The Lions of Lucerne

by Brad Thor

  He hit the ground and rolled again; just as another muffled shot narrowly missed his head. Using the still intact storefront window to his left, he could see a man with a mounted rifle in the back of the Ziretta Carpet Cleaning van. Scot was pinned down. He couldn’t go forward and he couldn’t go back. He was trapped. Or was he?

  Using the storefront image for guidance, Scot raised his pistol and fired two shots toward the red-and-white van. As soon as the shots were fired, he rolled into the street between two parked cars. What were the chances the men in the Nissan were hanging around after crashing into the furniture truck? Most likely, they had taken off in the car if it was drivable, or by foot if it wasn’t. The vehicle was undoubtedly stolen, and with the police on their way, the men would want to put as much distance between themselves and the crime scene as possible. Those who fight and run away live to fight another day, Scot thought to himself.

  There hadn’t been any gunfire from behind him, nor any sound of someone pursuing him on foot. Chances were the men in the Maxima had fled. One group down.

  His problem now was the shooter in the van. From where the van was parked, the shooter had a pretty good command of this length of the street. The sirens were getting closer. Both Harvath and the man in the van would have to make their moves soon.

  Fours shots from the van in quick succession tore up the roof and shattered the glass of the car Scot was using for cover.

  Harvath waited, but the van showed no sign of moving. They were playing a very deadly game of chicken. Show yourself and be shot; wait too long and be picked up by the police. Harvath knew the man in the van wouldn’t want that and probably knew that he felt exactly the same way. He needed to make a move, and he needed to make it now.

  Thinking back, Scot realized the shooter in the van hadn’t begun firing at him until he had run back toward his bank, which meant that if he went in the other direction, the guy probably wouldn’t have a clean shot. It was the only choice Scot had.

  Harvath hadn’t taken his eyes off the reflection in the glass for a second. The man still sat in the van, its doors open, with his rifle pointed in Scot’s direction. He hadn’t figured out that Scot could see him in the glass, or else he surely would have blown it out. Or would he? Maybe the shooter was using the glass to his advantage as well.

  Fixing the position of the van in his mind, Scot turned his Glock toward the storefront and chose several spots that would allow his bullets to break the glass, but minimize the chances of hitting anyone inside. He fired and, as the glass came tumbling down, he turned his weapon toward where he remembered the van to be and began firing as he ran back up the sidewalk, away from the bank.

  He managed to pin down the shooter in the van long enough to escape his line of fire. He was now safely out of range, but didn’t know what would face him in just a few car lengths.

  The furniture truck was still in the middle of the street. Scot kept his pistol at the ready. Sliding out into the street, he glanced back to make sure no one from the van was coming up behind him. So far, it was clear.

  Harvath hugged the back of the furniture truck and moved up the passenger side. As he neared the cab, he could see the crumpled gray metal of the Maxima. It was totaled. Crouching by the truck’s right front tire, Harvath held the Glock in both hands ready to swing out and search for the shooters. He took a deep breath, applied pressure to the trigger and spun, just as he heard a noise from behind.

  The truck’s passenger door began to swing open. An older, gray-haired black man, whose eyes were wild with fright, was attempting to climb down.

  “Stay where you are,” ordered Harvath. “Get back in your truck, close the door, and stay on the floor.” The man did as he was told.

  Scot waited a beat and then sprang forward. He swept the Glock from side to side, ready to take down any of the assailants in or around the vehicle who might still be armed. There were none. The Nissan’s trunk was completely crunched against its backseat. The car’s interior was filled with broken glass and brass shell casings, as was the ground around it. The men had fled. The police were almost on top of the scene, and Harvath also decided fleeing was a good idea. There was nothing to gain by hanging around.

