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F AIRFAX C OUNTY

H arvath’s concerns about where Nicholas would fall on the Willis estate issue were well-founded. Their discussion had not gone well.

His friend’s bad mood had likely been compounded by his lack of sleep. When Harvath connected with him, he could hear the baby crying in the background until Nicholas stepped into his home office and shut the door.

The weariness in the man’s voice told Harvath many things—chief among them that Scot had been a crappy godfather and an even crappier friend.

It was inexcusable that he hadn’t even thought to offer to come over with S?lvi to babysit.

Nicholas and Nina were drowning and he could have easily tossed them a lifeline—especially after returning home rested and recharged from a six-month honeymoon.

He apologized to his friend and let him know that no matter what Nicholas decided to do regarding the Willis issue, he was going to pitch in and lend him a hand.

It wasn’t a bribe. It was simply a matter of doing the right thing.

Harvath didn’t usually drop the ball, especially not when it came to those closest to him, but he had and he needed to fix it.

Simply hearing those words had caused a shift in Nicholas.

Harvath could see it in the man’s face via their encrypted video chat.

His friend had taken a true interest in not only his well-being, but also his family’s.

The cavalry was coming. Even if Scot and S?lvi couldn’t be there immediately, the offer of the lifeline had been extended.

It didn’t wipe out Nicholas’s reservations about the Willises having been Carlton Group clients, but it did make him a little more receptive to Harvath’s arguments.

Wanting to use that shift to his advantage, Harvath believed he could win Nicholas fully over to his side by slowing everything down.

He suggested they start with the personnel files McGee had already secured and see if Nicholas could uncover direct payments by Hale to the dead attackers from Ambassador Rogers’s house.

Nicholas agreed to see what he could find. He made no promises beyond that.

Nicholas also made clear that he was drawing a bright line around the Willis estate.

It was a line that Harvath was absolutely not allowed to cross.

Nicholas not only had asked if Harvath had understood him, but had also made him repeat it back.

Over the entire course of their friendship, Nicholas had never so firmly put Harvath on the spot like that.

After disconnecting the call, he returned to the kitchen to give McGee an update and to see if he had come up with any new developments.

“It’s going to take my source back at Langley a little bit of time,” he replied.

Harvath looked at his watch. A plan was forming in his mind and, regardless of what Nicholas ultimately decided, there were some very specific supplies he was going to need. There was a shop nearby where he could get them, but it would be closing soon. He invited McGee to join him.

USA Dive was a veteran-owned SCUBA shop about twenty minutes south of Harvath’s house. Calling ahead to make sure they had what he needed and wouldn’t close before he got there, he hunted down his own bag of dive gear, tossed it in the back of Haney’s Bronco, and they hit the road.

While Virginia was an extremely patriotic state year-round, all the additional red, white, and blue coming out in advance of this Fourth of July was especially noticeable.

It had always been Harvath’s favorite holiday. The story of the nation’s birth and, most importantly, its hard-won independence from Britain filled him with a deep sense of awe and pride.

He had especially been looking forward to this year’s celebration and to showing S?lvi what it truly meant to be American.

But with three attacks over as many days, with the Secret Service and the Central Intelligence Agency implicated, he was beginning to question what America stood for and how so much could have changed in such a short amount of time.

Even if there was some malign, foreign threat at work, how had it been able to find so many willing American conspirators?

By almost every single metric, America remained the envy of the world.

In a nation defined by its freedom, its prosperity and its abundance of opportunity, how do you find citizens willing to attack and kill their fellow countrymen and women?

None of it made any sense to him.

None of it made any sense to McGee either.

“We’re living in the greatest nation in history,” he said.

“I’ve heard it said that if you were a soul in heaven, and could choose any time and any place to be born—not knowing anything else about what your circumstances would be—you would choose right here, right now.

Our ancestors would marvel at how incredibly good we have it.

Yet people seem angrier and more pissed-off than ever before. ”

Holding up his phone, Harvath replied, “I blame this.

Keeping up with the Joneses used to mean keeping up with the people in your neighborhood.

The Joneses got a new car, you strove to get a new car.

They went on vacation to Florida, you shot for the same thing.

These were not only people you economically had things in common with, but they were living real, authentic lives.

You knew when Mr. and Mrs. Jones had a fight or that Mrs. Jones had a health scare.

