by Brad Thor
CHAPTER 6
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM
In Budapest, the CIA had a gray Mercedes waiting for them at the dock. Lara was going to the Four Seasons. Harvath was going to the airport. They were both exhausted.
Neither had wanted to face the raw emotion of their separation. It had been easier to let two bottles of champagne dull as much of it as possible, and they’d had one final, wild night.
They were a great couple—smart, passionate, and electric together. The fact that they couldn’t figure out how to make something so good work in the same city was crazy.
When it came time for the actual goodbye, Lara gave him one of the best kisses he’d ever had. Long, slow, sexy. Then she got out of the car, grabbed her bag from the trunk, and walked into the hotel.
Harvath sat in the backseat and stared at the polished glass doors. What the hell just happened, he wondered. It was like all the oxygen was just sucked out his lungs. Did I really let her walk?
Several moments passed as he sat there and tried to sort it all out. His driver finally interrupted his thoughts. “Are we ready to head to the airport, sir?”
The short answer was no. He wasn’t ready to head to the airport. He wanted to chase Lara up to her room, lock the door, and pretend he hadn’t said yes to Brussels. But he couldn’t do that. He had given his word.
Harvath usually enjoyed traveling by private jet, especially on something as luxurious as a Dassault Falcon 5X. But even its dramatic skylight failed to impress him today.
He mixed salt, sugar, and ground aspirin into a tall glass of tomato juice over ice. It tasted horrible.
After downing another, he stretched out on the white leather couch with a large bottle of water.
The CIA used an encrypted app that only allowed him to watch the Anbar video and view the image files once. It was more than enough.
ISIS was an Islamic death cult trying to usher in an apocalypse. The larger they grew, the more depraved they became.
Their ultimate goal was to meet the infidel in Dabiq, a tiny village in northern Syria. After a decisive ground battle, the Muslim messiah would return. Or so the ancient prophecy went. Harvath was willing to bet that the prophet Mohammed had never envisioned nuclear weapons.
If it were up to Harvath, he’d let the nukes fly. After dropping leaflets warning residents to flee, he’d flatten Dabiq and then Raqqa, the ISIS capital. There’d be no ground battle. There’d only be fields of glass. The ISIS savages were not worth another drop of American blood.
But it wasn’t up to Harvath. It was up to the President of the United States, who, for the moment, had a different plan.
He wanted to know how the SAD team in Iraq had come under attack. How had ISIS known they were there?
Harvath had gathered the intelligence for the operation. He was the one who had identified and pinpointed the high value ISIS target. The information had come from his contacts. Now thirteen Americans were dead.
The CIA had launched an immediate investigation. They learned that Ashleigh Foster had been in a relationship with one of the SAD team members. She had convinced two girlfriends from the Embassy to join her for the weekend and party at the safe house. Phone records, texts, and emails all backed it up. It was a case of extremely bad judgment across the board. The ISIS attack, though, was another matter.
The jihadists had come ready for the fight. They had not only overwhelmed the SAD team but had also downed two CIA helicopters. They knew exactly what they were up against. They’d even brought a video crew. Had they known the women were going to be there too?
All of this was what Harvath had been tasked with figuring out. And square one was in Brussels.
• • •
The city was more than twenty-five percent Muslim, and its most concentrated Islamic neighborhood was Molenbeek. Sitting on the wrong side of the canal, it boasted more than two dozen mosques.
It also boasted one of Harvath’s best contacts—a contact who had suddenly gone dark.
Either Salah Abaaoud was in trouble, or Harvath had been double-crossed.
If he’d been double-crossed, there wasn’t a hole deep enough for Salah to hide in. Harvath would find him. It was what he did.
Salah was a doctor with a storefront practice. Everyone in Molenbeek knew him. He was the unofficial mayor of the neighborhood. He settled disputes, helped new Muslim immigrants navigate the Belgian welfare system, pulled bad teeth, and even arranged marriages.
He was a generous contributor to local mosques and charities, drove a bright red BMW, and always had tickets to the best sporting matches.
By all outward appearances, Dr. Salah Abaaoud was a successful man. No one in the neighborhood had any clue about his criminal past. Even the Belgian government was in the dark.
Back in the Middle East, Salah had made a fortune as a smuggler. Leveraging his position as a doctor, he had exploited Red Crescent, UN and a host of other medical relief missions and convoys. He smuggled everything, from stolen antiquities, drugs, and weapons, to people. It was the weapons, though, that had gotten him caught.
At one point, he was moving a crate of stolen missiles from Morocco to Lebanon. Harvath had been tracking the cell behind the theft. One piece of information led to another until Harvath ended up on Salah’s doorstep. The only thing that had saved the doctor’s life was his willingness to cooperate.
With all his connections, Salah was in a position to know things. He had an impressive network, and Harvath wanted it.
Salah agreed to a generous monthly stipend and was allowed to continue breathing. Allah had doubly blessed him.
Harvath assigned him the code name Sidewinder, after the missiles Salah had been caught smuggling. But as time wore on, he realized the actual rattlesnake was an even better fit. Salah’s blood was cold, he made a lot of noise when he was upset, and he could strike without warning. The man required delicate handling.
