by Brad Thor
Harvath took one look at the intense damage to her skull and knew there was no way she could be alive, but he reached down and checked for a pulse anyway. The body was still warm—too warm, especially considering the massive loss of blood. Whoever had killed her had done so very recently, maybe even as Harvath was in the final stages of breaking in. He didn’t like the thought that they might have been able to do something to save her, but there was no way they could have known what was going on while they were busy punching through the wall.
The other thing Harvath didn’t like was that they might have interrupted the killer midway through his work. He swept the flashlight in a slow arc around the room. There were very few places a person could hide, but he wanted to make sure they were absolutely alone.
Understandably, Jillian was extremely frightened and stayed as close to Harvath as possible. “What is it?” she asked as he lit up the different corners of the room.
“Nothing. I just wanted to make sure we were alone.”
“Who do you think did this to her?”
“I have no idea,” replied Harvath, “but—” Harvath stopped mid-sentence as he focused the beam of his flashlight on Davidson’s desktop computer and then responded, “Goddamn it!”
“What is it?” she asked, carefully stepping around the body to see what Harvath was so angry about.
“Whoever killed her was concerned enough about what was on her computer to crack the tower and burn everything inside before leaving. “Now he knew where the burned plastic smell had come from. Davidson’s blood had turned out to be the other odor.
Jillian looked at the computer’s blackened and melted circuitry. “How do you create a fire that burns something that bad without setting off the smoke alarms?”
“You need a type of fire that burns with very little smoke—a real hot one. Whoever did this must have had some sort of a handheld blow torch or soldering iron with him.”
“So much for this being a spur-of-the-moment crime of passion,” said Jillian.
Harvath couldn’t argue with her. Whoever did this had come prepared. And, as he had just pointed out, there must have been something on Molly Davidson’s computer that they were desperate to erase.
“What do we do now?” asked Jillian.
“I don’t know, “He responded as he looked at his watch and realized it was nearing four o’clock in the morning. There had to be something. They were already in the building. Sotheby’s had to have another copy of the information somewhere, but where? Think, he told himself. The hard part is over—we’re already inside. Where would Davidson have kept backups of her files? Was there a central server in the building? Did they have hard copies in a file room somewhere? Harvath laughed at that idea. If Sotheby’s did have a file storage area, there was no telling how big it would be. With all of the transactions they did in Paris each year, the room would be enormous. It could take up an entire floor. It could even comprise a completely different building. Not only were they searching for a needle, they had no idea where the haystack was.
Then, something hit him. “Didn’t Davidson say she worked from home sometimes when she needed peace and quiet?”
“Yes. She most likely had copies there of everything she was working on. I often do the same thing.”
“So do I,” replied Harvath as he opened one of Davidson’s desk drawers. “She must have carried a purse, or a wallet or something that might have her address in it.”
After several moments of looking, it was Jillian who found the purse inside a tiny cabinet beneath the small sink in the corner. “Got it,” she said, pulling it out so Harvath could see it.
“Good job.”
Jillian cleared a spot on the nearest workbench, and while Harvath held the flashlight for her, she turned the purse upside down and emptied its contents. Among an assortment of useless items were a wallet, cell phone, and set of keys. Immediately, her attention was drawn to a Swiss Army knife, just three inches long, hanging from the key ring.
“What is that?” asked Harvath as Jillian extended a rectangular piece of metal-tipped plastic from beneath one of the blades.
“It’s a compact flash memory stick,” she replied. “It’s like a portable hard drive or storage device. I use the same thing to transport files between my computer at work and the one I have at home. Dr. Davidson must have been doing the same thing.”
“That might be exactly what we’re looking for,” said Harvath as another flash of lightning exploded.
Jillian, who was standing near the windows, suddenly saw a figure dressed completely in black, perched on the sloped roof and staring through the glass at them. But before she could scream, Khalid Alomari raised his pistol and fired.
THIRTY-FOUR
W hen the window exploded in a hail of razor-sharp glass, Harvath was already in motion. Leaping across the large table covered with artifacts, he knocked Jillian to the ground and drew the .40-caliber H&K USP Compact he was carrying at the small of his back. Raising himself up onto one knee, Harvath prepared to fire, but was forced to hit the deck when Khalid Alomari raked the room with another fusillade. A screeching, high-pitched siren soon joined the sound of gunfire. The shattered window had triggered the alarm system. Harvath could almost hear the heavy boots of Sotheby’s well-armed guards pounding their way up the stairs at that very moment. That was all he needed. He had no desire to dance with those guys again. They had to get out of there—now.
Rolling to his right, Harvath pounded the area around the window frame with six rounds from his H&K. Turning back to where Jillian lay, he said, “When I count to three, I want you to take off running for the hole in the wall. Stay low and don’t stop for anything.”
“I don’t think I can move,” she wheezed as her breath came in short gasps. Her hands were trembling and her eyes were wide with fear. Seeing Molly Davidson’s body and now this, it was all too much and had resulted in classic adrenaline dump. Her fight-or-flight mechanisms were overloaded and she was completely paralyzed. Harvath needed to get her focused on moving.
