his burger and let his silence speak for itself.

Harvath had no doubt that reporters from coast to coast were scouring hospitals, working their sources, trying to uncover additional cases. The one thing the government had going for them, for the time being, was that all of the patients thus far had contracted the illness abroad.

Harvath reached for a bottle of water as Nicholas’s phone chimed. The little man picked it up, plugged in his password, and read the message. He then opened the attachment and turned the phone so that Harvath could see the image.

“Here’s your escapee from the Ngoa facility.”

Harvath looked at the image. It appeared to be a scan of the man’s passport made by the Saudis when he entered their country. His name was Yusuf Mukulu and he was twenty-seven years old.

“Who’s that from?” he asked.

“Vella in Malta. Hendrik has confirmed that Mukulu is the man who escaped and ended up at the Matumaini Clinic.”

It was surreal seeing the man’s face — the person Colonel White had referred to as “Patient Zero.” If only there were one Patient Zero and not thirty.

“What happened to the rest of the pilgrims he travelled to Mecca with?” Harvath asked.

Nicholas turned the phone back around and thumbed through the rest of the brief message. “According to Hendrik, the Ngoa staff watched them die, then dug a pit, burned the bodies, and covered it up.”

“Literally and figuratively.”

The little man returned his phone to the console and turned his attention back to his burger.

Harvath checked his own phone for an update from Ash and his team back in Congo. An aircraft had been chartered to get them to Kinshasa. Another was sent to Bunia to retrieve the STAR team member assigned to work with them. So far, there was nothing.

They ate in silence until Nicholas asked, “If we don’t get a handle on this… if this whole thing spins out of control, what’s your plan?”

“It’s not going to.”

The little man looked at him. “Right, but let’s say it does. Let’s say the wheels come completely off the bus. Do you have a plan? Where you would go, what you would do?”

Harvath nodded. “A friend of mine from the SEALs has a place in Alaska. It’s cut off, remote, very tough to get to. But that’s where I’d want to ride things out. He’s a strategic guy. He’s laid in a lot of supplies over the years, just in case.”

“Doomsday prepper?”

“He’s just a smart guy. He knows store shelves may not always be stocked. He also knows that if there’s ever a major disaster, the government can’t, and won’t, take care of everyone. You’ve seen enough since you’ve been in D.C. There are some good people in government, but by and large the government looks out for itself.

“They’ve spent billions making sure that if the wheels come off the bus, they’ve got someplace safe to go with plenty of food to eat. They’re protected. You and me? Not so much. We’re on our own. So that’s why Alaska is my plan.”

“But you’d have to get there first,” said Nicholas. “That’s a pretty long way away.”

“I’ve got that covered. What about you?”

The little man looked at his two dogs and then back at Harvath. “I don’t know. I never really gave it much thought until now. I never felt like I had to. I guess it would depend on where the safest place was.”

“And then what?”

“Then I would figure out how to get us all there.”

“Meaning you, the dogs, and Nina,” said Harvath, referring to the woman in Nicholas’s life.

“Pretty much.”

“Can I be honest with you?”

The little man nodded.

“That’s a shitty plan.”

“I know,” he replied, “but it’s the only plan I have.”

“Well, we need to get you a new one.”

“Until we do, Alaska sounds good.”

“Don’t worry,” said Harvath. “It’s not going to come to that.”

“But if it does?”

“If it does, I’ll take you with me, okay?”

Nicholas smiled. Harvath was a good man, one of the only real friends he had ever had. “Thank you.”

Harvath was going to make a joke about stocking up on orange hair dye so they didn’t lose Nicholas in any Alaskan snowdrifts, when his phone rang. It was Palmer.

Activating the call, he said, “What’s up?”

“Look sharp. Damien and the woman are here.”