The First Commandment (32 page)

It was a perfect evening. The temperature was in the low seventies, all of the stars were out, and a light breeze was blowing in off the lake.

Meg Cassidy’s friend and next-door neighbor, Jean Stevens, had opened all her doors and windows. This wasn’t the kind of night you wasted by sealing yourself up in your cottage and running the air-conditioner.

They had been blessed with an amazing Indian summer. There was no telling how much longer it would last and Jean Stevens intended to squeeze every last ounce of enjoyment out of the season before she returned to the Chicago suburbs and another interminable Chicago winter.

Refilling her glass with sailboat-shaped ice cubes, she poured herself another vodka and tonic. As she turned to walk back out onto her porch, she got the scare of her life.

Before she could scream, the figure standing in front of her placed his hand over her mouth.

Cautioning her not to make a sound, the man turned out the lights and led her to one of the chairs at her breakfast table.

“What the hell are you doing?” she asked as Harvath removed his hand from her mouth and let her sit down. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”

“Surprise,” answered Harvath as he pulled out a chair for himself and sat down.

“
Surprise
is right. What are you doing here? Meg told me you never RSVPed for the wedding. She had no idea if you were coming or not. It’s rather poor form not to respond, you know, especially when Meg was big enough to invite you. Just because you two didn’t work out is no reason not to be courteous. Wait a second,” she said as she paused. “Where are my manners? Come here and give me a hug.”

Harvath stood and gave her a hug. Jean hadn’t changed a bit. Meg had always referred to her as Auntie Mame meets Lily Pulitzer. She was a warm and endearing character. It was obvious why she and Meg had become such close friends. To know Jean Stevens was to love her.

“So are you here to convince Meg to drop that jackass she’s marrying and run away with you?”

“Todd’s not that bad, Jean,” replied Harvath.

“The hell he isn’t,” said Stevens as she got up to fix Harvath a drink. “He’s manipulative, controlling, overbearing-”

“And he’s also the man she picked to spend the rest of her life with,” stated Harvath as he held up his hand and waved Jean back from the bar.

“Then you’re not here to convince her to marry you instead,” she replied flatly as she retook her seat.

“I’m afraid not.”

“That’s too bad; you two were good together.”

“I need you to do me a favor, please,” said Harvath, changing the subject.

“You just name it, honey,” replied Jean. Her bangled wrist jangled as she patted him on his knee.

Harvath removed an envelope from his pocket. “I need you to give this to her.”

Jean Stevens arched her left eyebrow. “I’m sensing the possibility of some eleventh-hour fireworks here,” she said with a smile. Reaching for the cordless phone behind her, she added, “Why don’t I just call her? I’m sure she’s tearing her hair out with all the last-minute details, but I think she could find a minute or two to come over and say hello. Seeing you, maybe she’d come to her senses.”

Harvath put his hand on top of hers and lowered the phone to the table. “This is complicated.”

“Most things in life are, honey. Listen, I’ll make daiquiris and you two can talk. I don’t even have to be here. I can take a walk if you’d like. It would probably be better if you two were alone anyway.”

Harvath couldn’t help but smile. He’d never met anyone who’d meant well more than Jean. “By complicated, I mean professionally, Jean. Not personally. I shouldn’t be here.”

“If you’re worried about Todd-”

This time Harvath laughed. “No, I’m not worried about Todd, believe me.”

“Cloak and dagger stuff, huh?” she replied with a conspiratorial wink.

“Kind of. Listen, no one can know I’m here. Meg doesn’t know yet and this has to be kept very quiet. Can I trust you?”

“Honey, nobody keeps a secret like me. My lips are sealed,” she said, accepting the envelope. “Consider it done. Now, how about something to eat?”

“I’m sorry,” replied Harvath as he stood. “I can’t stay.”

“Well, as long as we’re both single, how about being my date for the rehearsal dinner tomorrow night? It should be pretty swanky. We’re getting picked up on the dock at five-thirty for a little cocktail cruise and then it’s off to the club for dinner.”

“I have to say no to that too,” replied Harvath, shaking his head.

Jean stared at him. “Honey, can I ask you a question?”

Harvath had already pressed his luck by coming within thirty yards of Meg’s place and the Secret Service detail assigned to watch her. “Okay,” he conceded, “one question.”

