Chapter 20
It’s obviously bad,” Harvath said to Morrell once Rattanprasert was out of earshot, “but what’s your history with her?”
“We dated.”
Harvath had figured as much. “Does the chief of station know?”
Morrell nodded. “His wife introduced us.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Wish I was.”
Harvath looked at him. “So why does she hate your guts?”
“It didn’t end well.”
“I bet that happens to you a lot.”
Discreetly flipping him the bird, the CIA man suggested, “Why don’t you text the team and have them stand down? We may be here for a bit.”
It was a good idea. Sliding his phone from his pocket, he sent a message to their encrypted chat and let everybody know he’d text them again once they were on their way out.
Once they’d all confirmed, he turned back to Morrell. “Why’d you two break up?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You’re the one who chose to go fishing off the diplomatic pier. I just want to know if she can be trusted.”
“You can trust her,” the CIA man replied.
“Really?” Harvath responded. “I don’t even trust you.”
Morrell chuckled. “Jesus, you really can hold a grudge.”
“They keep me warm. They’ve also done a good job keeping me alive. You know what’s also helped keep me alive? Working with people who tell me the truth. Why’d you end it with her?”
“What are we, in therapy now?”
“Joke around all you want, Rick, but I’m not dropping this. You were sleeping with a foreign national—from your host country, no less. On top of that, you did something to piss her off. I need to know, so I can balance whatever intel we get from her.”
“If we get any intel from her,” Morrell clarified.
“I’m not kidding around here. And believe me, learning about your private life is even more painful for me than it is for you.”
“I doubt that.”
Harvath shook his head. “Would you man up already?”
“Fine,” Morrell confessed. “You want to know why it ended? It ended because I OD’d.”
“You what?”
“You heard me. Don’t make me repeat it.”
“Wow. I knew you could be a heavy drinker, but I had no idea you were into drugs. You really went full Bangkok, didn’t you? What was it? Meth? Heroin? Opium?”
“Shut the fuck up, Harvath,” said Morrell, lowering his voice. “I didn’t OD on street drugs. I OD’d on Viagra.”
Harvath’s eyes went wide. “You can OD on Viagra?”
The CIA man nodded. “It’s rare, but I had a heart attack.”
“How much did you take?”
“None of your damn business.”
“Touchy. Okay. I was just asking.”
“Well, you’re now done asking,” said Morrell. “Understand?”
“Not quite,” Harvath replied. “Where’d you get it? Some black-market source? Was it Tommy Sombat? Did he sell you knockoff Viagra?”
“No, it wasn’t from Tommy. It was legit Viagra that I got via prescription from a legit doctor.”
“Do the doctors here not put dosing instructions on the label?”
“Everything’s on the label,” Morrell admitted. “It’s even in English. I just took too many.”
“You’d have to have taken a lot too many,” said Harvath, his voice trailing off as he looked over at Davi, who was talking with the crime scene technicians. Suddenly, everything fell into place and he smiled. “We’re going to have to give you a new nickname.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Rick ‘The Prick’ hardly seems appropriate anymore.”
“Fuck you, Harvath.”
“Kind of an empty threat, all things considered, don’t you think?”
“I swear to God, I will kill you.”
“Relax, I’m just busting your balls.”
“One more dick joke,” Morrell warned, “and I’ll shoot you right here in front of everyone. I don’t care if I have to spend the rest of my life in a Thai prison.”
“You should care. I don’t think the term ‘hard ass’ means the same thing to them that it does to us.”
“That’s it,” Morrell growled, his patience all but gone.
“A, that wasn’t a dick joke, and B, I’m done.”
“You think this is funny, but just you wait. I know about the age gap between you and your wife. We’ll see how many jokes you’re making in a few years.”
Harvath shook his head. “My God, you are touchy. So that’s it? You had a heart attack and broke it off?”
“Can you blame me? It was embarrassing. I couldn’t keep up with her. Guys think it’d be so cool to date a younger woman, but they have no idea how much work it is.”
Harvath felt no sympathy for the man. He’d always been a shallow asshole, and it didn’t surprise him at all that Morrell’s relationship had revolved solely around sex. “Did you even tell her?” he asked.
“What? About the heart attack? Hell no.”
“Didn’t she wonder what had happened to you?”
Morrell shrugged. “I told her I had to head out of the country for a while and I just laid low.”
“Told her or texted her?”
“Texted.”
“And then what?”
“Six weeks later, when I was fully back on my feet, we met for a drink, and I told her I couldn’t see her anymore.”
“That’s it?” Harvath asked.
“That’s it,” Morrell replied.
“What about Langley? They just rubber-stamped you for fieldwork again. That’s not normally how these things shake out.”
“My station chief took care of everything. As far as the CIA is concerned, I had my ACL repaired. They left it up to him to clear me to go back into the field.”
“And he dummied up your medical records just because you’re a great guy?”
Morrell paused, waiting for Harvath to figure out this one as well. He didn’t have to wait long.
“Your station chief never fed it up the chain? Never reported that you and Davi were dating?”
“Nope.”
Harvath had worked with some CIA stations that had played fast and loose with the rules, but Bangkok Station appeared to be operating in some rarefied air.
Nevertheless, this wasn’t his circus and therefore Morrell and his colleagues weren’t his monkeys.
He wasn’t a big believer in process either, and so, he decided to let it go.
“By the way,” the CIA man continued, “I’d appreciate it if you kept this chat between us. Don’t say anything to Davi. Okay?”
Harvath wasn’t quite sure if Morrell was trying to protect his ego or Davi’s feelings. If he were charitable, he’d suspect it was the latter. That said, there was a tinge of something in the CIA man’s voice that he hadn’t heard before. It sounded a lot like humanity.
Harvath was a gentleman and never would have said anything to upset Davi or to make her feel uncomfortable. He also appreciated that it couldn’t have been easy for Morrell to make that admission. Taking a breath, he nodded, acknowledging that Morrell’s secret was safe with him.
Just then, the last of the forensic specialists walked out of Teens, and Davi waved Harvath and Morrell over. They were about to learn what Tommy Sombat had spent his last breath trying to say.