Right now, though, Harvath wasn’t in the mood to be delicate. Thirteen Americans were dead. Ten of them had been operating on intelligence he had gathered. The other three had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. None of them, though, would have been there if it wasn’t for him. That was a fact, and it weighed on him. He tried to put it out of his mind as he hunted for Salah.
The first place he checked was the man’s house, but there was no sign of him or his red BMW. Next was the clinic.
It was locked up tight. Through the window, Harvath could see a stack of mail piled up on the floor. Had Salah skipped town? Had he fled the country? Harvath’s concerns over being double-crossed began to rise. There was only one other place he could think to look for him.
Salah’s piety had a limit. It ended right at his erogenous zone. He kept a love nest, along with a well-stocked liquor cart, in the fashionable Saint-Gilles neighborhood. Harvath had followed him there once. The apartment was located just off the Avenue Louise.
If the true measure of a person’s character was what they did when no one was watching, Dr. Salah Abaaoud would have scandalized the Muslims of Brussels. In addition to being a semiprofessional alcoholic, he was screwing the very attractive, very much younger, and very married nurse from his clinic, Aisha.
Harvath stood outside the door and listened. What was he expecting to hear? Sex? Even a man as gluttonous as Salah wouldn’t disappear for days on a bender. He was too careful. He had too much invested in his public image. Not so much, though, that it stopped him from screwing or drinking. He had simply gotten used to a certain level of risk.
Harvath could hear something coming from inside. It sounded like screaming, but it definitely wasn’t sex. A soccer game?
He twisted the knob of the brass bell in the center of the door and waited. The last time he had walked in on Salah, he had gotten more than an eyeful. Full frontal of any man, much less that fat and that hairy, was something he never needed to s
ee again.
No one came to the door.
After waiting a few more moments, he removed a credit card–sized piece of steel from his pocket. Lockpick tools had been carved into it with a laser. All he had to do was pop out the ones he needed.
Studying the lock, he was in the process of selecting a pick when he decided to try the handle.
The door was unlocked. Salah never left anything unlocked.
Pushing the door open, he could see all the way into the apartment without stepping inside.
Someone had been here. And they had created their own Rembrandt.
CHAPTER 7
There was no sign of a struggle. No torture. Salah sat on the couch in a gold and purple robe with his head tipped back. A corona of blood was splattered on the wall behind him. On the table was a highball, half-filled with what was probably his favorite bourbon. The TV was on. Probably had been for days.
Harvath stepped inside and closed the door. The scent of tea and spices was overpowered by the odor of death. He needed to make this quick.
Standing in the vestibule, he took everything in. The hit looked professional. Salah had been shot once in the head.
As no one had called the police, the killer had probably used a suppressed weapon. That ruled out Aisha’s husband and an act of passion.
Making his way into the master bedroom, Harvath noticed an unmade bed, Salah’s clothes over the back of a chair, and a woman’s clothes draped across a chaise near the window. Faint light glowed from the bathroom. Harvath had a bad feeling about what he was going to find inside.
Moving over to the door, he nudged it open. Aisha lay naked and dead in the tub. Someone had shot her once in the head, just like Salah. The tiles behind her were bright red with her blood, the bathwater a deep rose.
Stepping out of the bathroom, Harvath walked back through the apartment.
It was definitely a professional hit. Nothing appeared to have been stolen. Salah still wore his gold Rolex Daytona, the two Chagalls still hung in the living room, and all the jewelry he had purchased for Aisha, which she could never bring home, sat in a red velvet box on her dressing table.
The killer was not only professional but disciplined. This ruled out most, if not all, of the underworld and jihadist figures Salah conducted business with.
If any of them had had a beef with the smuggler, Harvath would have heard about it. Salah frequently abused their relationship in order to settle his business disputes. He knew there were certain clients that the United States would gladly take out for him.
In fact, the CIA sometimes scrawled AGFSA on the missiles its drones used for such assignments—A Gift From Salah Abaaoud.
Salah’s success rate in identifying and locating terrorist targets was why the CIA had taken his recent ISIS intel so seriously.
But now look at him, Harvath thought as he examined the body. He had definitely been here a couple of days.
So if it wasn’t a jealous husband, or a disgruntled business associate, who killed him?
The professionalism of the hit made it look like a state sponsor, carried out by some country’s intelligence service.
Harvath immediately ruled out any services allied with the United States. He had flagged Salah across the board. If MI6, the Mossad, or anyone like that had wanted him, it should have been brought to his attention.
Could it have been a Middle Eastern nation like Morocco, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia? Possibly, but they were pretty bad at projecting force much beyond their own borders. And if it were one of them, why would they expend that kind of effort over Salah? It didn’t make sense.
There were a lot more questions coming to his mind than answers. One thing, though, was certain. Salah was proving just as much a pain in the ass dead as he had been alive.
Harvath continued to carefully move through the apartment as he looked for clues. The last thing he wanted was to leave anything that would tie him to the scene. He wanted Belgian authorities focused on catching the real killer.
