Foreign Influence

by Brad Thor

  With that, he walked back to the car and fished some gauze out of the first aid kit and shoved it into his nose to stop the bleeding.

  After he’d had enough time to assess the rest of his injuries, he tuned in the Citroën’s radio and turned up the volume. The bodyguard didn’t need to hear what he and Fournier were about to talk about.

  Next to the stool upon which she sat was a rickety old table. Upon it, Harvath had assembled several pictures Nicholas had e-mailed him. It was his hope that they would be all that was necessary to secure Fournier’s cooperation.

  Removing the gauze from his nose, Harvath walked up behind the woman and snatched off her hood.

  She was frightened and her eyes swept the barn as she tried to figure out where she was and what was going on. Harvath stepped into her field of view so that she could see him. When she did, the look of fear in her eyes turned to one of pure hate. She tried to say something but the duct tape made it impossible. Whatever it was, she was very animated about it and Harvath could imagine what it was she was saying.

  “Shut up,” he replied.

  Fournier ignored him.

  Harvath walked back over to her, grabbed a fistful of her ponytail, and jerked her head backward as he played the tip of his knife along her cheek just under her eye. “Don’t say another word,” he cautioned. “Look.”

  Still holding her hair, he directed her attention to the photos laid out along the table. They were partially illuminated by a shaft of sunlight filtering in from the damaged roof above.

  Harvath himself had trouble looking at the pictures. They had been chosen because of Fournier’s vanity. He had no desire to physically harm her. That said, he had no reservations about threatening the use of harm and leaning on her as hard as he could psychologically. He also knew that if it came to it, and he was left with no other choice, he would use violence against her if it meant preventing more Americans from being killed. But the person who would decide what ultimately came to pass was Fournier herself.

  “Ms. Fournier, you are in the position you are right now because you tried to kill the wrong person,” he said.

  Instantly, Fournier protested through the duct tape and began to shake her head.

  “There’s no use denying it. The man you tried to kill has sent me to exact his revenge. Now, in front of you, you see the pictures of five women. The man who sent me suffered serious facial trauma because of your botched attack.

  “He is not unreasonable and though I suggested he kill you and be done with it, he has decided to keep things fair. Each of the women you see on the table before you was disfigured in a very specific manner. Each attack was painful and caused grotesque disfigurement.

  “My employer is willing to allow you to select the means by which you will be disfigured.”

  Fournier began screaming behind the duct tape and shaking her head wildly. Tears streamed down her face as she looked at the photos depicting the results of torture by acid, knives, hammers, and other terrifying instruments.

  “You need to make peace with it, Ms. Fournier. Undoubtedly your looks have served you very well in life. Shortly, you will become a monster and will have no choice but to hide your face from the world. I’m going to remove the tape from your mouth. Please choose your method.”

  The moment Harvath pulled off the tape, Fournier began to negotiate with him. “Please,” she begged. “Don’t do this. I have money. I will pay you. I also have girls; lots of beautiful girls. They can all be yours.”

  Harvath wasn’t finding her very attractive anymore.

  “I could tell you liked me back on the road. I like you too. I can be yours if you want me.”

  “I don’t want you,” he said. “I want payback for the man you tried to kill.”

  “But I didn’t try to kill anyone!”

  He smiled. “Yes, you did. Maybe not directly, but you used his trust in you, his loyalty, to place an assassin in his bed.”

  A flash of recognition raced across Fournier’s face. It only lasted for a fraction of a second before it was gone. Harvath had seen it. It was called a microexpression and he had been taught to spot them years ago by the Secret Service.

  “You know who I’m talking about, don’t you?”

  “No,” she replied, and the tell was visible again.

  “Ms. Fournier, I have lunch in Nice and a flight back to Paris. Choose or I will choose for you,” he said, tapping the table with the edge of his knife.

  “You don’t want money. You don’t want sex,” she sobbed. “What do you want?”

