Brad Thor Collectors' Edition #3

by Brad Thor

  “Thank you,” replied Harvath.

  “How about some more bandwidth?” said the Troll as he tapped the laptop lying on the bed next to him.

  “Patience, Nicholas. The brothers are doing the best they can with what they were able to salvage from the farmhouse.”

  The little man threw his hands in the air as the priest left the room. They were covered in bandages and wrapped with gauze. “We’re in the middle of fucking nowhere and I’m all but cut off. Before the fire, I had a halfway decent uplink. Now I’m lucky to have any signal at all. Secretly, I think they prefer me cut off. I think they’re worried that if I connect back with the outside world something else might happen to me.”

  “So what did happen to you?”

  “A woman tried to kill me.”

  “You do have an unusual proficiency for pissing people off.”

  Nicholas’s face was like stone. “She was not just some woman, she was a professional. She knew exactly what she was doing.”

  “She couldn’t have been that professional. You’re still alive.”

  “Call it a higher power, but at the very last minute I sensed something and moved as she swung at my throat. But the real credit goes to the dogs. If they hadn’t broken through the door, I’d be dead. They’re the ones who stopped her and dragged me outside, away from the fire.”

  Harvath examined the wounds a bit closer. “What did she use? A knife?”

  “Straight razor.”

  “Why would you let anyone near you with a straight razor?”

  “I thought I could trust her. I was wrong.”

  “So who was she?” asked Harvath as he pulled the thermos from his pack and offered Nicholas a cup of coffee.

  “She was a courtesan,” he said, declining the coffee.

  “You mean a prostitute.”

  “We’re splitting hairs here. Call it what you want. She was a very expensive woman for hire, an escort.”

  “How did you find her?”

  “Through an agency.”

  “What’s the name of this agency?” asked Harvath as he took a sip of coffee.

  “I don’t know what it says on their bank statements, but to its clients it’s known as the Academy.”

  “And how does it work?”

  “They have an online password-protected catalog. When you see something you’re interested in, you send them a query. The director speaks with the courtesan in question and if she agrees, you set up a Skype visit as a sort of get-to-know-you session, then the price is set and the details are worked out.”

  “And you’re convinced she was a professional, not just some whack job?”

  The Troll shook his head. “No, she was definitely a professional.”

  “What does this have to do with the bus bombing in Rome?”

  “You’ve been shown the evidence of my supposed involvement?”

  “I have,” said Harvath. “What can you tell me about it?”

  “Someone obviously wanted to frame me. They chartered a private jet to Sicily and sent a little person with two dogs and a suitcase into a hangar. Ten minutes later, he comes out and the plane takes off. The pilots never see the meeting, but plenty of grist has been thrown into the rumor mill and a scenario starts to emerge. Add to that some Muslim men who make contact with the Cosa Nostra looking to buy explosives and why wouldn’t the authorities believe what they’re being told? The only thing is, I’m not in the arms business. I didn’t sell any explosives to some Muslim terror cell. That’s cheap and beneath me.”

  It was the same thing Harvath had told the Old Man. “So the idea was to frame you and then kill you to make the frame job stick?”

  “Dead or alive, as long as they could convincingly pin it on me, I assume that it meant nobody would be looking for them.”

  Harvath raised his eyebrows. “And who are they?”

  “I don’t know. What I do know is that whoever this person is, they began building their attempt to frame me for the bus bombing before it even happened. That means they had advance knowledge of it.”

  “I agree,” said Harvath. “Did you buy or purchase any information leading up to the bombing that could be connected?”

  “As far as I can tell, no. There was nothing I was involved with that indicated this attack was coming. I don’t like when children are targeted. I never would have gone along with something like this.

  “I might have taken money from animals who wanted to target children, but I would have found a way to either sell them incomplete intelligence, or leak their plans to the authorities so that I didn’t get implicated but the attack would have been stopped.”

  Harvath was good at telling when he was being lied to. Right now, he wasn’t. “So you believe the woman who tried to kill you was placed at the Academy as bait?”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  “Who knows that you’re a client?”

  Nicholas thought for a moment. “It’s not something I advertise. There’s the women themselves and the director. Other than that, nobody.”

  Harvath knew the list had to be longer than that. He was also certain Nicholas knew it as well. In the sex trade, everything was for sale, even the identity of valued customers. It all came down to how much someone was willing to pay.

  “Whoever placed the woman there knew enough to build a profile that I would find irresistible. I should have known better.”

  “You should have, but right now that’s not my problem. When Padre Peio called me, he said you believed there would be more attacks. I want to know when and where.”

  The Troll began to shrug but abandoned the gesture due to the pain. “I’m only picking up bits and pieces. There has been chatter. The handful of sources I have communicated with are talking about attacks in multiple European cities against Americans.”

  “Like the one in Rome or something different?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “C’mon, Nicholas,” said Harvath. “If we’re going to stop these attacks, I have to know more.”

  “Nothing would make me happier than to give you more information, but everything has gone quiet. You know what that means.”

  Harvath did know what that meant. Terror networks often went dark before a big attack.

