Chapter 60
F AIRFAX C OUNTY
O NE WEEK LATER
O n Sunday afternoon, after Prime Minister Stang and the Norwegian delegation had boarded their SAS flight back to Oslo, Scot and S?lvi felt like they could finally breathe again. Finally relax.
After saying goodbye to the Secret Service agents who had accompanied them, they walked outside to where Harvath had parked S?lvi’s Mustang.
Saying farewell to everyone, wishing the Norwegians who’d been injured, including Bente, speedy recoveries, and seeing to the dignified transfer of the coffins filled with the Norwegian dead into the cargo hold had been a lot.
“Do you want to drive?” he asked her.
She shook her head. “I’m exhausted. You drive.”
Stripping off their gear, they threw everything in the trunk and got on the road. But instead of heading for the Dulles Access Road and home, they struck off in a completely different direction—toward their goddaughter and their friends Nicholas and Nina.
While the new parents enjoyed a well-deserved evening out, Scot and S?lvi enjoyed a well-deserved evening in, playing with the baby and quietly being together.
As a bonus gift, they had spent the night, with Harvath getting up with the baby so Nicholas, Nina, and even S?lvi didn’t have to.
The next morning over coffee, it was obvious how much a solid eight hours of sleep had done for all of them.
With reserves yet to be tapped, Scot and S?lvi had offered to stay another night, but their friends had insisted they return home and promised that they’d take them up on their babysitting offer again very soon.
They had lingered in the kitchen, waiting for Monday morning traffic to die down, and then had headed home.
That afternoon, as Harvath had been busy turning his interrogation room back into a storage room, cleaning and restowing his gear, Alan Gallo had shown up at the house, along with Russ Gaines, who was carrying a large, gift-wrapped box.
Inviting them inside, he showed them into the kitchen.
“Can I get you guys anything?” he asked.
“Do you have any soft drinks?” Gallo replied.
“Sure. Sam Adams or Heineken?”
Both men chuckled.
“I guess, since it’s Fourth of July week,” said Gaines, “I’ll take a Sam Adams.”
“Me too,” Gallo agreed.
Pulling three beers from the fridge, Harvath opened them and handed them to his guests, reserving the third one for himself.
After a long slug, he asked, “Who’s the present for?”
Gaines pushed it across the table. “Open it.”
Harvath set his beer down. “If there’s a human head in here, S?lvi’s going to be pissed. I’m supposed to do that kind of stuff in the garage.”
Once again, his guests chuckled.
Lifting the lid, Harvath looked inside and saw that Gaines had brought his guns back from the attack outside the Naval Observatory.
“Are you granting me full custody? Or is this just a supervised visit?”
“The investigation is closed,” said Gaines. “At least that part of it. I also have this for you.” Pulling out an envelope, he handed it to him.
“What’s this?”
“Two tickets to the White House Fourth of July celebration.”
“Thank you,” said Harvath as he handed the envelope back. “Unfortunately, we have other plans.”
“Are you sure?”
Harvath nodded and Gaines put the envelope back in his pocket.
Looking at Gallo, Harvath smiled and said, “Those were two pretty good gifts. How are you going to beat that?”
Gallo shook his head. “I don’t know if I can, but I’ll try. How would you like an update on the investigation?”
For the next twenty minutes, Gallo laid out everything they had—much of which Harvath had already learned from his interrogation of Conroy.
Harvath knew, for instance, that the mole inside the FBI had been Kennedy and, shockingly enough, that the mole inside the Secret Service had turned out to be Gaines’s own unctuous assistant, Kyle Marshall. And of course, Conroy had been behind everything at the CIA.
The cabal of Washington insiders looking to unseat President Mitchell from power included the Vice President’s chief of staff, Missouri Senator Bill Blackwood, and even some podcaster whom Harvath had never paid any attention to named Coughlin.
The one thing all the men had in common was a deep sense of anger at Mitchell. They used this anger, cloaked in a warped, nationalistic patriotism, to recruit others to their cause.
Behind everything, however, Gallo still believed there lurked the unseen hand of the Russians and their new chaos group the SSD.
