The First Commandment

by Brad Thor

  “Yes, I did,” said Evans as she introduced the man to Harvath. “Arturo Ramirez, this is Agent Scot Harvath from the Department of Homeland Security. He has a few questions he’d like to ask about a customer we had in the bank two days ago.”

  Harvath rose and shook the man’s hand.

  “Arturo handles all the wires,” the woman continued. “He also never forgets a face. Do you, Arty?”

  Ramirez smiled politely at his manager and accepted the series of photographs. “Yes, I remember him,” he said after studying the pictures. “Peter Boesiger was his name, I believe. Nice guy. Swiss.”

  “Interesting,” replied Harvath, as he pulled a pen from his pocket. “How do you know he was Swiss?”

  “He used a Swiss passport for ID. I assumed that meant he was from Switzerland. He spoke with an accent too.”

  “Did you make a copy of his passport, by any chance?”

  “Of course,” said Ramirez. “It’s standard bank procedure.”

  “May I see the copy, please?”

  Ramirez looked at Evans, who nodded.

  He disappeared from the office and returned several minutes later with a photocopy of Roussard’s Boesiger passport.

  “Is there anything else you can tell me about him?” asked Harvath.

  Ramirez looked at him. “Like what?”

  “Did he have anyone else with him?”

  “No,” answered the portly teller. “He came in by himself.”

  “How about his vehicle? Did you notice what he was driving?”

  Ramirez shook his head, no. “Didn’t see it.”

  “Did he make small talk with you at all? Did he mention where he was staying, anything like that?”

  “Not that I can remember.”

  At this rate, Harvath was quickly coming to the end of possible questions he could ask.

  Then Ramirez said, “Wait a second. He asked me for directions. It was an address for a real estate office. It was near here, but I can’t remember which one. We talked about walking versus driving there. I told him that if he was already parked, he’d probably be better off walking it than trying to find a new spot once he got there.”

  Having remembered the crucial piece of information, Ramirez’s broad face was cleaved with a wide grin.

  As Harvath accepted a phone book from the bank manager, he wondered how many real estate offices there could be in a resort town like Lake Geneva.

  Chapter 112

  W hen Rick Morrell and the members of his Omega Team arrived in the village of Fontana, they split into two squads and, posing as FBI agents, interviewed Todd Kirkland and Jean Stevens simultaneously.

  Neither of them was able to provide any concrete leads to Scot Harvath’s whereabouts. Next, they visited the bar and restaurant where Harvath had been the night before, Gordy’s Boathouse. While the waitress remembered serving Harvath once Morrell had shown her his picture, she hadn’t spoken with him other than to take his order.

  With only a handful of hotels in the village, Morrell and his team got to work trying to figure out where Harvath was staying. They started with the hotel in closest proximity to Gordy’s Boathouse, the Abbey Resort.

  Very quickly, the resort looked like it was going to be a bust. There was no one registered under the name of Scot Harvath, or any of his known aliases. None of the front desk staff recognized his photograph. It was the same with the bell staff.

  Morrell and one of his men were on their way back to the car when they passed the valet stand and handed Harvath’s picture around.

  “Yeah, I know that guy,” one of the valets said. “I brought his car up to him this morning.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.”

  Morrell whipped out his cell phone and text messaged the rest of his team to come back from the other hotels they were investigating. They’d found where Harvath was staying.

  With the valet’s recognition of Harvath, Morrell and his men began the slow process of piecing together where Harvath was in the hotel.

  First, they sifted through the morning’s vehicle claim checks. Once they weeded out the ones the valet was certain hadn’t belonged to Harvath—two Porsches, an Audi, and a new Mercedes convertible—they took the rest inside.

  With the help of the front desk manager, they were able to ascertain which checks belonged to guestrooms with guests who had checked in within the last twenty-four hours. Morrell doubted Harvath had been here longer than that.

  The only guest to have checked in within the last twenty-four hours and to have had his vehicle go out first thing that morning was a man named Nick Zucker, registered in room 324. Having already established himself as an FBI agent pursuing a fugitive from justice, Morrell asked the front desk manager for a passkey.

  The manager made up a keycard, and no sooner had he handed it to Morrell than he and his men moved quickly out of the lobby.

  There was a housekeeping trolley at the end of the hallway, and flashing his badge, Morrell conscripted a young housekeeper. Outside 324, Morrell and his people took up positions on either side of the door, and he nodded for the housekeeper to knock.

  She gave a loud rap, calling out, “Housekeeping.”

  When no one answered, Morrell waved her away, slid his own keycard into the lock and opened the door.

  He and his men swept inside, but the room was empty. They found a small toiletry kit in the bathroom with prescription medications labeled for a Nick Zucker from a pharmacy in Phoenix and a pilot’s uniform hanging in the closet that couldn’t possibly fit Harvath.

  A small overnight bag contained a change of clothes, a worn paperback thriller, and a Sudoku workbook. Inside the workbook were several pictures of a man and his family, one of which showed him in his pilot’s uniform next to a plane with his teenaged daughter and son.

  They’d made a mistake. Scot Harvath was not posing as Nick Zucker. Morrell had his men put everything back the way they’d found it.

