Page 16 of Edge of Honor

“I haven’t forgotten,” she replied. “How could I?”

Harvath knew he was going to strike a nerve, and now that he had, he regretted it.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“You’re not wrong about what happened.”

“All I care about is you. Which is why I’m trying to understand this. What does the PM not trusting the Secret Service have to do with you?”

“She wants me on her detail to protect herfromthe Secret Service.”

Harvath’s eyes widened. “She thinks the Secret Service is going to try to harm her?”

Sølvi shook her head. “No, not intentionally.”

“Then what are we talking about?”

“After the assassination attempts, your government launched a sweeping investigation; top to bottom. They found a lot of things that were wrong in the organization. Inadequate training, too much time on, not enough time off. It was a pretty damning report. A report, which my government read in earnest, looking for any takeaways that could make our agents better at their jobs.”

“As they should.”

“One of the key findings was that the Secret Service needed a significant boost in its budget in order to revamp training and hire new agents.The problem, however, is that none of that money has been appropriated, much less released.”

“So in other words,” said Harvath, “nothing has changed.”

With a solemn expression, she nodded. “That’s the PM’s fear. She wants me on her detail not as another gun, but as another set of eyes. She wants to make sure there are no mistakes.”

“She can’t add another person from Oslo to do that?”

“I asked Ambassador Hansen the same question.”

“And?”

“The PM thinks that my involvement in countering the attack last night will give me some celebrity status with the Secret Service. They may decide to assign better, more experienced agents to the Norwegian delegation.”

“Norway is one of our most important allies. They’re going to put exceptional agents on the PM’s detail.”

“The Prime Minister also believes that with me on board, the Secret Service will work twice as hard. And if anything is amiss, will get it fixed immediately.”

“That explains why the PM wants you,” he said, not fully buying the argument. “What was her offer? The one you couldn’t refuse.”

Opening her water bottle, Sølvi took a deep drink before responding.

“A long time ago, when I was in a very dark place, I made a promise to someone. That promise created a debt. Prime Minister Stang has now come to collect.”

CHAPTER 9

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Starting at the British Embassy, all the way to Thirty-Fifth Street, Massachusetts Avenue had been completely closed off to through traffic.

After Carolan and Fields flashed their FBI credentials, a D.C. Metro cop pulled back a police barricade and allowed them to proceed.

Two blocks before the crime scene, a staging area had been established. Parking their car, they got out and headed for the cluster of blue tents and FBI Evidence Response Team vans.

Until this morning, Carolan hadn’t planned on visiting the scene. It had nothing to do with him. That had all changed when Assistant Director Gallo had called him at home and had instructed him to get down to headquarters as soon as possible.

They met in Gallo’s secure conference room, where the assistant director played an eleven-minute video of Russian intelligence officer Josef Vissarionvich being debriefed. It was in this debrief that the man had dropped his bombshell. Within the last twelve months, Russia had launched a new covert spy unit, the Department of Special Tasks, or SSD for short.

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