Spymaster

CHAPTER 33

After a few hours’ sleep, Harvath had come downstairs to relieve Haney and monitor radio traffic from the team out at the Sparrman property. So far, not a creature was stirring, though it being a farm, he expected activity to start pretty soon.

The country house they were staying in was an eclectic mix of old and new. The furniture was modern and brightly colored, while everything else looked as if it had been frozen sometime in the late 1800s. It smelled like lavender, and Harvath strongly suspected that the owner had placed sachets of it in hidden locations around the home.

He was sitting at the dining room table, killing time, with a mug of hot coffee and a book, when he heard Jasinski come downstairs.

“What are you doing up?” he asked.

“I kept tossing and turning. I can’t stop thinking about what happened in Norway, and now Rome.”

“I eventually turned the TV off. They just kept repeating the same images. Did you get any sleep at all?”

“A little. Not much,” she replied.

“There’s coffee in the kitchen.”

Jasinski thanked him and joined him at the table a few minutes later with her own mug. “What are you reading?”

Harvath held the book up so she could see it. “Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy by Nicholas Reynolds.”

“How is it?”

“It’s fascinating — all about how Ernest Hemingway was a spy for both U.S. and Soviet Intelligence.”

“He was?”

Harvath nodded. “Did you ever read Alexander Foote’s Handbook for Spies?”

“No. Should I?”

“It covers some of the same material regarding Soviet spy networks, but it’s a first-person account. I think it should be required reading for anyone in our business.”

Jasinski looked at him over the rim of her mug. “So, you’re a spy?”

“To be honest with you, Monika, I don’t know exactly what I am.”

She smiled. “I was always told that when someone says, ‘to be honest with you,’ it often means they’re lying.”

Harvath smiled back. “Not this time.”

“If you’re not a spook, what are you, then?”

It was a good question, and one that Harvath had been trying for a while to come up with an answer for. “I don’t think there’s a word for it. At least not one that covers all the aspects of the job.”

“Well, there has to be a word better than consultant. Why don’t you tell me about the person you work for? I understand he and Lars Lund and Carl Pedersen knew each other.”

“They all go way back,” said Harvath. “Cold War guys.”

“What did your boss do?”

“He was an intelligence officer at the CIA. He helped create the Counter Terrorism Center. Brilliant man.”

Finally, she was getting some answers. She decided to keep pushing. “And he now works at the Supreme Allied Command Transformation back in Norfolk?”

Harvath smiled. “No. SACT, and NATO more specifically, is our client. After retiring from the CIA, my boss took everything he had learned and set up his own business.”

“Doing what?”

“I’m still trying to find a better word for it.”

Jasinski rolled her eyes. “Try contracting.”

Harvath shook his head. “That conjures up images of ex special operations personnel doing security details. We do more than that. A lot more.”

“If you had a brochure,” she asked, “what would it say?”

He thought about it for several moments and replied, “Hypothetically, it would say that we offer a suite of products, services, and turnkey solutions comparable to the CIA, but without all the bureaucracy.”

“How comparable?”

“Extremely.”

She couldn’t believe it. “You’ve privatized the espionage business.”

“Some things work better away from all the red tape.”

“But what about accountability? Some semblance of oversight?”

“We answer to the client.”

“What does that even mean?” she asked.

“It means we’ve been given a certain amount of flexibility in getting our job done.”

“We’re back to creativity and tossing out the rulebook, aren’t we?”

“My boss likes to say that in every operation there’s above the line and below the line,” he replied. “Above the line is what you do by the book. Below the line is how you get the job done. We do what we need to do to get the job done.”

“Is that what you plan to do here? With Sparrman?”

“We’re going to work our way up the food chain. First we’ll start with Sparrman. Then we’ll go after the person above him. And so on and so on.”

“And what if Sparrman doesn’t want to give up the person above him?” she asked.

“He will.”

“How can you be so sure of yourself?”

Harvath smiled again. “Experience.”

“This isn’t a fact-finding assignment. You’re going to kidnap him, aren’t you? Just like that GRU agent you snatched in Berlin.”

“You don’t have to come along.”

“Look around you,” she said, holding out her arms. “I’m already here.”

“So are the Russians, Monika.”

He was right. She couldn’t argue with that. Taking a sip of her coffee, she looked away. She now understood they were not there to confirm suspicions. They had already decided that Sparrman was working with the Russians.

“You know I read your file,” he continued.

It seemed to her an odd thing to say. “And?” she asked.

“And I know you hate the Russians every bit as much as I do.”

“You read my file and you think you know me?” He had touched a raw nerve and pissed her off. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know you work in the terrorism intelligence cell, but have been instrumental in uncovering multiple Russian spies at SHAPE. That doesn’t happen by accident. That happens because you want to stick it to them. Because you want to cause them as much pain as possible. You’ve got a score to settle.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

But he did know what he was talking about. And he could see it written all over her face.

They sat without speaking for several minutes, before she finally broke the silence. “They killed him,” she said. “It was the Russians. I don’t care what anyone else says.”