  Harvath looked at her. “I told you, I want revenge. Revenge for the man you disfigured.”

  “I had no choice!” she stated. “Besides, how was I supposed to know she would try to kill him?”

  “Ms. Fournier, I’m giving you thirty seconds to choose.”

  “I was forced to take her. I was told not to place her in the general catalog; only the one that was made available to him.”

  Harvath walked several feet away and with his back to her asked, “Who are we talking about?”

  “The dwarf, of course. It’s the little man who sent you, isn’t it?”

  Harvath didn’t respond. “Who forced you?” he demanded as he turned back to face her.

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Fine. First we’ll use the acid and then I will go to work on you with the knife.”

  “No!” Fournier screamed. “No!”

  “Then tell me,” he shouted. “Tell me right now who forced you. I will not ask you again.”

  Fournier was silent and Harvath removed a bottle from his pocket and began unscrewing the top.

  “Leveque! Gaston Leveque!” she cried.

  “How did he force you?”

  “One of my girls had been involved in smuggling a substantial amount of drugs into France. He was going to implicate me. I would have lost everything.”

  She was lying. Harvath could see it in her face. “You’re not telling me the truth,” he said.

  Fournier hung her head and was quiet again. Finally, she said, “I have a child, a little boy. His name is David. He’s eight years old. He was in a private boarding school outside Paris.”

  “Was?”

  “Leveque found him and kidnapped him. He told me I would never see my boy again unless I did what he asked. He said if I told anyone he would kill me and David both.”

  Fournier then broke down sobbing.

  “Where is your son now?”

  “Back with my mother in Toulouse.”

  “And this Leveque?”

  Fournier tried to stop crying. “Antibes.”

  CHAPTER 20

  HOTEL DU CAP-EDEN-ROC

  ANTIBES

  The only thing Harvath disliked more than Russian Communists was the Russian mafia, and the Côte d’Azur was lousy with them. What once was a tasteful European summer playground was now choked with bulletproof Hummers, women overinjected with silicone, and men wearing so much gold jewelry that no matter what direction they faced when sitting down in the cafés, they always ended up pointing magnetic north.

  They were as gaudy as the Saudis and had bought up much of this stretch of the French coast. Even the Russian president was rumored to have a villa here. They did what they pleased and even handled crime in their own special way. To wit, when the home of a rich Russian gangster had been burgled, he sent his own leg breakers in every direction to crack heads until they found the perpetrators.

  Once the Mafioso’s goods had been recovered, he loaded the two thieves into his helicopter, flew it out over the Mediterranean, and shoved them out. The French police never even lifted a finger.

  For years, the center of Russian gravity was the exclusive Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc. Its owners were more than happy to suck up the Russians’ ill-gotten gains, and once they found themselves to be the hotel of choice, they began ratcheting up their prices. Not only was it a license to print money, they found that the more expensive they were, the more popular they became
. As their clientele rarely used credit cards, they abolished their use at the hotel completely. Instead, armored cars came three times a day to carry away the money to the bank.

  Finally, a big-time Russian billionaire, with plenty of notorious connections to the Russian mob, made the owners an offer they couldn’t refuse, and the hotel was sold. A subtle sign that the economy was catching up even with the Russians came when the hotel quietly reinstituted credit cards.

  Despite the global economic hardships affecting the hotel’s clientele, it was still comfortably booked throughout the summer months. Harvath was less than ten minutes away when Nicholas called to inform him that he had finally managed a reservation.

  When he pulled the black Porsche Panamera Turbo he had rented in Cannes up to the hotel’s front doors, his $135,000 sports car was the least expensive vehicle by far. He counted three Maybach Landaulets, two Bugatti Veyrons, an SSC Ultimate Aero, a Leblanc Mirabeau, a Pagani Zonda Cinque Roadster, a Lamborghini Reventon, and a Koenigsegg CCXR. It was easily twenty million dollars of exotic cars right there. Knowing the Russians, they all probably belonged to one man.

