“Lunch. I’ll buy.”
Nicholas’s gray Sprinter cargo van was a rolling TOC. It had satellite communications equipment hidden in the roof and was packed with racks of electronics inside. Special hand-controls had been added that allowed him to drive the van himself.
They arrived in downtown Winchester well before the lunch rush and found parking half a block down from La Niçoise on the other side of the street. Its awning promised Mediterranean and French cuisine — two of Nicholas’s favorites. Harvath exited the van and came back fifteen minutes later with Thai.
“What the hell is this?” the little man complained.
“Pad See Ew.”
“I’m not eating this.”
Harvath took the container back and set it on the dashboard.
“That’s it?” Nicholas asked. “No Champignons Sauvages? No Pâté de Campagne? No Escargots Bourguignons?”
Harvath looked in his bag from Thai Winchester. “I guess they forgot.”
He shook his head. “Less than fifty yards from a French restaurant and you stumble around until you find Thai food.”
“Who doesn’t like Thai?”
“Don’t play stupid with me,” Nicholas replied. “You’re so much better at it.”
Harvath laughed and reached inside the bag. “That’s what I love about you. You never look down on anyone.”
The little man fixed him with a stare. “Is that a short joke?”
“Maybe,” he replied, handing him a styrofoam container. “Gourmet bison burger, rare, with caramelized onions and blue cheese.”
Nicholas’s stare softened into a smile.
“We good?” Harvath asked.
“It’s not Gigot D’Agneau,” he said, lifting the lid and admiring the sandwich, “but I’ll take it. Did you bring back anything for the boys?”
Harvath looked into the back of the van at Argos and Draco, their noses in the air, taking in the smell of all the hot food. “Sorry, they only took cash and I came up a little—”
“Don’t say it,” Nicholas smiled.
Harvath smiled. “You’re lucky I found someplace to get you a burger.”
“Thanks.”
In between bites of his food, Harvath said, “A TV was on in the Thai place. They broke from national news for a local report about another patient who had bled out at Georgetown University Hospital.”
“They’ll never contain this.”
“The illness or the story?”
Nicholas took a bite of his burger and let his silence speak for itself.
Harvath had no doubt that reporters from coast to coast were scouring hospitals, working their sources, trying to uncover additional cases. The one thing the government had going for them, for the time being, was that all of the patients thus far had contracted the illness abroad.
Harvath reached for a bottle of water as Nicholas’s phone chimed. The little man picked it up, plugged in his password, and read the message. He then opened the attachment and turned the phone so that Harvath could see the image.
“Here’s your escapee from the Ngoa facility.”
Harvath looked at the image. It appeared to be a scan of the man’s passport made by the Saudis when he entered their country. His name was Yusuf Mukulu and he was twenty-seven years old.
“Who’s that from?” he asked.
“Vella in Malta. Hendrik has confirmed that Mukulu is the man who escaped and ended up at the Matumaini Clinic.”
It was surreal seeing the man’s face — the person Colonel White had referred to as “Patient Zero.” If only there were one Patient Zero and not thirty.
“What happened to the rest of the pilgrims he travelled to Mecca with?” Harvath asked.
Nicholas turned the phone back around and thumbed through the rest of the brief message. “According to Hendrik, the Ngoa staff watched them die, then dug a pit, burned the bodies, and covered it up.”
“Literally and figuratively.”
The little man returned his phone to the console and turned his attention back to his burger.
Harvath checked his own phone for an update from Ash and his team back in Congo. An aircraft had been chartered to get them to Kinshasa. Another was sent to Bunia to retrieve the STAR team member assigned to work with them. So far, there was nothing.
They ate in silence until Nicholas asked, “If we don’t get a handle on this… if this whole thing spins out of control, what’s your plan?”
“It’s not going to.”
The little man looked at him. “Right, but let’s say it does. Let’s say the wheels come completely off the bus. Do you have a plan? Where you would go, what you would do?”
Harvath nodded. “A friend of mine from the SEALs has a place in Alaska. It’s cut off, remote, very tough to get to. But that’s where I’d want to ride things out. He’s a strategic guy. He’s laid in a lot of supplies over the years, just in case.”
“Doomsday prepper?”
“He’s just a smart guy. He knows store shelves may not always be stocked. He also knows that if there’s ever a major disaster, the government can’t, and won’t, take care of everyone. You’ve seen enough since you’ve been in D.C. There are some good people in government, but by and large the government looks out for itself.
“They’ve spent billions making sure that if the wheels come off the bus, they’ve got someplace safe to go with plenty of food to eat. They’re protected. You and me? Not so much. We’re on our own. So that’s why Alaska is my plan.”
“But you’d have to get there first,” said Nicholas. “That’s a pretty long way away.”
“I’ve got that covered. What about you?”
The little man looked at his two dogs and then back at Harvath. “I don’t know. I never really gave it much thought until now. I never felt like I had to. I guess it would depend on where the safest place was.”
“And then what?”
“Then I would figure out how to get us all there.”
“Meaning you, the dogs, and Nina,” said Harvath, referring to the woman in Nicholas’s life.
“Pretty much.”
“Can I be honest with you?”
The little man nodded.
“That’s a shitty plan.”
“I know,” he replied, “but it’s the only plan I have.”
“Well, we need to get you a new one.”
“Until we do, Alaska sounds good.”
“Don’t worry,” said Harvath. “It’s not going to come to that.”
“But if it does?”
“If it does, I’ll take you with me, okay?”
Nicholas smiled. Harvath was a good man, one of the only real friends he had ever had. “Thank you.”
Harvath was going to make a joke about stocking up on orange hair dye so they didn’t lose Nicholas in any Alaskan snowdrifts, when his phone rang. It was Palmer.
Activating the call, he said, “What’s up?”
“Look sharp. Damien and the woman are here.”
CHAPTER 39
When the two black Suburbans pulled up in front of La Niçoise, members of Damien’s security team exited first. They were hard men, fit, well-trained, and obviously experienced. After looking slowly up and down the block, they opened the rear passenger door so Damien could exit, followed by Helena. He offered her his arm and the pair entered the restaurant together.
The owner rushed to greet him. They shook hands, Damien inquired after the man’s family, and then handed him a leather wine tote with two perfectly chilled bottles of 1978 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Montrachet.
It was fifty thousand dollars’ worth of wine and the owner, also an oenophile, knew it. Damien patted him on the shoulder. “When you bring our glasses, bring one for yourself.”
“My goodness,” the man responded, thrilled. “Thank you, Mr. Damien. That is very kind of you. Please, follow me this way. Let me show you to your table.”