by Brad Thor
Mansoor Aleem nodded.
“Good,” replied Harvath. “I also want you to understand this. We know everything. And I mean everything. We know who you are. We know why you are here. We know all of it. If you lie to me, even once, I am going to kill you. Do you understand that?”
Once again, Mansoor nodded.
Reaching forward, Harvath ripped off the man’s hood. As his eyes were adjusting, Harvath tore the piece of duct tape from his mouth.
“Tell me why you are here,” demanded Harvath.
“I’m cold,” he said, his teeth chattering.
“Answer my question and I may be able to find you a blanket.”
Mansoor tried to lick his lips, but he had trouble creating saliva. “I need something to drink. May I have some water?”
“You’re not going to get anything until you answer my questions,” said Harvath, raising his voice. “Why are you here?”
“I don’t know.”
Harvath withdrew his Taser, activated the laser, and pointed it at him.
The jihadist flinched and turned his head away, anticipating another painful jolt of electricity. “I don’t know,” he repeated.
“You’re lying to me, Mansoor,” said Harvath. IT people harbored a collective fear of anything that would impair their computer skills. It was almost 100 percent universal. Threatening their eyes, their hands, or the ability of their brains to function was very powerful. “Maybe instead of killing you, I should hit you with so many jolts of electricity that we take that forty-gig brain of yours down to two kilobytes. How about that?”
“They sent me a ticket. That’s all I know,” he pleaded.
“Who sent it to you?”
“Friends of my uncle.”
“Your uncle Aazim?” demanded Harvath.
Mansoor nodded and dropped his gaze to the floor.
“And why would they do that?”
When the young man didn’t respond, Harvath put the laser dot on the floor where he knew Mansoor could see it and then traced it up his leg to the yellow stain on his underwear. “Why?”
“Because he had been killed,” Mansoor responded as he raised his eyes to lock them on Harvath. “They brought me here to protect me.”
Harvath turned off the laser and tucked the Taser back into his coat pocket. “They didn’t bring you here to protect you, Mansoor. They brought you here to kill you. Just like they killed your uncle.”
The young man didn’t know how to respond. He was shocked. He looked away. A full minute passed. Finally, he said, “I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t care what you believe. I’m telling you the truth.” Harvath wasn’t telling the truth, but that made little difference. If he could convince Mansoor the Uppsala cell had brought him here to execute him, he might be willing to cooperate.
“You think about that for a little bit,” said Harvath as he began to replace the hood over the man’s head.
“What are you doing?” the jihadist implored, his teeth still chattering, his lips azure.
Harvath didn’t reply. Once the hood was in place, he walked over to the doors, unlocked them, and let himself out.
CHAPTER 10
HERMOSA BEACH
CALIFORNIA
“What do you think you’re doing?” Luke Ralston asked as he watched Larry Salomon reach for the cordless telephone on the kitchen counter.
“Leaving a message for my office,” replied the film producer.
Ralston shook his head. “No calls. No emails. Nothing,” he said sternly as he poured a mug of coffee and motioned for his friend to sit down.
They had driven south of L.A. to the quiet coastal community of Hermosa Beach. Ralston had steered clear of the freeways and major arteries in an effort to avoid traffic cameras. He had also disassembled his cell phone so no cellular print could be made of his progress or direction. He didn’t need to worry about Salomon’s phone, as it had been left behind at the house in Coldwater Canyon.
Ralston knew he needed to get them someplace safe. It had to be somewhere they could lie low and figure out what their next move was going to be. Going to Ralston’s apartment was out of the question. Sooner or later it would be crawling with police. The same went for any of the properties Salomon owned in Palm Springs or up near Santa Barbara. For all intents and purposes, they needed to completely drop off the grid. And for that to happen, they were going to need some help.
At just after three in the morning, they pulled into the driveway of a modest stucco house with a Spanish tile roof, two blocks back from the ocean. It belonged to an old friend of Ralston’s named Hank McBride.
Hank was a former Navy SEAL in his late sixties who dabbled in a wide field of endeavors, including technical consulting in Hollywood, though he had yet to work on any of Salomon’s movies. Despite their age difference, Ralston and Hank McBride had developed a good friendship and shared many of the same friends within the small, tightly knit Special Operations community.
“How long before we see it on the news?” said Hank, who had the TV near the kitchen table turned on, but muted.
Ralston had just come back inside after having parked Salomon’s Wagoneer in the garage and covered it with a tarp. “If I had to guess the window on this, I’d say probably not for a few more hours,” he replied. The graze on the side of his head had been easily covered with a Band-Aid, but it was a serious reminder of how close he had come to being killed.
Salomon sat down and accepted the mug of coffee. “If I don’t get the studio’s publicist working on this, it’s going to be a nightmare. Just let me make one call so she can get ahead of it.”
Once again, Ralston shook his head. “This already is a nightmare, Larry. A grade-A shitstorm.”
