The First Commandment (28 page)

“It’s you,” said one of the men in perfect English.

As he spoke his gun drew back and Harvath focused beyond its barrel. It was almost like staring into the face of a young Abu Nidal, his eyes dark and full of hate. Harvath recognized Philippe Roussard instantly.

There was an awkward moment of silence on the killer’s part as he tried to figure out what was going on. Harvath could almost hear the gears of his twisted brain grinding against each other.

“Where is the dwarf?” Roussard finally demanded as the other man stripped Harvath of his weapons and stood back. “We know he’s not in the boat. It’s out there doing circles in the bay.”

“Fuck you,” said Harvath, his body seething with rage. The man he’d been hunting was standing right above him and there was nothing he could do. Harvath had never felt so helpless in his life.

“So you know who I am,” Roussard replied with a smile before he struck Harvath across the jaw with the butt of his weapon. “I will ask you again. Where is he?”

Harvath turned his face back up to him and replied, “And I will tell you again,
fuck
you.”

Once more, the enigmatic smile spread across Roussard’s face and with it came another butt stroke. “Your tolerance of pain is nowhere near as great as my desire
and
ability to administer it. Now, where
is
the Troll?”

Harvath’s head felt as if a million red-hot spikes were being pounded into it. “Umm,” he replied, his vision slightly dimmed. “Oh, I remember, fuck you!”

Roussard drew back his weapon for another go and then suddenly thought better of it. Placing the muzzle against Harvath’s forehead he whispered, “I’m only concerned with the Troll. Tell me where he is and I’ll let you live.”

“You’re in no position to negotiate anything.”

“Funny,” said Roussard. “I thought I was the one holding the gun.”

“For all the Marines you killed in Iraq,” replied Harvath, “as well as everything you have done to the people I love and care about, I am going to watch you die.”

The smile returned to Roussard’s face. “Revenge is indeed a noble motive. A pity that it won’t be possible for you.”

Roussard snugged the weapon up against his shoulder and prepared to fire. “You see, the only one of us who’s going to die here today is you.”

Harvath’s eyes darted left and then right looking for a rock, a branch, anything he could use against his captors. There was nothing. On top of that, neither of the two men was standing close enough so that he could sweep their legs out from under them. He had absolutely no options.

Harvath looked Roussard in the face and was about to speak when the killer’s finger tightened around his trigger and Harvath saw a blinding flash of light.

The white phosphorous flare lodged in the chest of Roussard’s accomplice and lit him up like a lighthouse beacon.

When Harvath’s vision returned, he saw the Troll waddling toward him, a spent flare gun dangling in his hand.

The accomplice was dead. His smoking body lay on the ground several feet away. Harvath looked around for Roussard, but couldn’t find him.

The moment he stood up, his legs threatened to give out beneath him. The blows to his head had been worse than he’d thought.

“Slowly, slowly,” cautioned the Troll as he ran up to Harvath to help steady him.

“Where’s Roussard?”

“He took off toward the helipad.”

“Why didn’t you stop him?” Harvath demanded as he reached for the dead man’s submachine gun and his two extra clips.

“
Stop him?
I did stop him…from
killing
you. You ungrateful arsehole.”

Harvath was on the footpath, running for the helipad, before the Troll even finished his sentence. The sounds of the spinning helicopter rotors were growing in intensity. It was already lifting off.

By the time Harvath got to the pad, the chopper had already cleared the trees and was heading out over the water. Harvath tore through the forest to the beach on the other side of the island.

When he got there, he raised the Goblin and opened fire. He saw at least two rounds connect near the tail rotor, but not seriously enough to bring the aircraft down or force it back for a landing. Harvath blew through his other two magazines even though he knew the helicopter was at the very far end of his range, if not already beyond it.

With the Troll’s house fully ablaze, help would be coming soon. They needed to be gone before anyone got there.

Harvath left the beach and threaded his way back through the forest. When he got back to the charred body of Roussard’s henchman, the Troll was gone, as were the rest of his weapons, including Harvath’s Beretta.

