The First Commandment: A Thriller

by Brad Thor

  When they entered the conference room, Tim Finney and Tom Morgan were waiting for them.

  “The weather’s almost cleared,” said Morgan as Harvath poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down. “We should be hearing from our friend shortly.”

  “How’s your mom doing?” asked Finney as he took the chair next to Harvath.

  “Awful.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. How about Tracy?”

  “No change,” he replied. Wanting to steer the questions away from his series of misfortunes, he posed one of his own. “Has that sawed-off little shit bag moved at all?”

  “Nope,” replied Parker as he stood in front of his laptop and took a sip of coffee.

  “Has anyone been out to the island to see him?”

  “Negative.”

  Harvath leaned back in his chair and massaged his face with his hands. “So we’re back to waiting.”

  Finney tapped his pen against the conference table. “Yep.”

  The screens around the room were all illuminated and showed the chat room with the last message from the Troll indicating that he had information for Harvath but that it would have to wait until the rain had passed.

  “How’s Alison look?” asked Parker, breaking the silence that had fallen upon the room. “Good?”

  Harvath smiled. No matter how luxurious the surroundings, lying in wait was still lying in wait, and cops as well as soldiers always talked about the same thing. “Yeah,” Harvath replied. “She looks very good.”

  “If I could convince her to move here full-time, maybe we could have something.”

  Finney snorted derisively. “And deprive all the resort’s female guests of your attention? Not on your life.”

  Parker laughed. “It doesn’t matter. San Diego is where her career is. She’s not going to leave that. Not even for me.”

  Harvath was going to respond when Tom Morgan snapped his fingers and pointed to one of the screens. The Troll was back.

  CHAPTER 29

  It seemed an odd request at first, but Harvath wasn’t the world’s fastest typist either, and Morgan had assured him that they wouldn’t be putting themselves at risk.

  With his headset on and a nod from Morgan that it was safe to proceed, Harvath said, “Okay, I’m here.”

  “Agent Harvath, how nice to hear your voice,” replied the Troll over their encrypted voice-chat link.

  “Yours too. It’s a lot deeper than I expected.”

  The Troll laughed. “All the better to prevent you from building an accurate voiceprint of me. That Echelon listening program your government has is quite good, you know.”

  Harvath tried to place the man’s accent. He spoke the Queen’s English with an exceptional British accent, but there was something beneath it. Czech, maybe? Or was it Russian? Harvath spoke passable Russian and knew many native Russian speakers. This man sounded more like he came from outside mother Russia proper. Perhaps Georgia.

  That fact notwithstanding, Harvath still had no desire to make small talk, so he got to the point. “Your last transmission said you had something for me. What is it?”

  “Through a couple of sources I still have access to, I was able to secure a list of names. Four, to be exact,” lied the Troll. “All released en masse from the U.S. naval detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.”

  “And why would I be interested in them?” asked Harvath.

  The Troll paused for effect and then said, “Because one of those men is the person you’re looking for.”

  Harvath looked at Finney, Parker, and Morgan, who were all quietly listening in on the exchange. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  The Troll laughed. “As it turns out, Agent Harvath, there is quite a bit your government is keeping from you. Quite a bit they do not wish for you, or anyone else, for that matter, to find out.”

  “Like what?” asked Harvath.

  “Like the fact that these four men released from Guantanamo were very nefarious characters. All of them bona fide terrorists with multiple confirmed kills against American soldiers, as well as intelligence operatives and private contractors.”

  A million questions raced through Harvath’s mind, not the least of which was why the hell four bona fide terrorists would have been released. It didn’t make any sense. “Your information must be off.”

  “I thought so too at first,” replied the Troll. “But there’s more. The four men had their blood tainted with a radioactive isotope shortly before they were released. It was part of a top-secret project your government uses occasionally to track operatives who are going into dangerous areas, as well as prisoners it wants to release back into the wild.”

  At that moment, a series of realizations began crashing down upon Harvath.

  “The only problem,” continued the Troll, “was that whoever sent the plane to pick the men up knew about the top-secret program. The aircraft had been outfitted with equipment capable of conducting full blood transfusions.”

  As Harvath tried to focus his mind, he asked, “How do you know all this?”

  “It was part of a report filed after your government lost track of these four men when the plane landed overseas. Containers with their tainted blood were taken in four different directions and discarded. They were eventually recovered by the Central Intelligence Agency.”

  “I still don’t see what this has to do with—”

  “The blood painted above your doorway,” interrupted the Troll with impatience, “it contained the same unique radioisotope used on the four men released from Guantanamo.”

  CHAPTER 30

  We don’t have much choice,” offered Finney, trying to be the voice of reason in the group. “If you say no, or if you miss his deadline, he’ll bolt. I know it.”

  “So what?” replied Parker. “If he runs, we’ll find him. It may take a while, but we’ll track him down eventually. Besides, he’s got zero bank balances across the board. Maybe he’s got some hard currency stashed here and there, but how long is that going to last him? Not long.”