  While sifting through the contents of his safe deposit box and André Martin’s envelope again, it had become obvious to Scot that his only chance to get to the bottom of things was to go to Interlaken himself. After the attack outside the bank, he knew it was the right move. Besides, he reasoned, who wouldn’t want a break from the goddamn D.C. weather? Rain, sleet, snow, and now bullets. He just prayed he wouldn’t be embarking upon on a wild-goose chase.

  Three blocks away, he caught a cab that took him straight down M Street to the tony Georgetown Park mall. This time, he had cash for the driver.

  For some reason, the mall’s Edwardian interior, in green with brass touches, always reminded him of Harrods in London. The waterfalls, which he normally found soothing, didn’t work their magic on him today. He made his way toward the J. Crew store and paid for his purchases with bills from the twenty thousand dollars in cash he had removed from his safe deposit box. He’d always kept an emergency reserve, just in case, and today he was glad he had. He didn’t dare use his credit card again. He had used it for two cab rides and was sure that was how the assassins had tracked him. With plenty of cash at his disposal, he could afford to ditch the plastic.

  Leaving J. Crew, he bent his credit cards back and forth until he could break them into pieces. He pocketed the pieces and made his way toward Voyageur Luggage. At Voyageur, he picked up a wheeled KIVA Designs travel bag that could be converted into a backpack. It was big enough to hold the clothing he bought, but small enough to fit into an overhead compartment. Next on his list was Crabtree & Evelyn, where an attractive woman named Leslie outfitted him with a complete men’s toiletry kit and a women’s Pamper Yourself gift basket. Harvath counted out the bills, thanked the clerk, and asked where the nearest men’s room was.

  Outside the washrooms was a bank of pay telephones. Harvath chose the one at the far end and, opening the yellow pages, looked up the eight hundred number for Swissair. Knowing the quickest way to get an operator was to select the business-and-first-class-reservation option, he pressed the appropriate button. After only a few seconds a polite agent came on the line. According to the woman, Swissair had a 5:40 P.M. flight leaving Dulles that would arrive in Zurich at 7:35 the next morning. Harvath made a reservation in the name of Hans Brauner, memorized the record-locator number, thanked the agent, and hung up the phone. Harvath had been keeping an eye on the men’s room. There was very little traffic, so he decided now was as good a time as any.

  Inside, he looked under each stall to make sure they were vacant and chose one toward the very end. He locked the door and placed his bags in front of him. The pain in his head made it feel as if it were cracking wide open, and his stomach churned violently with nausea. Dr. Helsabeck had been right about stress and exertion making his symptoms worse, but there was no time to coddle himself. Scot faced the toilet and forced himself to vomit. If that’s what his body wanted to do, then let’s get it over with, he reasoned.

  He used some toilet paper to wipe his mouth, then removed his Crabtree & Evelyn toiletry kit and hung it from the hook on the back of the stall door. Inside was a travel toothbrush and some toothpaste. No one had come into the men’s room since he’d entered, so he left his stall, did a fast tooth brushing with the water from the sink, then returned to the stall and locked the door once again.

  Working quickly, Scot fished several Ziploc plastic bags out of his suit pocket. The first contained a contact lens case and the other a small white tube and what looked to be a handful of brown hair. The transformation wouldn’t be huge, but Harvath had learned over the years that with disguises, the sum is often greater than its parts.

  The two keys to a successful disguise were, first, to eradicate any traces of a very recognizable feature, which in Scot’s case was the deep blue of his ey
es, and, second, to have the disguise be as natural as possible. The more elaborate a disguise, the less chance it had of working. The final goal was not only to look like someone else, but to become someone else.

  As Scot put in the brown contact lenses and used the tube of glue to apply the goatee and heavy eyebrows, he began his transformation. He pushed his hair forward and parted it in the middle. With a pair of wire-rim glasses with slightly tinted lenses and a new wardrobe in mismatched earth tones, with dark sensible shoes and a dark suede blazer, Harvath became the man whose picture and name were contained in the false passport he had also removed from his safe deposit box, Hans Brauner of Stuttgart, Germany.