Handing her the keys to the van, he said, “I’m going to hold him off while you run. I want you to take the van and go back to the hotel and wait for me. Got it?”
Alcott nodded her head.
“Good. I’m going to count to three. Are you ready?”
“Wait,” she said, scared and trying to stall. “What about you?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll meet you there. Here we go. One. Two. Three!”
Harvath let loose with another volley of six shots while Jillian ran for the far end of the office. When Harvath had fired his final shot, he ejected the spent magazine and inserted a fresh one. He put seven additional rounds through the eaves above, hoping to get lucky and nail Alomari outside on the sloped roof, but there was no way to be sure. All he knew was that he was no longer returning fire. Either Harvath had gotten lucky or Alomari was on the run. Like it or not, Harvath knew he had to go after him.
Grabbing a stool from one of the workbenches, he knocked the remaining pieces of glass from the windowpane as the sound of Sotheby’s security guards racing down the hallway could be heard. Reaching for the best handhold he could, Harvath pulled himself up and out of the window.
The fierce rain was being driven horizontally by the wind, and it tore at him like sheets of nails. It was all Harvath could do to hang on. The sloped roof was slick with rain and an accumulation of Paris grime. Realizing he was going to need both hands, Harvath reluctantly tucked the H&K back into the holster at the small of his back, sucked up the pain from his ribs, and scrambled upward.
As he reached the top of the roof, the parapet exploded in a hail of gunfire and Harvath lost his grip. He came sliding downward on the slimy tiles, grabbing frantically for any sort of handhold he could find. Clawing at the sloped surface, he was finally able to stop his precipitous slide.
Harvath struggled his way back up the roof. When he arrived beneath the parapet, he steadied himself and drew his pistol
. He grabbed hold of the ledge and swung himself up and over the top. Rolling along the flat surface, he took cover behind a large stone chimney. He listened for any sign of Alomari, but all he could hear was the raging of the storm. Taking a deep breath, he tightened his grip around the pistol and sprang from his hiding place.
All of the roofs of the block’s buildings were connected, and through the driving rain, Harvath could make out the silhouette of Alomari no more than fifty yards away. With no civilians this time blocking his line of fire, Harvath didn’t hesitate. He pulled the trigger five times in quick succession and on the last round saw Alomari spin, as if he’d been hit in the back, and go down.
Harvath began to advance, ready to finish the job, when he heard voices behind him. The Sotheby’s security guards were scaling the roof, and there were the sounds of police sirens closing in on the street below. He had no choice. Though he didn’t like it, he had to get out of there. Spotting what looked like an access door two rooftops over, he took off at a sprint.
THIRTY-FIVE
W ASHINGTON , DC
G rowing up in South Philly, one thing Neal Monroe was not was a punk. He had learned early on to mind his own business and never anyone else’s. At the same time, his grandmother had brought him up as a good Christian and someone who knew the difference between right and wrong. And what his boss, Senator Carmichael, was doing was wrong. There were no two ways about it. That was why he had put the call in to Charles Anderson, tipping him off that Carmichael was on Scot Harvath’s trail. While Monroe didn’t know Harvath personally, he had learned enough about him over the past three days to know he didn’t deserve what the senator was preparing to do to him, all in her pursuit of the White House.
Contacting the president’s chief of staff, especially when he was of the opposing party, was tantamount to committing political suicide, but Neal Monroe didn’t care. He had come to Washington for one thing—to make his country a better place—and promised himself that no matter what, he would always do the right thing. If Carmichael knew what he was doing, there was no question she’d fire him. There was also no question that he probably would never find another job in DC either, but at least his conscience would be clear.
As an African American, Monroe liked to joke with the other two minority staffers in the senator’s office—a young Asian woman named Tanya, and George, a Hispanic guy who grew up in Neal’s neighbor-hood—that they formed the perfect little Rainbow Coalition right there in Carmichael’s office, demonstrating how worldly and open-minded she thought she was. Though the senator didn’t intentionally mean to be patronizing, she always was whenever she asked them how “their people” might feel about a specific issue or piece of legislation she was working on. Tanya was so removed from her Asian heritage that she was the first one to ask for a fork every time they ordered Chinese, and though George put on a good show of being of Mexican descent, he couldn’t speak a word of Spanish.
The bottom line was that Carmichael only saw what she wanted to see, and in slow-roasting Scot Harvath over an open flame, she saw her ticket to the White House. Maybe it was that his distaste for his boss had been simmering for so long that it was bound to bubble over onto the stove at some point; maybe it was because he had put himself through college on the GI bill and saw Harvath as a fellow soldier; or maybe it was just the Christian thing to do, but however you cut it, Neal Monroe didn’t care if he lost his job or not. At the end of the day, he wanted no regrets.
Once he had called Rutledge’s chief of staff, Neal felt totally absolved of any further responsibility. But all of that changed when he discovered how the senator was getting her information.
Now, as he walked through the Discovery Creek Children’s Museum, he thought about what he was going to say to the man Charles Anderson had sent to talk with him. Standing near a small placard that illustrated how trees grow, Monroe spotted his contact. “They didn’t have any of this in the neighborhood I grew up in,” said Monroe as the man joined him.
