Chapter 54
R emoving the hood, Harvath put the headphones back on, duct-taped them in place, and covered Hale’s head with his original blackout hood.
Instead of German death-metal music, Harvath now piped in white noise and allowed the man’s nervous system to stabilize.
Stepping out of the storage room, he joined McGee at the staircase.
“Do you believe him?” the ex–CIA director asked.
“I’ve never known the process not to be solid.”
“Except for the only other time you’ve administered it solo and you gave someone a heart attack.”
“Yeah,” Harvath admitted. “Except for that.”
“First somebody somewhere inside the Secret Service and now Andy Conroy? The fucking deputy director of operations at CIA? This has got all the hallmarks of a straight-up coup. They’re just not using the military to carry it out.”
“Seeing as how Conroy is the one who froze my money and tried to blackmail me into spying against S?lvi, you’ll forgive me for believing he’s capable of anything.”
“That was dirty pool,” McGee replied. “I told you, had I known, I never would have allowed it. But you need to understand, Conroy has been at Langley forever. We’re talking something like forty years. This doesn’t make any sense.”
“Nothing that’s happened this week has made any sense.”
“So what do we do now?”
Harvath looked at him. “With Hale?”
“With everything.”
He thought about it for a minute. “If Conroy is dirty, if he really is the one pulling Hale’s strings, we’d have to be able to prove that.
What we got out of Hale, that’s not going to be admissible anywhere.
And then we’d have to figure out who we can trust with the proof.
Which brings us back to where we started—we don’t know how high this thing goes, nor how widespread. ”
“What if there was someone I trusted at the Bureau?”
“Who?”
“An agent named Alan Gallo,” said McGee. “He’s an assistant director and head of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division. We’ve done a lot of counter-Russia stuff together over the years. If I had to trust anyone there, it’d be him.”
“So we’d go to Gallo and tell him what? You got someone at Langley to send you classified personnel files and we kidnapped some ex-employee and I used enhanced interrogation methods on him to elicit further evidence? What’s to stop your FBI buddy from putting us in cuffs and throwing us in a cell?”
“If he’s corrupt? Nothing at all. In fact, jail would probably be the least of our worries. But if he’s still the man I knew, he might be the only one who can help us.”
“How do we figure out if he is?” Harvath asked.
“We’d have to meet with Gallo. Feel him out.”
“And then what?”
“If we’re convinced he’s clean and he wants to take this, we let him take it. If we have any reservations, we keep going without him.”
It was a possibility, but it had one snag. “We can’t leave Hale here alone,” Harvath said. “Somebody needs to keep an eye on him.”
“What about Haney? If he and Rogers get an Uber, they can be here in an hour and a half. That gives us plenty of time to figure out what we want to share with Gallo and what we should keep in reserve.”
Harvath looked at his watch. “All doable. And, like it or not, we’re going to have to tell him what Hale revealed about the next attack.”
McGee nodded. “That just leaves us with where to set up the meeting. Ideally, it’d be someplace where we could have a secure conversation. No eavesdropping. No recordings.”
“Which cancels out FBI headquarters. In fact, considering all the intel we’ve amassed, I think Gallo should come to us.”
“Here?” the ex–CIA director remarked. “To your house?”
Harvath shook his head. “Fort Belvoir is just down the road. The Army Intelligence and Security Command has a SCIF. No phones. No recording devices. Just the three of us having a very private and very frank discussion.”
“I like it. And Gallo definitely has enough pull to make that happen.”
“Why don’t you take a break and see if you can get it all set up. I’ll stay down here with Hale.”
Grabbing his water bottle, McGee headed upstairs to put everything together.
When they were getting close in their Uber, Haney texted Harvath, who met them at Mount Vernon.
Doing a 360-degree inspection of his Bronco, Haney commented, “No bullet holes. Good job.”
After returning to the house, getting Ambassador Rogers set up in the den, and familiarizing Haney with all things Hale, Harvath and McGee got on the road for the fifteen-minute drive to Fort Belvoir.
After showing their IDs at the gate, they were issued a vehicle pass and told how to find the Army Intelligence and Security Command, also known as INSCOM, which was adjacent to U.S. Army Cyber Command.
Finding a spot in the lot, they entered the lobby and did another ID and security check.
Once they had been issued badges, a soldier escorted them to INSCOM, where they were handed off to a different soldier, who walked them the rest of the way to Alan Gallo, who was waiting for them outside the secure area that contained the SCIF they would be using.
He was an extremely fit, middle-aged man, with a perfectly parted haircut and a dark blue suit. After he greeted the two visitors with a firm handshake, they all deposited their electronic devices in the nearby cubby and then Gallo waved them into the SCIF.
They chatted for a moment as Gallo caught up quickly with McGee, and informed Harvath that he was aware of how everything had unfolded Monday evening and that he was proud to be meeting him in person.
Then, sitting down at one of the chairs around the short conference table, he looked at McGee and said, “You called this meeting, Bob. I’ll let you helm it.”
After thanking him again for coming down to Fort Belvoir, the ex–CIA director launched into everything he and Harvath had agreed would be in his speech.
