only two people at the VSD who knew anything about the operation in Kaliningrad and Lithuania’s involvement. Simulik was all talk.
He was also twitchy, or possibly paranoid, as hell. He couldn’t keep his eyes from flicking to the large computer monitor on his desk. Though Harvath couldn’t see what he was looking at, he assumed it was the feeds from his CCTV cameras.
Carl was right about this guy. Harvath had been in the room less than a minute and he already despised him.
He would need to keep reminding himself, though, that if it came to it, he had promised not to kill him before Sølvi had been allowed a crack at him. A promise, after all, was a promise.
“So why am I talking with you, Mr. Harvath? Why are you here?”
“Recently, I paid the Russians a visit in Kaliningrad. When I left, I took something that belongs to them.”
Simulik raised an eyebrow. “Took something or took someone.”
Harvath smiled. “You’re familiar with the operation, then.”
“Nothing happens in my corner of the world without me knowing about it.”
This guy was so full of shit, it was unbelievable. Not only was he full of it, he was also proud of it. Harvath was willing to bet he didn’t know a quarter of what was going on in his “corner of the world.”
“Two weeks ago, a team of Russians—one with a fancy Vandyke—paid a visit to a Lithuanian citizen named—”
Harvath stopped speaking mid-sentence. A distinct change had come over both men. Simulik’s eyes had stopped shifting to his computer monitor, while off to his right, Landsbergis had stiffened.
“Black hair and a Vandyke?” the younger VSD man asked.
Harvath nodded. “Sounds like you know him.”
“Sergei Guryev. Russian Military Intelligence. Works out of their embassy here in Vilnius.”
“How about one of his colleagues—large man, shaved head, big red beard?”
“Alexander Kovalyov. Also GRU from the embassy.”
“I’m going to assume that the other two leg-breakers who were with them are similarly employed.”
“That’s probably a safe bet.”
“What does any of this have to do with information critical to Lithuanian national security?” Simulik interrupted, growing annoyed. “After all, that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
“It definitely is,” said Harvath. “You see, right after this GRU team beat and tortured a Lithuanian truck driver named Antanas Lukša for information, that should have led them to Filip. Instead, they came to you. And the reason they came to you was because they already had you. You were already compromised.
“Why should they waste any time in breaking Filip, when you could get them the intelligence they wanted? And that’s what you did. Filip told you about Carl Pedersen, you told the Russians, and the Russians had Carl killed.”
“Pedersen is dead?” the VSD Director asked, his face pale, his arrogance gone.
Harvath glared at him. “What did you think the Russians were going to do with the information? Send him flowers?”
Like the coward he was, Simulik’s shock quickly began giving way to something else: self-preservation. “I couldn’t have known what they would do with the information.”
“Norway is an ally, and a fellow member of NATO.”
“So is the United States,” he snapped. “Yet you used our air base to launch a hostile, unsanctioned action against a foreign nation. Your operation could have dragged all of us into war.”
The VSD Director had no idea what he was talking about. Harvath’s operation had saved them from war. The Russians had already set the wheels in motion for an invasion—and not just of Lithuania, but of Estonia, Latvia, and a portion of Sweden as well.
As much as he hated the Russians, their plan had been brilliant. By overrunning the tiny garrison on the Swedish island of Gotland, they would have been able to install their mobile missile batteries and close off the entire Baltic Sea. From Kaliningrad, their air defense systems, along with legions of their fighter jets, would control the skies. The only way for NATO to resupply their tiny partners and pump soldiers and equipment into the area would be via trains out of Poland.
There was just one problem—the gauge of the railroad tracks changed at the Polish-Lithuanian border and everything had to be transferred onto new trains. These transfer points were predesignated for sabotage.
No matter how many times the Pentagon had run the simulation, no matter how many times they had brought in new and even more brilliant strategists, the Russians always won the conflict—and a new world war broke out as a result.
Harvath’s Kaliningrad operation—the risking of a handful of American lives in order to remove one