“Today, people try to keep up with what they see on social media, but none of it is real. It’s all fake.

Thirty influencers rent a mansion or lease a Bentley together and shoot all their content on the one day of each month they get to pretend that stuff is theirs.

It’s crazy. And worse than that, it’s just unrealistic.

Yet people convince themselves their life sucks because they don’t enjoy the lifestyles they believe those influencers are living.

If I found a lamp with a genie and only got one wish, it would be for the internet to disappear.

It’s like a vampire—it just takes and takes and takes from you, never reciprocating.

Time is our most precious commodity, but we willingly sink it into that black hole.

The internet is where human potential goes to die. ”

McGee nodded. “I think one day, maybe not too long from now, we’re going to get definitive science that proves how bad it is, not just for kids, but for adults too. It’ll have to come with a health warning, the way cigarettes do.”

Harvath laughed. “I admire your optimism. The idea that internet and tech-related companies would ever allow that research to see the light of day is kind of funny. If they couldn’t bury the information, I’m sure they’d find a way to push enough money to the politicians to look the other way.”

“You don’t think, if the research was indisputable, that there wouldn’t be a massive cultural backlash?”

“I think we already have the information and nobody cares. The Boston Marathon Bombing is a perfect example. Studies show that people with prolonged exposure to media coverage of the event experienced more acute stress than people who were actually there. That’s crazy—and it was over a decade ago.

Today the average person spends over six hours a day on screens.

I think the internet in general, and phones in particular, have rewired people’s brains to such a degree that they’ve convinced themselves that they can’t live without them. ”

“Garbage in, garbage out,” said McGee.

“And there’s a lot of garbage on the internet,” Harvath agreed, bringing them back around to the original point. “Large portions of which is being used to turn Americans against each other and their country.”

Entering the historic town of Occoquan, Virginia, Harvath found a spot in front of the dive shop and pulled in.

While he went inside, McGee walked to a café up the street and ordered dinner for the two of them to go.

In addition to picking up a fresh tank, Harvath had the USA Dive team look over his gear and bench-test his regulator. It had been a while since he’d had any of it in the water. If something wasn’t working, or was nearing failure, now was the time to fix it.

By the time McGee returned with the food, Harvath was wrapping up. The bill for all the work the guys had done was ridiculously reasonable. Not only that, but they had insisted on doing everything by the book, which meant that they had stayed past closing for him.

That kind of pride and commitment to the customer was something Harvath truly valued. He tried to give them a tip, but the men politely refused.

Sitting atop the counter next to the register was a large watercooler-style jug.

Taped to the outside was a photo of a group of disabled veterans on a previous dive trip, and a call for donations to help pay for this year’s dive.

Reaching into his pocket, Harvath peeled three hundred bucks off his wedge of cash and dropped it into the jug.

He thanked the men and, with McGee’s help, carried everything out of the shop and loaded it into the back of the Bronco.

Nodding at the to-go bags as he backed out of the space, he asked McGee, “What’d you get us?”

“You wanted healthy,” the ex–CIA boss replied, “so I got you the Greek chicken. And, because today’s my cheat day, I got an extra-large cheesesteak.”

“You know cheat days pretty much don’t work and are no longer a thing, right?”

“Mind your own business,” the man said, smiling, “or I’m going to put a hole in your fucking wetsuit.”

The last thing Harvath needed was a beef with the likes of McGee and so he quietly let it drop. Besides, whatever the man was doing to stay in shape, it was working. He was as lean as the first day Harvath had met him.

“When did Nicholas say he’d be getting back to you?” he asked, pulling a fry from one of the bags and popping it into his mouth.

“He didn’t,” Harvath replied as he headed toward US-1. “What about your source at Langley?”

Sliding the phone from his pocket, McGee opened one of his many encrypted apps and checked his messages. “Looks like something came in,” he said, opening an email and reading it. “Not good. Three more attackers ID’d as ex–Ground Branch members. All with ties to Hale.”

The man was right. It wasn’t good. The fact that Americans had attacked a motorcade filled with U.S. allies was bad enough, but the fact that they were ex–U.S. military and ex–CIA employees was going to push this into crisis territory. It could be seen as an act of war.

Harvath had some decisions to make. His biggest concern, though, was that no matter which way he decided to go, he ran a very high likelihood of making things worse.