That was the Old Man’s style, though. No matter who you were or where you came from, you had to earn your way up in his organization.
The problem with sending Ashby to select clothes for Harvath was that every time she was sent to do it, she always pushed the envelope — picking combinations Harvath would never assemble for himself.
“I didn’t pick these,” she said, handing over the garment bag. “I wasn’t in your house. I only drove up and popped the trunk.”
Harvath unzipped the bag and looked inside. It wasn’t the staid dark suit, white shirt, and dark tie he would have expected from the Old Man, but it wasn’t the envelope-pushing ensemble he would have expected from Ashby. In fact, it fell tastefully right in the middle.
“Who gave this to you?” he asked.
“Lara.”
“Lara?”
“Did you develop a hearing problem in Congo?” she joked. “Yeah, Lara.”
“Why was she at my house?”
“You can ask the Old Man when you see him. Right now, you need to get changed into your party clothes, or he’s going to chew my ass for being late. Let’s go, pretty boy.”
Harvath had a real soft spot for Ashby. She was a smartass, and he liked that. She could dish it out as well as she could take it. In fact, she probably dished it out too well, which was part of the reason the Army had agreed to let Carlton have her.
Ashby had killed so many of the enemy in Afghanistan that when a magazine back home did an unauthorized profile of her, a price was put on her head. She had taken out more bad guys than any other woman in combat, and more than even most male soldiers. The Army, though, couldn’t risk the negative PR of a celebrity soldier, much less one who was killed or captured, so they pulled her from active duty.
To add insult to injury, they refused her request to be sent to Iraq. Instead, she was detailed to Fort Bragg where she helped train the top-secret, all female Delta Force detachment known as The Athena Project.
She couldn’t believe her government had sidelined her for being good at what she had been trained to do — killing bad guys. While she may have been a good instructor, she was too talented and too young to be mothballed. When Carlton offered to arrange for her to be released to his organization, she had jumped at the chance.
Everyone knew that Harvath was the Old Man’s golden boy, but like any smart manager, he was always looking to add depth to his bench. At about the same time he hired Ashby, he had hired Chase Palmer. When Harvath stepped out of the Signature Flight Support building in his tailored Argentine blue suit, Palmer and Ashby were leaning against Palmer’s car waiting for him.
“Did you go to Congo or a Day Spa?” Palmer asked when he saw him.
Being a smartass seemed to be part of the Old Man’s corporate culture.
“It wasn’t Congo,” Harvath replied. “Your mom and I went to Turks and Caicos.”
Palmer flipped him his middle finger as Harvath chucked his bag in the trunk and told his two colleagues to get in the car.
Their conversation grew more serious as they neared the office. Ashby and Palmer were both privy to his operation, and he gave them a full recap of what had happened. It was good practice for what he would have to recount to the Old Man.
At the office building, they cleared security and pulled into the underground garage. Harvath retrieved his bag from the trunk and Ashby used her keycard to summon the elevator to take them upstairs.
Even though the Carlton Group was a private organization, they handled classified information, and so all of their systems were built to the strictest NSA specifications.
Every step had been taken to safeguard against “compromising emanations” or CE as they were known. CE was any electrical, mechanical, or acoustical signal from equipment that was transmitting, receiving, processing, analyzing, encrypting, or decrypting classified information. From preventing magnetic field radiation and line conduction, to actively vibrating the windows so that conversations and keyboard strokes couldn’t be intercepted, nothing had been overlooked.
All of these measures, though, were largely invisible. To the untrained eye, the Carlton Group’s offices resembled a successful, high-tech law firm.
Though Carlton believed in hiring the top people and staying out of their way so they could do their jobs, he ran a tight ship.
There were no casual dress Fridays. The Group’s employees were the best. They were expected to dress and act like it. There were also strict rules about physical conditioning, grooming, and hygiene. The Old Man was old school.
As a smoker himself, Carlton allowed people to smoke, but they couldn’t go outside to do it. Smokers had a habit of getting too chummy and chatty with strangers and other tenants in a building. That was dangerous in the intelligence business. They milled around outside and lingered over cigarettes, wasting productive time. They also made themselves vulnerable to surveillance and approach.
To cater to the smokers, he’d built what became known as “the coffin,” a small glass booth barely big enough for two people at the far end of the office. It had an intense air purification system that roared so loudly you could barely hear yourself think.
It wasn’t supposed to be comfortable. There wasn’t even a place to sit down inside. You went in, got your fix, and got out.
Strangely enough, no one ever saw the Old Man using the coffin, and it was widely suspected he had an equally efficient though much quieter system placed in his office that allowed him to smoke whenever he wanted to.
When Harvath stepped off the elevator and entered the offices, he half expected to find the Old Man waiting for him up front in the main conference room. Instead, there was a medical team. Harvath recognized the doctor. It was the same one he had been on the phone with from Congo. The man waved him into the conference room.
Despite Harvath feeling perfectly fine, Carlton had ordered a full workup. They took his temperature and vitals, as well as several blood samples.
After the team was finished, the doc handed Harvath a digital thermometer. He told him to take his temperature twice daily and to text him the results.
Harvath tucked the device in his pocket, put his jacket on, and thanked the doctor. He then walked back toward the Old Man’s office.
He and Jessica Decker had been wearing full protective gear when they explored the Matumaini Clinic, but only a respirator at the pit, and nothing at all in the village, nor in their encounter with the sick FRPI rebel commander.
From what he had gleaned from Hendrik, whatever the illness was that had been cooked up in Ngoa, it moved fast. The incubation period was days, not weeks. Oddly enough, Leonce and his son had been standing right there when the rebel commander had damaged one of the vials, but nothing had happened to them. They had been perfectly fine. If, and when, he started running a fever or had any other symptoms, then he’d raise his concern level. Right now, he tried not to think about it.
Reaching the Old Man’s office, Harvath stuck his head inside, but it was empty.
As he had sent Ashby with a suit to pick him up at the airport, someone important had to be in the building, or on their way. Harvath figured it was Beaman. The Old Man probably wanted to give him an update. But as he was a civilian, there was a lot that had happened in Congo that couldn’t be shared with him. They would have to figure out what their story was and just how far they would read Beaman in.
Walking down the hall, Harvath breezed past the coffin, but still no sign of Carlton. Unless he had left the building, there was only one other place he could be.
CHAPTER 29
A Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, commonly referred to in intelligence parlance as a “SCIF,” was an enclosed space, fortified against all forms of eavesdropping and electronic surveillance, and used for processing sensitive information. The sign on the outside of the door read, DIGITAL OPS.