  “Our best hope for stopping these people is for you to uncover who placed my attacker at the Academy.”

  He was right.

  “The director’s name is Dominique Fournier. She’s based in Provence. Nothing happens at the Academy without her knowledge. She’s an absolute bitch, and I promise that she will not willingly cooperate with you.”

  “We’ll see,” said Harvath. “What kind of security does she have?”

  “Better than most. I’ve already discussed my plan with Peio.”

  “He isn’t a priest, is he?”

  Nicholas smiled. “Father Peio is definitely a priest, but it’s what he did before his calling that makes him so interesting.”

  “I’m going to assume he didn’t run a petting zoo.”

  “No,” said Nicholas with a laugh. “He didn’t run a petting zoo.”

  “He was an ETA operative, wasn’t he? What happened? He got tired of planting bombs and found religion?”

  “You’ve got Peio completely wrong. He wasn’t a terrorist. He was actually an intelligence agent.”

  “Peio was a spook?”

  Nicholas nodded. “With the Centro Nacional de Inteligencia.”

  Harvath was familiar with Spain’s official intelligence agency, also known as the CNI. “How did he end up making that kind of career change?”

  “You can ask him on the way.”

  “On the way where?”

  “France. He’s offered to make sure you get across the border. I just hope you can get to Fournier in time.”

  CHAPTER 15

  CHICAGO

  FRIDAY

  When John Vaughan met Paul Davidson at a health food restaurant under the “L” tracks in Chicago’s River North neighborhood, he though
t he had the wrong guy. Davidson was a barrel-chested man in his late forties who looked more like a narcotics officer or a Hell’s Angel than a cop from Public Vehicles. He had long hair pulled back in a ponytail, a goatee, and even an earring.

  Vaughan, who had dropped off his daughter at school and bypassed the Starbucks in order to get to this meeting on time, hadn’t been expecting this.

  “We’ve only got one type of coffee,” said the waitress after he had joined Davidson at the table. “But I’ve got tons of teas. I can bring over the box if you want to choose.”

  “No thanks,” said Vaughan. “Just coffee, please.”

  “Anything to eat?”

  “Their turkey sausage is off the hook,” replied Davidson.

  Vaughan shook his head. He hated health food.

  Davidson rattled off an order that sounded like it was straight from a craft services table for some Hollywood movie. Vegan this and tofu that. It was disgusting.

  “Why do you eat that stuff?” asked Vaughan.

  “Because I’m too stubborn to go on Lipitor.”

  “I’d rather take a bullet.”

  “No you wouldn’t. Trust me. It’s not fun.”

  “You’ve been shot?” asked Vaughan.

  “I didn’t move to the Public Vehicles Division for the action.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “Four years ago. I was a patrol officer. My partner and I were doing a traffic stop. Some thug pulled a gun, and my partner and I both got capped. I took it through the shoulder and my partner got a round in the leg. I shot the offender in the head and killed him.”

  “So you decided to hang it up being a patrol officer?”

  “No. My wife decided. No mas patrol.”

  “How did you wind up at Public Vehicles?” asked Vaughan.

  “Due to my heroism and valor, blah, blah, blah, the department let me have my pick. There was a slot at Public Vehicles and the rest is home-by-six-every-night history.”

  Vaughan was amazed by how the man downplayed what had happened. “Is your partner still a patrol officer?”

  Davidson laughed. “He is and he’s been shot two more times since then. I’m glad I got away from him. The guy’s a bullet magnet.”

  Vaughan laughed. “Listen, I’m sorry again for bothering you on vacation.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll let you pay for breakfast and we’ll call it even.”

  “I was going to offer to pay anyway.”

  “In that case, I’ll think of something else.”

  Wiseass, thought Vaughan. “You’ve already got something for me?”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “I only called you the day before yesterday.”

  “I can hold on to it for a day or two if it’d make you appreciate it more.”

  “No. What have you got?”

  Davidson pulled a blue notebook from his jacket pocket and set it on the table. “Are you familiar with how the cab system works in Chicago? I don’t want to bore you with a bunch of stuff you already know.”

  “I know the basics. You’ve got the actual cab owner who purchases a license to operate from the city office of Consumer Services. It’s also called a medallion. You can’t legally operate a cab without one. Usually, the medallions are worth more than the cabs themselves.”

  “Correct.”

  “Each cab is required to have a meter. The meter is turned on when a fare gets in. The meter has set rates, et cetera.”

  “Exactly. Drivers then lease the cab for a short period of time from the owner. The most common lease is for a week for about six hundred bucks. Owners, whether it’s a small-time guy with a handful of cabs or a big conglomerate like Yellow, also do weekend leases for about two hundred bucks if they’ve got extra vehicles sitting around not making them any money. That’s the surface material. When it starts to get interesting is when you get beneath that.

  “Like gas stations and mini-marts, cabs are a popular entry job for immigrants. In Chicago, the taxi subculture is composed of three predominant cartels: the Middle Easterners, the Pakistanis, and the East Africans.”

  “What about the Russians?” asked Vaughan.

  “The Russians and Eastern Europeans own a lot of cabs, but I’m talking about drivers. The Eastern Europeans are more into the limo business.”

