State Of The Union

“He’s still in surgery,” said Herman, “but it looks like the doctors are getting ready to close. I was going to wait until they had finished and wheeled him into recovery before calling you.”

“How long?” asked Harvath.

“From what the nurse said, about forty-five minutes to an hour, but that’s just for completion of surgery. He’s under general anesthesia. There’s no telling how long it will take until he comes around and when he’ll be able to communicate.”

“I’m on my way,” said Harvath, hanging up the phone. Turning to Morrell he said, “I need your car keys and DeWolfe.”

“What’s up?” asked Morrell, as he tossed Harvath the keys to his rental.

“I’ve got an idea of how we might be able to put some lipstick on this pig. If I’m right, maybe we can stop things from getting too ugly, too early.”

Chapter 30

As Harvath engaged the rental car’s onboard navigation system and selected his destination-the Virchow-Klinikum campus of Berlin’s Charité Hospital, located along the banks of Berlin’s Spandau Canal, DeWolfe toyed with Gary’s burst transmitter, trying to find a way into the encryption program.

“You talked about numeric codes,” said Harvath, speeding through an intersection to avoid a changing light. “In the SEALs we’d normally have a four-digit code with a backup in case the first one was ever compromised. For our system to work, we would take whatever the current code was and subtract that day’s date. That was it.”

“That’s essentially how this works. Your missions were probably like the ones we’ve been deployed on. We’d only need to do burst transmissions back to the command and control structure, not to other operatives in the field, so you didn’t need lots of additional codes.”

“Exactly.”

“That’s when it’s easy. As the commo guy, I got to set our encryption codes myself. I wanted something significant that I could always remember, so whenever I could, I liked to use important dates from the Revolutionary War. My favorite was 418.”

“April 18th?” asked Harvath.

“Yup. April 18th, 1775. We’d subtract the 418 from 1775 and then add the date of whatever day we were transmitting on. That was our code. As far as communications are concerned, April 18th, 1775 was one of the most historic.”

“April 19th was when the battles of Lexington and Concord happened,” said Harvath, quiet for several moments as he thought before responding. “Then the night before would have been when Paul Revere was charged with taking the message to Concord that the British were coming.”

“Very good” replied DeWolfe. “You know your stuff.”

“Yeah, I only wish I knew Gary’s stuff.”

“You seem to know him pretty well. Like I said, it is probably going to be something that was significant for him and easy for his operatives to remember. Do you have any idea what numbers would have been memorable or significant for Gary? They’d need to be numbers that his men could also relate to.”

Harvath racked his head for strings of numbers that would have meant something to Gary, but which also would have held relevance for his operatives. That meant, though, that anything personal to Gary, like his anniversaries or addresses, wouldn’t qualify and so Scot dismissed those right off the bat. The hard thing was that on top of not being a computer guy, Gary wasn’t much of a numbers guy either.In fact, thought Harvath,it would probably be a toss-up over which he hated more -computers or math.

When it came to logistical and organizational competence, Gary had both of those qualities in spades, but like it or not, the old man would have had to have used some sort of math to organize his burst transmissions. Harvath wondered if maybe he was over-thinking the problem before him.Keep it simple, stupid, he heard from somewhere in the back of his mind.

He spent the rest of the drive trying to free associate, but without very much luck.

When they arrived at the hospital, Herman was waiting for them at the nurses’ station. Harvath quickly introduced DeWolfe and then followed Herman down the hall to the recovery room, where Hollenbeck and Longo were standing guard outside.

“They just brought Gary in,” said Hollenbeck.

“How’s he doing?” asked Harvath. “Has he come around yet?”

“Dr. Trawick’s with him. It’s pretty serious,” replied Longo, stepping aside and holding the door open for Harvath. As Herman and DeWolfe tried to follow, Longo held up his arm. “Too many people inside already. I’m sure you guys can understand.”

Harvath looked back and gave his companions a polite nod that indicated he would be okay by himself.

“Sure,” replied Herman. “We understand. Scot, if you need anything, we’ll be in the waiting area.”

Scot smiled his thanks and pushed through a set of double doors where a nurse promptly blocked his path and pointed to a sink where he was required to scrub in.

His hands and forearms scrubbed, Harvath donned a sterile paper “bunny suit,” along with a hat, booties, and a mask, and then joined Skip Trawick next to Gary Lawlor’s bed.