He had also taught him about leadership and running an organization—specifically The Carlton Group. But any time the subject of one day “taking over” had come up, Harvath had made it abundantly clear he wasn’t interested. He preferred being in the field. That’s what he was good at.
When Carlton was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, he pulled out all the stops. Harvath was too valuable to keep putting into the field. Scot was his protégé and he wanted him as his successor. And, like any good intelligence officer, Carlton was willing to use anything, even a personal tragedy, to get what he wanted.
He played upon Harvath’s emotions—particularly his sense of duty. He used guilt, leveraging their father-and-son-like bond. He even tried to shame Scot, suggesting that he owed it to the family he was starting to stay home and to limit going overseas.
That last attempt was particularly egregious. Harvath was dating a woman whom he was very much in love with and she had a little boy. It was the perfect, ready-made family, especially for a man who had spent the better part of his adult life kicking in doors and shooting bad guys in the head. To drag them into this discussion showed him how desperate and even how fearful Carlton was of the future. Not only the future of his business, but more important, the future of the country.
Out of his love for Carlton, or the “Old Man,” as Harvath affectionately referred to him, he agreed to a compromise. Harvath would keep one foot in the field and one foot in the office. To do that, though, he insisted Carlton hire a full-time Director.
After a lengthy meeting in the Oval Office with the President and the Director of Central Intelligence, approval was given to hire Lydia Ryan.
Up until that point, she had been Deputy Director at the CIA. The President had handpicked her, and her boss, to clear out the deadwood at the Agency, streamline it, and get it aggressively back in the fight.
It was a Herculean task—akin to cleaning out the Augean Stables—and they soon realized it would take far longer than any of them ever anticipated. Entrenched bureaucracy needed to be torn out, root and branch. The most difficult part of tearing it out was that it fought like hell every step of the way.
While the Director tried to rescue the CIA, Ryan came over to helm The Carlton Group. It would function as a lifeboat of sorts—a place where critical operations that couldn’t be handled by Langley, would quietly be carried out until the Agency could be rehabilitated.
A handsome New Englander with a prominent chin and silver hair, Carlton had been a legend in the intelligence business—the spymaster’s spymaster. He was brilliant. To have his mind taken from him was the cruelest twist of all.
It robbed the nation of one of its greatest treasures. He literally knew where all the bodies were buried—names, dates, accounts, passwords, places, times, who had screwed whom, who owed whom. . . . He was a walking encyclopedia of global espionage information and it was all slipping away—quickly.
Harvath and Ryan were in a race against time, harvesting what they could. They took turns visiting with him, never knowing when Carlton would have enough energy or lucidity.
Some days were better than others. Carlton would drop cognitively, then level off, and drop again. It tore both their hearts out, but especially Harvath’s.
Then one day, out of the blue, there’d been a dangerous lapse.
CHAPTER 5
* * *
Ryan had gone to Carlton’s home to sit and spend some time with him. If he felt up to talking, she was always prepared to take notes.
When she arrived, he was engaged in an animated discussion with one of his private, round-the-clock nurses. While it was wonderful to see him so talkative, he was regaling his caregiver with highly classified information about America’s relationship with the Saudis. Not good.
Pulling out her phone, she had called Harvath first. He was at the office and told her he’d get to the house as soon as he could. Next, she called her former boss at the CIA and suggested that the Office of the General Counsel get the nurses to sign national security nondisclosure agreements. It was a temporary fix, a stopgap, but it had to be done—immediately. There was no telling what he had already revealed.
Coming back into the den, Lydia offered to sit with Carlton so the nurse could work on preparing his lunch. The Old Man immediately began telling her how beautiful she was.
She was, indeed, a beautiful woman—tall, with long black hair, green eyes, full lips, and high cheekbones—the product of a Greek mother and an Irish father. He wasn’t paying her some passing, sweet compliment, though. His internal brakes were coming off. He was saying things people might think, but knew better than to give voice to.
The doctors had warned this might happen, but no one expected it so soon.
She tried to take advantage of the situation by pressing topics they needed information on; plumbing areas where his mind had gone dark too quickly.
By the time Harvath arrived, she had assembled several pages of notes. How reliable the information was, she couldn’t know. It would have to be checked out. Nevertheless, the visit had been somewhat productive.
“How’s he doing?” Harvath had asked.
“He’s doing fine,” Carlton answered, speaking for himself. There were moments where he appeared to have decent self-awareness. Unfortunately, if you pressed him on details, he often couldn’t access them. In essence, his high degree of intelligence allowed him to bluff his way through a lot of conversations.
As if on cue, the nurse poked her head in to check on her patient. Harvath handed the lunch tray back, vegetables uneaten. Thanking her, he asked politely for some privacy. Walking her to the door, he closed it behind her and returned to Ryan, who explained everything that had taken place since she had arrived.
Harvath smiled at Carlton. “I don’t know what else to call this. You’re like a loose nuke. You’ve got all of these secrets that we have to make sure don’t fall into the wrong hands.”
The Old Man brushed it off with a dismissive wave. “Don’t be melodramatic. I’m fine.”
He wasn’t fine. He had become a security risk.
To his credit, Harvath hadn’t wasted time. He already had a contingency plan.
On a beautiful lake in New Hampshire was a small island with a cluster of old vacation homes—one of them built by Carlton’s grandfather—where he had spent summers as a boy. As his strongest memories were his earliest, Harvath thought it would be a comfortable, familiar place to put him.
He had arranged an open-ended lease from the current owners and with permission from the Department of Defense, assembled a contingent of Navy Corpsmen to see to the Old Man’s care and security. No one wanted a loose nuke to become a broken arrow. If the wrong people got their hands on Carlton, there was no telling what kind of intelligence they could extract from him. It was worth every penny and every ounce of effort to keep him safe and out of sight.
Under the cover of darkness, he was moved. Harvath went along to help keep him calm and had stayed for a couple of days just to make sure everything was running smoothly.
Carlton was delighted at being at the house he recognized from his youth. He didn’t like that the décor had been changed, but he blamed his grandmother, who never seemed to be happy unless she was redecorating.