Near Dark (Scot Harvath #19)(93)

Normally when he closed his eyes, he saw Lara. That happened this time too, but then his mind switched to Marco and what the little boy had been through. Not only had his father died just before he was born, but he had also lost his mom and had been caught up in some sort of failed, violent attempted kidnapping, accompanied by plenty of gunfire.

Harvath couldn’t even to begin to imagine what all the long-term impacts would be. How do you even begin to have a “normal” childhood, much less grow into a healthy, fully functioning adult with that kind of stuff in your past?

What worried Harvath even more was what was to come. Lara’s parents were wonderful people, but they were much older. What would happen if one or, God forbid, both of them passed before Marco was old enough to be on his own? How much pain could a child take? Just thinking about it threatened to shatter his heart into a thousand more pieces.

He needed to put his thoughts about Marco and Lara in that iron box, weld it shut again, and shove it as far back into his mental attic as it would go. The pain only served to drain his energy and exhaust him further.

An unhealthy part of him suggested a nightcap would be worth getting up for and would quiet his mind. He knew, though, that it wouldn’t end well. He shoved that thought down too.

Looking for anything else he could lose himself in, he allowed his mind to drift. It landed on the woman next door.

As he thought about S?lvi, their lunch on the boat, and how her smile had dazzled him, everything else slipped away and he slowly began to unwind.

Not long after, he drifted off, sleep having locked him firmly in its grasp.

It was dark and dreamless, like tumbling off a cliff into a bottomless, midnight pit. He slept hard and deep.

At some point, the brain needed to power down—if only for a little while. Shock, trauma, and constant threats created an environment where the central nervous system—without periods of rest—could begin to deteriorate. Sleep was the key to remaining sharp. And his ability to remain sharp—to function at his absolute optimal limit—was what gave him his edge.

Unlike in the Jeep, this time he was able to get several hours of shut-eye. But when he awoke, he thought he had overslept. It sounded like S?lvi was knocking on his door.

After a few moments, he realized that the sound he was hearing wasn’t someone knocking at his door, but rather his cell phone vibrating atop the wooden coffee table next to him.

Reaching over, he picked it up and squinted at the caller ID. It was Nicholas. He couldn’t imagine what time it was back in the States.

Activating the call, he said, “You must have something.”

“I absolutely do,” the little man replied.

“What is it?”

“I think I know who the assassin is.”

Harvath sat up on the couch. “Talk to me.”

“In order to catch Carl’s killer, I thought maybe we should set loose the most terrifying organization the United States has ever created.”

“Which is?” he replied, eyeing the coffee machine.

“The Internal Revenue Service.”

He smiled. They certainly were disliked by a lot of people in the United States. That said, Harvath would have guessed that Nicholas would have taken a shot like that at his old nemesis, the National Security Agency.

Nevertheless, maybe the IRS did make sense. After all, the most relevant data in the Contessa’s file had to do with financial transactions.

“So, lay it out for me. What’s the connection?”

“Remember OAKSTAR?” Nicholas asked.

“The NSA’s internet surveillance program that Snowden revealed?”

“Precisely. While everyone was freaking out about their Facebook posts, emails, and private messages being gobbled up by the government, there was a whole other vein the U.S. government was mining. Uncle Sam was tracking all senders and receivers of bitcoin—around the world.

“According to the documents Snowden released, it went deeper than just the records contained in the blockchain—the ledger where users are designated via ‘anonymous’ identifiers. The NSA had actually collected passwords, years’ worth of internet activity, IP addresses, and unique device identification numbers also referred to as MAC addresses. In short, if you ever even googled the word bitcoin, chances were the NSA had targeted your computer and had sucked up all the data they could pull from it.”

Harvath had dealt with the NSA on multiple occasions. They had always been super people to work with. That said, there were more than a few high-level executives there who gave him pause.

“Snowden’s revelation,” Nicholas continued, “spooked a lot of users and sent them scrambling for added layers of encryption and protection. That’s where the IRS comes in.

“They had been working on something, a software program capable of tracking financial transactions that was light-years ahead of OAKSTAR. They just needed a partner with enough computing muscle and a network with an all-powerful, global reach.”

“Enter the NSA.”

“You got it,” the little man replied. “It’s a brilliant joint venture. Together, they can outthink, outsmart, and outreach even the best criminals.”

“Which is how you got our assassin?”

“Sending you his picture now,” said Nicholas, transmitting the photo. “Meet Paul Vincent Aubertin.”