Page 97 of Spymaster

Like the smell of fresh-baked cookies or bread, scent had a way of bypassing the conscious, rational part of the brain and going straight to where our memories were stored. Vella believed a similar mechanism could be used in interrogations. He had spent years studying, and testing, how scent could unlock certain pathways in the brain. In particular, he had been focused on how it could be used to break a subject, so that he was no longer able to resist and would reveal the truth.

Harvath looked at the bright halogen work lights that had the Russian lit up from the front and the sides.

“I have headphones on him,” said Vella, “so he can’t hear us right now.”

“What did you need to talk to me about?”

“He wants to make a deal.”

“What kind of deal?” asked Harvath.

“He’s willing to give up everything he knows.”

“And you believe him?”

“Come look at this,” replied Vella as he gestured toward his computer.

Harvath joined him and watched as he played back a short piece of video. Underneath it were a series of graphics, similar to a polygraph, but more sophisticated.

Pointing to several of the lines, the doctor said, “If there was even the slightest hint that he was being untruthful, it would show up here. He couldn’t be in this range if it was a ruse. He’s telling the truth. He wants to make a deal.”

“Maybe he’s just tired.”

“The more fatigued he gets, the more difficult it is for him to hide from me. That’s why I don’t let them sleep.”

“Maybe he’s just stringing us along in order to get pain meds. Have you given him any?”

“He’s definitely in pain,” said Vella, “but I haven’t given him anything for it. You’ve watched me do this before. You know how this all works.”

“I’m just making sure,” replied Harvath. “This is an option I wasn’t expecting.”

“This isn’t an option. It’s anopportunity. He’s ready to give you everything he has. I have been going at him for almost eight hours. Believe me, this is legitimate. It’s also why you brought me in; to speed things up.”

Harvath knew this kind of thing happened, but it wasn’t exactly his area of expertise. He had a lot more experience with turning Muslim terrorists against one another than he did negotiating with Russian intelligence officers to leave their service.

“Was he promised anything?” Harvath asked. “What did you tell him,exactly? And what did he tell you?”

“I started with the standard stuff. I told him he was a prisoner of the United States and was not going back to Russia, ever. His stress levels at this point were already pretty high and when he asked me where he would be taken, I told him Gitmo. That didn’t do anything to relax him, but when I told him he’d be placed in with the Muslim population, things really started to blast off.”

Harvath wasn’t surprised. Russia had made a lot of enemies in the Muslim world. Putting Kuznetsov in with hardened Al Qaeda operatives, who remembered all the bad things the Russians did in Afghanistan and elsewhere, would probably be worse than executing him.

“You’ll be surprised to know that he carries several grudges about the Russian military in general and the GRU specifically,” the doctor continued.

Right, big surprise. The Russian military was a pretty corrupt organization. What’s more, Russians were spectacular grudge-holders. Harvath liked to tell a joke about an angel appearing to three men—a Frenchman, an Italian, and a Russian. The angel tells them that tomorrow the world is going to end and asks what they each want to do with their last night on earth. The Frenchman says he will get a case of the best champagne and spend his last night with his mistress. The Italian says he will visit his mistress and then go home to eat a last meal with his wife and children. The Russian replies that he will go burn down his neighbor’s barn.

“Gotland was a huge failure,” said Vella. “He knows he will be blamed for it and that the GRU will take it out on his family, so that it serves as a lesson to other operatives. He wants asylum for himself and his family.”

“He wants to live in the United States?” Harvath asked.

Vella shook his head. “No. Italy. Florence, to be exact.”

“At least he’s not picky,” Harvath said with a grin.

“I didn’t push back on it. It represents something to him. I figured I would let you make the call. One would suppose that if he could help turn over evidence linked to the bombing in Rome, the Italians might cooperate.”

The Italians also had a thing about American intelligence operatives who snatched people and rendered them to foreign countries. He didn’t know if that was a road he wanted to go down, but for right now it didn’t matter.

The Swedes would also need to be massaged. Kuznetsov had killed a Swedish intelligence officer and had sliced open a cop. It would be hard to let a guy like that ride off into the Italian sunset.

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