“In my neighborhood, we didn’t even have trees,” replied Gary Lawlor.
Monroe offered the man his hand, and Gary shook it. “You’re a brave guy, Neal. You know that?”
“Why? Because I’m airing the senator’s dirty laundry?”
“If what you told Chuck is true, her laundry is well beyond dirty.”
“Suffice it to say that I don’t like the way she’s conducting the people’s business.”
A group of children was approaching, and so Lawlor suggested they take a walk. As they did, he looked around and said, “I’ve had clandestine meetings in a lot of interesting places over the years, but this is certainly one of the most unique. Why’d you pick it?”
“I knew it was the one spot where we’d never bump into Helen. The senator hates kids.”
“But I thought she had a daughter,” replied Lawlor.
“That’s a neighbor’s kid. They just rent her for photo ops.”
Gary laughed. “So what have you got? Chuck mentioned you’re pretty confident you know where Senator Carmichael is getting her information.”
Neal nodded his head. “I knew it was coming from one of the intelligence agencies. I just didn’t know which one. Until this morning that is.”
Lawlor couldn’t believe it. “You know who’s feeding her the information?”
“No. I only know where it’s coming from, not who’s behind it.”
“That’s still a start,” said Gary. “What’s the source?”
“Langley, Virginia. The Central Intelligence Agency.”
THIRTY-SIX
P ARIS
H arvath and Alcott found a small, twenty-four-hour Internet café a few blocks away and ordered two mugs of coffee. Except for a couple of backpackers waiting for an early morning train, the place was deserted. Harvath chose a computer in the back, sat down, and got on line. The first thing he did was log on to the public bulletin board site he used to covertly communicate with Gary Lawlor. He left a brief, coded summary of what had happened so far and then plugged in Davidson’s flash drive and began scrolling through her files. It took over twenty minutes of searching, but when he finally found the record of Sotheby’s mysterious client, he knew it couldn’t be a coincidence. There were two names, one of which he recognized and another which he didn’t. The name he did recognize, Elliot Burnham, was one of the aliases Harvath had uncovered during his investigation of none other than ex-Secret Service agent Timothy Rayburn.
His address was listed as being in care of a hotel called the Carré de l’Ours, or the Skin of the Bear, somewhere in southeastern France. Harvath had never heard of the village before and had to look it up online. Once he found it, he also pulled up the SNCF web site and began scanning timetables for the next high-speed TGV train to Nice. He knew driving the distance would take way too long, and the last thing he wanted to do was hassle with airport security. At least traveling by train, he’d be able to quietly carry his gun along with him. In Nice, they could rent a car and drive north into the Alps for the rest of the trip to the village of Ristolas.
After they gathered their belongings and checked out of the hotel, they took a cab across town to the Gare de Lyon. Once their train was safely outside of Paris and well on its way to the south of France, Harvath finally felt comfortable enough to close his eyes and get a few hours’ sleep.
In Nice, they used Harvath’s Sam Guerin credentials to rent the last car the agency had available, a midnight blue Mercedes. It was well into the evening by the time they pulled across the old wooden bridge and into the tiny village of Ristolas. The three-story, barnlike Alpine hotel known as the Skin of the Bear was located just off the main street. A series of low stone walls surrounded the building and looked as if they might have once been used for grazing livestock. They parked their rental in the driveway and climbed the wooden steps to the hotel’s ornately carved front doors.
A large stone fireplace with books covering its mantelpiece anchored the deserted reception area inside.
One book in particular caught Harvath’s attention, and he walked immediately over to it and took it down. It was an autographed first edition of John Prevas’s Hannibal Crosses the Alps. Harvath held it up for Jillian to see. She looked at it for a moment and then went back to studying the many photographs that covered the reception area’s walls. They appeared to be of different climbers who must have used the hotel as a base camp over the years. In each one, there was a big bear of a man whom Jillian assumed was the hotel’s owner as well as a mountain guide.
Harvath had come over to join her and was hoping to spot Rayburn in one of the photos, when a petite, gray-haired woman of about sixty, her face as craggy as the mountains in the photos, emerged from the kitchen and said, “Bon soir. Puis-je vous aider?”
“Bon soir,” replied Harvath. “Avez-vous une chambre?”
Wearing a white, lace-trimmed apron over a loose-fitting peasant’s smock, the experienced hotelier recognized Harvath’s accent and replied in perfect English, “You’re American.”
“Yes.”
“And British,” added Jillian.
“You’re on your honeymoon,” said the woman, raising her eyebrows conspiratorially. “I can always tell.”
For some reason, people often came to that conclusion when they saw Harvath with an attractive woman. He had no idea why. He figured he must have had a look about him that suggested he was perfect marriage material. He had learned the hard way, though, that at this point in his life, marriage or any kind of reasonable relationship was not in the cards for him. “No, we’re not here on our honeymoon. We came to climb. We’ve heard very good things about your hotel.”
“Really?” said the woman as she looked at the ground and smoothed the creases of her apron. “We don’t get many guests here anymore. Not since Bernard has gone.”
“Was Bernard your husband?” asked Jillian as she turned toward the photographs. “Is he the one I see in all of these?”