Brad Thor - Full Black

When it came to bringing Nicholas on board, Carlton had been one hundred percent against it, but Harvath had made a very compelling case and he’d eventually relented once the man had been able to secure his presidential pardon. That didn’t mean that he had changed any of his ways. The Old Man had created a secure area within which Nicholas operated, and within which he could constantly be monitored.

Nicholas had refused to shave his beard and had also insisted that the two enormous white Russian Ovcharkas, or Caucasian Sheepdogs, he owned, which were never away from his side, be allowed to come to work with him. Though Reed Carlton loved dogs, he had refused the request. The little man then claimed they were service animals and hinted at bringing a suit against him for violating the Americans with Disabilities act. The Old Man didn’t know if Nicholas was pulling his leg or if he was actually serious.

Once again, Harvath had stepped in and had lobbied for the dogs, explaining that the Group wouldn’t secure Nicholas’s cooperation unless the dogs were part of the deal. Carlton relented once more. It was obvious that Harvath had appointed himself the little man’s guardian. That point was driven home shortly after Nicholas’s first day on the job.

Because of the man’s physical limitations, a special Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, SCIF for short, had been built for him. A SCIF was an enclosed area within a building used for processing sensitive information. Nicholas’s SCIF was built to his specifications on a raised floor and stuffed full of all the computer equipment and data links he had asked for. As with the other sections of the Carlton Group, Nicholas’s SCIF had been assigned a title based on its function. A white sheet of paper with the words Digital Ops had been printed out and taped to the door.

The next day it had been taken down and replaced with another sign: The Lollipop Guild. When Harvath heard about it, he had hit the roof.

It took him less than fifteen minutes to track down who had done it. And cornering him in the men’s room, it took every ounce of restraint he had for Harvath not to punch the man’s lights out. To his credit, the man didn’t deny that he had posted the sign. In fact, he owned right up to it and launched into what a mistake he felt it was having brought a criminal like Nicholas into their operation.

Harvath didn’t care what the man thought. He told him that if he didn’t stay away from Nicholas, he would put a bullet in his head and dump his body where his family would never find it. Five minutes later, the man was in his supervisor’s office registering a complaint against Harvath. To the supervisor’s credit, he had backed up Harvath and told the man that if he didn’t close his mouth and get back to work, Harvath wouldn’t have a chance to shoot him because he was going to do the job himself. That seemed to put an end to things. Word quickly got around that anybody who screwed with Moonracer was going to get a visit from his big brother, Norseman, and that Harvath had carte blanche to do whatever he wanted and management would turn a blind eye.

Arriving at the SCIF, Harvath punched in his code, waited for the green light to come on, and listened for the locks to slide back and the hiss of air as the door was released.

The growling of Nicholas’s two dogs, Argos and Draco, ceased as soon as they saw who it was. Both of them stood up from their beds and trotted over to see Harvath.

“Hello, boys,” he said, patting them on the head. “Hello, Nicholas.”

The little man was typing away at his keyboard. He quickly raised his left index finger, indicating he’d be with Harvath in a second, and then returned to typing.

In the eerie lighting of the SCIF, Harvath studied Nicholas’s face. He had been attacked over the summer with a razor. It had happened in a remote mountainous region of Spain. There wasn’t a hospital, or even a clinic, for over a hundred miles. One of the monks who found him had some medical experience and had sewn him up. All things considered, Nicholas was lucky to have received any stitches at all. In fact, he was just lucky to be alive.

He had since undergone two procedures to help improve his appearance and reduce scarring. From what Harvath could see, Nicholas was almost back to normal.

As soon as the little man was finished with what he was typing, he hit the Enter key, saying, “And a Dolly for Sue.”

Nicholas needed an extraordinary amount of computing power to do what the Carlton Group had brought him on board to do. When the NSA categorically denied him access to their massive data centers, he turned to the next best thing and hacked into Google’s.

Google had dozens of data centers around the world and more than a million servers, from right there in Reston, to places like Sao Paulo, Moscow, Milan, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. Nicholas had given the ones he used most often nicknames-Spotted Elephant, Bird Fish, Charlie-in-the-Box, Ostrich Cowboy, Scooter for Jimmy, and a Dolly for Sue.

Harvath had chalked it up to eccentricity until someone in the Group had asked him if he knew the significance of Nicholas’s code name. The little man had chosen it for himself and it had been approved. Harvath figured it had some poetic meaning for him until he learned that Moonracer was the name of the winged lion that ruled the Island of Misfit Toys. He was responsible for flying around the world each night in search of unwanted toys. It was a fitting moniker.

When it became obvious that Nicholas was not going to grow any bigger, his godless Soviet Georgian parents had decided he was an embarrassment and would forever be like a stone around their necks. They no longer wanted their son and decided to get rid of him.

They made no attempt to find him a suitable, loving home. They didn’t even try to place him in an orphanage. Instead, they abandoned the boy, selling him to a brothel on the outskirts of the Black Sea resort of Sochi. There, Nicholas was starved, beaten, and made to participate in unutterable acts no child should ever be subjected to.

It was there that Nicholas learned the true value of information. Pillow talk from the alcohol-loosened lips of the brothel’s powerful clients proved to be a gold mine, once he knew what to listen for and how to turn it to his advantage.

The women who worked in the brothel were society’s castoffs, just like Nicholas, and they took pity on him. Those ladies of the night were the first to ever treat Nicholas with respect. They became the only family he had ever known, and he repaid their kindness one day by securing their freedom. He had the madam who ran the brothel, along with her husband, dispatched for the inhuman cruelty he had suffered at their hands.

Though he moved beyond the horrors of his youth, he never forgot them. He carried with him a tremendous burden of shame. He was no angel. He had done many bad things since leaving the brothel in Sochi. He had done many good things as well, particularly with the vast amount of money he had made and lost over the years. He wanted to cleanse himself. Whether that was possible, only time would tell. Agreeing to come to work with Harvath was a step in that direction.

Pushing his chair back from the desk, he reached his tiny arms into the air and arched his back. Lowering them, he turned to face his friend. “I’m sorry about Uppsala,” he said.

“Me, too,” replied Harvath, nodding toward the minifridge on the opposite wall.

Nicholas nodded. “Help yourself.”

Crossing over to it, he opened the door and peered inside. “Does the Old Man know you’ve got a bottle of wine in here?”

“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Besides, with the hours I’ve been putting in, I deserve a drink now and again.”