  “And if he decides to use the money to take out a contract on Scot?”

  It was a scenario Parker had considered, but didn’t deem plausible. “Then he’d really be in trouble. If he killed Scot he’d never get his data or his money back.”

  “But he could start over,” said Finney. “Maybe he could even extort protection money from the four men on his list. He could offer to get rid of Harvath for them.”

  “He’d have to find them first, and based on what we’ve been told,” countered Parker, “that’s not something even the United States government has been able to do. Right?”

  Parker was speaking to him, but Harvath had only half heard him. His mind was still replaying the conversation he’d had with Gary Lawlor shortly after hanging up with the Troll.

  Everything the dwarf had told him made sense. He had been right about the radioisotope program and the fact that the blood over Harvath’s doorframe had been tainted with it. He had little reason to suspect the information about the men released from Guantanamo was anything but accurate as well.

  That was what really bothered him. If these four detainees were as bad as the Troll claimed, they never should have seen the light of day again. So why were they free? What possible reason could there have been for letting them go?

  This line of questioning led Harvath to something even more disturbing. These men could never have been released from Gitmo without the president’s knowledge. Suddenly, he knew why the president had wanted to sideline him. For some reason, Rutledge was protecting these men. But why?

  Protecting them made about as much sense as releasing them. Harvath shared his shock and disappointment at the president with Lawlor, but his boss had little sympathy for him. He reminded Harvath that he was under direct orders from Rutledge to back off and let the president and his people handle it. Lawlor then demanded that he come home.

  If anyone knew that there were times not to play by the rules, it was Lawlor.
His refusal to acknowledge that now was definitely one of those times not only pissed Harvath off, but left him feeling strangely abandoned.

  Parker snapped his fingers in front of Harvath’s face to get his attention. “Am I talking solely for my own benefit here?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry,” replied Harvath, bringing himself back to the present. “What were we talking about?”

  Parker rolled his eyes. “The Troll. Are we going to agree to his deal or not?”

  Harvath thought about it a moment and then replied, “I’m inclined to pay him.”

  “You gotta be kidding me,” moaned Parker as he threw his hands into the air. “Jesus, Harvath.”

  “Tim’s right. He knows better than to put a hit on me. If he does, he’ll never get back any of what we took from him.”

  “But—” attempted Parker.

  “And I know if anything does happen to me,” continued Harvath, “I’ve got two friends who will make sure he pays.”

  Finney looked over both of his shoulders trying to spot the friends Harvath was referring to, then exclaimed, “Oh! You mean us.”

  Harvath ignored them both and rattled off a list of instructions to Tom Morgan.

  Forty-five minutes later, the Troll posted his list of four names, along with their nationalities and some other info, to the private chat room. The list made no sense at all. The nationalities were all across the board. Harvath had no idea what they could possibly have in common, but it didn’t matter. He was convinced he had his man. It was the third entry on the list—Ronaldo Palmera, Mexico. Mexico was only a short boat ride from San Diego.

  Harvath typed the name on his computer and hit send.

  While the Troll went to work tracking down anything he could about the target, Parker and Morgan got started on their own research. Finney and Harvath were left alone to talk.

  “Any of the names ring a bell with you?” asked Finney.

  “No,” he replied.

  “Syria, Morocco, Australia, and Mexico? I don’t know about this. I think your pal the Troll is pulling our legs.”

  Harvath shook his head. “If he plays us, he’ll be the one who loses. He knows that.”

  “But what kind of a list is that? It sounds like a judging panel for an international figure-skating competition. We’re talking about four of the worst of the worst released from Gitmo.”

  “So?”

  “So, what’s the link? What do these guys have in common that they’d all be released at the same time? And who’d care enough about these assholes to send a plane to pick them up and change out their blood as part of the in-flight entertainment?”

  Harvath couldn’t argue with him. “Maybe Ronaldo Palmera will be able to tell us.”

  “Maybe,” replied Finney. “But first we’ll have to find him. Mexico is a big place.”

  “We’re talking about the guy who attacked my mother and almost killed Tracy,” replied Harvath. “I don’t care if we have to tear the whole country apart. He’s ours.”

  CHAPTER 31

  BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

  Since interviewing Tom Gosse, Baltimore Sun reporter Mark Sheppard hadn’t slept much. The first thing he had done was verify Gosse’s claims that his friend, State of Maryland Medical Examiner Frank Aposhian, and his girlfriend/investigator, Sally Rutherford, had actually been killed in a traffic accident. They had, but the circumstances around it weren’t as cut and dried as Gosse made them out to be.

  According to Gosse, Aposhian said that the night the supposed FBI agents had returned to his home, they had threatened him. They had told him to cease any further inquiries into the John Doe that had been removed from the ME’s office. Aposhian didn’t want any trouble and agreed not to ask any more questions. The problem, as it turned out, wasn’t with Aposhian asking questions, it was with his girlfriend, Rutherford.

