SARGASSO INTELLIGENCE PROGRAM

ELK MOUNTAIN RESORT

MONTROSE, COLORADO

Tom Morgan finished his presentation by playing the CCTV footage from the San Diego Marriott and the Utah Olympic Sports Park in a split screen on a monitor at the front of the Sargasso conference room. “Though we don’t have a shot of his face, the cops found a note with the same message as the other two crime scenes-That which has been taken in blood, can only be answered in blood. Everything here tells me we’re dealing with the same guy.”

Harvath agreed. “Let’s get that footage to both hospitals. Even though we don’t have his face, I’d feel better about my mother and Tracy knowing their security people were keeping an eye peeled for this guy.”

“We’re going to send some of our guys out too,” replied Finney.

“What do you mean?” asked Harvath.

“We’ve handpicked two teams to cover your mom and Tracy,” answered Parker.

Harvath looked at him. “That would cost a fortune. I can’t ask you guys to do that.”

“It’s already done,” replied Finney with a smile. “The sooner you catch the asshole who’s responsible for all of this, the sooner I can bring my guys back and put them on a gig that actually pays.”

“I owe you,” said Harvath.

“Yeah, you do, but we’ll take that up later. For right now, we need to figure out what our next move is going to be.”

It was a word Harvath didn’t want to hear, much less acknowledge. This was not our move, as Finney had put it. It was his move-Harvath’s. He loved Finney and Parker like brothers, but he preferred working alone. He could move faster and there was less to worry about. While Finney and Parker had been a big help to him in Mexico, he couldn’t put them at risk anymore.

He was already struggling under a mountain of guilt. He needed to start compartmentalizing his life-firewalling off everyone he could from danger, and that included Tim Finney and Ron Parker.

Turning to Tom Morgan, Harvath asked, “What do we know about the three remaining names on the list?”

Morgan handed folders to everyone and then opened a file on his computer. The CCTV footage on the monitor disappeared and was replaced with three head-and-shoulder silhouettes, with names and nationalities underneath. “Not much. Scattered intelligence references. A smattering of aliases. Little to no known contacts. What I could find is in the folder. I’m afraid it looks like we’re going to be at the mercy of the Troll for running these three down.”

“Have you put them through our domestic databases?” asked Harvath as he studied the screen and set his folder on the table.

“Yes,” replied Morgan, “but I can’t find any visas, visa applications, airline tickets, or anything else that suggests any of them have recently entered the United States.”

Harvath wasn’t surprised. “This guy isn’t going to leave a trail.”

Morgan nodded.

“Then do you think Mexico was a red herring?” asked Finney.

“I think we wanted Mexico to equal two plus two,” said Harvath, “but it wasn’t that easy.”

“So is the Troll playing us?”

Harvath shook his head. “I think we jumped the gun. We have no idea which way our guy went after he left the San Diego Harbor. He might even have stayed within the U. S. But in our minds, Mexico made the most sense, and when the Troll handed us Palmera, we jumped.”

“So?”

“So maybe we shouldn’t jump anymore.”

“You went with your gut,” clarified Parker. “You didn’t jump. Instinct is part of good investigative technique.”

“Yeah? So is evidence,” replied Harvath.

“Well, this guy doesn’t leave a lot of evidence behind.”

“Let’s face it,” said Finney, “we’re not being left with anything.”

Harvath studied the countries of origin of the remaining three men on their list: Syria, Morocco, and Australia. According to the Troll, one of those men was responsible for three horrific attacks, and there was every reason to believe there’d be more. Since whoever was preying upon the people close to Harvath was tying the attacks to the ten plagues of Egypt, Harvath wondered if maybe the answer lay within the plagues themselves.

Then again, maybe it didn’t. Maybe it all had something to do with Egypt as a country. Still, there was no making sense out of any of it. And what terrified him was that there were six plagues left. Would this nut job combine them as he had with his mother? Or would they each be loosed individually? And behind all of it, what did the president have to do with releasing the four from Gitmo in the first place? Surely a release of this magnitude couldn’t have happened without his knowledge.

Gathering up the folder and his notes, Harvath excused himself from the conference room and went to Tom Morgan’s office.

He needed to check on his mother and Tracy. He dialed his mother’s hospital first. She was awake and he spent twenty minutes talking with her, reassuring her that everything was going to be all right and that he’d be back out to see her as soon as he could. As he was preparing to say good-bye, another of his mother’s friends arrived at her room, and he was heartened by the fact that she wasn’t alone. It would have been better if he could be there, but he couldn’t be in two places at once.

He clicked over to a new line and called the hospital in Falls Church, Virginia. Tracy ’s parents had already gone back to their hotel for the night. Her nurse, Laverna, was on duty, and she gave Harvath a full update on her condition. It wasn’t good. While her overall condition had not changed, small signs were materializing that suggested her situation was beginning to deteriorate.

Glancing at the fly-fishing scene on Tom Morgan’s wall, Harvath asked Laverna for a favor. When she held the phone up to Tracy ’s ear, he began to tell her about the wonderful vacation the two of them were going to take as soon as she got better.

Leaning back in Morgan’s desk chair, Harvath closed his eyes. There had to be something he wasn’t seeing, some sort of thread strung just beneath the surface of everything.

At this point, he knew of only one man who could answer his questions. Though already rebuffed by him once, Harvath decided enough had changed to warrant trying again. Picking up the phone, Harvath dialed the White House.

He knew better than to ask for the president directly. No matter how much Rutledge liked him, he had multiple layers in place to prevent direct access. The best Harvath could hope for would be to reach the president’s chief of staff, and even then there was no knowing when or if Charles Anderson would pass the message along to the president.

He needed someone he could trust and someone who would get the president on the line right away. That someone was Carolyn Leonard, head of Jack Rutledge’s Secret Service detail.

Getting to an agent while she was working, much less getting her to step away from active protection to take a phone call, was a near impossible task. When Carolyn Leonard picked up the phone, she wasn’t happy. “You’ve got five seconds, Scot.”

“Carolyn, I need to speak with the president.”

“He’s not available.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s in the cement mixer,” replied Leonard, using the Secret Service codename for the Situation Room.

“Carolyn, please. This is important. I know who carried out the attack on the U. S. Olympic facility in Park City today.”

“Give it to me and I’ll have it run down.”

Harvath took a deep breath. “I can’t do that. Listen, I need you to tell the president that you have me on the line and that I have important information for him regarding today’s attack. He’ll want to hear what I have to say. Trust me.”