Gallo looked as if someone had not just walked across his grave but had driven over it with an F-150 too.
“Anything else?” asked the FBI agent.
McGee looked at Harvath and nodded, signaling that he was okay with dropping the other shoe as long as he was.
“Hale says there’s another attack coming,” Harvath replied. “It’s not his people, however. And he doesn’t know anything about the target. Apparently, whoever is behind all this, they’ve got another roster of hitters they’re drawing from.”
“I think we’re getting close to uncovering that other roster.”
Upon hearing that, both Harvath’s and McGee’s eyebrows went up. Though neither man said anything, it was obvious that they were waiting for Gallo to elaborate. When he did, it was substantial.
First, however, he reaffirmed the ground rules. “Both of you have maintained your top-secret clearances. I expect you to abide by all the rules and regulations therein. Nothing I am about to share with you gets repeated. Is that clear?”
Harvath and McGee both agreed.
“Seven months ago, the FBI apprehended a Russian intelligence officer. In debriefing him, we learned that about a year ago, Russia had stood up a new covert spy unit, the Department of Special Tasks, or SSD. Their goal is to destabilize the West and one of their first operations is called Chernaya Liniya , or Operation Black Line. The object is to tip America into chaos and collapse the country from within.”
“And you think that’s what we’re experiencing now?” Harvath asked.
Gallo nodded. “According to our Russian intelligence officer, everything we’re seeing is in keeping with that plan.
You start with terrorism to make Americans feel unsafe, and then you apply downward pressure on our political and cultural fault lines, sow distrust not only in the government, but in each other as well. ”
“What did I tell you?” McGee said, looking at Harvath.
“But how did the Russians get a bunch of Americans on board with their plan, much less current and former CIA people, as well as someone at Secret Service?” Harvath asked.
“My best guess would be that these people don’t know that they’re doing Russia’s bidding. I think there’s probably something else between them and the Russians. What that is, though, we haven’t figured out yet.”
“What about this other roster of hitters?” Harvath asked. “Who are they?”
“They’re a White nationalist group called Iron Tree.
Real blood-and-soil, neo-Nazi types. The Russians have covertly been using combat sports as a recruiting ground.
They teach these guys how to fight, in an expectation that eventually they’ll be called out onto American streets to commit violence against those they see as their political opponents.
Based on intelligence we just received, we believe they’ve taken things to the next level with training in weapons and small unit tactics. ”
“And you think that’s what my wife and I encountered outside the Vice President’s Residence?”
“There, as well as with the final shooter inside the Norwegian ambassador’s residence,” Gallop replied.
“So shooting at the D.C. cops and the protesters was handled by this Iron Tree group,” said McGee.
“And the attack on the Secret Service motorcade was Hale’s ex–Ground Branch people.
All of which causes chaos, a feeling that no one is safe, et cetera.
But what’s the rationale for going after Brendan Rogers? ”
“Did you ask Hale?”
“I tried,” said Harvath. “But by that point, it looked like he was headed for a rapid unscheduled disassembly.”
Gallo tilted his head, confused.
“He was redlining. His pulse had spiked so high that I thought he was going to go into cardiac arrest. So I stopped the interrogation.”
“Rendition. Chemical interrogation. You realize that I can’t use any of this, right?” the FBI agent stated. “None of it’s admissible in court.”
“With all due respect, we’re under attack and we’re losing. They’ve killed and injured a lot more of us than we have of them. I’m more concerned with stopping the threat than making sure they get their day in court.”
“You guys are hammers. I get that. My job and my oath, however, are different. I’m bound by a more complicated set of rules.”
“I understand. Believe me,” said McGee, who’d had to straddle both worlds—the lawful and the lawless—when heading the CIA. “We’re here as a courtesy. We’re not looking to get in your way. We just want to help.”
“I’ve got to be honest,” Gallo admitted.
“I’m not sure where to even start. If the Russians are ultimately behind this, they’ve effectively weaponized pieces of our national security apparatus against us.
There’s no telling how long it could take to unwind this and clean out all the infection.
Anyone we turn to for help, in any organization, could be part of the plot. ”
“Which is exactly where we are in looking at all of this,” said Harvath.
“That’s why we came to you,” McGee added.
The FBI agent shook his head. “I don’t know whether to thank you, or to tell you to lose my number and never call me again.”
The men shared an uncomfortable laugh.
“As far as I see it,” McGee continued, “we’ve got to stop the bleeding. Stop the attacks.”
“I agree,” said Gallo. “But I don’t want any of the perpetrators walking free because we couldn’t build cases against them.”
Harvath looked at him. “I guarantee you: Not a single one of them is going to walk. Not one.”
Based on his ominous tone, Gallo didn’t doubt it. “There’s a lot of things I’m hearing in here that, for the record, I’m going to pretend I didn’t.”
“So, what do you want to do?” asked McGee, cutting to the chase. “Do you want us to go home, set Hale loose, and encourage Ambassador Rogers to make his peace with God?”
“Or,” interjected Harvath, “do you want to find a way to put us to work?”