Foreign Agent

CHAPTER 43

The interrogation facility was located about a half hour outside the town of Valetta. It had been built to resemble a rural Maltese farmhouse. The guts of the operation were belowground in a series of tunnels and windowless cells that had been nicknamed the Solarium.

A man named Vella ran the program. He had PhDs in psychiatry and neurochemistry, and was considered one of the best interrogators in the business.

He was the one Harvath had shot at. Vella and his team were waiting as the jet landed and taxied inside the private hangar.

As soon as the pilots shut down the engines and lowered the stairs, Vella and his team came aboard.

“Flight okay?” Vella asked, as his men got the prisoners ready to deplane. “Any trouble?”

Harvath shook his head.

“Good. My car’s outside,” he replied, waving Harvath toward the cabin door.

He was a couple of inches shorter than Harvath, lean, with dark hair and glasses. He didn’t look like some mad scientist. He looked like an accountant.

Harvath grabbed his bag and followed him out to the car.

“Hungry?” he asked as they climbed into his silver Jaguar.

He was. “Can we pick something up on the way? I want to get started with the interrogation as soon as possible.”

“Don’t worry. We’ve got time.”

When Harvath had been given permission to transport Sergun and the other two to the Solarium, the Old Man had explained that Vella would be running the show. Harvath was expected to follow his lead.

“Breakfast or lunch?” he asked as they left the airport and pulled out onto the main road.

“Lunch,” Harvath replied.

Vella nodded, pressed the button to open the sunroof, and pushed down on the accelerator.

Harvath lowered his window. The sun was bright and it was warm outside. He could smell the ocean. It felt good being close to the water.

Twenty minutes later they pulled off onto a dirt road and kept going. There were no houses, no shops, nothing. They were in the middle of nowhere. Harvath’s antennae were beginning to stand up. Then he saw it.

It was half beach cottage, half shack, surrounded by a faded picket fence. A brightly colored rowboat was pulled up onto the beach in front. Two old men worked repairing a large fishing net.

Vella parked his car and motioned to follow him inside.

The front of the restaurant was open to the ocean. They were shown to a small table and offered menus.

“Is there anything you don’t eat?” Vella asked.

“Brains and intestines,” Harvath replied.

Vella laughed and ordered in Maltese for both of them.

When the waitress left to place their order, Harvath said, “Listen, I owe you an apology.”

Vella held up his hand. “No, you don’t.”

“I shot at you.”

“If you had intended to hit me, would you have?”

Harvath nodded.

“Then you didn’t shoot at me. You shot near me. There’s a difference. In your case it was a subtle difference, but a difference nonetheless.”

“I apologize.”

“It’s in the past,” Vella replied. “Let’s talk about the present.”

“What do you want to know?”

“How you broke Eichel and Malevsky. And then what, specifically, it is you want me to get from Sergun.”

“Did they send you my reports?” Harvath asked.

Vella nodded. “I read everything. I just wanted to see what else you could provide. Even small things, things that may seem inconsequential, can sometimes help me.”

Harvath began speaking, but paused as the waitress returned with their drinks. Once she had gone again, he continued. Vella didn’t write anything down. He simply listened, only breaking in when he wanted clarification.

By the time their food arrived, he had told him everything he could remember about all three prisoners.

The lunch was fantastic. Fresh prawn carpaccio, “aljotta,” which was a traditional fish soup, and for their main course a rib eye of veal with wild mushrooms.

By the time Harvath was done eating, he felt even more tired than he had on the flight in. Vella ordered espressos — a double for Harvath — and paid the bill.

When they were done with their coffees, they returned to the car and continued on to the Solarium.

Even with his knowledge of Arabic, the road signs were difficult to read. Maltese was an interesting language, to say the least.

Arriving at the farm, Vella checked Harvath in, issued him a security card, and showed him to his room.

“I’m going to start with Malevsky first,” the interrogator said. “I want to gather as much intel as I can before I sit down with Sergun. Okay?”

“Your house. Your rules,” Harvath replied.

Vella smiled. “Give me two hours and then come down.”

“Will do.”

As the man left and closed the door behind him, Harvath tossed his bag on the end of the bed and began unpacking. He then texted a quick update to Lydia Ryan and took a long, hot shower.

After shaving and changing his clothes, he set the alarm on his phone and lay down on the bed. Within seconds, he was asleep.

An hour later, his alarm went off. Though he could have used a lot more sleep, he at least felt a little refreshed.

Pulling a bottle of water from the small fridge in the room, he drank half of it and headed downstairs. He knew his way from the last time he had been here.

It was at the end of his last assignment. He had been given a list of kills to carry out. They were elites, untouchables scattered across Europe. They had been responsible for the terrible pandemic that had swept the globe.

The last person on his list had been a South African. A prisoner at the Solarium. Harvath had brought him to Malta himself.

The South African had worked for the elites. He had helped make their plan possible. He had killed scores and scores of innocents. He was the last link in the chain and Harvath had killed him with his bare hands.

Then he had chased everyone out of the Solarium and had gotten drunk. He had stayed drunk for days. It was the only way he could deal with what he had seen and what he had done.

When Vella came to check on him, that’s when he had fired a shot at him. Thirty-six hours later, a friend walked into the cell Harvath was camped in and sat down. They drank and they talked. They sat there until Harvath was ready to leave.

It was indeed one of the lowest points of his life. He had done what he had needed to do, what he had been assigned to do. Once he felt ready, he had flown back home.

He and Lara, along with her parents and little boy, had retreated to Alaska. Harvath had friends there who had a fishing lodge. It was a good place to ride out the next four weeks, a safe, remote place to hide from the infection.

Then, as quickly as the disease had appeared, it disappeared — all but burning itself out.

Every nation had suffered, some worse than others. The amazing thing was how quickly “normal” life had returned. No matter what nature threw at mankind, mankind always seemed to find a way to rebound.

Nevertheless, Harvath still carried the demons with him. He saw the faces of the dead and the dying. He felt responsible, as if somehow he could have changed the outcome. Somehow stopped it.

But based on what he had known, and how far he’d had to go to get answers, he couldn’t have stopped it. The wheels had already been in motion. The virus had been set loose before anyone knew what was happening. The men behind the attack didn’t send out polite announcements drawing attention to what was coming. It wasn’t his fault.

What about Anbar, though? The SAD team was there because of the intelligence Harvath had received from Salah. They were so convinced it was solid, they had bet everything on it. Then the team and the helicopter contingent had gotten wiped out.

Next came the assassination of the Secretary of Defense, his security team, and the suicide bombing at the White House. All of that led from Salah to Sacha Baseyev, and now to the man in a cell downstairs, Colonel Viktor Sergun. He was the man with the answers Harvath wanted.

In light of that, it probably made sense that Vella was in charge of this interrogation. Harvath wouldn’t have been subtle. He would have been brutal.

The death of Valery Kumarin had been an accident. Harvath hadn’t intended to kill him when he showed up at Malevsky’s estate, but that had been the result. Perhaps D.C. was trying to safeguard against any more accidents.

Whatever the reasoning, the call had been made. He was an observer now. Vella had full authority. He was the one calling all the shots. Harvath would act accordingly.

As he walked down the stairs, he looked forward to watching the interrogation of Viktor Sergun.