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  “We believe so. One of the paparazzi outside filed photographs with his press agency of Lorenzo arriving shortly before the bomb went off.”

  The President took a deep breath, slowly exhaled, and then looked at Ryan. “Could we have prevented this?”

  “No, sir,” she said. “We had no idea, no advance warning that Lorenzo, or anyone from the NATO Defense College or the Foundation, was actively being targeted.”

  “Three diplomats have been murdered, then the Norway incident, and now Rome. Can you honestly sit there and tell me that we should still be quiet about this? That we shouldn’t expose the Russians and bring holy hell down on them?”

  “I don’t think so, sir,” she replied.

  “Why not?”

  “First, we don’t have enough concrete evidence that we could release to the media. It would be our word against the Russians’. They would spin it as a wild conspiracy theory. Fake news. Perhaps even claim it is a plot by us to discredit them. As we discussed before, if we can’t completely control the narrative, we don’t want it out there.”

  “And, if I might add,” injected McGee, “putting the story out there might not change anything. All we’d be doing is tipping our hand to Moscow. We should stick with Harvath’s plan.”

  “It’s turning into a bloodbath,” stated the President. “We have to do something.”

  “We are doing something,” Ryan reassured him. “We’re actively targeting their propaganda apparatus, as well as the PRF itself. Director McGee is right. We need to stick to the plan.”

  “But can you assure me that it’s working?”

  “Yes. It’s working.”

  Pointing at the coverage on his television, Porter replied, “Because that doesn’t look like it’s working to me.”

  “Mr. President,” said McGee, “the Russians were always going to have a head start on us. We had no idea where or when the starting gun was going to go off. Now that it has, we’re right on their heels.”

  Porter looked at Ryan. She was the one in charge of the ground operation. “Is that true?” he asked. “Are we right on their heels?”

  No, it wasn’t true and Ryan knew it. In fact, they had taken a huge step backward. Losing Lars Lund had been a terrible blow to their progress. Harvath was working in a ridiculously tight window, and it was all but impossible to make up the ground Lund had covered before the Swedish police stepped in and froze them out.

  Nevertheless, she had to give him a chance, carve out a little breathing room that might allow him to make up that lost ground. If anyone could pull it off, it would be Harvath.

  What was more, this wasn’t the time for the President to be having second thoughts. Ryan abhorred the loss of life, too. She would have given everything to have prevented one drop of blood from being spilled. But the fact was, America and her allies weren’t spilling the blood. The Russians were.

  Coming out publicly wasn’t the answer. McGee was absolutely right. They’d only be tipping their hand to the Russians. Moscow would very likely see it as a sign of weakness, which might even embolden them further. It was better for America to keep its cards to itself and push on. The challenge, though, was in convincing Porter to stay the course.

  If not for the liquor in her bloodstream, Ryan might not have had the courage to say what she said next.

  “Mr. President, with all due respect, you gave us this mission. You said, and I quote, ‘No matter what the cost, prevent an Article 5.’ ” Drawing his attention to the TV, she said, “This is the cost, and it is terrible. Those are allies and innocents being maimed and killed. But it pales in comparison to what another world war would look like.

  “You made the right decision. Now, please, trust us to do our jobs. I promise you, we can do this.”

  Porter knew she was right. They had to see this through. It didn’t make it any easier, though, to watch unfold. Nor did it ease his mind about what might come next.

  Which brought him to the other item he wanted to discuss. Pausing, he said, “Let’s talk about what we’re going to do regarding Matterhorn.”

  CHAPTER 33

  * * *

  GOTLAND, SWEDEN

  SATURDAY

  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.”

  CHAPTER 34

  * * *

  Her eyes were moist as she fought to keep her emotions in check. It was incredibly painful and difficult to discuss.

  Harvath didn’t push. Monika was the one who had to decide if she wanted to go into detail. This was completely up to her.

  “In April and May of 1940, the Soviet Union committed a series of mass executions of Polish military officers, politicians, and intellectuals. Among the so-called intellectuals were police officers, lawyers, priests, doctors, bakers, and schoolteachers. In all, twenty-two thousand were executed and their bodies were dumped in mass graves in the Katyn Forest outside Smolensk, Russia.

  “The murders were carried out by the precursor to the KGB—the Soviet secret police known as the NKVD. It was done with Stalin’s full knowledge and support.

  “For years, the Russians lied and dissembled about their involvement. They first blamed the Nazis. Then after the fall of communism, they blamed the no-longer-existent Soviet Union. Finally, they stopped discussing it altogether, saying that because the perpetrators were all dead, there was no point. They refused to fully accept the blame, much less discuss reparations.

  “As far as the Polish people were concerned, it should have been classified as a war crime or genocide. Instead, the Soviet-era cover-up was simply swept under the rug and largely ignored. Poland, though, kept pushing.

  “Because it refused to give up, Poland forced Russia to finally and officially accept its role. Of course, in its proclamation the Russian Duma blamed Stalin and a collection of party officials, but it was at long last recognition of the evil that had been done.

