Near Dark (Scot Harvath #19)(72)
The adjacent rooftops were steep and clad with smooth red-clay tiles. If things went wrong and that was their only means of escape, they were going to be in a lot of trouble.
Carefully directing the drone, he had it begin peeking in the windows. All of them, though, were covered—either by aluminum blinds in the office areas or shades or draperies in the residential portions. There was nothing left to see and so he recalled it.
The drone set down in the middle of the street, just next to the Land Cruiser. Harvath hopped out, repacked it in its case, and secured it in the cargo area.
Closing the hatch, he looked up at the sky that only minutes ago had been a deep purple. Much like his mood, it was transitioning rapidly from dark blue to black. This wasn’t going to be an easy night. There was a lot they were about to do that he didn’t like.
For starters, both the CIA Director and the President had told him—in no uncertain terms—that he was absolutely forbidden from doing it. Lawlor, whose call he had ignored because he was too busy talking with Landsbergis on the drive in, had also sent him a series of angry texts telling him to stand down. Only Nicholas had been on board.
Getting back into the driver’s seat, Harvath looked at S?lvi, then Landsbergis, and said, “Let’s go over the plan one last time.”
CHAPTER 33
Harvath didn’t need to speak Lithuanian to understand that Andriejus Simulik was pissed off. Really pissed off.
As Director of the VSD, he expected all of his people—even one as high-ranking as Landsbergis—to strictly follow agency protocols and, at the very least, to practice basic tradecraft. Bringing an American intelligence operative, unannounced and uninvited, to his home violated every rule in the book.
Bring him to the office, bring him to a restaurant, use a safe house—hell, set up the meeting at a fucking park bench, he didn’t care. Revealing where he lived, though, and not giving him time to prepare was unforgivable.
Nevertheless, he buzzed them in and, as the gates swung open, ordered them to leave the vehicle in the underground parking area.
Harvath wasn’t crazy about the idea. He had planned for S?lvi to remain with the Land Cruiser in the courtyard. Without the drone, they needed an extra set of eyes outside. He was also worried that if Simulik was guilty, having a member of the Norwegian Intelligence Service suddenly turn up was only going to spook him. There was no telling what he might do.
Harvath’s presence wasn’t that much better, but at least he was a known commodity to the VSD Director. And that had figured heavily into his plan.
He hadn’t wanted to wait until tomorrow to set up a meeting someplace else. All that would have done was give Simulik a chance to plot against him. He needed to take him by surprise and catch him off balance. To do that he needed a pretext for why it had to be tonight and had to be at the Director’s house. He needed to dangle something so valuable that the man would take the bait, agree to a meeting, and buzz them in. He decided to play one of the best and most authentic cards he had.
It told him a lot that after beating the information about Kaliningrad out of Luk?a, the Russians hadn’t gone to Landsbergis. They had gone to his boss. In Harvath’s mind, that could only mean one thing—the VSD Director was already compromised.
The Russians didn’t need to waste any time leaning on Landsbergis. They told Simulik to get them the information they wanted and he had done it.
According to Landsbergis, on what he now understood to be the day after Luk?a had been beaten, his boss had called him into his office at the State Security Department for a chat.
There were rumors that Lithuania had assisted in a foreign operation that had taken place in Kaliningrad. The President wanted a full briefing on it. If Landsbergis knew anything about it, said Simulik, now was the time to come clean. If he didn’t tell him everything he knew, the VSD Director wasn’t going to be able to protect him.
At the time, Landsbergis explained to Harvath, it had seemed odd that Simulik had focused in on him. Only with knowledge that the Russians had tortured Luk?a did things make sense.
Simulik had a pretty good understanding of what had taken place, which obviously had been provided to him by the Russians, and Landsbergis had come clean—giving him the rest. After that, his boss never mentioned it again.
What Landsbergis didn’t know was who the target of Harvath’s snatch-and-grab operation in Kaliningrad had been. That was the bait that had been dangled to get the VSD Director to open up his gates.
The Russians were desperate for any information about Oleg Tretyakov, their head of covert activities for Eastern Europe. Moscow wanted to know if he was still alive, where the Americans had been keeping him, and how much he had revealed.
When Landsbergis explained that not only was Harvath in the car, but that he also had information gleaned from the recent operation vital to Lithuanian national security, there was no way Simulik could resist the meeting.
Harvath had put his plan together on the fly, but it had worked. They were inside the compound. The rest, he hoped, would be even easier now.
According to Landsbergis, Simulik lived in the home alone—his wife having left him several years ago. There were no security guards and the VSD Director did not have an overnight personal protection detail.
Pulling into the garage, Harvath took note of the cameras. “If he has no on-site staff, who watches all of these?” he asked.