Near Dark (Scot Harvath #19)(77)

“And you never received any such tasking?” Landsbergis demanded.

“No,” the Russian replied. “We didn’t even know Pedersen was dead. Our job was to unravel how the operation took place and report back anything we learned. When the truck driver was identified, we were sent to interrogate him. And, if we discovered he was involved, we had orders to hurt him so that he couldn’t work. But we were never told to kill him.”

Harvath didn’t want to say it, but the man’s argument made sense. If Carl’s involvement had merited killing, then certainly Landsbergis’s did, and so too did Luk?a’s. It would have settled the score and sent a strong message—Cross Moscow at your peril. If you do, you’ll pay the ultimate price. But that was looking less and less like what was going on here.

While Harvath appeared to be the reason Carl had been killed, perhaps it was possible that Moscow wasn’t behind it. If it wasn’t Moscow, though, who was it?

“I don’t buy any of this,” said Harvath. “Shoot him again.”

“No!” Kovalyov shouted, sticking up for his boss. “There may be another reason.”

Harvath waited for him to elaborate. When he didn’t, he nodded at S?lvi. As she pointed her pistol at the bearded man’s crotch, the Russian exclaimed, “Montecalvo!”

“What is ‘Montecalvo’? she demanded, applying pressure to her trigger.

“She’s a person,” Kovalyov clarified. “A broker of information.”

“What does she have to do with Carl’s murder?”

“I gave her Pedersen’s name.”

“You did what?” Guryev grunted.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“What did you do?” the Russian GRU boss demanded.

“I sold a small piece of information.”

“About one of our operations?”

“Only after the report had been filed,” the bearded man said in an attempt to justify his actions. “Why should our superiors be the only ones getting rich off of our work?”

“Alexander, you have betrayed us.”

“I have only done what is done every single day in Moscow. They use the information from our intelligence operations to steal intellectual property and to take advantage of the stock market. Why should we not do the same? Especially when we are the ones out in the field taking all of the risks?”

Guryev was in too much pain to even shake his head. All he could do to show his disappointment was to close his eyes for a moment.

When he opened them, he said, “Tell them how to find Montecalvo. If you don’t, they’re going to kill us.”





CHAPTER 36


BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

From the moment he was wheels down at Logan International, the Ghost did what he did best—he began to build a human network.

His cab driver, as most cab drivers tended to be, was a font of information. He not only knew a lot about the neighborhood the Ghost would be staying in, but he also had a friend whose sister-in-law owned a local business.

The business, it turned out, was a small grocery store, two blocks away from the three-flat owned by Harvath’s deceased wife. Across the street was a playground.

The store was the nerve-center of the neighborhood and the collection point for every piece of gossip, rumor, and innuendo for ten blocks in any direction.

The Ghost had the cab driver stop and introduce him. He did some quick shopping, endearing himself to the owner, and then headed to his Airbnb nearby.

Over the course of the next two days, he popped in and out of the little store. He billed himself as a New York City photographer and videographer who was compiling a living history of the neighborhoods of Boston. The goal of his “project” was to capture the soul of each neighborhood—the day-to-day things that made them tick, as well as their eccentric and unusual characters.

The shopkeeper thought it was a wonderful idea. The store had been in her family for three generations. She had grown up in the neighborhood and knew everyone. And so, his human network had begun to grow.

Meanwhile, Johnson and Preisler had begun to build out the tactical side of the operation. Based on their experience, and the limited amount of time they had spent with Lara’s parents, the most likely place for an attack was either at the house or somewhere between the house and the playground. Thankfully, Marco wasn’t in school at the moment, so that took some of the logistical headaches out of the equation. Nevertheless, they still were going to have their hands full. Harvath had been right to send them to Boston.

And if it hadn’t been for Harvath, Lara’s parents never would have cooperated with such a plan. Left to their own devices, they would have retreated to the familiar.

They would have gathered up Marco and hopped a plane to Brazil. There, in Providência—the notorious Rio de Janeiro favela where they themselves grew up—they would have hoped to hide and ride out the storm.

But with a possible one-hundred-million-dollar bounty on Harvath’s head and Marco as an irresistible piece of bait, there would have been no place they’d ever be truly safe. This was the best way to handle it. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and keep Marco’s life as “normal” as possible.

Unlike many of their friends, they didn’t blame Scot for Lara’s death. Both their homicide detective daughter and their intelligence operative son-in-law had difficult, dangerous jobs. More importantly, they knew that Scot had loved Lara. They also knew that he still loved Marco. He would never intentionally do anything to compromise them.