State of the Union (19 page)

Harvath’s blood ran cold. “They’ve found our nukes?”

“I was just supposed to give you that message. Goaltender wants to talk to you,” replied Morrell. “We brought a sat-radio with us, and Carlson and DeWolfe are busy setting up a secure link.”

“Why you?” asked Harvath. “Why send your team?”

“Because he knows you trust us and therefore so does he. He knows together we’ll get the job done.”

“And what job is that?”

“When we get back to the hotel, you can ask him yourself.”

“What about security for Gary?” said Harvath. “The people we’re after might not be done with him yet. They could come back. I’ve got a very old and trusted friend watching over him right now, but he won’t be able to pull all the shifts. And if these guys came back in force, as good as this guy is, I can’t guarantee what the outcome would be.”

“Not to worry. We’ve arranged for a few visiting medical students to conduct a rotation here and keep an eye on Gary,” said Morrell, who signaled to Avigliano to open the door to the conference suite’s adjoining room.

Harvath couldn’t believe his eyes. Standing there in surgical scrubs and white lab coats were two of his closest friends from the White House security detail, Secret Service agents Tom Hollenbeck and Chris Longo.

“I’ll be damned,” said Harvath. “If it isn’t Doctors Moe and Larry. There’s just the two of you? You couldn’t get a third to play Curly?”

At that moment, the sound of a toilet flushing came from the suite’s private bathroom and then the door opened revealing a third man in a white lab coat, tying the drawstring on the pants of his scrubs.

“That figures,” said Harvath, as he recognized who it was.

“Surprise, surprise!” crowed Doctor Skip Trawick with a mock Scottish accent. The semi-retired Special Forces medic had been instrumental in helping Harvath rescue the president from Gerhard Miner and his team of Swiss mercenaries two years ago.

“Because Longo and Hollenbeck know absolutely nothing about medicine,” said Morrell, getting things back on track, “Goaltender thought it would be best to have at least one real doctor along for the ride.”

Satisfied that Gary was now going to an appropriate level of security, Harvath marched the trio of “doctors” down to Herman Toffle, where he explained what was happening. While Longo, Trawick, and Hollenbeck worked out how they were going to handle shifts, Morrell and Avigliano followed Scot and Herman down to Herman’s Mercedes, where Harvath transferred his and Gary’s bags to the trunk of Morrell’s rental car.

“Well, I guess this is it,” said Herman, extending his hand, a slight edge of disappointment noticeable in his voice. It felt good getting back in the game, even if it was short lived.

“Actually, Herman,” began Harvath, “I was hoping you might stick around a little bit longer. Those are good guys back up in Gary’s room, but they don’t have near the experience that you do.”

Herman brightened. “And, they speak lousy German.”

“That’s true,” smiled Harvath. “Would you mind hanging in with them for a little longer? I’d feel better knowing you were up there with Gary.”

“How can I say no to a friend in need?”

“I was hoping you’d feel that way,” said Harvath. “I want you to keep me up to speed on Gary’s progress and call me the minute he’s out of surgery. He’s the only one that can help us make contact again with Frank Leighton.”
If Leighton’s even still alive
, thought Harvath.

“Don’t worry,” replied Herman. “I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything.”

It was raining again as they pulled out of the parking structure and though the fog had dissipated, the evening still felt dense and impenetrable.

As the small sedan became ensnarled in evening Berlin traffic, Harvath leaned his head against the leather headrest and looked out the rain-streaked window. A heavy sense of foreboding weighed on his mind. The surgeons’ lack of confidence in Gary Lawlor’s prognosis was definitely troubling, but more than that, he was concerned about the message Rick Morrell had delivered on behalf of the president.
All of our pieces have been knocked off the chessboard
.

R
ick Morrell pulled their car into the underground parking structure of the distinctive semicircular building known as Berlin’s Kempinski Hotel Bristol. After finding an empty stall, Morrell used his keycard to summon the elevator and the three men rode to the sixth floor.

When the elevator doors opened, Gordon Avigliano led the way down the lavishly carpeted hallway to a rich mahogany door where he rapped out a quick code.

“Housekeeping,” said Avigliano in a high-pitched voice, shouldering his way into the room as DeWolfe opened the door for them. “Fluff your pillow? Chocolate mint?”

“Scot,” said DeWolfe, shaking his hand and ignoring Avigliano. “Good to see you again.”

“You too,” said Scot, genuinely glad to see the operative who had helped rescue him from Adara Nidal’s terrorist compound in the Libyan desert last year.

“Hey,” shouted Carlson, who walked over and grabbed Scot Harvath by both shoulders so he could look at him, “why wasn’t I surprised when they told me you were in trouble?”

“Nice to see you too, Steve,” replied Harvath.

“Now that we’re all reacquainted,” interjected Morrell, who had locked the door behind them and was making his way to the center of the room. “Maybe we can get started.”

Morrell turned to DeWolfe, “How are we doing?”

The communications expert was bent over a map of the world, complete with latitude and longitude lines, upon which he had placed a clear plastic slide. “I’m just working out our elevation and azimuth,” he replied.

“What about the electronic countermeasures?”

