Brad Thor: Takedown

The president looked at his newly appointed director of National Intelligence, Kenneth Wilson, and said, “Do you want to take this?”

Wilson nodded his head and clearing his throat said, “We actually know very little about the man you saw in Gibraltar, but based upon your description of him, and in particular his two dogs, we believe he’s a figure known as the Troll.”

“The Troll?”

“Rumors of his existence have pervaded the intelligence world since before the fall of the Berlin Wall. It’s said he deals in the purchase and sale of highly sensitive information. We think he’s the one who bought off Joseph Stanton to get the Athena locations in New York City.”

“What makes you think that?”

“After the sites were secured, a thorough sweep was conducted to search for any signs that the intelligence being gathered and analyzed there had been compromised.”

“And had it?” asked Harvath.

“Significantly. Everything the NSA had on their servers at those locations is gone.”

Nothing at this point surprised Harvath.

Removing a small silicon device from his pocket, Wilson held it up and said, “We found remnants of devices like this one here at each of the locations. They can be programmed to covertly transfer a server’s data to a remote location while making it look like the servers themselves are still carrying out their normal functions.”

“Which is why nobody at NSA suspected anything and the alarm was never raised.”

“Exactly. Our best explanation is that the Troll traded al-Qaeda the location of where Mohammed bin Mohammed was being held in exchange for them breaching the Athena Program locations and planting the devices for him. Which, by the way, self-destructed after the data was transferred and which is why we only found remnants.

“We also believe the Troll managed to get to someone inside the Defense Intelligence Agency who revealed where we were keeping Mohammed bin Mohammed. The circle of people in the know is pretty small, so we expect to have something soon.”

Director Wilson continued on, but Harvath was no longer listening. After killing Abdul Ali and Mohammed bin Mohammed, he thought he had fulfilled the promise he’d made Bob Herrington, but now there was one more name he was going to have to cross off his list-the Troll’s.

Once Wilson had wrapped up, the president asked Scot if he had any other questions. This was a relatively rare event. Because he was not always privy to the entire intelligence picture, there were many instances when he was unaware of the full impact of the success of his assignments. Sometimes, out of sheer gratitude, he was allowed access to information that otherwise never would have been made available to him. On days when this magnanimous flow of intelligence occurred, Harvath was able to forget, if only for a moment, how fed up he was with Washington politics. Today had turned out to be just such a day.

The president didn’t have to gather his top people to spend an hour and a half spelling everything out and answering all of Harvath’s questions, but he had, and Harvath appreciated it. He did, though, have one final question. “How is Amanda?”

Rutledge smiled and said, “She’s doing much better, thank you.”

“A collapsed lung is pretty serious.”

The president nodded. “I think the death of her friends and so many of the agents on her detail was harder for her to handle than anything else.”

“I’m sure it was,” replied Harvath.

“I’ll tell her you asked about her.”

“Thank you, Mr. President.”

Always uncomfortable with the president’s fulsome praise of his efforts on behalf of his country, Scot thanked him for both his time and his candor and then prepared to stand up.

“If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like you to stay for a few more minutes,” said Rutledge as he excused the rest of the people in the Oval Office.

Once they had gone, the president removed an envelope from his desk and handed it to Harvath.

“What’s this?”

“Scot, you are a tremendous asset to this country.”

Harvath tried to interrupt, but the president stopped him. “It often seems to me that we should be doing more in return to thank you.”

“I don’t do it for the thanks, sir.”

“I know you don’t, and I also know you don’t do it for the money. There certainly are places that would pay you a lot more for what you know.”

Harvath couldn’t tell for sure, but he had a sneaking suspicion that the president knew he had been looking for another job lately. He made a mental note to get in touch with his contact at Valhalla out in Colorado to let them know that for the time being, he was going to remain in his current position.

“Well?” said Rutledge, snapping Scot back to the here and now.

Looking down, Harvath realized the president was talking about the envelope he was holding.

“In addition to signing the leasehold, we’re going to need to amend your file to show you as caretaker,” Rutledge added.

Harvath looked up and said, “I’m sorry, caretaker? I don’t understand.”

“Two days ago, I spoke with the secretary of the Navy. Are you familiar with the Navy’s Federal Preservation Office?”

“No, sir. I can’t say that I am.”

At that moment, the president’s chief of staff, Charles Anderson, knocked and poked his head into the Oval Office. After saying a quick hello to Scot, he pointed at his watch and indicated to Rutledge that they needed to get going.

The president pointed at the envelope and said, “All the information’s in there. Take a few days and then let me know what you think.”

Not really knowing what he was thanking the man for, Harvath shook the president’s hand, tucked the envelope inside his breast pocket, and left the Oval Office. Once he got outside, he opened the envelope and read its contents. Halfway through the first page, Harvath couldn’t believe his eyes.

Exiting the White House grounds, he made his way down Pennsylvania Avenue to where he’d parked his TrailBlazer and then got on the road and headed toward Fairfax County, Virginia. He had to see this for himself.

On several acres of land overlooking the Potomac River, just south of George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate, was a small eighteenth-century stone church known as Bishop’s Gate. During the revolutionary war, the Anglican reverend of Bishop’s Gate was an outspoken loyalist who provided sanctuary and aid to British spies, which resulted in the colonial army attacking the church and inflicting great damage.

Bishop’s Gate lay in ruins until 1882, when the Office of Naval Intelligence, or ONI, was established to seek out and report on the enormous post-Civil War explosion in the technological capabilities of other world-class navies. Several covert ONI agent training centers were established up and down the eastern seaboard to instruct naval attachés and military affairs officers on the collection of technical information about foreign governments and their naval developments.

Because of its isolated, yet prime location not far from Washington, DC, Bishop’s Gate was secretly rebuilt and funded as one of the ONI’s first covert officer training schools.

As the oldest continuously operating intelligence service in the nation, the ONI eventually outgrew the Bishop’s Gate location. The stubby yet elegant church with its attached stone rectory was relegated to a declassified document storage site. Apparently, the fate of Bishop’s Gate was not out of the ordinary. As Harvath read the letter, he learned that the Navy often was forced to mothball assets that served no immediate need, but might at some point in the future. This “laying away” of properties, many of them historic like Bishop’s Gate, might be for a short term, an intermediate, or an undetermined period. Regardless of how the properties might once again be used, while still under the jurisdiction of the Navy, the Navy was obligated to protect and preserve their historic significance, as well as maintain their physical integrity.