“I eventually turned the TV off. They just kept repeating the same images. Did you get any sleep at all?”
“A little. Not much,” she replied.
“There’s coffee in the kitchen.”
Jasinski thanked him and joined him at the table a few minutes later with her own mug. “What are you reading?”
Harvath held the book up so she could see it. “Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy by Nicholas Reynolds.”
“How is it?”
“It’s fascinating — all about how Ernest Hemingway was a spy for both U.S. and Soviet Intelligence.”
“He was?”
Harvath nodded. “Did you ever read Alexander Foote’s Handbook for Spies?”
“No. Should I?”
“It covers some of the same material regarding Soviet spy networks, but it’s a first-person account. I think it should be required reading for anyone in our business.”
Jasinski looked at him over the rim of her mug. “So, you’re a spy?”
“To be honest with you, Monika, I don’t know exactly what I am.”
She smiled. “I was always told that when someone says, ‘to be honest with you,’ it often means they’re lying.”
Harvath smiled back. “Not this time.”
“If you’re not a spook, what are you, then?”
It was a good question, and one that Harvath had been trying for a while to come up with an answer for. “I don’t think there’s a word for it. At least not one that covers all the aspects of the job.”
“Well, there has to be a word better than consultant. Why don’t you tell me about the person you work for? I understand he and Lars Lund and Carl Pedersen knew each other.”
“They all go way back,” said Harvath. “Cold War guys.”
“What did your boss do?”
“He was an intelligence officer at the CIA. He helped create the Counter Terrorism Center. Brilliant man.”
Finally, she was getting some answers. She decided to keep pushing. “And he now works at the Supreme Allied Command Transformation back in Norfolk?”
Harvath smiled. “No. SACT, and NATO more specifically, is our client. After retiring from the CIA, my boss took everything he had learned and set up his own business.”
“Doing what?”
“I’m still trying to find a better word for it.”
Jasinski rolled her eyes. “Try contracting.”
Harvath shook his head. “That conjures up images of ex special operations personnel doing security details. We do more than that. A lot more.”
“If you had a brochure,” she asked, “what would it say?”
He thought about it for several moments and replied, “Hypothetically, it would say that we offer a suite of products, services, and turnkey solutions comparable to the CIA, but without all the bureaucracy.”
“How comparable?”
“Extremely.”
She couldn’t believe it. “You’ve privatized the espionage business.”
“Some things work better away from all the red tape.”
“But what about accountability? Some semblance of oversight?”
“We answer to the client.”
“What does that even mean?” she asked.
“It means we’ve been given a certain amount of flexibility in getting our job done.”
“We’re back to creativity and tossing out the rulebook, aren’t we?”
“My boss likes to say that in every operation there’s above the line and below the line,” he replied. “Above the line is what you do by the book. Below the line is how you get the job done. We do what we need to do to get the job done.”
“Is that what you plan to do here? With Sparrman?”
“We’re going to work our way up the food chain. First we’ll start with Sparrman. Then we’ll go after the person above him. And so on and so on.”
“And what if Sparrman doesn’t want to give up the person above him?” she asked.
“He will.”
“How can you be so sure of yourself?”
Harvath smiled again. “Experience.”
“This isn’t a fact-finding assignment. You’re going to kidnap him, aren’t you? Just like that GRU agent you snatched in Berlin.”
“You don’t have to come along.”
“Look around you,” she said, holding out her arms. “I’m already here.”
“So are the Russians, Monika.”
He was right. She couldn’t argue with that. Taking a sip of her coffee, she looked away. She now understood they were not there to confirm suspicions. They had already decided that Sparrman was working with the Russians.
“You know I read your file,” he continued.
It seemed to her an odd thing to say. “And?” she asked.
“And I know you hate the Russians every bit as much as I do.”
“You read my file and you think you know me?” He had touched a raw nerve and pissed her off. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know you work in the terrorism intelligence cell, but have been instrumental in uncovering multiple Russian spies at SHAPE. That doesn’t happen by accident. That happens because you want to stick it to them. Because you want to cause them as much pain as possible. You’ve got a score to settle.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
But he did know what he was talking about. And he could see it written all over her face.
They sat without speaking for several minutes, before she finally broke the silence. “They killed him,” she said. “It was the Russians. I don’t care what anyone else says.”
CHAPTER 34
Her eyes were moist as she fought to keep her emotions in check. It was incredibly painful and difficult to discuss.
Harvath didn’t push. Monika was the one who had to decide if she wanted to go into detail. This was completely up to her.
“In April and May of 1940, the Soviet Union committed a series of mass executions of Polish military officers, politicians, and intellectuals. Among the so-called intellectuals were police officers, lawyers, priests, doctors, bakers, and schoolteachers. In all, twenty-two thousand were executed and their bodies were dumped in mass graves in the Katyn Forest outside Smolensk, Russia.
“The murders were carried out by the precursor to the KGB — the Soviet secret police known as the NKVD. It was done with Stalin’s full knowledge and support.
“For years, the Russians lied and dissembled about their involvement. They first blamed the Nazis. Then after the fall of communism, they blamed the no-longer-existent Soviet Union. Finally, they stopped discussing it altogether, saying that because the perpetrators were all dead, there was no point. They refused to fully accept the blame, much less discuss reparations.
“As far as the Polish people were concerned, it should have been classified as a war crime or genocide. Instead, the Soviet-era cover-up was simply swept under the rug and largely ignored. Poland, though, kept pushing.
“Because it refused to give up, Poland forced Russia to finally and officially accept its role. Of course, in its proclamation the Russian Duma blamed Stalin and a collection of party officials, but it was at long last recognition of the evil that had been done.
“That was eight years ago — the seventieth anniversary of the massacre. As a gesture of what was believed to be goodwill, Russia agreed to allow a party of Polish dignitaries to visit the site of the massacre and pay their respects. It was supposed to have served as a commemoration ceremony — a closing of a very painful wound.
“What no one knew, at least not in Poland, was how much deeper and more painful that wound was about to be made.”
Jasinski took a moment and several deep breaths in order to maintain her composure. The worst part, for her, was what came next.