“And Operation Black Line,” said Harvath.
The FBI man nodded. “We’re still looking for a connection, but haven’t been able to find anything yet.”
“Sounds like you’ll be busy for a while.”
Again, Gallo nodded. “It’s about to get even busier. Blackwood was using a penthouse apartment belonging to one of his donors for his coup meetings. Somebody, my guess is the Russians, bugged it. Videos of the meetings were given to 60 Minutes . They’re doing a special prime-time exposé tonight.”
Harvath was stunned. “More chaos.”
“Lots more. It’s going to shatter America’s already shaky faith in its institutions.”
“And give birth to oceans of conspiracy theories. They’ll be saying ‘If high-ranking people in the government can do this, what can’t they do?’?”
“There’s no reason for your name to come up in any of this; we still haven’t released your name or S?lvi’s from the Naval Observatory attacks, but I thought you’d want to know.”
“Thank you,” said Harvath.
“One other thing,” said Gallo, rather matter-of-fact. “As you know, Hale and Conroy were both found dead at Conroy’s house.”
“You don’t say.”
“Mm-hmm. Investigators believe they were arguing, pulled pistols at the same time, and shot each other.”
“That sounds extremely violent,” Harvath, who had spent more time getting rid of the traces of duct tape afterward and staging the scene than he had interrogating Conroy, replied.
“According to Hale’s employer, he disappeared under very strange circumstances, along with their very expensive Mercedes, which only recently was found abandoned.”
“Sounds like he was a bit unstable.”
“That’s the line investigators are taking.
Of course, once this 60 Minutes piece drops and Conroy gets exposed, all attention will be on the coup.
This’ll probably look like anger or payback for the failed attack at the Convention Center.
Bottom line: As long as there’s no evidence tying you to Conroy’s house or the Willis estate, you should be fine. There isn’t, is there?”
Harvath shook his head. “Nope.” He had already returned to reclaim his wetsuit, the inflatable dingy, and all the other dive gear he had left behind.
The Goblins Nicholas had placed near the security building came complete with a tiny tungsten charge that had fried their insides soon after Harvath had fled the property. He was completely clean.
The most personal piece of information for Harvath had to do with Ambassador Rogers, and it was one of the last items he had extracted from Conroy.
Though Rogers had been critical of the Mitchell administration on TV, it was his connections to their national security team that had earned him the ire of Blackwood and his cabal.
Along with the secretaries of state and defense, Rogers was seen to be exhibiting too much influence inside the White House.
They were seen as holdovers from the last administration who wouldn’t leave—“swamp creatures,” as the cabal called them—responsible for Mitchell softening his stances, particularly on things like NATO and not involving American defense contractors in the Sky Shield missile system.
The sheer magnitude of the plot, as well as the depth of the anger toward Mitchell, was still stunning to Harvath.
While he abhorred the injuries and the tragic loss of life, if the Russians had pulled this off without a single fingerprint, it would have marked an incredible leap forward for one of America’s most dangerous enemies.
It was almost enough to make him want to stay in the game, at least long enough to get even. But by the same token, he had fifty-million-and-one reasons, including S?lvi, not to.
After finishing their beers, Harvath had walked the men out to their cars, wished them a Happy Fourth, and, after asking Gallo to relay his regards to Carolan and Fields, watched them drive away.
Returning to the house, he found S?lvi in the kitchen. She had just come up from the dock and was putting a plan together for dinner.
Holding up her phone, she showed Scot a news story.
“What’s that about?” he asked.
“Some D.C. lobbyist named Claire Bennet went to Istanbul to meet with potential clients,” S?lvi replied. “Police found her in an alley this morning with her throat cut.”
“Did I ever tell you about my first trip to Istanbul?”
“Were there also dead people involved?”
He nodded. “Lots of them.”
“I don’t think I want to hear this story,” she said, opening the fridge. “We’ve experienced enough death for a while.”
“Speaking of which,” said Harvath, “I think something died in our fridge. It smells terrible.”
S?lvi smiled. “Nothing died. It’s just a little present Bente brought us from Oslo.”
“What is it?”