  During Scot’s time with the SEALs, he had done a lot of cross-training exercises with some of Germany’s most elite soldiers. One soldier in particular, Herman Toffle, had become quite popular with the SEALs, not only for his bravado, but also for his crazy sense of humor. Scot and Herman the German, as the guys called him, grew to be fast friends. When Herman left the military because of an injury, he entered the private sector and began representing a German arms manufacturer. Scot helped Herman get his weapons tested in America and also plugged him in with former SEALs around the world who were doing military or private security consulting and had a heavy say in their clients’ weapons procurement.

  Scot couldn’t accept any commissions, but Herman felt his good friend was due something for all of the business he had helped create. Once, while Scot was on leave in Germany between SEAL training exercises, Herman led him on a cloak-and-dagger tour of Munich which, after several stops for beers, finally ended in a small apartment on the city’s north side. Knowing his friend’s proclivity for loose women, Harvath thought Herman had brought him to a brothel and was going to get him laid.

  As it turned out, Herman had a million connections and the two men just happened to be in the apartment of one of them, a master documents forger. Herman introduced the stooped, balding man with thick glasses simply as Tinkerbell. After making Scot up with the eyebrows, goatee, glasses, and contacts, Tinkerbell had him sit in front of a tarp to have his picture taken. Two hours and five beers later, the man emerged from the back of the apartment and handed Scot his new passport. When, through the fog of beers, Scot realized what Herman had done for him, he tried to refuse the gift, but Herman said, “Men in our profession need insurance that employers can’t always provide.”

  Harvath knew that Herman was trying, in his own way, to thank him, so he kept the passport locked safely away at his bank, not thinking he would ever need it. The passport was filled with valid entry and exit stamps from America, Canada, Europe, Asia, and South America. Trying to find the most recent stamp would drive an immigration officer crazy, Tinkerbell had said, so not to worry. The old man had also given Scot an address in Munich at which, if he dropped the passport off whenever he was in Germany, one of Tinkerbell’s people would update the stamps for him. Scot knew the gift had cost Herman a lot of money, and even though he originally hadn’t wanted to take it, it looked now as if it was going to come in very handy.

  Harvath finished changing into the J. Crew clothes and put the rest of the new clothing into his rolling suitcase. The trench coat and suit he had been wearing went into the J. Crew bag, which he promptly tossed into a Dumpster in an alley behind the mall. Wiping his prints off the Glock, he disassembled it and threw the pieces into three different storm drains. Now all he had to do was make a phone call and he would be free to go.

  44

  Scot Harvath, having completely taken on the persona of Hans Brauner, strolled with a certain nonchalance through the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton towing his luggage on wheels. When he’d walked through the main entrance, he’d noticed the cab line was full of taxis. In his German-accented English he told the bellman he did not need any help with his bag. Having stopped at the Georgetown American Express travel office to buy a stack of traveler’s checks under his new persona, he was confident in not only the outward appearance of the disguise, but his ability to pull off the complete identity of the character.

  Harvath made his way to the pay phones and, glancing at his watch, knew he would have to make this call quickly. He picked up the receiver, deposited the coins and dialed the number.

  “Lawlor,” said the voice that answered.

  “Gary. It’s Scot Harvath.”

  “Scot, where the hell are you?”

  “C’mon, Gary, you know me better than to expect an answer to that, and don’t bother tracing this call. I won’t be here long enough for you to get me.”

  “What’s this all about?” asked Lawlor.

  “I was going to ask you the same thing. I had nothing to do with the deaths of André Martin and Natalie Sperando. She was a good friend. I want you to believe that. For some reason, Bill Shaw is trying to set me up.”

  “Bill Shaw is trying to set you up? Why would he do that?”

  “I know you’re trying to stall me, but I’ll indulge you anyway,” said Scot, looking at his watch to see how long he’d been on with Lawlor. “I think he’s connected to the president’s kidnapping, along with Senator Snyder and maybe Rolander as well. He’s trying to paint me as a conspiracy nut.”

