Old Man, who had also been handsomely rewarded on a recent operation by Chase and Sloane, picked him up and transported him across the country to the border with Russia.
There, he was met by an old acquaintance. Before the murders in New Hampshire, he had been developing her as an intelligence asset inside the FSB—Russia’s equivalent of the CIA. She was a patriot who loved her country, but despised its system of government.
Bob McGee, Lydia Ryan, and even President Porter had all been aware that he had slowly been attempting to bring her over. This was the one part of the plan that Nicholas hated the most. He saw Alexandra Ivanova as its weakest link—an untested pillar they would be resting all of their weight upon.
Though she and Harvath had a long history, and despite the fact that he had even killed a major Russian mafia figure in the Caribbean the previous year to help advance her career, there was no telling how she would handle his request. He was putting his neck in a noose, handing her the other end, and closing his eyes.
The hardest part for Nicholas was that, while he loved the plan in general, there was no one he could go to help him push back on Harvath and the specifics. McGee and the CIA had no idea what they were doing. And that went double for the President. This was completely off-book, and therefore off anyone’s radar.
The little man had argued as intensely as he could, but Harvath’s mind had been made up. There was only one thing they had agreed with each other on—if Ivanova double-crossed them and Harvath ended up captured, the Russians would go to extraordinary lengths to guarantee there would be no rescue this time.
It was a risk that Harvath had been willing to take. In fact, “willingness” had nothing to do with it. After running it through his mind a thousand and one times, this had been the only path he could see available.
He knew it had to be the right course because the Russians wouldn’t see it coming, and it was also exactly what the Old Man would have done. It was a plan that required a pair of the biggest balls anyone had ever seen.
Once he had the address he had been waiting on in Moscow, he prepped an envelope and sent it on its way. Inside was a letter to Russian president Fedor Peshkov. It was signed by Harvath and explained, in excruciating detail, everything he was going to do to him. It brought chilling new meaning to the words “hate mail.”
Hiding in a farmhouse near the border between Belarus and Russia, Harvath had fieldstripped, cleaned, and reassembled Reed Carlton’s 1911 pistol so many times that it gleamed in the darkness.
Putting together his kit for the operation, it had seemed appropriate to carry the legendary spymaster’s favorite weapon. Even if Harvath never drew it, the mere fact that he had brought it along for protection would be a profound way of honoring him.
Of course, the greatest way to honor Carlton would be to avenge him, which was exactly why he was here.
When Alexandra Ivanova finally showed up, they had a brief exchange before he climbed into the cutout in her trunk. She covered him with a custom piece of carpeting, and shut the lid.
He felt every bump, jostle, and pothole in the road. The ride was absolutely brutal. But it was also absolutely necessary.
Ivanova was one of the smartest intelligence operatives Harvath had ever met. It was one of the reasons he had labored so hard to get her to come to work for him. She didn’t have ice in her veins; what she had was molten steel.
She had agreed to the operation with one caveat: Everything that happened inside Russia was her call.
Naturally, Nicholas had balked at this condition and had told Harvath that he’d be better off cutting his own throat in D.C. At least then it would save SPEHA Rogers the trouble of negotiating the repatriation of his body.
Harvath, though, had agreed to all of her demands. He trusted Alexandra. If she had wanted to burn him, she could have done so long before now. As far as he was concerned, she was someone he could trust.
Riding in the secret compartment in the trunk, he expected to feel the car slow down at some point, if nothing else then for the border. The slow-down, though, never came. She kept the pedal to the metal.