Page 107 of Edge of Honor

“Do you believe him?” the ex–CIA director asked.

“I’ve never known the process not to be solid.”

“Except for the only other time you’ve administered it solo and you gave someone a heart attack.”

“Yeah,” Harvath admitted. “Except for that.”

“First somebody somewhere inside the Secret Service and now Andy Conroy? The fucking deputy director of operations at CIA? This has got all the hallmarks of a straight-up coup. They’re just not using the military to carry it out.”

“Seeing as how Conroy is the one who froze my money and tried to blackmail me into spying against Sølvi, you’ll forgive me for believing he’s capable of anything.”

“That was dirty pool,” McGee replied. “I told you, had I known, I never would have allowed it. But you need to understand, Conroy has been at Langley forever. We’re talking something like forty years. This doesn’t make any sense.”

“Nothing that’s happened this week has made any sense.”

“So what do we do now?”

Harvath looked at him. “With Hale?”

“With everything.”

He thought about it for a minute. “If Conroy is dirty, if he really is the one pulling Hale’s strings, we’d have to be able to prove that. What we got out of Hale, that’s not going to be admissible anywhere. And then we’d have to figure out who we can trust with the proof. Which brings us back to where we started—we don’t know how high this thing goes, nor how widespread.”

“What if there was someone I trusted at the Bureau?”

“Who?”

“An agent named Alan Gallo,” said McGee. “He’s an assistant director and head of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division. We’ve done a lot of counter-Russia stuff together over the years. If I had to trust anyone there, it’d be him.”

“So we’d go to Gallo and tell him what? You got someone at Langley to send you classified personnel files and we kidnapped some ex-employee and I used enhanced interrogation methods on him to elicit further evidence? What’s to stop your FBI buddy from putting us in cuffs and throwing us in a cell?”

“If he’s corrupt? Nothing at all. In fact, jail would probably be the least of our worries. But if he’s still the man I knew, he might be the only one who can help us.”

“How do we figure out if he is?” Harvath asked.

“We’d have to meet with Gallo. Feel him out.”

“And then what?”

“If we’re convinced he’s clean and he wants to take this, we let him take it. If we have any reservations, we keep going without him.”

It was a possibility, but it had one snag. “We can’t leave Hale here alone,” Harvath said. “Somebody needs to keep an eye on him.”

“What about Haney? If he and Rogers get an Uber, they can be here in an hour and a half. That gives us plenty of time to figure out what we want to share with Gallo and what we should keep in reserve.”

Harvath looked at his watch. “All doable. And, like it or not, we’re going to have to tell him what Hale revealed about the next attack.”

McGee nodded. “That just leaves us with where to set up the meeting. Ideally, it’d be someplace where we could have a secure conversation. No eavesdropping. No recordings.”

“Which cancels out FBI headquarters. In fact, considering all the intel we’ve amassed, I think Gallo should come to us.”

“Here?” the ex–CIA director remarked. “To your house?”

Harvath shook his head. “Fort Belvoir is just down the road. The Army Intelligence and Security Command has a SCIF. No phones. No recording devices. Just the three of us having a very private and very frank discussion.”

“I like it. And Gallo definitely has enough pull to make that happen.”

“Why don’t you take a break and see if you can get it all set up. I’ll stay down here with Hale.”