40
After typing out his report and making the multitude of clarifications his boss had asked for, Harvath was finally finished. It would have been done sooner, but Shaw kept interrupting him with more questions. Shaw said he was going to be present at the debriefing in the morning with Director Jameson and the treasury secretary and that he wanted to make sure Scot had all of his ducks in a row. After a final read-through of the report and Shaw’s okay, Harvath printed it out and signed it. He was exhausted.
Shaw excused himself and went back to his study to make a few more phone calls. When he reemerged almost twenty minutes later, he informed Harvath that Natalie and André had been collected from the Radisson and moved to the safe house. Everything was taken care of. Shaw said that he had high hopes for Harvath’s debriefing. There were some things that even Shaw couldn’t help him get out of, like assaulting the FBI agent, but given the new circumstances, a lot might be forgiven and Scot might actually walk away with his job intact.
Buoyed by his boss’s confidence, Scot allowed himself a moment of hope. Seeing that he was exhausted and knowing he had a big day in front of him, Shaw called Harvath a cab. While he had fought to stay awake at Shaw’s, Scot allowed himself to nod off on the ride home.
When the cab pulled up in front of Harvath’s Alexandria apartment building, the driver had to call to him several times before he woke up. Once he shook the fog from his head, Scot glanced at the meter and removed some cash from his wallet to pay the driver. He stumbled up the driveway, wondering why he was so groggy, and figured his head still wasn’t exactly back to normal. Passing up his mailbox once again, Harvath decided he needed to get as much sleep as he could before the big meeting in a few hours. He walked up the stairs and fumbled in his pocket for his keys.
Out of habit he glanced up to see if the brown hair was still in place in the upper corner of his doorframe. Immediately, his body tensed. It wasn’t there. He thought back to when he had left and wondered if he could have forgotten to do it. He had rushed out of the house for his meeting with Natalie. Had he or hadn’t he? It had become second nature to him, but then again, he had been doing a lot of things lately that weren’t exactly normal.
Well, either he could stand outside his front door for what was left of the night wondering, or he could go in. Which was it going to be? Harvath decided to go in.
He opened the door slowly and moved cautiously into the apartment, letting his eyes get adjusted to the dark. As his eyes began to focus, he noticed water on his kitchen floor. Then a sharp pain jolted the back of his head and everything went black as his body fell to the linoleum.
When Harvath awoke and slowly opened his eyes, things were blurry and out of focus. There were objects in his line of vision that were unfamiliar. He shut his eyes tightly and opened them again. As his vision cleared, the objects began to take form and make sense. He was lying on the kitchen floor looking at the bottom of his refrigerator.
His head felt as if it had been slammed in a car door. As he drew his right hand across the linoleum to help push himself up, he noticed he was surrounded by puddles of water. His ice trays were scattered not far from where he lay, as were a couple of once-frozen pizzas and a melted container of Ben amp; Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream. Looking up, he could see the freezer door was wide open.
With both hands and feet, Scot pushed himself into a sitting position and leaned against the cabinets underneath the sink. He reached up and touched the back of his head. There was a bump the size of a walnut, but there didn’t seem to be any blood, dried or otherwise.
Harvath would have killed at that moment for one of his SportGel cold packs for the back of his head, but looking up once again at the freezer, he knew they would all be melted. What was this all about? What was going on? Who had hit him, and what could someone have been looking for in his freezer?
Scot sat on the floor, his back supported by the cabinets, until he felt he could stand. Using the counter for support, he let a wave of dizziness and nausea pass before he attempted to walk into the entry hall. He checked the front door. It was closed, but not locked. He slid along the wall in the hallway, using it to help keep him upright, and almost fell as he drew up to the living room.
He couldn’t believe what he saw inside. It was an absolute shambles. The whole room had been tossed. Books, videotapes, couch cushions, everything had been scattered in someone’s manic search, but for what? None of this made any sense. He carefully searched the rest of the apartment until he was confident that whoever was responsible wasn’t hiding in one of his closets somewhere.
Scot knew he should call in immediately, but a wave of nausea began to sweep over him again and he decided to put off any calls until he had a long shower and was able to collect his thoughts.
In the bathroom he turned on the hot water and let it run. Before things got too foggy, Scot grabbed a small mirror from his travel kit and positioned himself with his back to the bathroom mirror. Angling the small mirror, he was able to get a good look at the damage to the back of his head. From what he could see, the skin had not been torn. It was pretty painful to the touch, but it would heal. He got into the shower, put his hands on the tile in front of him for support, and let the hot water pound against his body.
He didn’t know how long he had been in the shower, but it was long enough for the hot water to start running out. Alexandria’s older buildings had their charm, but they also had their drawbacks. Scot climbed out, shaved, and dried his hair. Crossing to his bedroom, he put on a light gray suit, white shirt, and blue tie. Hungry and knowing he shouldn’t disturb anything in the kitchen, Scot remembered he had a box of granola bars in a hall closet. As he passed the living room, he noticed the caller ID box was lying on the floor, blinking. It showed one new call.
When he depressed the Call List button on the display, a number came up that Scot immediately recognized as being one at the Secret Service main office. According to the time, it had come in while he was in the shower.
By following the phone cord, he found the base station for his cordless. He hit the intercom button and was able to track down the handset, which was buried beneath one of the wayward couch cushions. Scot dialed his voice mail. It was Director Jameson. “Agent Harvath, this is the director. I have absolutely no idea what is going on or how the media got ahold of this thing so fast, but you have a lot of explaining to do. I am sending a car for you, and you’d better be there.”
The media? I’ve got some explaining to do? What was the director talking about? Scot waded through the sea of upturned items in his living room and turned on his TV. It was tuned to a local channel, and the image of a female reporter standing in a wooded area with police, state trooper, and rescue vehicles in the background appeared on the screen.
The reporter was speaking, and Scot turned up the sound to hear what she was saying. “…by two joggers early this morning. Apparently the victims had both been shot in the back of the head with a large-caliber weapon. While police say they have no leads on the killer, the FBI’s mobile crime lab appeared on the scene moments ago, and we will keep you informed of any developments. Back to you in the studio.”
What is going on? Scot furiously switched channels until he found another live shot from the same scene. The reporter was saying, “Yes, Jean, it is indeed a tragic day for the White House, as if their problems weren’t already bad enough. To compound the feelings of loss President Rutledge’s staff must already be experiencing, they now must add to it the murder of the assistant to the White House social secretary, Natalie Sperando, whose body, along with that of a currently unidentified man, was found early this morning by joggers in rural Maryland. Both victims were shot once in the back of the head with what police are saying was a large-caliber weapon, most likely a handgun.