He heard a noise near the generator shack and quietly crept forward to investigate.

The Troll was on his hands and knees, the weapons stacked along with Harvath’s dry bag next to him.

“Did you get him?” asked the Troll without turning around.

“No,” replied Harvath as he pointed the empty automatic weapon at him.

“I only had one shot, you know,” continued the Troll. “I shot the man closest to me, and even then I was afraid I was going to miss.”

“I want you to move three steps to your right, away from those weapons.”

“These?” said the Troll as he gestured to the pile and stood up to face Harvath. “I collected them for you. Consider it a thank you for running the hose for the dogs.”

“Just step away.”

The Troll did as he was told.

As Harvath moved in to collect the items, the dwarf grinned and said, “You don’t trust me, do you?”

Harvath half-laughed as he checked to make sure a round was chambered in his Beretta and then placed the other items into his dry bag.

“It’s not my fault the man I shot wasn’t Roussard. All you tall people look alike from behind.”

“All the more reason I’ll be sure never to turn my back on you,” replied Harvath as he picked up the bag and slung it over his shoulder.

“Why did you lie to Roussard?” asked the Troll, changing the subject. “If you’d told him where I was, you might have saved your own life.”

“Roussard was going to kill me either way. I didn’t tell him where you were because I’ve got a thing about not helping bad people get ahead in life.”

“Touché.”

“By the way,” asked Harvath, “why’d you come back? You were supposed to tie off the boat’s steering wheel, send it out into the bay, and wait for me.”

“When I didn’t hear the helicopter take off, I figured you’d been successful in the first part of your plan, but I still had a few reservations about the rest of it.”

“I suppose I should be glad.”

“No,” answered the Troll, “just grateful. If only a little bit.”

Harvath didn’t know how he felt about owing his life to such a man, so to avoid thinking about it he took his turn at changing the subject. “What made you take the flare gun?”

The Troll looked at Harvath and replied, “In life, even the smallest advantage is better than no advantage at all.”

Instead of going north toward Rio, they headed south along the coast to Paraty, a small eighteenth-century Portuguese fishing village. Set against the forested slopes of the Serra do Mar, Paraty looked out over a bay of hundreds of uninhabited islands. It was similar to Angra dos Reis, but much lower key.

Residents and visitors alike were more discreet here, preferring to own or rent a refurbished fisherman’s cottage or one of the town’s diminutive terracotta-roofed villas. It was completely different from the jet-set style of Angra, and that suited Harvath just fine.

He swam back out to his boat and returned to the island to pick up the Troll as well as his two dogs, Argos and Draco. It was a colossal pain in the ass, but the Troll had refused to leave without them.

They beached the boat a mile outside town, and Harvath hiked back to secure transportation for them. There were plenty of cars to choose from-most of their owners having left them in one of two public parking areas specifically set aside for island dwellers who had no need of their vehicles until they drove back home to Rio.

Harvath chose the first one he saw, a white Toyota Sequoia SUV with tinted windows.

When they arrived in Paraty, it was still dark. They purchased more water for the dogs and some food for themselves at an all-night gas station and then parked along a quiet agricultural road to eat and rest. But first, Harvath had a question. “Why would Roussard want to kill you?”

“I’ve been wondering about that too,” said the Troll as he sank his spoon into a Styrofoam cup of thick bean and sausage stew known as
feijoada.
“For some reason, he’s been keeping tabs on me. He used me to find you and now that he knows I’m helping you try to stop him, he wants me dead. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

The man was right. It was the only explanation that made sense. The Troll was good at covering his trail, but he wasn’t exactly perfect. If he had been, Tom Morgan and his people at Sargasso never would have been able to track him down.

“My friends call me Nicholas,” said the Troll after a long silence.

Harvath was in no mood to cozy up with him and ignored the remark as he unwrapped his sandwich.

The Troll was undeterred. “It’s a nickname of sorts. I’ve always been fond of children, and Saint Nicholas is their patron saint.”

“As well as the patron saint of prostitutes, robbers, and thieves.”