  They were halfway down the hallway when the front desk manager appeared and held up two additional keycards.

  “I did a little more looking,” he stated when he reached Morrell. “Zucker checked in with another man named Burdic. According to their registration cards, they both work for the same aviation company. There was a third man who checked in at the same time; his name is Hans Brauner. He told the clerk last night that he would be paying for their rooms and also arranged for golf and lunch for them today.”

  Burdic’s room was as useless as Zucker’s, and the one belonging to the supposed Hans Brauner had nothing. Morrell, however, knew they had zeroed in on Harvath.

  Instead of having the desk clerk from the previous night come in to work to ID Harvath’s photo, they simply emailed it to him. Over the phone, he confirmed that the photo belonged to the man registered as Brauner who had shown up with the two pilots.

  So now Morrell not only knew the alias Harvath was using, he also knew how Harvath was getting around, both in the air and on the ground. Through his contact at Langley, Morrell had credit reports pulled for Zucker, Burdic, and Brauner.

  He wasn’t surprised that nothing came back for Brauner. Zucker and Burdic, though, were another story. Among the run-of-the-mill crap one would expect to find—mortgage payments, department store charges, and so forth—was a particularly serendipitous find. Zucker had rented a car at the airport yesterday.

  Not only was the car from a national chain, but Morrell also knew that they used a GPS tracking system in their vehicles as part of something known as “fleet management.” It was beginning to look as if Harvath might not be that hard to catch after all.

  Chapter 113

  A s it turned out, there were eight real estate offices in downtown Lake Geneva, and each employed a multitude of agents. The proverbial needle in a haystack analogy didn’t even come close to what Harvath was facing.

  It took him all morning and well into the afternoon to make his way through the offices and to track down the realtors who
might have had contact with Roussard/Boesiger in the last two days.

  He’d come up empty in all of the offices except one, Leif Realty, which had a sign in its window saying it was closed for the day and would reopen tomorrow. Harvath had left multiple messages on the Leif Realty voicemail system and finally managed to get the owner’s cell phone number from another realtor in a nearby office.

  It was almost four o’clock when Leif Realty’s owner, Nancy Erikson, called him back and told him she could meet him at her office in fifteen minutes.

  When Harvath arrived, Erikson unlocked the front door and let him inside.

  The office was small and had been decorated to look like the interior of a lakeside cottage.

  “Being able to close for a personal day, especially at the end of the season, is one of the perks of owning your own business,” she said as she powered up a Tassimo “cup-at-a-time” coffee machine.

  She rattled off a list of hot beverages she could make, all of which Harvath politely declined. Erikson was his last lead, and he was eager to find out what she knew about the man he was hunting.

  “He set up everything almost exclusively via email,” said Erikson as she pulled a file from the stack on her desk. “I’d say over seventy-five percent of our business happens through our website these days. You almost don’t need a realtor,” she added with a chuckle.

  “Can you tell me about the house Boesiger rented?” asked Harvath.

  The woman slid a flyer from the file and handed it to him.

  “Nice place,” said Harvath as he studied the pictures. It was a large home right on the water. “Seems like a lot of house for one person.”

  “I thought that too, but that’s the way a lot of Europeans are. They live such cramped existences over there that when they go on vacation they really want some breathing room.”

  Harvath doubted that was what was motivating Roussard. He’d picked this house for another reason. “Can you show me where specifically on the lake the property is located?”

  Erikson rolled her chair over to the bookcase and returned with a large book about Lake Geneva. She opened it to the center and unfolded a large map. Her finger hovered over the lake’s north shore until it came down with a plop and she stated, “The house is right about there.”

  She spun the book around on her desk so Harvath could see where the property was located.

  Lake Geneva was the second deepest lake in Wisconsin. It was 7.6 miles long, but only 2.1 miles across at its widest point. One of the possibilities that Harvath was quietly considering was that Roussard had selected the house because it provided an unobstructed line of sight to his target. A missile or RPG attack was not something Harvath was willing to rule out, especially when he knew it was one of the Secret Service’s worst nightmares and something that was all but impossible to defend against.

  As soon as Harvath located the Lake Geneva Country Club along the lake’s south shore, he ruled out his line-of-sight rationale. He compared the location of Roussard’s rental to Meg Cassidy’s cottage as well as the estate of Rodger Cummings, the president’s college roommate, with whom Rutledge always stayed when he visited Lake Geneva. Neither of them fit the bill either. Whatever kind of an attack Roussard was planning, he wasn’t going to launch it from where he was now.

  Turning back to the flyer, Harvath asked, “Do you have any other photos of the property?”

  “We’ve got a couple more on our website,” said Erikson as she booted up her computer. When she had clicked through to the page for the house Roussard had taken, she turned the monitor so Harvath could see for himself.

  “Can you click on the virtual tour, please?” said Harvath after she had scrolled through all the static images.

  Erikson was halfway through the second 360-degree virtual tour when Harvath ordered her to stop. “Back up,” he said.

  The realtor dragged her mouse, slowly moving the image back the way it had come. Finally, Harvath said, “Right there. Stop.”