  Harvath tipped the valet and followed the bellman inside. The lobby was full of fresh-cut flowers and potted palms. It was bright and elegantly furnished. Its high ceilings and soaring white columns bounced back the sunlight that streamed in through the porticos and open French doors. It wasn’t at all garish and Harvath put a check in the billionaire owner’s column for having the good sense not to mess with a good thing.

  After the front-desk clerk had checked him in, Harvath sent the bellman on to his room with his bag. He had a stop to make before going upstairs.

  Behind the concierge desk was an average-looking man of medium height and thin build in his late fifties. He had a long Gaelic nose upon which were perched a pair of trendy designer glasses. Affixed to his perfectly pressed uniform was the prestigious clefs d’or, or crossed keys of gold, marking him as a member of the top concierge society in the world. Beneath the clefs d’or was a name tag which read “Leveque.”

  “May I help you, sir?” the concierge asked as he saw Harvath approach.

  Harvath smiled. “I hope so,” he said, removing a stack of bills, counting off a thousand dollars, and sliding it across the counter to the man. “I’m going to need some dinner reservations while I’m here, and I also would like to charter a yacht.”

  “Absolutely, sir. Where would you like to eat?”

  It was all Harvath could do not to reach out and throttle the man right there. If only half of what Dominique Fournier had told him about Leveque was true, it would be too much. He was a fixer for the Russians. Whatever they wanted, he got for them: drugs, underage children for sex, you name it. Fournier used to arrange liaisons for the wealthy guests of the Hotel du Cap, but had stopped. She claimed the Russians drank too heavily and when they did they beat her girls mercilessly. Add to that the fact that Leveque trafficked in children for prostitution and Fournier had severed all ties with him—at least until he had orchestrated the kidnapping of her son.

  Harvath brought his mind back to the business at hand and answered the man’s question. “A colleague of mine is supposed to e-mail me some suggestions. Can I get back to you on that?”

  “Certainly,” said Leveque. “What about your yacht charter? If you can tell me which day you would like to go out, how many people, how long you’d like to go, and what kind of a vessel you are interested in, I can get started on that right away.”

  “I’d like to go tomorrow for a half day. There will just be four of us, and I’d like to have lunch served. As far as the vessel, I’d like a motor yacht at least seventy meters in length. Oh, and we’d like to swim.”

  “Of course. Tomorrow should be a beautiful day for swimming. I’ll get started right away on this for you.”

  Harvath gave Leveque his room number and headed upstairs. After tipping the bellman, he put the stopper in the tub, turned on the tap, and called room service.

  Fifteen minutes later a waiter knocked on the door and was shown in. Harvath tipped him and told him he could leave the table on wheels in the middle of the room.

  Next, he called down to the valet and asked to have his car brought around. He then began filling the tub the rest of the way with the ice the waiter had brought.

  He tossed the buckets into the closet, moved the table out of the way and, once everything else was ready, called down to Leveque. The concierge was only too happy to personally bring Harvath an Ethernet cable for his laptop and help him retrieve the e-mail his colleague had sent with restaurant suggestions in Antibes.

  When Leveque’s knock fell upon his door, Harvath was ready. He opened it with a smile and showed the concierge in. Once the door had closed behind him, Harvath sprang.

  The punch took the Frenchman completely by surprise and he staggered backward, knocking over a lamp and hitting his head on the coffee table as he fell to the floor.

  Grabbing him by the back of his collar, Harvath dragged him into the bathroom and dropped him next to the tub. He wrapped one hand around the concierge’s throat and used the other to pull the Glock from underneath his shirt.

  “Make one noise and I will kill you. Do you understand me?” he asked, the barrel of the weapon pressed against Leveque’s head.

  The man nodded slowly, the terror evident in his eyes.

  “Good,” replied Harvath. He pulled the pistol away and then slammed it into the side of his face, breaking the man’s jaw. “That was for Dominique Fournier’s son.”