“I swept the room three times and placed the ECMs in the appropriate positions, so don’t worry. Not only is nobody listening to us, but even if they wanted to, they couldn’t. All of the equipment is working perfectly, and everything is tip-top.”

“Good. This is the first time I have been handpicked by the president for an operation, and I don’t intend to screw it up. In fact, this is our first scrambled communication with him and I expect it to go off without a hitch. Is that clear?”

“Yes sir, boss,” responded DeWolfe. He was aiming for one of the Defense Department’s dedicated satellites and as he computed the best ‘takeoff’ angle for their transmission, Carlson assembled a wire spider-web satellite dish the size of a dinner plate, connected it to their fully digitized and fully encrypted Harris manpack SATCOM radio, and then placed the dish on top of the coffee table.

According to DeWolfe’s calculations, they had twenty more minutes before they would pass into their optimal broadcast window, so Morrell allowed Avigliano to run out to pick up orders of the lamb and salad sandwiches packed in pita bread known as Döner Kebabs. Though Morrell would have preferred Cokes, when Avigliano returned with a beer for each of the men, he let it slide.

Harvath had grabbed a quick shower and shave and after dressing in a black sweater and a new pair of jeans, joined the rest of the team in the living room. He sat down on one of the leather couches, opened up Gary Lawlor’s suitcase on the floor in front of him and began to go through it again.

Carefully, he removed each piece of clothing and after thoroughly examining it, folded it and set it on the couch next to him.

“Where’d you get that?” asked DeWolfe, as Harvath was emptying out the contents of Lawlor’s shaving kit.

“What?” said Harvath, holding up a tube of toothpaste. “This?”

“Not the toothpaste. That other thing you’ve got sitting there next to those clothes.”

“This organizer?” asked Harvath, reaching for the oversized PDA that had been vexing him since he had first found it in Gary’s luggage.

“Yeah, let me look at it,” said DeWolfe who crossed over to where Harvath was sitting and took the device from him. “Interesting.”

“What’s interesting?”

DeWolfe had powered the device up and was scrolling through its programs. “I haven’t seen one of these in ages.”

“I know. It’s an antique,” replied Harvath as he looked over DeWolfe’s shoulder to see what he was doing. “Gary hates almost anything computerized, so I figured the organizer was part of his cover somehow.”

“You mean to tell me you’ve never seen one of these things before?”

“Of course I have, but by the time I got my PDA, it was about a quarter of the size of that thing.”

“When you were a SEAL, didn’t you ever work with a burst transmitter?”

Harvath’s eyes widened. “
A burst transmitter?
That’s what that thing is supposed to be?”

“Yup. It uses one of the early modem cards with a pop-out phone jack. Did you find any telephone adaptor plugs in that bag?”

“As a matter of fact,” said Harvath holding up a small clear plastic box, “I did, but how do you know about all of this?”

“When I was studying communications and electronic surveillance at the Agency we got to play with one of these. The device was set up to look like one of the early PDAs. It actually was a pretty simple and pretty clever way to camouflage what, in its day, was a cutting edge burst transmitter.”

“Speaking of camouflage,” interrupted Morrell, who had walked over to see what DeWolfe was looking at. “Where’s that Tabard IR suit I lent you back in DC?”

“It’s in safe hands,” replied Harvath, his attention still focused on the burst transmitter.

“Whose hands? I’m responsible for that and those Tabard suits aren’t cheap.”

“Kate Palmer is holding onto my stuff for me until I get back.”

“Secret Service Agent Kate Palmer?” asked Carlson. “The one who works at the White House?”

“Yeah,” said Harvath, motioning for DeWolfe to hand the device back to him. “Why? You know her.”

“No, but she’s hot. You don’t suppose when we get home you could—”

“Not a chance.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” replied Harvath, “you’re not her type.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Carlson.

“It means, I know what kind of guys she likes and you’re not it.”

“Oh yeah? Well maybe you’re wrong. What kind of guys does she like?”

“Guys like Avigliano—tall, blond, and
good
looking.”

“Oh, so in other words she’s got no taste. Why didn’t you say so?”

“Fuck you,” said Avigliano from across the room.

Harvath ignored them and turned back to DeWolfe. “The burst transmitters I’ve worked with were in conjunction with field radios, not telephone lines. Plus, they were much smaller. Why would he want to lug something like that around? Why not upgrade and go with something more compact?”

“From what I understand, the Dark Night operation was established in the eighties and after the Soviet Union fell, the team was retired, so there was no need for it. Don’t get me wrong, though. This thing might be a little out of date, but it’s still good technology.”

“I’ve never seen one like this masked with all that PDA software. Do you know how it works?” asked Harvath.

“Sure,” said DeWolfe, ejecting the PDA’s stylus and reaching across Harvath to tap the screen. “Let’s say you were a handler like Gary and had several different operatives you were going to need to communicate sensitive information with. The burst transmitter allows you to type out your message, encrypt it, and then send it in a quick burst over the telephone. To the uninitiated, it sounds just like a fax tone, but if you have one of these little beauties and the proper encryption key, you can unencrypt the information and read the message on the screen here.”