  The camera had been set on a manicured lawn that led down to the water. It provided a perfect view of the home’s short pier and the view beyond. What Harvath was interested in wasn’t the view, though. It was the hull of a sleek powerboat that sat beneath a striped awning in the pier’s sole boat slip.

  “Oh, that,” replied Erikson, rolling her eyes. “That boat almost cost me the deal.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Harvath.

  “When Mr. Boesiger arrived, I had to explain to him that it had developed a problem with its fuel line and had to be taken in to the shop. The home’s owners offered a very generous discount on his rental rate but he didn’t care about the discount, he wanted the boat and was very angry that it wasn’t available.

  “I know the family who owns the Cobalt dealership in Fontana. They agreed to lease me one of their best boats so Mr. Boesiger could have a comparable watercraft for the duration of his vacation.”

  Harvath couldn’t believe his good fortune. “And how long is that supposed to be for?”

  “Mr. Boesiger is paid through Sunday, but when we were trying to arrange a new boat for him he said he didn’t care when it came as long as he had it by today.”

  Chapter 114

  A s Harvath left Leif Realty, he knew he had uncovered a major part of how Philippe Roussard planned on carrying out his attack. It was going to come from the water.

  Scenes of a USS Cole-style ramming attack briefly flashed through Harvath’s mind, but he discounted them. Roussard did not strike him as suicidal, and when it came to the Lake Geneva Country Club, there was nothing to ram. The club was perched high at the water’s edge and almost impossible to get significantly close to because of a series of wooden piers and boat slips.

  There was a chance that Roussard could pack his boat full of explosives and try to leave it in one of the slips closest to the clubhouse, but it would be next to impossible for the craft to avoid Secret Service scrutiny. Well before the president had arrived they would have checked each boat over completely and matched it with its rightful owner, upon whom a thorough background investigation would have already been completed along with background checks of all the other members of the club.

  Harvath backed out of his parking space and followed the directions Nancy Erikson had given him for the rental property. As he drove, he gave play to every conceivable scenario that might involve Meg’s wedding and Roussard’s access to a high-powered speedboat.

  The SEAL team that accompanied the president whenever he visited marine environments would be on, under, and all around the water during the wedding. In addition, there would be numerous support craft keeping boaters a good distance away from the area. A straight kamikaze-style run by Roussard would certainly fail.

  Reaching Highway 50, Harvath turned left and headed west, parallel to the lake’s north shore. There had to be something he wasn’t seeing; something about the boat, but he couldn’t figure out what it was.

  With a hard perimeter established around the country club, the only way it could be breached was with an attack that, once launched, couldn’t be stopped. Again, Harvath returned to the idea of a projectile of some sort, along the lines of a Stinger missile or an RPG.

  Consulting his map, Harvath noticed that he was coming up on the turnoff for Roussard’s lakefront rental. When he saw the road sign, he eased off the gas and applied his turn signal.

  Moments later, he was driving down a paved lane shaded by a canopy of tall oaks that had been planted at equal intervals along both sides of the road.

  As Harvath drove, he focused on what lay ahead of him. Most important, he focused on the need to keep Roussard alive until he uncovered what the man had planned.

  For all Harvath knew, the boat might have nothing to do with Roussard’s attack and everything to do with his getaway. He couldn’t close his mind off to any options.

  As Harvath followed a gentle bend in the road, he was unable to see the dark SUV that had just turned off the highway behind him.
r />   Chapter 115

  A bout a half mile before Roussard’s, Harvath came upon a small home undergoing extensive renovation. As it was nearing five o’clock, all the construction workers had gone. He pulled into the gravel drive and parked. He’d cover the rest of the distance on foot.

  Roussard’s rental property was bordered on three sides by thick wood? Harvath decided to approach from the far side, opposite the road.

  He moved as quickly as he could without making too much noise. Nothing moved save for a cloud of gnats that seemed to follow him every step of the way.

  At the edge of the woods, Harvath stopped. From where he sat, he could make out the entire rear and one side of the French château-style home.

  Roussard had registered a Lincoln Mark VII with the real estate office, but the driveway was empty.

  There were no interior lights and none of the windows were open. Only the hum of the air conditioning unit hinted at the possibility of human life inside. It was time to make his move.

  Maneuvering through the woods to a spot nearest the garage, Harvath located the side door off the garage and removed the set of keys the realtor had given him from his pocket.

  Crouching low, he pulled his H&K, counted to three, and made a break for it.

  He moved fast, making sure his approach wouldn’t be seen from any of the windows. At the door, he slid the key into the lock and opened it slowly.

  The first thing he noticed was Roussard’s Lincoln. Harvath walked over and placed his hand on the hood to see if it had been driven recently. It hadn’t.

  Skirting a collection of brightly colored beach toys, he headed for a short flight of steps and the door that led into the house. He didn’t expect it to be locked and it wasn’t. Roussard was like most people who trusted the overhead garage door to be a sufficient line of defense.

  The air inside the home was much cooler than that in the garage. It washed over Harvath as he slipped inside and silently shut the door behind him. He was in a mudroom area just off the kitchen.