  “You know all of this from being in Public Vehicles?”

  “I know it because I have initiative. Public Vehicles may be a safe place to work, but it’s frickin’ boring. After a year of wanting to put a gun in my mouth, and I’m kidding by the way, I decided to get out on the street. I got my sergeant to approve a sting operation I wanted to run on gypsy cabs at the airport. I was busting these guys left, right, and center. You should have seen it. I’d pop the glove box and they’d have ten grand in cash and a stack of food stamps. It really pissed me off.

  “I wanted to learn more, so I started building a network of informants. When I caught a guy I thought could be useful, I’d let him go.”

  “Which meant he owed you.”

  “That’s right,” said Davidson. “I started visiting the pool parking lot where they all wait and got to know as many drivers as I could. I became friendly with a lot of them and learned what restaurants they hung out at and started eating in those places and so on and so forth. What really surprised me was that nobody was doing this. Not the CPD, not the FBI, nobody. I mean before 9/11 I could understand them overlooking these guys, but not doing it afterward was nuts. Nevertheless, that’s the way it was and still is. I’m it.”

  “How does this play into Alison Taylor’s case?”

  “I put the word out to all of my informants. I wanted to know if they’d heard of anything that fit with our case. Was anyone suddenly out sick? Was anyone suddenly remorseful or guilty? That kind of stuff.

  “I pumped my contacts at the cab restaurants, the roach coaches, the hummus stands, the hookah bars; everywhere. I even spent the last two nights cruising the neighborhoods most of these guys live in, looking for cabs with damage.”

  “How’d you do?”

  “I struck out,” replied Davidson. “I didn’t get anything.”

  “So?”

  “So I reached out to another driver I know. He’s not a regular informant, but I let him slide on something a ways back and he owed me.

  “I wanted to put myself in the shoes of the guy we’re looking for, so I called him up and laid out the scenario for him. I asked if he had been involved in a hit-and-run, what would be going through his mind.”

  “I would assume, getting caught by the cops,” said Vaughan.

  Davidson shook his head. “Not quite. According to this driver, he’d be more afraid of his owner learning that the cab had been in an accident.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yup. And to prevent the owner from finding out, the guy we’re looking for would need to get the cab repaired as quickly as possible. Enter the Triple P.”

  “What’s the Triple P?”

  “Piss, paint, and pray,” replied Davidson, as the waitress set his breakfast down on the table. “It’s an under-the-radar taxicab mechanic and body shop. They’re all over the city and fix damaged cabs while drivers wait. And they’re fast too. The Muslim ones have little prayer rooms in them and the joke is that as soon as you’ve taken a piss and said your prayers, the paint on your cab would be just about dry.”

  Vaughan was fascinated.

  “If you’re a Middle Eastern driver, you go to one of the Triple P’s owned and run by a Middle Easterner. If you’re Pakistani, you go to a Pakistani operation. If you’re East African, you go to an East African one, yada, yada, yada.”

  “How come I haven’t heard about these places before?”

  “Like I said, they’re under the radar. They operate around the clock, only deal in cash, and don’t advertise. They do business only within their own ethnic group.”

  “And you think the driver who hit Alison Taylor used one of these body shops
to repair the damage to his cab?”

  “According to my source, there was a Pakistani driver who brought his vehicle into a particular shop on the night in question. He was shaken up and was dumb enough to blab about clipping some woman. He wanted to get his cab repaired as soon as possible and was willing to pay extra for it.”

  “This is fantastic,” said Vaughan. “When can we pay a visit to the shop?”

  “Right after we’re done with breakfast.”

  CHAPTER 16

  They left Vaughan’s Crown Vic at the restaurant and drove Davidson’s Bronco to the Crescent Garage and Body Shop. Outside, several cabs were double-parked along the street. Men dressed in the traditional salwar kameez—long, cotton tunics over loose-fitting trousers that stop just above the ankles—stood in front talking. Many had long beards without mustaches and almost all of them were wearing sandals. Vaughan couldn’t tell if he was in Chicago or Karachi.

  As the two police officers walked up, the men ceased their conversations and stared at them. Davidson had purposely left his jacket in his truck and all eyes fell to the shield clipped to his belt and the large pistol he wore on his hip. For his part, Vaughan didn’t flash anything. He didn’t need to. They all could tell he was also a cop.

  With the overhead door down, they accessed the garage via a standard entrance next to it. There were four hydraulic lifts: two on each side. In the far corner was a makeshift painting bay. Tool chests lined the walls and there were fenders, bumpers, mirrors, body panels, and other parts stacked everywhere. At the far end, another overhead door led to a small lot crammed with beat-up taxis out back. The garage was lit with sputtering fluorescents hung from the ceiling.

  The first thing Davidson noticed when he walked in was a man attaching a medallion to the hood of a freshly painted taxicab. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.

  If there was one thing Davidson had learned from dealing with the cab communities it was that their cultures only respected strength. If you showed any weakness whatsoever, you were screwed. You had to get in their face from the get-go, project power, and never let them forget who was in charge.