looked as if it could have been to a safety deposit box. With it was a handwritten note on the hotel’s stationery.
It simply said: To President Fedor Peshkov. From Scot Harvath. And it included an address.
Harvath had gotten the stationery at the front desk, written the note, and then carried the envelope upstairs, where he paid a waiter $100 to make sure it would be waiting for Botnik when he arrived.
The moment Botnik read Harvath’s name on the note, he knew they were in trouble. His biggest concern was that the President might be at risk. Pulling out his cell phone, he had dialed Peshkov’s Chief of Security and had headed quickly for the elevator.
By the time his driver had pulled up downstairs, a plan had already been formulated and put in motion.
The drive to the main post office on Myasnitskaya took almost twenty minutes in Moscow traffic. By the time he arrived, the police had already closed off the street and an evacuation was under way. If Harvath had placed a bomb, they wanted to make sure that they kept the loss of life to a minimum.
It took an additional forty-five minutes before the bomb disposal team was on scene and could send their robot in. Opening the post office box, though, proved impossible. They needed a human for the job and suiting up one of the technicians took an additional twenty minutes. Shortly thereafter, they finally retrieved the letter.
After X-raying and testing it for hazardous materials, it was handed over to Botnik. Per its postmarks, the letter had been sent more than two weeks ago from the United States—Washington, D.C., to be specific. The sender was listed as Scot Harvath, and the return address Botnik had to look up on his phone. It turned out to belong not to Harvath, but rather to the International Spy Museum. If he was trying to be funny, the Chief of Staff didn’t find it amusing.
Knowing that the President was waiting on what they had found, he returned to his car to make the call. He had his driver remain outside the vehicle.
As Botnik read the letter, his heart froze in his chest. The things Harvath was threatening to do to Josef Kozak, General Minayev, and the President’s son were horrifying.
On the other end of the line, he could hear Peshkov shouting directions to his security people to check on Misha, as well as to warn Minayev, and to alert the hospital Josef Kozak was being treated at.
Botnik’s eyes scanned the rest of the letter. It ended with a final warning from Harvath. The only reason he had spared the Russian President was so that he would spend the rest of his life grieving his son—just as Harvath would grieve his wife and two dear friends. If Peshkov took any steps to retaliate, Harvath promised to find him and kill him in the most horrific way imaginable.
As the Chief of Staff finished reading, he heard the President cry out in anguish.
“Misha,” Peshkov wailed. “No!”
CHAPTER 83
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LITTLE TORCH KEY
FLORIDA
Harvath had been tempted to park himself near the Moscow post office to watch the fireworks, but Alexandra had warned him about pushing their luck. She had been right, of course.
She had also been right about getting the PO box key to Botnik at the Ritz. It had worked perfectly. As soon as he had left the envelope with the waiter in the O2 Lounge, he had exited the hotel, and met back up with her a couple of blocks away for the six-hour drive back to the border with Belarus. Though he would have liked to have gotten some sleep, he kept his eyes open and his head on a swivel the entire way.
When they met up with the Old Man’s smugglers and said their good-byes, he thanked her. She had taken a lot of risks on his behalf and he wanted her to know how much he appreciated it. Without her, this could have very well turned into a suicide operation.
Climbing into the smuggler’s truck, he made himself comfortable for his next six hours of driving to the border with Poland. There, he’d at least be back in NATO territory, though he couldn’t let his guard down. At least not fully.
It wasn’t until he was back on The Carlton Group jet and in the air that the weight of everything he had been under started to lift. Once he was in international airspace, he got up and poured himself a