  “He doesn’t need to paint you as one; you painted yourself that way.”

  “I did? What are you talking about?”

  “I heard a recording of your call to him this morning. It didn’t sound like the musings of a sane person. You’re really throwing around some far-fetched notions.”

  “Yeah, well, if I’m so far off base with my theories, why did I get hallmarked today?”

  “‘Hallmarked’? What do you mean?”

  “You know, when you care enough to send the very best?”

  “Are you trying to tell me somebody tried to put a hit on you?”

  “Twice. Once at Union Station and then again outside my bank on Twelfth Street not long after that. They must have been tracking my credit card because I used it to pay for cabs to both locations.”

  “Hit men? Tracking your cards? Scot, this is pretty serious stuff. If you come in, I promise I’ll help you.”

  “No thanks, Gary. That’s the second time I’ve had that offer today, and I feel a whole heck of a lot safer on my own for the time being.”

  “Scot, I swear I don’t know anything about a hit being put out on you. That’s not how we do business and you know it. Tell me where you are, and we’ll send a car for you right away. I’ll put you in protective custody while we debrief you, and then—”

  “Yeah? And then what? Shaw had told me he was doing the same thing with Natalie and André Martin, and look what happened to them.”

  “Scot, how well did you know André Martin?”

  “He was a friend of Natalie’s. I just met him last night. Why?”

  “When was the last time you checked your bank statements?”

  Harvath looked at his watch. “You’re running out of time, Gary, and you’re wasting it with questions that don’t make any sense.”

  “The Secret Service has discovered that you received several large deposits to your bank account in the past month, the most recent being the day after the president was kidnapped. The money came from an account in the Caribbean. A little digging revealed a series of shell corporations, which eventually led to André Martin, D.C. attorney and international finance specialist.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “It’s not what I’m saying, Scot; it’s what everyone else is. The way it looks is that André Martin somehow used his relationship with Natalie Sperando to get to you and buy you off.”

  “Buy me off? What the hell for?”

  “The Secret Service and the Justice Department figure you were the inside leak and helped the kidnappers in grabbing the president.”

  “Me? That’s insane.”

  “Is it? Look at it from their point of view. You had the means as head of the advance team, money’s as good a motivation as any, and you had the opportunity.”


  “You can’t believe that I—”

  “You were the only Secret Service agent to survive the avalanche. You then interfered with three separate crime scenes resulting in the corruption of evidence in at least one of them; you were the last person seen with Sperando and Martin alive—”

  “Yeah, at a bar in D.C.”

  “No. A desk clerk at the Radisson in Alexandria said that Martin and Sperando were picked up by a Secret Service agent who identified himself with credentials as Scot Harvath and perfectly fit your description.”

  “And my gun was found near the scene of the murders. Well, someone thought of everything, didn’t they?”

  “Scot, if you are innocent, running is not going to help your case. Let me bring you in. I swear nothing will happen to you.”

  “Do you believe I’m innocent, Gary?”

  “I need to hear your side first.”

  “I’m not coming in. Not now. Somebody has gone to a lot of work to set me up, and it looks like they’re hedging their bets by trying to bump me off. I’m sorry, but I think I stand a safer chance on my own right now.”

  “Scot, I can help you, but this has got to be done by the book. You have to come in.”

  “Sorry, Gary. No way. You’re not going to hear from me for a bit, but I want to leave you something to think about. If someone could put this whole elaborate plan together to silence me, what could that same person do to keep the whereabouts of the president secret? You’re barking up the wrong tree with the Abu Nidal and the FRC. It’s a red herring. I’m sure of it. Widen your nets. I’ll be in touch.”

  Harvath hung up the phone, went back through the lobby, and told the doorman he was going to Union Station. Once there, he found another cab and told the driver to take him to Dulles International Airport.