“I know. I could be tainted by this forever. Look at what happened to Phil Spector. And there’d been only one body in his house. I’ve got—” Salomon’s voice trailed off as he did the math. “Six bodies, if you count what’s left of the one outside who you apparently parked on.”
Hank let out a low whistle. “Six? That’s pretty good.”
“Only four of them were bad guys,” clarified Ralston. “The other two worked with Larry. Speaking of which—”
Salomon suddenly realized something. “The hard drives. Damn it. We forgot to get them out of the house.”
“What hard drives?”
“From the computers in the office.”
Ralston needed him to slow down. “Let’s take things one step at a time. First, I want to know about the two men who were killed. Jeremy and—?”
“Chip,” said Salomon.
“Who were they?”
“They were working on a film project with me.”
“You said it was a documentary?” asked Ralston.
The movie producer nodded, but didn’t elaborate.
“Why was everything set up in your office at home? Why weren’t you working at the studio?”
“Because this was a private project.”
Ralston’s antennae went up. “Private?”
“Yeah,” said the producer, somewhat absentmindedly, as he stared into his coffee cup. “Personal.”
“Larry, we’re pretty good friends, wouldn’t you say?”
Salomon nodded.
“So why don’t you come clean and tell me what you’ve been up to. Let’s start with who Jeremy and Chip are.”
The producer took a sip of coffee and set the mug back on the table. He was still very upset. “They were friends of mine. Chip is a blogger and political activist and Jeremy is, or I guess I should be using the past tense, Jeremy was a film student who had teamed up with Chip to make a short film.”
“A short film about what?”
“Endowments.”
Ralston wasn’t sure he had heard that correctly. “As in financial endowments? Like at universities?”
Salomon nodded.
“Not exactly the type of summer blockbuster you’re known for, but everyone in Hollywood has their pet projects
, I guess. What I don’t understand is why you were working on this out of your house?”
Hank McBride looked away from the TV and over his shoulder at Salomon. “Short film isn’t code for porn, is it?”
Ralston held up his hand at the man.
“I’m just saying,” replied Hank as he went back to monitoring the television. “Something doesn’t sound right. You don’t get a visit from a wet work team for making documentaries.”
“And you probably don’t get it for making porn, either,” argued Ralston.
“You do if the Russians are involved somehow,” countered Hank.
He had a point. Turning his attention back to Salomon, he said, “Let’s back all the way up. Is there any reason someone would want to kill you?”
The producer shrugged.
“That’s not a no, Larry.”
“The film we’ve been making might not be too popular,” Salomon responded.
“Do you think it’s something worth killing over?”
“Maybe.”
Ralston was taken aback. “Then we really do need to start from the beginning. What’s the film called?”
Salomon mumbled his response and Ralston had to ask him to repeat it. “Well Endowed,” he said.
“I was right,” said Hank without turning away from the TV. “Making skin flicks.”
“Do you mind?” asked Ralston.
Hank shrugged and went back to clicking through the muted channels, searching for any stories about what had happened at the producer’s home.
Refocusing on Salomon, Ralston said, “Was this project your idea, or did somebody bring it to you?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Well, it doesn’t look like you’re going to be going anywhere for a while,” said Hank as he stopped on a channel that was streaming helicopter footage from above a hilly, wooded area. “Your house is in Coldwater Canyon, right?”
“Yes,” said Salomon.
“Then I’d say the window for when your story would make the news just got slammed shut.”
CHAPTER 11
Realizing he wasn’t going to be going back to bed, Hank McBride disengaged from the TV and offered to cook breakfast while his two guests, or the two “fugitives,” as he had referred to them until Ralston told him to drop it, continued their conversation at the table.
“It’s all very complicated and convoluted,” said Salomon as he held his mug out for Ralston to top off. “It’s like a shell game the way foundation money gets moved around. In fact, Shell Game had been Jeremy and Chip’s working title for the project. I thought Well Endowed was a little more provocative and would help the film get more attention.”
“Sell the sizzle,” said Ralston, reflecting on an old advertising adage he had often heard Salomon use, “not the steak.”
“Precisely. Documentaries are a tough sell anyway, but a documentary about endowments? Forget it. The only way we were going to get people interested was to sex it up.”
Ralston had his reservations about whether a pithy double entendre would make much of a difference, but with the film business, you never knew. “So how did Jeremy and Chip get on your radar screen? Was it at a film festival or was one of them a waiter at one of your favorite dinner spots?”
A fatigued yet knowing look crept across Salomon’s face. Hollywood was packed with wannabe actors, wannabe screenwriters, and wannabe directors. Anyone with even a semblance of power who could help get a movie made was under constant assault by those looking to break into the business. Producers, in particular, had pitchman horror stories, including being wooed while in the dentist’s chair, as well as the mother of all famous stories, involving a producer being pitched at a rather sensitive moment in her gynecologist’s office.
“What difference does it make?”
