“From what I have been told, traces of explosives were found on the plane’s left wing. There are some very powerful people who believe this was absolutely a plot by the Russians to weaken and destabilize Poland.”
Harvath knew the conspiracy theories were not popular in Poland and that polling ran two to one against its being anything but a crash in bad weather due to pilot error. In fact, the unit the pilots had come from had been disbanded for how poorly its members were trained, and several senior level officers had been forced to resign.
He also understood people wanted answers, especially for such a terrible, terrible tragedy. Having done presidential protection with the Secret Service, he couldn’t for the life of him understand why the Poles had packed so many extremely important, high-level government figures onto one plane. The protocol had been changed since, but it was just plain foolish from a continuity-of-government perspective.
There was nothing Harvath could say other than “I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you,” she replied.
Even if the Russians hadn’t been involved in crashing the plane and it had been an accident, they had handled the aftermath in such an atrocious fashion that he couldn’t blame her for hating them and letting that hate creep into blame for the entire thing.
There was also the possibility, no matter how remote, that the Russians had been involved in bringing the aircraft down. It wouldn’t have been the first time, and sadly, it likely wouldn’t be the last.
Taking a sip of her coffee, Monika looked away from him and out the window. “As terrible as it was,” she continued. “There was one more wound I was forced to suffer.”
Harvath had already known about her husband and the crash, but that was pretty much the extent of it. He waited for her to continue.
“I was pregnant,” she said. “We hadn’t told anyone yet. Julian and I were trying to decide what we were going to do. We had talked about my leaving the Army.
“In the end, it didn’t matter. In addition to losing my husband, I miscarried and also lost my baby.”
Harvath felt terrible for her. “Monika, I am so sorry. No one should have to go through that.”
“Apparently, I did.”
How to respond? Harvath wasn’t exactly skillful at talking about his own feelings, much less somebody else’s. The one thing he knew, though, was that if he wasn’t careful, he could very likely make things worse. He decided not to say anything, and they sat there for several more minutes, as they had in the beginning, in silence.
He watched her, turned away from him and looking out the window. He couldn’t even begin to fathom what she was feeling.
It made him realize, though, how fortunate he was to have someone back home waiting for him. It also made him wonder if he hadn’t been taking Lara for granted.
The Old Man, before he really began slipping away, had pushed him to do the right thing and marry her. He had even gone so far as to call Harvath a “dope” for not already having done so. He said it would serve him right if another man came along and swept her off her feet. And that it would be doubly poetic if it happened while Harvath was on one of his many trips abroad.
The Old Man probably had a point. In fact, if Harvath was honest with himself, there was no “probably” about it. Harvath needed to figure out what he wanted, and then act on it.
He was about to grab another cup of coffee when his radio crackled to life. It was Staelin. “We’ve got activity.”
Harvath wasn’t surprised. It would be daylight in an hour. There were countless things that needed to be done on a farm every morning. “What do you see?” he asked.
“The farmhands are jogging.”
“Jogging?”
“Yes,” said Staelin. “In formation. Military formation.”
CHAPTER 35
* * *
Harvath would have liked to have seen it for himself, but he never would have gotten there in time. Instead, he had Staelin describe, in detail, what was taking place.
Apparently, eight rather fit men had assembled outside, two abreast, and had run off in a column. Normally when runners go out in a group, it’s casual and they run in a pack. To run in formation was unusual. It suggested that structure and discipline were being imposed.
Harvath’s mind went back to what Nicholas had said about placing a deep-cover team of Spetsnaz operatives on the island. He also remembered what Nyström had said about Sparrman hiring from Eastern Europe. While the Swedes were excellent in English, he doubted they could tell a Russian from a Romanian or a Moldovan. If the GRU had a willing local, a farm would be a perfect place to hide a team of Special Forces soldiers.
Harvath told him to keep an eye on everything and that he’d be sending in Ashby and Barton soon to relieve them.
Signing off, he began formulating a plan. Eight potential Spetsnaz troops was not a fight he wanted to have. If they came out of the GRU’s unit, they were battle-tested and had seen plenty of action—most recently in places like Syria and Ukraine, if not as far back as Chechnya and Georgia.
Taking Sparrman at the farm might be too dangerous. Harvath and his team might have to snatch him on the fly, while he was in transit. That posed a whole other set of problems.
If Sparrman had been involved in Lars Lund’s accident, which Harvath had a pretty good feeling he was, then the man might be a lot more switched on than usual, paying close attention to whether he was under surveillance.
Harvath would need to identify the best possible location, as well as the best possible circumstances under which to grab him—all with having little to no surveillance on him.
This, of course, presupposed that Sparrman even left the farm at all. If he didn’t, if he was under the weather or was just some sort of recluse, Harvath was going to need to come up with a plan to go in and yank him out.
And no matter which route he took, Harvath would have to make his move before the window closed and Nyström set up his own surveillance and actively took over the case. He had only thirty-six hours left.
But the more Harvath studied the situation, the more problems he saw staring back at him. He wasn’t exactly being pummeled by the good idea fairy. It was going to be a long day.
• • •
Surveillance, like a lot of the work performed in the intelligence game, involved long periods of extreme boredom. The Sparrman farm assignment was a textbook case.
With the sunrise, Ashby and Barton had been able to provide Harvath with the makes, models, and colors of the vehicles parked at the entrance of the property. None were any shade of olive.
Other than that, no useful intelligence was produced. Nobody visited the farm. Nobody left the farm.
By late afternoon, Harvath and Haney were debating the risks of doing another, more aggressive drone flight. Harvath had already begun fleshing out an assault on the farm and needed more information to help plan their approach. They decided to wait until dark and then go out to check on the surveillance team.
When the time came, they filled a thermos they had found in the kitchen with hot coffee and headed out to the minivan. The Camry was with the surveillance team in case Sparrman left the property and offered an opportunity to be followed.
They all knew what Sparrman looked like. A Gotland newspaper had done an article about the farm two years ago and had run his picture with it. Harvath had made sure that everyone downloaded a copy to their phone.