“Are you happy? I mean
honestly
happy.”

The question was quintessential, get-right-down-to-it Jean Stevens, but it still took him by surprise. “What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean? It’s a simple question. Are you happy?”

“I guess it would depend on how you define happy,” said Harvath, anxious to get moving and also maybe a bit uncomfortable with how the woman he was standing in front of had always had such an uncanny ability to read people.

“Being happy boils down to three things. Something to do. Someone to love. And something to look forward to.”

She said nothing more. As her words hung in the air, she studied him. He and Meg
had
been good together. Harvath was a great guy and reminded Jean a lot of her husband, strong, good-looking, and exceedingly kind to the people he cared about. It was a damn shame that things hadn’t worked out between him and Meg.

Harvath stood there for several moments, the uncomfortable silence growing between them. Finally, he bent over and kissed her on the cheek. “Thank you for getting my note to Meg,” he said, and then he was gone.

Philippe Roussard stood on the end of his private pier and looked out across the darkened lake. Closing his eyes, he felt the breeze as it moved around him. From somewhere off in the distance, he heard a chorus of sailboat halyards clanking against aluminum masts as the craft bobbed up and down at their moorings.

Roussard had spoken with his handler again, and again the conversation had ended badly. They had argued about the botched attack on the bar in Virginia Beach. His handler blamed him for its failure, because he was the one who had changed the plan at the very last minute. The RV was overkill, as was the amount of diesel fuel and fertilizer. Roussard should have stuck with the pickup truck with a lesser amount contained within its enclosed bed. Had he proceeded as instructed, everything would have been successful.

The pair was also still at odds over how the last plague attack would be carried out, as well as how Scot Harvath should be killed afterward.

Roussard was tired of arguing. He was in the field and he would make the decisions as he saw fit. He had a means to get out of the country once his work was done and he also had enough money at this point to finish the job. The incessant bickering was counterproductive.

The simple truth was that they were strangers to each other. Too much time had passed, and blood alone was not enough to bridge the gap between them.

Roussard opened his eyes and lit another cigarette. He knew he was going to do exactly what he wanted. The last attack would be dramatic. It would be chilling in its audacity and a fitting finale to all that had preceded it.

He took a long drag and thought about where he would go when it was all over. In his day-to-day existence in Iraq and then during his absolutely hopeless incarceration at Guantanamo, he had never thought much beyond the next hour, much less the next day, week, month, or even year, but that was beginning to change inside him. He could see a value in preparing for the future, in setting goals for oneself.

He had tasted real field work and he liked it. He did not fear capture, although he was smart enough to realize that his days in America were numbered. He needed to be leaving soon, but not before his crowning achievement.

Raising the night vision binoculars to his eyes, he took one final look at his target and then walked up the dock and retired to his rented cottage. It was time to get some sleep. Tomorrow would be a very busy day.

Though asking Gary Lawlor to arrange for a special security detail for Meg had been the right thing to do, it only made Harvath’s job harder.

He needed to talk to Meg face-to-face, and meeting her in broad daylight was out of the question. She’d have too hard a time shaking the detail.

Losing them at night, after they already thought she’d turned in, was something Meg could pull off.

Harvath sat in the back of Gordy’s Boathouse, one of Fontana’s most popular waterfront bars, and looked at his watch for a fifth time. He tried to compute how long it should have taken for Jean Stevens to get his note to Meg and then for Meg to get out of her house and walk the old Indian footpath along the lakeshore to Gordy’s.

The bar was crowded with the young, the wealthy, and the good-looking who made Lake Geneva their summer playground. A DJ spun records while bright strobes of colored light knifed across the dance floor.

As Harvath watched, he remembered the good times he and Meg had had here. He was still watching the crowds of people dancing when he felt a hand, a man’s hand, fall upon his shoulder.

He’d been looking for Meg, and while he’d noticed the man’s approach in his peripheral vision, he hadn’t paid him much attention. To be honest, he wasn’t that remarkable. It wasn’t until Meg’s fiancé, Todd Kirkland, actually touched him that Harvath realized who he was.

“We need to talk,” said Kirkland.

“About what?” asked Harvath, though he knew why the man was there.

