When the administration changed, Harvath’s program was discontinued and he was let go. That’s when the Old Man had picked him up and had taken his training to an entirely new level. The career intelligence officer had taught Harvath everything he knew. Then he sent Harvath out to train with the best shooters, hand-to-hand combat instructors, interrogators, and former spies, among other dark arts specialists. By the time Harvath was done, he was one of the most formidable counterterrorism and intelligence operatives to ever ply the trade. In short, he was an Apex predator—an animal at the top of the food chain who hunted, yet was so fearsome, he himself was not hunted.
Be that as it may, Harvath had spent the last couple of years in awe of the Old Man. No matter how much he had seen and done in his career, he felt he would never accomplish as much as what Carlton had done.
“So, are you going to keep me in suspense or are you going to tell me what we’re looking at?” the Old Man asked.
Harvath smiled.
“What’s so funny?” Carlton said.
“I just figured at a prestigious university like Brown with a catchall major like Western Civilization, you would have learned at least a little about the Stamp Act.”
CHAPTER 12
“The Stamp Act was a tax on any piece of paper printed in the colonies—newspapers, licenses, legal documents, anything and everything, even playing cards. The Brits claimed it was necessary in order to pay for the thousands of troops it had protecting the colonies’ back door near the Appalachian Mountains. The colonists, though, had a greater fear than invaders from the frontier. They were afraid that if this tax was allowed to pass unchallenged, there’d be a tidal wave of taxes to follow, and all without any colonial input,” said Harvath.
“Taxation without representation,” replied the Old Man.
“Precisely. In an act of defiance, the colonists refused it. Instead, they began drawing their own stamp on their printed materials. They used a skull and crossbones, and eventually some added a crown floating above it to represent tyrannical Britain.”
“Death to tyranny.”
Harvath nodded.
“What do you think the ‘S.O.L.’ stands for? Is it Latin or something?”
“I don’t think so,” he said, reaching for another book and flipping through its pages. “I think it has to do with the bloody streaks left on the sign by Claire Marcourt’s fingers.”
“Why do you think those two are connected? Maybe she grasped at the sign in her death throes.”
“It doesn’t make any sense to hang a sign around someone’s neck until they’re dead,” Harvath replied. “Why go to all the trouble of the sign, just to have the victim mess it up? If you’re going to kill somebody, you kill them and then hang it around their neck.”
“So the bloody streaks were put there on purpose? Just like the logs the body was put on?”
“If I can find the right picture, I’ll show you, and then you tell me what you think.”
The Old Man waited while Harvath flipped through two more books until he found it. When he did, he placed the police photo of the sign that had been hung around Marcourt’s neck beneath the image of a flag in his new book and spun them around to show him.
“What am I looking at here?” the Old Man asked.
“A flag with nine vertical stripes; five red and four white,” responded Harvath as he splayed the fingers of his right hand, placed them on the table, and slowly drew them toward himself like Claire Marcourt’s bloody fingers sliding down the sign.
“You think that woman’s bloody finger streaks look like that flag?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
Carlton studied both pictures for a few moments. The irritation was back in his voice again. “I think it’s a stretch.”
“Fair enough,” said Harvath as he removed the police photo in order to reveal the caption beneath the flag. “How about now?”
The Old Man leaned forward and peered at the writing. “Hold on,” he said, pulling his glasses from his suit pocket and putting them on. “The caption says this is the flag of the Sons of Liberty?” A fraction of a second later he put it together. “Sons of Liberty—S.O.L.”
Harvath sat back and took a long, satisfied sip of his beer.
“Who are they?”
Setting the bottle on the table, Harvath flipped forward a couple of pages in the book. “They were America’s first organized resistance,” he said. “A group of patriots, inspired by what they saw as the tyranny of the Stamp Act who banded together to fight British oppression. Their most famous operation was one of my favorites—the Boston Tea Party.”
The old spymaster sat for a moment appreciating one of America’s greatest historical moments and then replied, “You think whoever’s behind all of this is styling themselves as some sort of modern Sons of Liberty movement?”
“I do,” said Harvath as he reached for his last book and opened it. “Ever heard of the Pine Tree Riot?”
Carlton shook his head.
“One of the reasons the Brits were the most powerful empire in the world was because of their command of the high seas—via both their navy and their merchant vessels. They were building ships at an incredible clip and white pine trees were considered the best species from which to make soaring, single-stick masts. Because the British Isles had been stripped almost entirely clean of white pines, they passed a law in the colonies that made it illegal to cut down any white pine here more than twelve inches in diameter.
“This angered lots of colonial loggers, builders, and sawmill owners. Many of them just ignored the law. In fact, it became highly fashionable among the colonists to thumb their noses at Britain by installing floors made of white pine and showing off that their boards were at least a foot wide or wider.”
“What does that have to do with the logs Claire Marcourt was found on?”
Harvath pointed to the photo and the thickest log in the stack. “See the arrow chalked on this one?”
The Old Man peered at it and nodded as Harvath paraphrased the accompanying text.
“When the crown sent its ‘Surveyors of the King’s Woods’ on inspections, any trees found to have been cut down in violation of the edict were marked with a big, thick arrow just like in that photo. Anyone found to be in possession of white pines, considered property of the crown, was heavily fined.
“In 1772, a surveyor for the crown uncovered a mill owner in Weare, New Hampshire, named Ebenezer Mudgett, who had been cutting down white pines that should have been reserved for the king. Mudgett was fined, but he refused to pay, so the county sheriff, along with his deputy, rode out and arrested him.
“Mudgett must have been a hell of a salesman, because he convinced the sheriff to release him that night with the promise that he’d show up in the morning to pay his bail.”
“He didn’t show up, did he?” said Carlton with a laugh.
“No, he showed up, all right,” Harvath replied, “but with somewhere between twenty to forty men. They arrived, their faces blackened with soot, just before dawn at Quimby’s Inn, where the sheriff and his deputy were staying.”
“I assume it didn’t end well. What happened?”
“They beat the sheriff and his deputy with tree switches, and then shaved the manes of their horses. And here’s the kicker: they cut off the horses’ ears to send a message and make them worthless.”
The Old Man screwed his face up in disgust. “That’s horrible.”
“I agree one hundred percent.”
“Were they ever caught?”
“You bet,” said Harvath, “and they were all prosecuted, but they only received a small fine. And because the punishment was so lenient, some think it encouraged more resistance and actually set the stage for the Boston Tea Party less than two years later.”