by Brad Thor
45
“Yah, dis is a problem ven you are a businessman, no?” said Harvath in his German-accented English.
“But it is so sweet. Your wife will be thrilled,” said the Swissair ticket agent as she checked the passport of Herr Hans Brauner.
“Yah, I hope zo. I also bought her a little zomething zpecial,” said Harvath, putting the women’s Pamper Yourself gift basket from Crabtree & Evelyn on the counter between himself and the agent. “Do you think she will like it?”
“I think she will love it. You are so sweet to drop everything and rush home to be with your wife when she has the baby. Some things are more important than jobs, aren’t they?”
“Unfortunately, my boss doesn’t approve, and I am forced to use my traveler’s checks to pay for zee flight. I vas supposed to be here for another three veeks, but now vis zee baby coming early, vee do vat vee can, no?” said Harvath as he counted out almost six thousand dollars in American Express traveler’s checks.
It was a risky proposition. He knew airlines were very wary of customers who paid in cash, especially for same-day reservations, but he could not use any of his Scot Harvath credit cards, even if he hadn’t broken them all into pieces and flushed them back at the Georgetown Park mall, because whoever was watching would be able to track him right away. At least disguised and paying cash, he would be harder to trail. Winning the ticket agent over would definitely help him. Had she or another agent been the slightest bit suspicious, they could have created a lot of trouble for him before he even got away from the desk. It had been an expensive gamble, but it looked as if it would pay off.
Harvath continued to smile as the agent asked him the standard questions about who packed his bag and whether it had been out of his sight at any time. With a final glance at his passport, she thanked him, gave him his ticket, wished him and his wife good luck, and directed him toward the business-class lounge, where he could wait until his flight was called.
So far he had lucked out. Harvath’s German was relatively limited, and he would be extremely hard-pressed to carry on more than a brief conversation with anyone, but that wasn’t a problem with the American-born Swissair agent. He knew these agents would converse with him in the language he chose to use. Swissair was a thoroughly professional outfit, and that’s why he had chosen to fly with them. This airline would respect his privacy. To them he was another harried businessman, torn between work and family, and trying to get back home to Europe. Because of Zurich’s close proximity to the German border, there was no reason a German businessman returning home wouldn’t choose to fly into Zurich rather than Munich, especially if time was of the essence and Swissair’s was the next flight out.
Harvath hadn’t eaten anything since his bagel and orange juice that morning. While he could have picked something up at the mall, he hadn’t wanted to waste time. He was thankful for the food in the Swissair lounge and discreetly loaded up while he waited for his flight to be called.
When the 5:40 flight to Zurich was called in the lounge, Harvath stood with the rest of the businessmen and made his way to the plane. A German newspaper tucked under his arm and walking slowly, almost wearily with his bag in tow, Hans Brauner blended in with the rest of the business travelers and boarded the plane without incident.
Finding his seat, he accepted an orange juice from one flight attendant as another took his coat. He felt his muscles relax as the plane pulled away from the gate and taxied out onto the runway. When the plane’s engines revved up, he felt even more of the tension drain away from his body. Placing a Do Not Wake Me for Meals sticker on his headrest, he slipped out of his shoes, donned the Swissair booties and eye-mask from his courtesy kit, and was asleep before the plane reached its cruising altitude.
46
Scot awoke in time for breakfast and enjoyed a vegetable omelet, croissant, fruit, and coffee. He made one last trip to the bathroom to make sure his disguise was still firmly in place and then watched out the window as the plane made its final approach into Zurich International.
As he walked along the never-ending moving sidewalks toward passport control, he grew convinced that the Swiss government was in cahoots with airport advertisers. Why else make passengers walk so far, if not to take in the endless stream of advertisements for Swiss watches, jewelry, pens, and chocolate?
Finally, Harvath reached passport control. It was almost eight o’clock in the morning local time, and in an uncharacteristically Swiss fashion, there was only one passport control agent on duty. Being in business class did have its advantages, one of which was getting off the plane with the first-class passengers before everyone else and being at the head of the line for passport control, but that wasn’t the case today. Apparently, another flight had arrived just before Scot’s, and there was already a good-sized line at passport control. The grumbling of tired, cranky passengers could be heard up and down the queue. He stood nervously in line for only a few minutes, before another passport control officer appeared at the next booth, and the line began to move faster.
Scot had decided to stay with the Hans Brauner disguise and present his German passport just in case his real one had been flagged. As the plane was landing, he went through all of the possible questions he might be asked by the German-speaking passport control officials and how he would respond. As it turned out, he didn’t need any of it. Anxious to clear the backup, the passport officer just glanced at the stamps of Hans Brauner’s passport and added a new one. It was a red rectangle with the corners rounded off. It had the German word for Switzerland, Schweiz, with the date, followed by the words Zürich Flughafen. As Harvath was waved through by the officer, he said a small thanks for the good fortune that had brought Herman the German into his life.