The Troll smiled. “Strangely appropriate for a boy who grew up in a brothel, wouldn’t you say?”

This guy is a real chatterbox,
thought Harvath as he went to work on his food.

“How about you?” asked the Troll. “How is it you only spell Scot with one T?”

Harvath took a swig of his water. He knew he was going to have to say something. “My mother chose the spelling,” he said, setting the water down. “My middle name is Thomas and she didn’t like the way it looked to have three Ts all run together when my name was written out. So, she lopped off one of the Ts.”

“I am sorry for what Roussard did to her.”

“If it’s all the same to you,” replied Harvath. “I’d rather not discuss my personal life with you.”

The Troll put up his hands in defeat. “Of course. I understand. No one can blame you for feeling that way. The people you care about have been through an incredible amount.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” Harvath grunted.

“You don’t like me very much, do you, Mr. Harvath?”

Harvath slammed his water bottle down, spooking his passenger and raising the ire of the dogs in the back, who started growling.

Looking into the rearview mirror, Harvath ordered the dogs to be quiet and they immediately fell silent.

Turning back to the Troll, Harvath said, “One of my best friends was killed in New York because of you. Running off Roussard with that flare gun isn’t going to make us even.”

The Troll was quiet for several moments. The entire time, Harvath’s eyes drilled into him. Finally, he spoke. “I know there is nothing I can say or do to bring your friend back to you. If it’s any consolation, Al Qaeda still would have hit Manhattan, even without the intelligence I provided them.”

“ New York never would have been a target if it wasn’t for your intelligence,” snapped Harvath.

“That’s not true. The individual in your government who sold me that information was offering it to the highest bidder. I just happened to have the most readily available checkbook. If it hadn’t been me, some other broker would have purchased it, and the information would have still found its way to Al Qaeda.”

“And you think that makes what you did okay?”

“No,” said the Troll. “It doesn’t. I want you to know it’s not easy to live with.”

Harvath glared at him. “Thousands of Americans died in an attack worse than 9/11 and you find your role in that difficult to live with. Well, I’m glad to know you at least have a subtle pang of conscience.”

“And you expect me to believe that you’ve never done anything you are ashamed of?”

“Believe what you want,” replied Harvath. “My conscience is clear.”

“Every single time you pulled a trigger, you knew the person on the receiving end deserved to die? You did it for America. Mom and apple pie, so to speak. Right? Never questioned if what you were doing was the right thing. Never questioned if maybe your superiors had made a mistake. You were simply following orders.”

Harvath held the steering wheel in a death grip. “Let’s get something straight. The only reason you are sitting next to me and still breathing is that I think you still can be useful.”

They spent the rest of their time in silence. Harvath’s thoughts were occupied with stopping Roussard, while the Troll’s were occupied with the thought that his fate was now inexorably entwined with Harvath’s. Roussard wouldn’t stop stalking either of them until they were dead, or the terrorist himself had been killed. Like it or not, the Troll understood that he and Harvath now shared a very dangerous enemy. He also understood that Harvath represented his best chance of neutralizing Roussard, permanently.

The stakes at this point were well beyond getting his money and data back. His life, in more ways than one, was in Harvath’s hands.

When the shops and businesses finally opened the next morning, Harvath used his Brauner alias to rent a small, walled villa overlooking the ocean outside town. The less attention they drew to themselves, the better.

When Harvath returned from purchasing supplies, he found the Troll in the grassy courtyard playing fetch with the dogs.

As Harvath approached, one of the two dogs began growling. The other trotted over and dropped the stick he’d been playing with at Harvath’s feet. The animal then sat obediently down and waited to see what Harvath would do.

“I think Argos remembers you,” said the Troll as he came across the courtyard. Nodding at the box Harvath was carrying, he asked, “Do you need any help unloading?”

“Yeah,” he replied, tilting his head toward the road. “There’s a bunch of stuff still in the truck.”

As the Troll headed for the vehicle, Draco followed, but Argos remained right where he was.

Once they were out of sight, Harvath sighed, balanced the box in his left arm, and bent over to pick up the stick.