  “That was eight years ago—the seventieth anniversary of the massacre. As a gesture of what was believed to be goodwill, Russia agreed to allow a party of Polish dignitaries to visit the site of the massacre and pay their respects. It was supposed to have served as a commemoration ceremony—a closing of a very painful wound.

  “What no one knew, at least not in Poland, was how much deeper and more painful that wound was about to be made.”

  Jasinski took a moment and several deep breaths in order to maintain her composure. The worst part, for her, was what came next.

  “On April 10, 2010, eighty-nine passengers and seven crew members boarded a Polish Air Force Tupolev TU-154 jet in Warsaw for the flight to Smolensk. On board were the President of Poland and his wife, the last surviving President of Poland in Exile during the Soviet occupation, Chief of the General Staff, as well as the Commanders of the Polish Army, the Polish Navy, the Polish Air Force, and the Polish Special Forces, President of the National Bank of Poland, eighteen members of Parliament, the Deputy Minister for National Defense, the Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, prominent clergy, and several relatives of victims of the Katyn massacre.”

  Once again, she breathed deeply. Her eyes were damp with tears as she said, “In addition to other dignitaries, there were a handful of key aides along to make sure the trip went smoothly. One of them was my husband, Julian.

  “According to the Russian reports, the aircraft tried to land in a rapidly deteriorating weather situation. There was a dense fog, which reduced visibility to less than five hundred meters. Allegedly, the plane came in dangerously low, its left wing striking a birch tree, which caused the plane to roll and crash into the woods near the airport, killing everyone on board.

  “Despite their claims that it was just an accident, the Russians stonewalled the investigation at every turn, refusing to turn over the flight recorders, refusing access to the site, and refusing to produce key pieces of the wreckage.

  “Only through incredible international pressure did Russia finally begin to cooperate. By then, a large portion of the Polish people believed that Russia was complicit in the crash—that it had been a massive political assassination, a decapitation strike.

  “The Polish government that came to power in the aftermath of the crash was much more favorable to Russia than its predecessor. That fact is undeniable, and further supports the theory that the Russians caused the crash.

  “Many people in Poland would rather close the book on the crash, to not pick at the scab, as it were. To this day, it is still a very hotly contested subject in Poland.

  “That said, three years ago a different government came to power—one that does not hold Russia in such high regard. The new government decided to reopen the investigation and has gone so far as to exhume the remains of the deceased President.

  “From what I have been told, traces of explosives were found on the plane’s left wing. There are some very powerful people who believe this was absolutely a plot by the Russians to weaken and destabilize Poland.”

  Harvath knew the conspiracy theories were not popular in Poland and that polling ran two to one against its being anything but a crash in bad weather due to pilot error. In fact, the unit the pilots had come from had been disbanded for how poorly its members were trained, and several senior level officers had been forced to resign.

  He also understood people wanted answers, especially for such a terrible, terrible tragedy. Having done presidential protection with the Secret Service, he couldn’t for the life of him understand why the Poles had packed so many extremely important, high-level government figures onto one plane. The protocol had been changed since, but it was just plain foolish from a conti
nuity-of-government perspective.

  There was nothing Harvath could say other than “I’m so sorry.”

  “Thank you,” she replied.

  Even if the Russians hadn’t been involved in crashing the plane and it had been an accident, they had handled the aftermath in such an atrocious fashion that he couldn’t blame her for hating them and letting that hate creep into blame for the entire thing.

  There was also the possibility, no matter how remote, that the Russians had been involved in bringing the aircraft down. It wouldn’t have been the first time, and sadly, it likely wouldn’t be the last.

  Taking a sip of her coffee, Monika looked away from him and out the window. “As terrible as it was,” she continued. “There was one more wound I was forced to suffer.”

  Harvath had already known about her husband and the crash, but that was pretty much the extent of it. He waited for her to continue.

  “I was pregnant,” she said. “We hadn’t told anyone yet. Julian and I were trying to decide what we were going to do. We had talked about my leaving the Army.

  “In the end, it didn’t matter. In addition to losing my husband, I miscarried and also lost my baby.”

  Harvath felt terrible for her. “Monika, I am so sorry. No one should have to go through that.”

  “Apparently, I did.”

  How to respond? Harvath wasn’t exactly skillful at talking about his own feelings, much less somebody else’s. The one thing he knew, though, was that if he wasn’t careful, he could very likely make things worse. He decided not to say anything, and they sat there for several more minutes, as they had in the beginning, in silence.

  He watched her, turned away from him and looking out the window. He couldn’t even begin to fathom what she was feeling.

  It made him realize, though, how fortunate he was to have someone back home waiting for him. It also made him wonder if he hadn’t been taking Lara for granted.

  The Old Man, before he really began slipping away, had pushed him to do the right thing and marry her. He had even gone so far as to call Harvath a “dope” for not already having done so. He said it would serve him right if another man came along and swept her off her feet. And that it would be doubly poetic if it happened while Harvath was on one of his many trips abroad.