“You’ll see.”
The remainder of the week had passed quickly. They went back out to babysit on Wednesday, but other than that, had played things close to home—mostly spending time on their dock, working on their tans, and enjoying the ultimate luxury of just sitting still.
When Friday and the Fourth of July finally arrived, Scot was in pretty good spirits.
The 60 Minutes special had indeed been devastating, but in a strange sort of way, it had given President Mitchell an opportunity—especially in the run-up to America’s birthday—to promote the importance of Americans coming together, of working to build an even stronger union.
It was a difficult moment for the country, but Mitchell was proving himself the right man for it.
Running a brand-new American flag up the Bishop’s Gate flagpole, Scot stood there for several minutes, admiring it as it blew in the breeze.
If the people who had once lived on this property could see where the nation was now, they would be amazed.
The American experiment had not only endured, it had prospered.
As he always said, there was no other place he would rather be than in the United States and in no other time in history.
From the open kitchen window, S?lvi watched her husband staring up at the flag. Pulling out her phone, she snapped a picture. She wanted to capture the moment. It was the essence of the man she had married—strong, proud, and patriotic—quintessential Scot Harvath.
When Ambassador Rogers arrived, they already had cocktails prepared. S?lvi had wanted to do something to represent the colors of the flag and they had settled on highly alcoholic red, white, and blue daiquiris.
Haney and his wife, Jenna, were next to show up, and after Mike had carried in the food they had prepared, they both gladly accepted insulated tumblers with S?lvi’s special Fourth of July concoction.
They had invited Nicholas and Nina, but they had politely declined, thinking it might be too much for the baby.
Eventually, McGee texted to let them know that he was getting close. As soon as he did, they gathered everything up and took it all down to the dock.
The ex–CIA director had graciously offered, and everyone had accepted, to pilot the Chris-Craft over from Kent Island, so they could all watch the D.C. fireworks from the water.
It was a long trip, but McGee enjoyed being out on the boat. Harvath had also offered to let him tie up at his dock and spend the night, so he didn’t have to go all the way back in the dark.
“Do you have the coordinates for me?” McGee asked once they had cast off and started heading up the Potomac.
Harvath helped entered them in the GPS unit and then, after offering his friend something to drink, joined S?lvi at the stern.
Putting his arm around her, he didn’t say anything. He just took in the moment, savoring the breeze and the slowly setting sun.
When they got to the rendezvous point, they found Admiral Tyson and Pier Pressure right where he had promised to be. His boat was loaded down with friends, many of them female, and they were having a terrific time drinking and passing around plates of food.
“Hungry?” S?lvi asked, getting up and pulling out paper plates and plastic utensils.
“I am,” Harvath said, knowing that she’d been out shopping. “Ravenous actually. What do we have?”
“Sushi.”
“Perfect. What kind?”
An impish grin spread across her face as she handed him his own special container to open. “Viking sushi.”
That didn’t sound very good, and the moment he peeled away the lid he knew why. Entering his nostrils, the smell was like getting punched in the face. Even being in the fresh air, on a boat, out on the open water couldn’t blunt its impact.
It was a smell Harvath had only encountered once before. One he would never forget. His body had an instant aversion to it and there was no question what it was— lutefisk .
As he looked up at his wife, the disgust written across his face, she snapped his photo—another quintessential Harvath moment she wanted to capture.
“When we get back to shore, I’m calling the police,” he stated.
“What for?”
“Spousal abuse.”
S?lvi rolled her eyes. “Weak. Just like my brothers said.”
He smiled and she leaned into him as he put his arm around her again. Unseen was his dumping the lutefisk over the side of the boat into the Potomac. With all the lye it contained, it could only help but improve the quality of the water.
Thankfully, S?lvi, as well as the Haneys, had brought plenty of other, palatable things to eat.
As they ate and enjoyed each other’s company, Harvath reflected on how fortunate he was—not only to have such wonderful friends and such a fantastic wife, but also to have been able to serve his country and to have done so with honor.
Kissing S?lvi, he sat back and watched as the fireworks began with an enormous bloom of red, white, and blue.