“Pazzo,” he chuckled to his men. Crazy. But Vottari liked crazy. You had to have balls to be this crazy.
He let Tursunov walk all the way back to the farmhouse before sending one of his men to return him to the outbuilding.
When Tursunov came back in, Vottari said, “The merchandise you requested was very difficult to get. Only a fool would bring all of it together in one place. If something were to happen to it before I received my money, that would be very bad.”
Tursunov didn’t respond. The Italian hadn’t asked a question. He had made a statement. People weakened their hands by feeling they had to fill uncomfortable silences.
“Forty percent,” the Italian offered. “And you allow me to change the delivery location.”
“Change it? Why? Where to?”
“Someplace safer. Not far from where we agreed.”
Safer? Tursunov didn’t like it. Vottari was changing all the parameters of the deal. “Twenty-five percent.”
“Molto pazzo!” the Italian exclaimed, smiling. “Thirty percent and I’ll throw in two cases of these. No charge.”
He nodded to one of his men, who retrieved a smaller crate from the back of the Range Rover and brought it over for inspection.
Tursunov lifted the lid. Fragmentation grenades. His plan didn’t call for them, but better to have something and not need it than need it and not have it. “Deal.”
Vottari shook hands with Tursunov, but didn’t let go. “Remember,” he cautioned, “all of the merchandise leaves Italy. Take it to France. Take it to Germany. Take it to the moon. I don’t care. But if I find out you didn’t, you and your people are dead. All of you.”
Tursunov smiled right back and replied, “The last thing I and my people want is any trouble, especially with you and your people.”
CHAPTER 7
The small lockkeeper’s house, only a short drive from D.C., sat along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. It was a squat, two-story structure, built of local stone painted white.
Its shutters and door were painted robin’s-egg blue — the genesis of its nickname.
Unlike other lockhouses in the C&O National Historic Park, which could be rented for overnight stays, the “blue lockhouse” was closed to the public. And for good reason. It was owned and maintained by the Central Intelligence Agency.
One of the Agency’s numerous safe houses, it had been used extensively during the Cold War for debriefing high-value Soviet defectors. Today, it was being used for a very important, very quiet meeting.
When Harvath rolled up, he saw three heavily armored black Suburbans parked in front. Even in casual clothes, the detail agents posted outside gave off a serious don’t-fuck-with-us vibe. Intensity was an important prerequisite for the job.
Even more important were experience and ability. Terrorists the world over would have loved nothing more than to get their hands on the two people inside.
Parking his Tahoe in the grass, Harvath shook hands with the lead agent — a man named Haggerty — and chatted with him for a few seconds.
Haggerty had gone to Notre Dame, which Harvath, as a University of Southern California grad, always explained wasn’t the man’s fault. It was obvious that his parents hadn’t cared much for him.
It was good-natured ribbing born from a storied college rivalry. Haggerty was confident about the football team Notre Dame was fielding this year. So confident, in fact, that he wanted to place a wager on the game against USC.
After reminding him of the Code of Federal Regulations banning gambling in the federal workplace, Harvath smiled and agreed to a hundred dollars.
“Cash,” Haggerty clarified. “None of that Bitcoin crap.”
Harvath laughed and they shook hands. Turning, he climbed the three slate steps to the lockhouse and knocked.
“Come in,” a voice replied. “It’s open.”
Harvath entered to find the CIA Director, Bob McGee, and the Deputy Director, Lydia Ryan, at a weathered wooden table in the living room.
McGee was in his early sixties. He had dark wavy hair, which was rapidly going all gray. His most distinctive feature, though, was his thick mustache. You didn’t see a lot of those in Washington, and even fewer in government.
Ryan was a gorgeous woman. She was the five-foot-ten product of an Irish father and a Greek mother. She had long black hair and deep green eyes.
Both McGee and Ryan had come from the clandestine service side of the CIA. They were smart, seasoned, no-bullshit people. The President had chosen them specifically to clean out the dead wood at Langley and bring the Agency back to its former glory.
“There’s coffee in the kitchen,” Ryan said as Harvath stepped inside.
Walking back to the kitchen, he grabbed an enamel mug from one of the cupboards and poured himself a cup.
Returning to the living room, he joined McGee and Ryan at the table. It was covered with files.
They had been meeting like this a lot — outside CIA headquarters, on nights and weekends. The less people knew about what they were up to, the better.
Like a ruptured appendix, terrorism had exploded, gushing its poison in all directions. Attacks were on the rise everywhere, especially in Europe, and now in the United States as well.
Losing territory and suffering defeat after defeat, ISIS had become like a cornered, wounded animal. In desperation, it had lashed out, calling for attacks on Americans whenever and wherever they could be found. They were sending a very clear message — nowhere was safe.
In return, the American President had sent a very clear message of his own — there wasn’t a rock big enough for ISIS to crawl under or a hole deep enough to slither down. Wherever its members tried to hide, the United States would find them. All of them. America would hunt its enemies to the very ends of the earth. And it would be relentless in doing so.
The problem, though, was that not everyone in the U.S. agreed with the President. Some saw his approach as too antagonistic. They worried that he was giving the terrorists exactly what they wanted, that he was playing right into their hands. They wanted less cowboy and more samurai — wise, patient, striking only when absolutely necessary and then slipping back into the night.
Then there were those who didn’t want any strikes at all. They claimed that hitting back only perpetuated a cycle of violence. They cautioned that if we didn’t stop, neither would ISIS. The already bad situation would only grow worse.
Many felt that the President didn’t appreciate their opinions and hadn’t even bothered to take them into consideration. But those who knew him — that small circle with whom he kept counsel — knew that wasn’t the case at all.
The President didn’t like waging this battle, but it was a just war. The use of force was not something he took lightly. His greatest desire was peace. He wanted nothing more than the security of the American people. He saw the safety of Americans at home and abroad as his number-one responsibility as commander in chief. It was the duty he placed above all others.
He also was privy to something his fellow citizens were not. Every morning, he received an intelligence briefing, which laid out how truly dangerous organizations like ISIS and Al Qaeda were.
They were fanatics who believed that they had been chosen to rule the earth. For that to happen, they had to subjugate America and her allies through jihad. Anything less than total commitment to this goal was an act of defiance against God himself.
The fundamentalism that drove them was a cancer. It infected almost everyone it touched. And yet the people best positioned to remove the cancer lacked the courage and the desire to do so. No matter how many atrocities were committed in the name of their religion and their God, the Muslim world was wholly incapable of combating the problem.