Meg’s fiancé held up the note Harvath had given to Jean Stevens and said, “This.”

They moved away from the dance floor to the front of the bar where they found a freshly vacated table and sat down.

“You want to tell me what this is all about?” asked Kirkland, waving the note in Harvath’s face.

Harvath ignored him as a waitress approached. Picking up the table’s empty wineglasses and handing them to her, he asked the waitress to please bring them two beers.

The minute she walked away, Kirkland was back at it. “Who the hell do you think you are? You think you can just…”

As much as Harvath had tried to take the high road with Jean Stevens, she’d been right. Kirkland was a jackass. He was arrogant and rude, which no doubt stemmed from a deep sense of insecurity. Harvath didn’t know what the guy had to be insecure about.

He made a shitload of money as a commodities trader and his looks weren’t all that bad, especially after he supposedly had gotten his nose, eyes, ears, and chin done by one of the best plastic surgeons in Chicago.

Despite his faults, Meg had found something in him that she loved. If he was indeed manipulative, controlling, and overbearing, that was Meg’s problem. Nobody was forcing her to marry him.

Nobody had forced Harvath to sabotage his relationship with her either, and as he sat across the table from the man she was going to marry in less than forty-eight hours, he couldn’t help but wonder what it was she saw in him.

“You’re going to explain this letter to me right now,” asserted Kirkland, drawing Harvath’s mind back to the matter at hand. “What the hell are you trying to do?”

“Nobody’s trying to do anything, Todd,” said Harvath calmly.

“My ass you’re not,” he responded. “You’re in cahoots with that crazy bitch who lives next door, aren’t you? She’s always asking Meg questions about you, especially when I’m around and-”

“Todd, Jean Stevens and I aren’t in cahoots together in anything.”

“Really? Then how’d she end up with this letter for Meg? Keep in mind that it’s kind of hard to deny you sent it when you were sitting exactly where the letter said you’d be.”

“I’m not denying anything. I needed to talk to Meg,” replied Harvath.

“And you couldn’t do it over the phone?”

The waitress had returned and Harvath waited for her to set their beers down before answering Kirkland. “No. I need to speak to Meg in person.”

“About what? The fact that you still have feelings for her? If that’s the case, I can tell you with absolute certainty that she is one hundred and ten percent over you, pal.”

Harvath hated when people called him pal, especially ignorant assholes who not only were most certainly not his pal, but also didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about. “I’m assuming Meg doesn’t know about my note?” said Harvath, trying to keep the conversation on an even keel.

“No, and she’s not going to, as far as I’m concerned.”

Harvath hated the high road. He took a long sip of beer and tried to maintain his composure. Finally, he said, “I have reason to believe that Meg is in danger.”

“Which is why you had the Secret Service assigned to protect her, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but-”

“
Yes,
my ass,” spat Kirkland. “You just did it to flex your muscle, and I’m pretty goddamn sick of it. Every time I turn around I’ve gotta be reminded of you. It stops right here, right now.”

Harvath had to tell himself to ease up on the grip he had around his beer glass before he broke it. “Don’t turn this into a pissing match with me, Todd. This is a serious threat.”

“So why aren’t you talking to the Secret Service about it, then?”

The man did have a point, and Harvath hated to concede it to him. “Because we don’t yet know the exact nature of the threat.”

“
We?
Who’s we? DHS? FBI? CIA?”

When Harvath didn’t answer, Kirkland responded, “See, I didn’t think so. This all about you.
You
and Meg-at least in your mind. But I’ve got news for you. There is no you and Meg, not anymore. It’s over. So stay the fuck away from us,” he added as he rose and pushed his chair in.

Harvath pushed the chair back out with his foot for Kirkland to sit back down. “Don’t be such an ass. I’m here because a credible threat exists. This guy is serious and he’s going to be gunning for your wedding.”

Meg’s fiancé wasn’t interested in sitting. “Something tells me that with the president attending our wedding, if there was a real
credible
threat you’d be working with the Secret Service to stop it, not trying to meet up with my wife in the middle of the night at some bar.”

Kirkland fished a twenty-dollar bill out of his wallet and threw it on the table. “And just for the record, the only reason Meg sent you an invitation to our wedding was that she wanted to show you she had moved on with her life. Maybe you should think about doing the same.”