  Leveque wanted to cry out in pain, but Harvath squeezed his throat so hard no sound was able to escape. “Now we’re going to go ice fishing. Let me know if you see anything.”

  With that, Harvath raised the concierge up and over the side of the tub backward so that his head went into the water upside down.

  Filling the tub with ice and submerging the victim in this fashion intensified the psychological trauma. A spinoff of waterboarding, it was known colloquially as iceboarding and was based on a concept called “cold calorics” that could manipulate and irritate brainstem reflexes.

  The sensation of being drowned was bad enough, but the layer of ice and the intense cold of the water compounded the experience. It also succeeded in better muffling any screams the victim might make. The only drawback was that if you weren’t wearing gloves, which Harvath wasn’t, your hand got cold very quickly.

  Leveque’s legs thrashed wildly and Harvath brought the butt of his pistol down hard into the man’s crotch before pulling his torso back out.

  The concierge vomited out both his mouth and nose and Harvath shoved him back over the side of the tub and under the water once more.

  The thrashing started all over again and Harvath held him under for what must have seemed like an eternity to Leveque.

  Finally, he pulled him out of the water again and asked one question. “Who hired you to kidnap Dominique Fournier’s son?”

  “I don’t understand what you are talking about.”

  “Wrong answer,” said Harvath as he plunged the man back into the water. This time he let Leveque stay down a long time.

  The Frenchman flailed wildly until Harvath pulled him back up. Once out, he vomited again and his body heaved for air.

  “Listen to me, Leveque,” said Harvath. “Scumbags who target children don’t deserve to live. I want to kill you so bad I can taste it. The only way you’re going to walk out of this bathroom alive is if you tell me who hired you to kidnap Dominique Fournier’s son right now.

  “As a matter of fact, screw that,” he added as he tipped the man backward again. “I’m going to give you some more time underwater to think about it.”

  “No,” croaked the concierge. “Please. His name is Tony Tsui.”

  “I’ve never heard of him. Who was the girl you forced Fournier to place inside her operation?”

  “Tony set all that up. I was just a middleman.”

  Harvath had figured as much. “What was her n
ame?”

  “I don’t know. I was just the go-between. Tony handled everything. I just passed the information to Dominique.”

  Harvath was about to ask another question when he felt the cell phone he was carrying vibrate. It was one of the clean SIM card phones from the safe house in Madrid, the one he was using to communicate with Nicholas.

  “I’ve got a name,” he said as he connected the call and raised the phone to his ear.

  “You’ve got to get out of there,” said the Troll. “I just learned the entire hotel is wired. The new owner is a blackmailer. He’s got mics and cameras in every room.”

  “But I swept the room when I got in,” said Harvath.

  “As does every guest who knows even a little bit about security. This is all new equipment they’re using. You’ve been blown. There is a security team about to kick down your door. Get out of there now!”

  CHAPTER 21

  Harvath heard the soft click of his door being opened and tightened his grip around Leveque’s throat. Quietly, he pulled the concierge to his feet. He then got behind him and, placing his pistol in the small of the man’s back, clamped his left hand down around Leveque’s mouth.

  If the luxurious lobby was an indication of the “money is no object” approach of the hotel’s billionaire owner, Harvath had to assume his security team was going to be top-notch as well. Any hope that they might be nothing more than sides of beef in dark suits was dashed when they chose to enter his room quietly instead of breaking down the door.

  Harvath assumed the men now entering his room were very well trained, either former FSB operatives, or Spetsnaz—Russian special operations soldiers.

  He had his answer the minute they stepped all the way into his room. Their weapons were drawn, but they weren’t in any tactical formation. At worst, these were FSB. At best, they actually were slabs of beef in dark suits. In the end, it didn’t matter. Harvath was the only person with any cover. Whether he’d agree or not, the concierge was earning his $1,000 tip.