Harvath exited through the customs nothing to declare lane. Everything had gone off without a hitch, but Harvath reminded himself not to get too comfortable. Pretending to be slightly confused, Harvath purposely walked past the departure monitors and sign boards only to turn around and come back to them, which allowed him to check whether anyone was following him. As far as he could tell, no one was.
Following the overhead signs, he reached an information counter and picked up a small brochure that had a map of the airport and a list of shops and services. He found the establishment he was looking for and made his way toward the next concourse.
Along the way, he counted fourteen more billboards for Swiss watches, seven for pens, eleven for jewelry, and nine for chocolate. It was amazing.
Coming upon a men’s room, Harvath carefully rechecked to make sure he wasn’t being followed and ducked inside. He chose a stall at the end, walked in, and locked the door. Quickly he changed out of his earth-toned clothes and into a pair of baggy cargo pants, boots, and a T-shirt, which he covered with a retro seventies green sweater with red and brown racing stripes across the chest and down one sleeve. The false eyebrows, goatee, and glasses were all safely packed away. Scot was still wearing the brown contact lenses, and as he pulled on a blue knit cap, he exited the men’s room. To any casual observer, Scot Harvath now appeared no different from any of the other twenty-something European or American youths who either lived in Switzerland or were vacationing there for its incredible skiing and snowboarding. This disguise, though, needed one final element to make it complete.
Harvath covered the distance to his objective in the next terminal with the slow, lackadaisical stride he imagined his new persona would have. He found the Zoom hair salon exactly where the airport services guide said it would be and went in. As the young hairstylist worked, Scot discovered she was eager to practice her English. When he told her he was in Switzerland for the snowboarding, she launched into reviews of the different places she and her friends had been throughout Switzerland, France, and Austria. He had stumbled upon a real devotee.
When she was finished, Scot paid her in the Swiss francs that he had gotten at the currency exchange in the baggage claim area before proceeding through customs. He took a final look
in the mirror and gave the stylist a thumbs-up.
She had done a very good job. While anyone looking for Scot Harvath or Hans Brauner would be searching for men with brown hair, parted on the side or in the middle, Scot now sported an extremely short haircut that had been bleached a bright blond, bordering on white. While it wasn’t the most inconspicuous hairstyle on the planet, it would suit Harvath’s needs, and it was cold enough in Switzerland that he could always cover up with a hat if needed. Popping on a pair of dark blue wraparound SPY brand sunglasses, he strutted out of the hair salon and followed the signs to the airport train station.
The first time Scot came to Europe had been with the U.S. freestyle ski team. He smiled as he thought about how his new clothes and hairstyle would probably make him fit right in with all the members of this year’s team. Scot remembered now how impressed he had been with the European rail system. Almost all of the major airports had railway terminals, as opposed to America, where the airports were on the outskirts of town and the railroad stations were right in the center, requiring some sort of transportation in between.
Reaching a schedule board near the ticket window, Scot saw that there was a train leaving soon that would get into Interlaken at 12:20.
He paid the equivalent of fifty dollars in Swiss francs and bought a second-class ticket. On the platform, he noticed a group of students and casually made his way over to them, trying to blend in. The train arrived exactly on time, and Scot boarded with them. He placed his bag, which he had converted to a backpack, on the overhead rack and sat as close to the students as possible. The train made a couple of stops within and around Zurich, then began to pick up speed as it traveled out into the countryside. Once the conductor had passed through the car and checked on people’s tickets, Scot leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.
It would take about two and a half hours to cover the 239 kilometers between Zurich and Interlaken, and by the time he arrived, he hoped to have made some sense out of the last four days.
Starting at the beginning, Scot replayed in his mind everything that had happened. It was obvious that whoever the kidnappers were, they had had inside help and it involved William Shaw somehow. Shaw was working with Senator Snyder, and the two had conspired to kill André Martin and Natalie Sperando, then pin the murders on him. They had arranged for a person or persons to steal his gun, use it to kill Natalie and André, and then leave it behind so the evidence would point directly at him. Then Lawlor had said there were deposits made to his bank account via a series of Caribbean shell companies that André Martin was somehow involved with.
Shaw had admitted that Harvath had been at his house, but denied the true reason he was there, what he did, and what they discussed. So Shaw was unquestionably covering for Senator Snyder and the two were definitely in bed together, but why? How could Shaw, a career Secret Service man, be involved with something that resulted in the deaths of so many of his own men? What was the reason? That was where it started to break down for Scot.
Why would they frame him and then turn around and try to kill him? Whoever had knocked him out in his apartment could easily have finished the job as he lay unconscious on his kitchen floor. Why not kill him right then and there? Why the cat-and-mouse game? Unless framing him would take the heat off them, and he had spoiled their plans by refusing to allow himself to be captured. How was Senator Rolander connected to all this, and who or what was Star Gazer?
As Scot tried to make the pieces fit together, other images and fragments flooded his mind that didn’t seem to have a place in the puzzle. He felt his headache increase in intensity and decided to leave alone what he didn’t know for the time being and focus on what he did know and why he was here.
