Hidden Order: A Thriller by Brad Thor Read Free Book Online Page A

pieces together and make some international incident out of it. Had everything been contained to the ship, that would have been one thing, but going into Somalia and that village has created a whole different set of headaches.”
    “We had no choice. They’d killed the navigator and we had every reason to believe they’d do the same thing to the captain,” Harvath insisted.
    “Of course, but I want you to listen to me. You did the right thing. That captain would have been murdered had you left him there. We all know that. Nevertheless, the owners of the Sienna Star are nervous. They never okayed the shore raid and now they’re worried that this whole thing is going to blow up in their faces. They’ve boxed us into a corner by refusing to release any payment until this whole thing goes away.”
    He now understood why the Old Man was in such a bad mood. “I don’t know what to say.”
    “Don’t say anything.”
    “I feel responsible, though, about the payment being held up.”
    Carlton lifted his hand, his face tensing up again. “I gave the green light for you to launch. I will handle this. In the meantime, let’s focus on what’s in front of us.”
    Harvath nodded. “You asked if I’d seen a paper since I’ve been gone. I haven’t. What’s up?”
    The Old Man handed him his copy of the Wall Street Journal . It had been folded over to an article inside. “You can read it if you want, but there’s not a lot of detail. A week ago, the chairman of the Federal Reserve had a heart attack and died.”
    Harvath looked at the man’s picture. He had seen him on TV and in a few news articles over the last couple of years. “I’m sorry for his family.”
    “So am I, but that’s not why we’ve been asked to this meeting.”
    “What’s the reason, then?”
    “The President of the United States in this situation is given a very closely guarded, some even say secret list, and from that list he picks who the next Federal Reserve chairman will be. Last night, all of the people on that list disappeared.”
    Harvath was astounded. “All of them? Just gone? ”
    Carlton nodded. “The body of one, a woman named Claire Marcourt, was found this morning.”
    “Where? What happened to her?”
    The Old Man stopped walking. They were now parallel with the enormous white marble Federal Reserve Building, which took up an entire D.C. block. Pointing to a discreet side entrance, he said, “That’s what we’re here to discuss.”

CHAPTER 8

    CIA H EADQUARTERS
    L ANGLEY
    V IRGINIA
    P hil Durkin leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and pressed the heels of his hands against his temples as he tried to think. “For all we know, Nafi didn’t have a single thing in that folder. Or maybe he had his wife’s grocery list or the lease for his mistress’s apartment in Amman.”
    “He wasn’t bluffing, Phil,” Lydia Ryan said to her former supervisor. “If you’d been sitting across from him like I was, you would’ve seen he was dead serious.”
    “Think he might give you the information if you slept with him?”
    “Go fuck yourself, Phil,” Ryan responded in disgust. “Better yet, why don’t you go fuck Nafi Nasiri and see if he’ll pillow-talk the plot over to you .”
    “I’m not seriously suggesting you sleep with Nasiri to get the intel, Lydia.”
    “Oh, really? Because that’s exactly what it just sounded like to me. In fact I ought to take this up to the seventh floor right now and have them run your ass up a flagpole. You’re beyond sick.”
    Durkin laughed as he leaned forward and focused on Ryan. “You have no idea what sick is.”
    “I’m looking at you, so I’ve got a pretty good picture in my head.”
    “Yeah, I’m the first guy in all of history to have too much to drink at an office Christmas party and make a pass at a coworker. I’m the devil.”
    “First of all, we weren’t coworkers, you were my supervisor . And secondly, what you did wasn’t some booze-fueled pass,” she said,