He was being cagey again and Ralston pressed him on it. “Why do you keep holding out on me?”
The producer looked up from his coffee. “I’m not holding out on you.”
“You’re not answering my questions and I’m beginning to think maybe Hank was right. Maybe you were making porn. Maybe you ran up a huge drug debt with the Russians too and they came to collect.”
“I’m not making porn,” insisted Salomon, “and you know me. I have never touched drugs in my life.”
Ralston did know his friend and he didn’t believe for a second that Salomon was making porn or into drugs, but he didn’t like having his questions parried. “Larry, I’m going to chalk a lot of your current condition up to—”
“My current condition?” interrupted the producer. “What are you talking about?”
Ralston held his hand up for him to stop. “What happened tonight would put anyone into shock. Add to it that this would have been Rachael’s birthday.”
“It is Rachael’s birthday.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s the anniversary of Rachael’s birth. She’s gone, Larry.”
Salomon went off like a flare. “You think I want you to spell it out like that? You think I give a good goddamn about how you see it? She wasn’t your daughter, Luke. Don’t you ever forget that.”
The outburst was so intense it froze Hank in mid-scramble over his eggs at the stove.
Ralston motioned for the old SEAL to bring the bottle of Bushmills from next to the fridge.
As Hank placed it on the table and retreated to the stove, Ralston pulled the cork from the bottle and poured a generous amount into each of the coffee cups. He was feeling the effects of everything that had happened as well. A little anesthetic would be good for them.
Salomon took a deep drink of his Irish coffee and said nothing. Ralston respected the silence, just as he had hours earlier in the producer’s driveway. Even Hank maintained a respectful distance in the kitchen.
“I’m sorry,” the producer eventually said.
Ralston reached out and put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “There’s no need to apologize.”
“Jeremy and Chip were good people; good filmmakers. I think Rachael would have liked them. And they her.”
“She was a wonderful girl, Larry. You have every right to be proud of her.”
The producer smiled, taken away for a moment by a thought from a happier time in his life. As his attention returned, his expression became more serious. “I met Jeremy and Chip at a social function.”
“If you don’t mind my asking,” said Hank as he brought over three plates of food and set them down on the table, “how’d you lose your daughter?”
“Let’s not go there,” Ralston replied, trying to protect Salomon.
“That’s okay.” Looking up at Hank, the producer said, “My daughter was murdered during a trip to Israel three years ago.”
Hank sat his considerable frame down onto a chair. “I’m sorry to hear that. I hope they caught the fuckers and strung them up.”
Salomon shook his head. “Unfortunately, they didn’t catch them. That’s the hardest part for me. How can anyone move on, knowing that person, or persons, is still out there and probably still committing unspeakable acts? How do you even begin to let that wound heal?”
Ralston knew that talking about Rachael would only end up sinking Salomon deeper into depression, so he decided to change the subject. “So you met Jeremy and Chip at some social event, right?”
The filmmaker nodded and scooped up a forkful of eggs. “That’s right. I didn’t know much about Chip before that. It turns out that he was a real agent provocateur via his blog sites. He’d broken a handful of scandals before the mainstream media even realized what was happening.”
“And Jeremy?”
“Jeremy was Chip’s protégé. The two of them were looking to broaden their platform beyond the blogs. They saw a potential niche for certain types of documentary films they thought could really do well. Between them, they must have had a hundred different ideas, many of which were very topical and actually quite interesting. To get started, though, they had to narrow it down to just one.
“S
ome whistleblower had approached Chip with a story for one of his blogs a while back. She worked for the Ford Foundation and had uncovered some unusual activity that she felt should be brought to light.”
“What kind of unusual activity?” asked Ralston.
“Financial; who the money was being funneled to, how it was being funneled, that kind of thing. But before he could go to press with the story, the woman disappeared. Chip received a note, allegedly from her, saying that she had made it all up.”
“Why would she do that?”
Salomon shook his head. “Nobody knew. They figured somebody had gotten to her.”
“So what happened?”
“Chip and Jeremy kept after the story. The more they looked into it, the more they uncovered. They started thinking it was too big for the blogs. That’s where the idea for the documentary came in. They pieced together a short rough cut, and were screening it for different people who they thought might be interested in helping to get it made. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.”
“Yet you didn’t want any of your Hollywood pals to know you were working on it. That’s why you were doing it out of your house?” mused Ralston.
The producer nodded and took a bite of his bacon before replying. “With technology these days, especially for a documentary that doesn’t require any special effects, we didn’t need to be at the studio; we could do it all from home.”
“You said you were worried the production was going to ruffle a few feathers. I can see ticking off some foundations by exposing what they might have been up to, but I can’t picture them getting together and putting out a hit on you,” said Ralston. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“Not until you understand how much money is involved and what’s at stake,” Salomon replied. “One hundred years ago, there were only eighteen American tax-exempt private foundations. Today, there are more than sixteen thousand.