Page 89 of Spymaster

“Maybe,” Harvath replied, closing his eyes and trying to relax.

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They sat quietly on the tarmac for almost an hour before a chime rang through the cabin. It was followed by the engines winding up. Finally, the fog had partially lifted and the pilots were going to make a go of it.

Harvath watched Jasinski as she snuck a worried glance out her window and then tightened her seat belt.

Moments later the massive engines roared to life and the jet went screaming down the runway. Airport buildings were barely visible as they went racing past.

The plane lifted off the ground and soared up and into the foggy night sky. They had done it.

With altitude, the air began to clear. Banking out over the Baltic Sea, the pilots pointed the plane south and headed for Brussels.

Harvath closed his eyes, but as the stress of escaping Sweden began to recede, a new pressure replaced it.

Would they be in time to stop the next attack?

CHAPTER 52

SIRKECIRAILWAYSTATION, ISTANBUL, TURKEY

Turkey was at the political crossroads of West and East. It was not only a NATO member, but also had the second-largest army within the organization.

Positioned on Syria’s northernmost border, Turkey had been unhappy with the “solutions” America was pushing in the country. In particular, it didn’t like at all the idea of a thirty-thousand-member “border force” composed of Kurdish fighters, whom Ankara saw as terrorists.

For its part, America had been concerned about how Turkey was drifting ever closer to authoritarianism. An attempted coup two years earlier had given the current nationalist President an excuse to consolidate power and conduct a purge, jailing many of his opponents—including teachers and intellectuals. Anyone who had spoken out about him had been imprisoned.

He had been particularly ruthless in regard to the military, firing any officers he felt were too pro-West. Hundreds of military envoys to NATO were recalled. Many fled rather than be thrown in jail. Those who replaced them mirrored the President’s thinking when it came to a collective dislike of NATO.

It wouldn’t take much to collapse Turkey’s relationship with NATO, leading to its withdrawal. That was why Oleg Tretyakov had decided to launch his Istanbul attack next.

Inflaming the Turks would not only drive a deeper wedge between them and the West, but would also drive them deeper into the arms of Russia.

The Russian President had been involved in a major charm offensive with the Turkish President. By all accounts, it had been working.Spectacularly so.

Turkey had invested tens of millions of dollars in multiple Russian air-defense systems. The purchase sent shockwaves through NATO, as the Russian system was incompatible with their systems. What’s more, Turkey would have to import Russians to run the new systems and, worst of all, would likely be sharing highly classified information about the NATO air-defense systems with their Russian counterparts. It was a very, very bad development. Turkey was an anti-NATO tinderbox—all it needed was the correct spark.

The best part for Tretyakov’s plan was that Turkish nationals with deep anti-NATO sentiments were not difficult to find. In fact, there had been an abundance of them. The greatest challenge was to find competent cell members with the right skills. The bombs Tretyakov wanted were difficult to build. They were even more difficult to transport and conceal. Butdifficultdid not mean impossible.

His GRU team had successfully recruited a handful of highly qualified young Turkish men. With degrees in chemistry, physics, and electronics, they took to the technological aspects of the job quite easily.

Tretyakov’s biggest fear was that when it came time to plant the bombs, the young men would have a crisis of conscience, and would back out, unwilling to expose civilians to death and dismemberment. That was why the cell leader position had been such an integral component.

The man chosen was a Russian patriot of incomparable magnetism. He could have even the most hard-hearted cynic eating out of his hand and committed to his cause in an afternoon.

The young men had no clue that they were being manipulated by a foreign actor. They believed NATO was a blight on their country and that this attack would drive NATO out. By driving it out, the President of Turkey would then be unshackled. He would be free to create a perfect society for the Turkish people.

It was pure propaganda, of course, but it was a message that resonated with the young men. One which they wanted and needed to hear. It was much easier to blame Turkey’s problems on NATO rather than on the Turks themselves.

So, in a small house in an Istanbul slum, the materials for the bombs were collected and the bombs assembled.

The work was nerve-wracking, requiring painstaking attention to detail. The hours were long and the home was stifling. The men were forbidden to speak with friends or family members, especially toward the end, lest they give the plot away. In fact, they weren’t even aware of the final target until the last minute.

In order to protect the operation, the bombers had been required to conduct surveillance on multiple locations. There was a list of things the cell leader had instructed them to look for and to study.

When they returned from reconnaissance missions, he would quiz them for hours, testing how thorough they had been in their observations. Sometimes, he would even follow and surveil them himself—using his observations to further critique their performance. This had the added benefit of letting the men know that they were constantly being watched. Fear, in its many forms—even fear of failure—was a powerful motivator, and the Russians were experts in wielding it with surgical precision.

On the day the attack was to take place, the cell leader gathered the men together and finally revealed their target.

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