A fax tone
, thought Harvath, recalling the shrill tone he had heard over Gary Lawlor’s home phone when he had redialed the last number Gary had called before disappearing. That must have been what he was hearing,
a burst transmission
.

“On any op,” continued DeWolfe, “you would want to compartmentalize as much as possible, so Gary would have had a specific encryption code for each one of his operatives. All he would have to do is select that code program and make sure it was up and running before he spoke, or ‘bursted’ for lack of a better term, with that particular operative.”

“And those code programs are in that device?” asked Harvath.

“They should be. The software is not only a type of camouflage, but it also acts as a gateway to the encryption programs.”

“How so?”

“On these models, it was as simple as pulling up the calendar function and going to a specific date. The date is the actual gateway for your encryption programs. When you tried to enter an appointment on that date, you would be prompted to enter a security code. Normally, it’s a four-digit numeric code derived from a specific mathematical equation; something that would have relevance for both the operative and his handler. To unlock the encryption program you would have to do a simple math problem and then use the answer as your code. You type it in and the encryption program would then engage and you’d be ready to go. The important thing to remember is that Gary had a lot of operatives.”

“So?”

“So the more operatives he had, the more code information he would have had to keep straight. It has been my experience that the more numeric codes you have to assign and memorize, the more likely you are to start assigning them based upon things that are easier and easier for you to remember, but which would have no relevance for any unauthorized persons trying to hack into your system.”

“That makes sense,” said Scot, remembering one of Gary’s favorite mottos. It was an acronym he was always referring to—KISS, Keep it simple, stupid.

“But remember, it’s a two-step process. You’d need to know how to access the general domain for the operative, such as a birth date, and then you’d need the numeric code to open the encryption program so the two of you could communicate freely.”

“I suspect you would also need to know,” added Harvath, “when and where the two of you were supposed to connect.”

“That goes without saying,” replied DeWolfe. “You could have all the other information, and yet if you were sitting at a payphone at the train station waiting for it to ring, when you should have been at a payphone at the drugstore, you’d be shit out of luck.”

No kidding
, thought Harvath. Even though he now understood the true nature of the burst transmitter, it was of no use to him without knowing how to unlock Frank Leighton’s encryption program or what the emergency contact plan was.

As the time for their encrypted communication with the president drew near, DeWolfe did a final check of his equipment and then outfitted Harvath with a headset. Morrell pulled one of the overstuffed chairs up to the coffee table and donned a headset as well. Avigliano handed him a briefcase and then slid over three of the large hard shell equipment cases from the other side of the room.

“I have Goaltender on the line,” said DeWolfe. “We are ready to proceed.”

“This is Norseman,” said Harvath. “Go ahead, Goaltender.”

“Is BenchPress on the line?”

“Yes he is,” replied Harvath who had never cared much for Morrell’s ridiculous code name; a codename he knew Morrell hadn’t received from his superiors or his peers, but rather had chosen for himself.

Even though Harvath had grown to like Morrell, that still didn’t change the fact that the man could be an arrogant, insufferable prick a lot of the time and his code name seemed to perfectly reflect his inflated sense of self. Though on many occasions Harvath had been tempted to suggest an alternate two-syllable code name that might more suit the man such as
dipshit
,
dumbass
,
dumbfuck
, or
dickhead
, he had miraculously managed to keep his mouth shut and thereby had refrained from doing damage to a friendship that was still very much in its infancy.

“Norseman,” continued president Rutledge, “you received my message about the condition of the chessboard?”

“Yes, sir. But I don’t understand. What happened?”

“Somehow, the other side knew where our devices were hidden. We sent in teams to prep them and get them ready for transport, but they were already gone.”

“
Gone
?” said Harvath.

“Yes, all of them have been stolen.”

“Do we have any leads?”

“We’re going back over satellite imagery, but we’re not holding out much hope of getting them back. The Russians would have been very careful in covering their tracks.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“We’ve developed a plan, which I pray to God will work, called Operation Minotaur,” replied the president.

“
Operation Minotaur
?” repeated Harvath.

“Yes. BenchPress has the file and he will explain everything to you.”

“Sir, what about our remaining operative in the field? He still has one last device.”

“Unfortunately, that man is of no use to us anymore. We need to pull him from the game before he becomes a greater liability. BenchPress will explain that as well.” There was a pause on the line as the president took a deep breath and said, “Things are very tense back here. The time is drawing nigh for us all gentlemen and we have no other options available. This is it. We either win or we lose. The fate of America is in your hands. Don’t let us down.” There was a click followed by a hiss of static as the president terminated the connection.

Morrell looked at DeWolfe and, referring to the status of the transmission, asked, “Are we clear?”

“We’re clear,” said DeWolfe.

“
Operation Minotaur
?” mouthed Harvath. “What this all about?”

“The Minotaur is a mythical creature—”

“From ancient Greece who was half man, half bull, and was confined to a labyrinth on Crete. Yeah, I know that, but what is this new op all about?” said Harvath.

“This is a little something the president and his team came up with,” responded Morrell. “The focus of this operation is going to be on the bull, and lots of it.”