Near Dark (Scot Harvath #19)(55)

Raising his right index finger, Harvath pointed at himself. “Me.”

“You?” said Proctor. “I don’t get it.”

“During the time they believe Carl was being tortured, files were accessed not only on his phone and laptop, but also within the NIS database. All of them had to do with me. They believe the killer was compiling a dossier.”

“How many people even knew about your relationship with Pedersen?”

“Outside this room? Not many.”

“Wait a second,” Jasinski interjected. “You’re not here because you think we had something to do with this, are you?”

“Does the President think we were involved?” Proctor added.

Harvath shook his head. “I made it crystal clear back home that neither of you would have ever been involved in something like this.”

“Good.”

“With that said, I need to know if either of you may have mentioned Carl to anyone. Did his name appear in any of your reporting? Anything like that?”

“Reporting?” said Jasinski. “What reporting? We didn’t even take notes. And in case you don’t remember, I had no idea what kind of operation I had been sent on when I linked up with you. I went because the Admiral told me to. I reported to him and him only. I didn’t even tell my own government about it.”

Harvath believed her. One hundred percent.

“Scot,” Proctor assured him, “if someone linked you to Carl, it wasn’t through us. We kept the entire operation locked down, airtight. If you’ve got a leak, it’s someplace else.”

Harvath believed the Admiral as well. Neither one of them had directly betrayed Carl, nor did it appear as if there was an ancillary contact he needed to track down and question.

Ever the perceptive intelligence officer, Jasinski sensed that Harvath was holding out on them. It was just a feeling, but it was pretty strong. There was something he wasn’t telling them.

“Why would someone target Carl in order to build a dossier on you?” she asked.

“I’m not completely certain.”

“Rarely is anyone in our line of work completely certain. But let’s put that aside for a second. You’re holding out on us. I’m more than sure. I’m positive. What’s the rest of the story?”

She was really good—which was why he had enjoyed working with her. She had a solid moral compass, but wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty if she had to. Sometimes, in their line of work, the ends did justify the means. They were paid to save lives and protect their nations from foreign aggression. Occasionally, it was necessary for the bad guys to be shown what lengths they were prepared to go to in order to meet those goals.

“Three nights ago someone tried to kill me,” stated Harvath.

Proctor’s eyes widened. “The same person who killed Carl?”

“We’re not sure. We don’t even have a positive ID on the body.”

“At least you got him before he could get you.”

Harvath shook his head. “I shouldn’t even be here. He had me. Dead to rights. The only thing that saved me was a warning from the Norwegians and my team finding me before he could pull the trigger.”

Jasinski looked at him. “So if you didn’t recognize him, someone must have sent him, right? And I can guess who.”

“Who?”

She laughed, thinking that he was joking. “Well, it certainly wasn’t the Tibetans. After all the damage you have done to the Russians? And I’m just talking about everything that happened before they kidnapped you. Then there was that cascade of mayhem that happened after and—”

“Cascade of mayhem?” Harvath interrupted.

“Come on, Scot. I read reports and connect dots. That’s part of the job. A few weeks after you were rescued, key figures around the Russian President Peshkov began dropping dead—including his son.”

“From what I read in the papers, his son overdosed.”

“That’s part of the job, right?” she countered. “To make it look like an accident. Except a bunch of connected ‘accidents’ quickly begin to look like an orchestrated campaign. It wasn’t random. It wasn’t dumb luck. And it wasn’t a coincidence. It was you. I knew it then and I’m even more certain of it now. In fact, I’ll go on record and say that I’m completely certain.”

Resting her case, Jasinski leaned back in her chair, raised her mug, and took a sip of coffee.

Admiral Proctor didn’t waste the moment. Looking at Harvath, he said, “You asked for our best person. Now you know why I sent Monika.”

Harvath never doubted that she was their best person. He had known it from the beginning. He also knew that she was trustworthy. So was Proctor.

“Supposedly, there’s a contract out on me. A big one,” he confessed. “One hundred million dollars. To make it even more interesting, it wasn’t just given to one assassin. It was offered to a pool. Whoever gets to me first, gets the prize money.”

“And I thought my week was off to a bad start.”

Jasinski not only had the natural talent for their line of work, but she also had the requisite sense of humor.

“So let me get this straight,” said the Admiral. “You don’t know who killed Carl. You don’t know who tried to kill you. And behind all of this, there’s allegedly a one-hundred-million-dollar contract. Does that about sum it up?”