Rising Tiger: A Thriller (72)

Nursing his bourbon, he tried not to focus on the cold. The longer he stayed in the tub, the more restorative the torture would be.

He hadn’t been this cold since the Russian helicopter he had been flying in had crashed into the ocean above the Arctic Circle. The only time he had been colder was when he had fallen through a frozen river in Russia and had begun hallucinating.

It was funny how, more than his SEAL training, the worst experiences he had had with cold had always involved Russia. That was a country that if he never saw it again, it would be too soon. He didn’t have a problem with the Russian people. Their government, however, he despised with a passion.

The same went for China. Its people, by and large, were decent, honorable, hardworking. But the Chinese Communist Party was an absolutely horrific regime. They enslaved, slaughtered, and oppressed people on a scale that, much like Russia’s atrocities, should have been a global embarrassment.

The fact that the United States remained so reliant on Chinese manufacturing was a black mark on its purported belief in individual liberty and human rights.

Harvath loved his country, deeply, but its relationship with China was a constant source of frustration and anger for him. And recent events involving Ritter, Nicholas, and Nina had done nothing but bolster his hatred of the CCP.

Taking a swig of bourbon, he tried to push the cold, as well as the godless Chinese communists, from his mind. It didn’t work. The only thing that would keep him in the tub was being pissed-off, so he allowed his anger at both to flood through him.

Finally, when he couldn’t stand it any longer, he got out and took a nice, long, hot shower.

Standing under the rain head, with jets shooting at him from the walls, he let the water pound him into a trancelike state.

He allowed his mind to let go of bad things. He thought of only good things. He thought of S?lvi in Oslo, their wedding, and of seeing her again soon.

He thought of Nicholas and Nina, and their baby, and hoped that all would be well.

And he thought of getting his hands on the person responsible for killing Eli Ritter and imagined what it would be like to watch him die.

While not on the same level of Nicholas’s satisfaction in killing the person who had attacked him and his family in his home, he figured it would be in the ballpark. Harvath was nothing if not loyal. Plus, meting out vengeance was something of a specialty of his. No one wronged those he cared about without paying the full and maximum penalty.

Climbing out of the shower, he put on one of the Oberoi’s famous bathrobes, shaved, and brewed an espresso.

The fact that he was shortly going to mix it up in the New Delhi underworld seemed almost surreal. From a cold, loud transport aircraft to two luxury hotels in a row, the espionage world was nothing if not inconsistent and totally unpredictable.

He set an alarm and closed his eyes, hoping to catch some sleep, but was only able to drift off for about twenty minutes before popping back up, wide awake.

His brain could be restless, uncooperative, when he was on assignment and trying to process lots of information. He would have liked to have caught a little bit more than twenty minutes, but he was glad to have had it. Twenty minutes was better than nothing.

Grabbing the menu, he called down to room service and ordered dinner. He didn’t know when he was going to get a chance to eat again, and doing so now, at the hotel, meant he wouldn’t risk getting sick later by ordering something from a street vendor on the fly.

The food came up on a linen-covered cart, with polished silverware and hand-cut crystal glasses. Everything he had ordered was there—multiple, high-protein appetizers and fully cooked vegetables. Per his request, there was no bread, or butter, in sight.

In addition to a carafe of coffee, there were two large bottles of water. Turning on satellite news to catch up on what was happening at home, he sat down and tucked into his meal.

Back in Washington, it was the typical bullshit. The two parties were unable to work together. Those representatives willing to reach across the aisle and attempt compromise were labeled by the fringes in their parties as sellouts and even “traitors.”

Harvath hated the internet. He hated the political media complex even more. A bunch of loud-mouthed jackasses on the left and the right were getting rich by fomenting strife and convincing good Americans that their way of life was being destroyed by the other side.

The truth was that Americans had it better than any other people at any other time in history. The United States was at the peak of the mountain—lean too far left, too far right, forward or back, and we risked losing everything.

Instead of letting idiots on TV, radio, and the internet convince us that our good lives were terrible, we needed to be practicing gratitude. Only by recognizing how good we had it and being grateful for it would we ever hope to preserve it for the next generation. Frankly, there were days that the rampant stupidity in the United States made Harvath want to suck-start his Glock.

Lots of people were well-meaning, but they were lazy. They didn’t exert the basic duties of good citizenship. They believed anything and everything that flashed across their phone or computer screen. They believed that if they were in a group, or a feed, of like-minded people, all the information being pushed at them was true. They didn’t realize that the information spaces where you felt safest were where America’s enemies loved to seed their propaganda and disinformation.

Harvath loved his fellow countrymen and women but loathed the ones who couldn’t be bothered to fact-check what they were reading and hearing. Being a responsible steward of the American republic meant doing the hard work of being truthfully informed.