From the outset, Harvath had never believed the kidnapping could have been conducted by Middle Easterners. Call it an ingrained bigotry he had picked up in the SEALs or a healthy understanding of what Mideast terrorist groups were and were not capable of, but an operation of this nature, carried out in snow, just couldn’t have been pulled off by any group from the Mideast. Harvath had discounted the lone body found with a Skorpion as a red herring from the beginning. It bothered him that Sam Harper had managed to get a shot off, but somehow no one had ever heard it.
If Middle Easterners hadn’t actually pulled off the job, could they have financed it? Yes, that was definitely a possibility, but Harvath had an even harder time believing that men like Bill Shaw and even Senator Snyder would sell their country out to foreigners. That didn’t fit.
Scot’s head began to throb as his mind drifted, and he struggled to again bring it back and concentrate on what he knew.
His gut told him that the people who pulled off the attack and kidnapping worked very well in snow and had a lot of experience. They had access to explosives to trigger the avalanche, money and international contacts to purchase the jammer, and came up with incredible tactical advantages that allowed them to wipe out the president’s protective detail and get away leaving almost no trace at all.
Almost no trace were the key words. They had left traces at the Mormon farmhouse. There had been cigarette smoke and that piece of Swiss chocolate. He had seen mousetraps in the kitchen and in one of the bathrooms, so Harvath knew the chocolate couldn’t have been there long. It had to have been dropped by whoever was watching the house, waiting for the rest of the kidnappers to return. Then there was the e-mail from Nestlé that said the chocolate was sold only in Switzerland. Had one of the kidnappers bought it on a layover on a flight from somewhere in Sand Land? Not likely. It wasn’t until he read the note and saw the Interlaken post office box address in the manila envelope Martin had led him to that his hunch about Switzerland began to seem like such a good possibility.
As the train gently rocked back and forth along the tracks, Scot glanced out the window at the majestic, snow-covered Swiss mountains. A Swiss railway magazine hung from a small hook above the seat opposite him with a title in German and English: “The Eiger…Only for the Foolish?” Scot took down the magazine and began to skim the article. It talked about one of the country’s most daunting peaks and the attempts by teams from all over the world to conquer it.
As his eyes drifted from the photos in the glossy magazine to the Swiss countryside speeding past his window, he was positive his instincts were correct. Whoever arranged to kidnap the president had put together an incredible team of soldier mountaineers. Germany, France, Italy, and Austria could also boast men potentially up to the task, but it was the smattering of clues, hints really, that narrowed Harvath’s gut feeling down to Switzerland.
Scot still had the same question that every law enforcement officer in America had. Cui bono? It was Latin for “Who benefits?” Who would benefit from kidnapping the president? The possibilities were endless. Although all the communications received by Washington since the kidnapping seemed to point to the Fatah, Scot made up his mind to leave the Cui bono? question to the FBI and everybody back home.
Right now who benefits was not as important as who took him and where is he? Harvath had learned a long time ago to go with his gut. Everything that had happened, everything he had seen and felt, told him the men responsible for taking the president were from here. And as sure as he knew that, Scot also knew that he would bring the president back and bring him back alive, no matter how long it took to find him.
47
The hardest thing to get used to had been the smell—the godawful smell—that and the intolerable, intermittent wailing of people being called to worship over scratchy public address systems. Then there was the sand. It was everywhere—in his clothes, in his hair, even in his food. There didn’t seem to be a single crack or crevice in the president’s cell that the sand hadn’t made its way into. He had heard that about the desert. It would eventually overtake anything, even if it took thousands of years to do it. The sand reminded him of when he and his late wife had visited Egypt and the Pyramids many years ago. He wondered where in the world he was now.
He knew he was someplace hot. At times unbearably hot, and very dry. The calls to worship meant that he was close to an Islamic population—maybe a town, a village, or even a city of some sort. His cell had no windows, so he had no idea if it was day or night. Only the deliveries of terrible-tasting food through a sliding grate at the bottom of the cell door interrupted his isolation.
The floor was covered with straw. There was a bed with a thin mattress against one wall and a Turkish toilet in the corner—which was nothing more than a hole in the floor with two stone footrests to stand on. At first, he thought the terrible stench was wafting up from the toilet, but gradually he realized it was coming from outside and was being carried in by the ventilation system of his cell. He tried to memorize every detail, as he knew there would be a very extensive debriefing once he returned home. If I return home, he thought.
Of course he would return home. He couldn’t let himself think otherwise. He was the president of the most powerful nation on earth. Right now in D.C. they would be doing everything they could to get him back. He knew that, and had to keep focusing on it. If the kidnappers had wanted him dead, they could have killed him already. There was no reason to keep him alive unless they intended to return him once their demands were met.
To take his mind off his confinement, the president tried to think about his daughter, but that only led to more distress. He had no idea what had happened to her. The last thing he remembered was splitting up with her detail, planning to meet back at the house for hot chocolate. As he made his way down Death Chute, there was some sort of accident and he lost his vision. There were strange voices, and someone started an IV on him, and then he awoke in this cell dressed in a cheap and uncomfortable peasant robe bearing an Arabic logo. That was all he was really sure of.