Page 23 of Shadow of Doubt

She had a lot to untangle, but now wasn’t the time. Prebooking a room at the Thief under a false name and credit card had only been a just-in-case contingency and was only meant to provide a short-term sanctuary. They couldn’t stay here. Not for very long.

Walking into the bedroom, she slid the bench away from the foot of the bed, removed her blood-caked knife from its sheath, and sliced along the seam where she had expertly reglued it.

In the shallow cavity inside were several items she had prestaged, including a burner phone. Powering it up, she waited for a signal and then sent a text message to the only person right now she could trust.

Moments later, Scot Harvath texted back.

They had a shorthand that, even if someone was intercepting their communications, no one would be able to decipher.

He told her to sit tight. He was on his way.

Sølvi urged him to hurry. She was concerned that they hadn’t seen the worst of things yet. Not by a long shot.

CHAPTER 10

CIA HEADQUARTERS

LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

Andrew Conroy had been with the Central Intelligence Agency for almost forty years. During that time, he had gone through four wives, three peptic ulcers, two brushes with cancer, and one assassination attempt.

Over his career, he had helped the Agency navigate coups, wars, foreign interventions, and untold other global and regional crises.

For his dedication and hard-won experience, he had been promoted to Deputy Director of Operations.

As such, he was responsible for overseeing the collection of foreign intelligence, most specificallyhumanforeign intelligence, as well as covert action by CIA operatives around the world. It was a job he had not only excelled at but also had enjoyed. At least until recently.

His failed marriages notwithstanding, he liked to think that he performed better under pressure, but the relentless force being applied by the White House at the moment, as well as the intelligence committees in Congress, was withering. They all wanted answers. And rightfully so. He did too.

For three weeks, the powers that be had been pushing the CIA to turn over every rock, leaf, and blade of grass that they could find. It was critical that the Agency get to the bottom of what the Russians had transferred to Belarus. But so far, the entire Directorate of Operations had come up empty.

They had hit so many dry holes, in fact, that some were wonderingif it might be a wild goose chase—some sort of psychological operation cooked up by the Kremlin to spook Western powers into reevaluating their support of Ukraine.

But on the other hand, if the story was accurate, all bets would be off. It would mark an incredibly dangerous escalation—the first time since the Cold War that Moscow had moved nuclear weapons into a country outside Russia.

And not just any country. Belarus was a bellicose, regional backwater with a rightly deserved inferiority complex and enough bubbling paranoia coursing through its leadership’s corrupt bloodstream to make even the most fervent of conspiracy theorists blanch.

The Belarusians weren’t just unstable nutcases; they were now unstable nutcases who may have been handed nuclear weapons.

As to what type of nukes they could be in possession of, the consensus, based on best guesses, as well as recent public statements from Russian president Fedor Peshkov, was that they were tactical nuclear weapons—smaller, shorter-range devices that could be put to devastating effect on the battlefield.

While experts debated the degree of likelihood that the transfer had taken place, Conroy and his people had already moved on to the next question—if Belarus did have Russian nukes, where were they being kept?

The most obvious answer was at one of its old Soviet-era nuclear storage facilities. The USSR had built dozens of them across the country. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, all of the facilities had, presumably, fallen into disrepair. That meant that one, or more, must have been refurbished.

Though the CIA couldn’t have eyes everywhere at every moment of the day, if the Agency had missed such a refurbishment—at the very same time they were unable to confirm or deny the presence of Russian nuclear weapons on Belarusian soil—it spoke to a massive intelligence failure. It was the Iraq WMD debacle all over again. Langley would have failed to develop the proper well-placed, knowledgeable sources necessary for the U.S. government to make vital national security decisions.

It would be a black mark on the CIA’s record. More specifically, it wasa stain on the Directorate of Operations—especially with how deeply invested America was in the war next door in Ukraine.

There were other divisions, departments, and American intelligence community partners that had played a role in the current failure, but ultimately Conroy saw it as his responsibility and therefore his problem to fix.

As such, the Agency was playing a dangerous game of catch-up—shoveling mountains of currency, man-hours, and resources into Belarus, all in the hopes of quickly developing as many high-value human networks as possible.

Until they received evidence to the contrary, the CIA had no choice but to operate as if there were indeed Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. That raised the stakes for everyone, including the Russians, to a dangerously high level.

It was a level that the White House deemed absolutely unacceptable. American president Paul Porter had no intention of accidentally stumbling into war with Russia, nor did he intend to allow the Russians to purposely drag him into one.

In a face-to-face with the Director of Central Intelligence, President Porter had made his position crystal clear—he wanted the gloves to come off. The Agency was to do everything in its power not just to clip Russia’s wings, but to remove them.

---