Page 6 of Spymaster

Then one day, out of the blue, there’d been a dangerous lapse.

CHAPTER 5

Ryan had gone to Carlton’s home to sit and spend some time with him. If he felt up to talking, she was always prepared to take notes.

When she arrived, he was engaged in an animated discussion with one of his private, round-the-clock nurses. While it was wonderful to see him so talkative, he was regaling his caregiver with highly classified information about America’s relationship with the Saudis.Not good.

Pulling out her phone, she had called Harvath first. He was at the office and told her he’d get to the house as soon as he could. Next, she called her former boss at the CIA and suggested that the Office of the General Counsel get the nurses to sign national security nondisclosure agreements. It was a temporary fix, a stopgap, but it had to be done—immediately. There was no telling what he had already revealed.

Coming back into the den, Lydia offered to sit with Carlton so the nurse could work on preparing his lunch. The Old Man immediately began telling her how beautiful she was.

She was, indeed, a beautiful woman—tall, with long black hair, green eyes, full lips, and high cheekbones—the product of a Greek mother and an Irish father. He wasn’t paying her some passing, sweet compliment, though. His internal brakes were coming off. He was saying things people might think, but knew better than to give voice to.

The doctors had warned this might happen, but no one expected it so soon.

She tried to take advantage of the situation by pressing topics they needed information on; plumbing areas where his mind had gone dark too quickly.

By the time Harvath arrived, she had assembled several pages of notes. How reliable the information was, she couldn’t know. It would have to be checked out. Nevertheless, the visit had been somewhat productive.

“How’s he doing?” Harvath had asked.

“He’sdoing fine,” Carlton answered, speaking for himself. There were moments where he appeared to have decent self-awareness. Unfortunately, if you pressed him on details, he often couldn’t access them. In essence, his high degree of intelligence allowed him to bluff his way through a lot of conversations.

As if on cue, the nurse poked her head in to check on her patient. Harvath handed the lunch tray back, vegetables uneaten. Thanking her, he asked politely for some privacy. Walking her to the door, he closed it behind her and returned to Ryan, who explained everything that had taken place since she had arrived.

Harvath smiled at Carlton. “I don’t know what else to call this. You’re like a loose nuke. You’ve got all of these secrets that we have to make sure don’t fall into the wrong hands.”

The Old Man brushed it off with a dismissive wave. “Don’t be melodramatic. I’m fine.”

He wasn’t fine. He had become a security risk.

To his credit, Harvath hadn’t wasted time. He already had a contingency plan.

On a beautiful lake in New Hampshire was a small island with a cluster of old vacation homes—one of them built by Carlton’s grandfather—where he had spent summers as a boy. As his strongest memories were his earliest, Harvath thought it would be a comfortable, familiar place to put him.

He had arranged an open-ended lease from the current owners and with permission from the Department of Defense, assembled a contingent of Navy Corpsmen to see to the Old Man’s care and security. No one wanted a loose nuke to become a broken arrow. If the wrong people got their hands on Carlton, there was no telling what kind of intelligence they could extract from him. It was worth every penny and every ounce of effort to keep him safe and out of sight.

Under the cover of darkness, he was moved. Harvath went along to help keep him calm and had stayed for a couple of days just to make sure everything was running smoothly.

Carlton was delighted at being at the house he recognized from his youth. He didn’t like that the décor had been changed, but he blamed his grandmother, who never seemed to be happy unless she was redecorating.

He didn’t understand who the Corpsmen were or why they needed to be there. Harvath eventually gave up trying to explain.

It seemed to be enough for him. Though he couldn’t afford to, Harvath stayed for one additional night. They grilled steaks, smoked cigars, and drank more bourbon than was healthy for either of them.

Not knowing how long his upcoming assignment would keep him overseas, Harvath wanted to squeeze every good moment out of the visit that he could.

The next morning, when it came time to leave, he embraced his mentor and held him for longer than he ever had. The Old Man seemed to know something serious was going on—that one of them might not be seeing the other again—and he, in return, held the embrace.

When they released, Carlton placed his hands atop Harvath’s shoulders, looked him in the eyes, and said, “You’ve been a good son.”

Then, the Old Man turned and walked back into the cottage. Had one of the Corpsmen not been close by to witness it, Ryan would likely never have heard that part of the story. It wasn’t the kind of thing she could imagine Harvath sharing.

Having ducked college for a career as a freestyle skier, Harvath had barely been on speaking terms with his actual father. If not for his mother, they wouldn’t have communicated at all. The death of his father, a Navy SEAL instructor, brought Harvath’s world crashing down.

From what Ryan had gleaned from the people who knew Harvath best, something inside him at that moment had either clicked, or snapped.

Scot had lost his appetite for professional athletics. Quitting the U.S. Ski Team, he attended college and then followed in his father’s footsteps by joining the Navy and becoming an even more accomplished SEAL than his dad had been.

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