And whoever that was, he had chosen to splash Salah here, rather than at his home or his clinic. Why?
Based on the evidence, it looked like he had caught Salah by surprise. Having just had sex, he was watching TV and enjoying a drink, while his mistress took a bath. The assassin appeared to have only one goal—to kill him right where he found him.
But if that was the case, why not then turn and leave? Why walk back to the bathroom and kill Aisha? Time.
If he had just turned and left, it wouldn’t have taken Aisha long to find Salah’s body. Would she, the unfaithful wife, have called police? Maybe. Would she have screamed and drawn the attention of neighbors? It was possible, and a professional would have taken it all into consideration.
This was particularly true of someone who needed to get out of the country. The more time he had before the police even knew he was there, the better his chances, especially if he was leaving by plane or rail.
Pulling out his phone, Harvath took pictures of everything. GeoTagging the location, he transmitted the images back to his team in the United States. He included a message with it for his IT expert, Nicholas.
Known to global intelligence services as “The Troll,” Nicholas suffered from a condition known as primordial dwarfism. Though he stood less than three feet high, Nicholas was a digital savant who had built a name through the purchase, sale, and theft of highly sensitive black-market information.
He had made powerful enemies in his career. And though he had gone “straight,” his two enormous white Caucasian Ovcharka dogs were always at his side, just in case.
Professional job, Harvath’s message read. Possible foreign intel service. Pull surrounding CCTV footage. See if you can track the hitter.
Returning to the bedroom, Harvath removed the keys from Salah’s trousers and exited the apartment.
• • •
By the time he arrived back in Molenbeek, it was already dark and residents were at evening prayers. He decided to check Salah’s clinic first.
Unlocking the front door, he stepped over the pieces of mail and slipped inside. Salah’s personal office was in the back.
Harvath didn’t know what he was looking for. A professional hitter coming after Salah was one thing. A professional hitter coming after Salah, right on the heels of the attack in Anbar, was something entirely different.
Until he had reason to suspect otherwise, Harvath was going to consider the two events connected. You didn’t live very long in this line of work by believing in coincidences.
He made a quick pass of Salah’s office, but everything seemed to be in place. It didn’t look like anyone had been here at all.
Turning on the clinic computers, Harvath inserted a portable flash drive with a program that would allow Nicholas access. Once the program was uploaded, he removed the drive and headed for Salah’s house.
It was a bland, three-story brick structure. The ground floor, where Salah held meetings and received people from the neighborhood, was modestly decorated. The second and third stories were much more lavish.
The color scheme for these levels was similar to the robe Salah had been shot in—lots of purple and gold. Overstuffed couches sat on thick Persian carpets, accented by ornate chairs and heavy draperies. Paintings of plump, naked women and bowls of fruit adorned the walls. The musty air was laden with the sickly-sweet, overly perfumed smell of incense.
Harvath used his elbow to open a set of French windows and let in some air. Moving from room to room, he took note of what he saw.
Dirty breakfast dishes sat in the sink. A coffee cup rested on the windowsill in the bathroom. A three-day-old newspaper lay open on the dining room table. It didn’t look like anyone but Salah had been here since then.
Either the murder was revenge for something very far in Salah’s past, or he had been killed in order to keep him quiet.
Harvath was betting on quiet. But quiet about what?
There had to be something in the house that would tell him. Returning to the study, he opened Salah’s desk drawers and began going through his personal papers. Most of them were written in Arabic.
It was a language Harvath had some proficiency in speaking, but reading was all but out of the question. He was going to have to bag everything and get it to an Agency translator.
He was coming back from the bedroom with a pillowcase when he got a text on his phone.
Recognize this guy? the message from Nicholas asked. A photograph followed.
It showed a thin, almost feminine-looking young man with pale skin and blond hair that was nearly white. He wore a short sleeve dress shirt and a narrow black tie.
No. Who is he? Harvath typed back.
Within seconds, his phone vibrated. It was a call from Nicholas.
“His name is Sacha Baseyev,” the little man said from more than three thousand miles away, back in northern Virginia. “Two years ago, the FBI debriefed a Russian intelligence officer seeking political asylum. He came ready to play. Baseyev was on a list of names he gave up.”
“Why are we talking about him?”
“I’m getting there,” Nicholas replied. “You remember the Beslan School siege and the Moscow theater massacre?”
Harvath knew them well. They were huge mass-casualty events.
Beslan was a horrific three-day attack in which 1,100 people were taken hostage. Three hundred eighty-five were murdered, 186 of them children.
The attack on the Moscow theater resulted in 900 hostages, 170 of whom were killed.
They were textbook cases studied by America’s premier counter-terrorism and hostage rescue personnel.
“I remember,” said Harvath. “It was carried out by Islamic terrorists. Chechens. Is there some other nexus?”
“A Deputy Director of the GRU, Russia’s largest foreign intelligence service, lost his wife and daughter at the theater that night. After a long leave of absence, some believe to hunt terrorists in the Caucasus, he returned to the GRU and received permission to establish a new unit.”