Foreign Agent

CHAPTER 39

Viktor Sergun left his apartment building at 7 a.m. sharp, walked to the end of his block, and turned left.

He was wearing a gray suit and a navy-blue trench coat. His black shoes were polished and his hair neatly combed. A small piece of toilet paper marked where he had nicked himself shaving that morning.

Harvath’s instructions had been crystal clear. He didn’t want Sergun followed. He only wanted confirmation.

Once Sergun disappeared around the corner, Adler radioed Kluge. As soon as Kluge saw Sergun enter the embassy, he radioed Herman. It was on.

They numbered six men total. Two needed to stay back with the prisoners, which meant they were left with four operatives at any given time in the field.

Surveilling an embassy was no easy task. Surveilling the Russian Embassy specifically was an open invitation to get caught.

For all their faults, the Russians weren’t stupid. They weren’t careless either. In addition to being heavily invested in electronic countermeasures, they spent a lot of time focused on good, old-fashioned human tradecraft.

The Embassy lay just east of the Brandenburg Gate on a grand boulevard named Unter den Linden. It was one of the busiest, most popular areas in all of Berlin.

In addition to being packed with shops, cafés, offices, and assorted tourist sights, there was a tree-lined allée, replete with park benches, that ran right down the middle of the boulevard, which offered multiple places where someone could position themselves to conduct surveillance.

To combat this issue, the Embassy sent out roving teams of observers. They were dispatched sporadically, which made them hard to spot. Hard, but not impossible.

There was a look to them — something that said eastern European. The causal observer might miss it, but not someone who knew what to look for. Herman’s men knew what to look for.

As such, they had been able to rotate in and out of the area. One at a time, they kept an eye on the Embassy while avoiding detection by its CCTC cameras and observation teams.

Around noon, Harvath and Herman headed to the Restaurant Pasternak. They took their time looking for a parking space, driving around the neighborhood in order to get a feel for it.

There were multiple bottlenecks and chokepoints, but there were also multiple side streets and opportunities to disappear. It was a mixed bag, but Harvath and Herman both agreed that net-net, it was too good a location to pass up.

The restaurant sat on an odd-shaped corner where several streets met. A long outdoor terrace like that of a Parisian café wrapped around the front. Across the street, an old water tower that had been converted into apartments rose from a thick, green park.

They took a table under one of the red awnings outside and ordered lunch. Herman had a beer. Harvath drank Red Bull.

Watching the traffic pass, they quietly discussed what the neighborhood would look like tonight and what kind of problems they might encounter.

When their meals came, they ate and then each man used the restroom in order to scope out the restaurant from the inside.

After walking all the way around the long block, they retrieved Herman’s BMW and drove back to the old produce warehouse in Friedrichshain.

Farber and Bosch were finishing up their shift keeping an eye on the prisoners.

Harvath pulled up an overview of Berlin on Herman’s laptop and walked them through what he had seen.

They discussed primary and alternate routes, as well as what should happen if police became involved or if they were unable to get back to the warehouse. All of them knew that anything was possible.

They key to success was being ready for anything. That included having a backup plan in case Sergun didn’t go to the restaurant. If that happened, they were going to have to take him at his apartment.

All things considered, grabbing him at his apartment was a safer option, but it would not have the benefit of being a public spectacle.

Harvath wanted witnesses because he wanted them to talk. If it looked like Sergun had been grabbed by a team of Arabic speakers, the Russians wouldn’t know what to think, much less what to do. They might think it was a ruse, but they wouldn’t be certain. It would keep them off balance, doubting.

The second layer of the onion was Malevsky’s driver and bodyguards down in Berchtesgaden. According to Malevsky, no one in his organization knew that he was doing work for Sergun and the GRU.

Harvath found that highly unlikely. In fact, he knew it would only be a matter of time before word filtered back to Moscow that Malevsky had been apprehended. When that eventually happened, the Russians would be chasing their tails wondering what Germany’s involvement was and whether it stretched beyond Malevsky’s money-laundering activities.

It only had to keep them tied up long enough for Harvath to get to Sergun. Once he had his hands on him, he didn’t really care what the Russians knew. At that point, it would be game over for them.

When he was finished, Farber floated several questions, along with a couple of suggestions. There were two security cameras Harvath had pointed out that he was concerned about.

Since they would be wearing masks and taking other precautions, he wasn’t worried about being ID’d. What he was concerned with was appearing too professional.

They needed to come off as lucky. Good, but not great. It couldn’t look too polished or too choreographed. Not only would the German security services not believe it, neither would the Russians, once the CCTV footage was shared with them.

There had to be a little sand in the gears — a mistake or two, rookie moves that no pros would engage in. From front to back, it had to feel like a jihadist production. Harvath agreed and was already three steps ahead of him.

He laid out his ideas, and then went back and forth with both Farber and Bosch. Finally, they came to a meeting of the minds.

Some of the things that Harvath had suggested meant the operation would take longer than it should, but they would add legitimacy.

The hardest part would be going against years of training. There were certain things that had been drilled into all of them — certain things that they didn’t even consciously think about. They just instinctively knew to do them.

Tonight, though, they were going to have to turn several of those things upside down.

The big thing they had in their favor was that they had all spent countless hours dissecting tactical videos. Both the good guys, and the bad. They knew what the professionals would be looking for. That, they hoped, would give them the upper hand. As long as they all played their rolls as scripted, it should come off exactly as they wanted it to.

The last thing Harvath raised was footwear. It was a small detail, but an extremely important one. He didn’t want any of them wearing tactical boots.

Their big, black watches had to stay behind as well. Anything that could even remotely tag them as pros was off-limits. He didn’t care what some terrorists had been caught wearing in the past. None of that stuff could be part of this operation.

Farber and Bosch agreed. It wasn’t worth it. The entire team had already ditched their distinct boots and jackets for more low-key street clothes anyway. They were well trained and knew that their surveillance of the Russian Embassy required them to blend in.

With everything settled for the time being, Harvath got ready to take up his post when his phone rang. It was Lydia Ryan calling him from Langley.

“Hey,” he said, answering the call, “what’s up?”

“Turn on your TV,” the Deputy CIA Director replied.

“I don’t have one.”

“Do you have a laptop?”

“I do,” Harvath answered, as he opened Herman’s back up and pressed the space bar to wake it from sleep mode. “What’s going on?”

“The White House has just been attacked.”