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president of the United States to meet with a man like Ozan Kalachka.”
    The ambassador couldn’t help laughing. “That would indeed be a historic meeting, but thankfully, President Rutledge is not the person Mr. Kalachka wishes to meet with. He has someone else in mind.”
    Anderson was trying to guess who in the U.S. government Kalachka might want a favor from and why he would need the Swiss ambassador and the president’s chief of staff to put it together for him. “As long as this person is not the president or a cabinet member, I’m willing to consider arranging a meeting. Who are we talking about?”
    The ambassador leaned forward and said, “Agent Scot Harvath.”

ELEVEN
    THE WHITE HOUSE
    NEXT MORNING
     
    What the hell do you mean, I’m fired?” said Harvath.
    “I mean, you’re fired,” replied Charles Anderson, “and I don’t care how upset you are; this is the White House, and I will not tolerate that kind of language in this building.”
    Harvath was never at a loss for words, but this time he honestly didn’t know what to say. He was absolutely stunned, and on top of that, he was completely exhausted. The debriefing had started the moment he touched down at Andrews Air Force Base, and the questions hadn’t stopped until a team of Secret Service agents came and whisked him away to the White House at nine o’clock this morning.
    Before leaving Andrews, he had been given a few minutes to clean up. For the first time in his life, as he looked in the mirror of the men’s latrine, Harvath not only felt older than his thirty-five years, but thought he was starting to look it too. His constant workload had caught up with him. His bright blue eyes were bloodshot and rimmed with fatigue, and while the hair on his head was still light brown, traces of gray were starting to sneak into the stubble that covered his chin.
    While in the SEALs, he had earned the code name Norseman, not for his rugged good looks, which were more Germanic than Norse, or because he fought like a fearsome Viking warrior, but rather because of the long string of Scandinavian flight attendants he had dated. As he splashed some cold water on his face and examined his haggard appearance, he wondered what he would look like in two or three more years if he kept going at this pace.
    The one thing that didn’t seem to belie his age was his body, a testament to how hard he worked to keep himself in top physical condition. At five foot ten, and a solid one hundred seventy-five pounds, Harvath was in better shape and carried more muscle mass now than he had at twenty-five. The only effect that aging seemed to have on his body was that the pain that came with the invariable bumps and bruises of his job seemed to linger a lot longer than it used to. While an unfortunate byproduct of the way he lived his life, pain was one of the few things he felt he could exercise some semblance of control over. He had been taught time and again in the SEALs that pain was largely psychological.
    What the mind can perceive, the body can achieve-and with that mantra playing on an endless loop in his mind, Harvath had forgone everything else in pursuit of his career, which now seemed to be coming to a screeching halt.
    “I’m going to ask a stupid question,” said Harvath. “Does the president know I’m being dropped?”
    Anderson reached into his drawer, removed a blue folder, and slid it across the desk to Harvath. “What he knows is that you’re resigning this morning.”
    “So now I’m resigning?” replied Harvath as he slid the resignation letter out and read it over.
    “You really screwed up in Baghdad,” continued the chief of staff. “The president didn’t like seeing you on TV.”
    “Neither did I, but there was nothing I could do about it. It was a set-up.”
    “I got that much from your debriefing report.”
    “So what’s the problem?”
    “The problem,” replied Anderson, “is that you’ve created a firestorm with that takedown.