  The woman smelled something funny and refused to throw in the towel. As far as she was concerned, there was nothing to compel her to obey a pair of fake FBI agents—no matter how convincing they were. What’s more, they had no idea she and Aposhian were an item. All they knew was that she was an investigator in the ME’s office and had run a set of prints for him. As long as she was careful, whoever these clowns were, they’d have no idea what she was up to.

  So Rutherford continued to dig. But what she found was far from comforting.

  She avoided contacting the police department in Charleston. Rutherford had already reached out to them once and couldn’t help but wonder if they had tipped off the men who had shown up at Frank’s apartment. Instead, she contacted the Charleston coroner’s office.

  Based on the backup copy of the ME file she’d made after Aposhian had been visited again by the so-called FBI agents, she had no doubt that her John Doe and the police shoot-out victim in Charleston were one and the same. What was different, though, was that her stiff had died from a drug overdose—not gunshot wounds.

  Deepening the mystery was the fact that an application for exhumation could not be filed for the corpse, as it had already been cremated. When asked who had authorized the cremation, the coroner’s office told her that they didn’t have that information and would have to get back to her.

  They never had the chance. Later that night, Rutherford and Aposhian were both killed when they ran a red light and were T-boned by another vehicle.

  The fight Gosse had overheard that day sprang from Aposhian’s telling Rutherford to just let the John Doe situation go. Rutherford had uncovered something on the internet, but Aposhian didn’t want to hear about it. He just wanted it all to go away. That was when she had stormed out of her office.

  That night at the funeral home, the assistant ME had turned down his friend’s offer of a second tumbler of Maker’s Mark and had called Rutherford on her cell phone. He said he felt terrible about their fight. He agreed to go pick her up, and that was the last time Tom Gosse ever saw him alive.

  Gosse was convinced that whoever wanted Aposhian to stop asking questions about the missing John Doe had somehow caused the fatal accident.

  Sheppard, though, wasn’t so sure. Using his network of contacts in the Baltimore PD, he spoke to all of the personnel involved in investigating Aposhian’s crash. None of them had any doubt that the accident was anything other than the assistant ME tragically running a red light. There was nothing wrong with the vehicle and Aposhian hadn’t been using his cell phone at the time of impact, but he did have a minor blood alcohol level—something Tom Gosse probably blamed himself for. But at the end of the day, the accident seemed to be Aposhian’s fault. As one of the officers put it, The poor guy simply fucked up.

  Be that as it may, Aposhian and Rutherford had both apparently been on to something when they were killed. Throw in a couple of shadowy figures posing as FBI agents and even the biggest cynic would have a hard time ignoring the possibility that some sort of conspiracy might be afoot.

  Why use a John Doe from Baltimore to fake a shoot-out with police in South Carolina?

  Sheppard found the beginning of an answer to the question in less than two minutes. Charleston was a small town, especially by metropolitan Baltimore standards, and even more helpful was the fact that their citizens didn’t often get into police shoot-outs.

  He was only halfway through the first newspaper article he’d pulled up on Google when he knew what his next move would be. Mark Sheppard was going to have to go to South Carolina.

  CHAPTER 32

  MEXICO

  It was a crappy little café in a crappy little Mexican town, but it had halfway decent sandwiches, cold beer, and, unbelievably, a high-speed internet connection.

  “Progress,” Philippe Roussard mumbled to himself as he wiped the lip of his bottle of Negro Modelo with his shirt and entered his password.

  The setup was quite simple and had been around for quite some time, but with all their technology the Americans had yet to find a way to crack it. Which was why it was perfect.

  Roussard and his handler shared a free
, web-based email account. Instead of posting cryptic messages on an electronic bulletin board, or risking being undone by sending emails back and forth, they simply left brief notes for each other in the account’s draft folder. As soon as the other read the message, it was deleted. No trail, no trace, and no chance of anyone monitoring their conversations.

  Roussard did what he had to do, logged off, and then dragged the cold bottle of beer across his forehead. What a country, he thought to himself. High-speed internet, but no air-conditioning.

  The bottle felt good across his face and along the back of his neck. Earlier this morning he had stopped for gas, found the men’s room, and shaved. It was one habit he practiced religiously each day. He could thank his mother for his dark features. Stubble only made it worse. While some had told him over the years he looked Italian, that wasn’t how the majority of the world saw him. Roussard couldn’t escape his breeding. He looked like what he was—a Palestinian.

  For all diplomatic intents and purposes, he was French. He spoke the language and carried a French passport. He even harbored a strong dislike of Americans, which meant he fit in perfectly when he was in France. But the reality of the situation was that he hadn’t been there for years. The war in Iraq had kept him quite busy.

  Being Juba, being everywhere and nowhere, striking down Western imperialist soldiers one by one with a crack from his rifle was an all-consuming affair. Then he had gotten caught.

  Between intensive interrogations, Roussard had had time to think—lots of it. And in that time, certain things had become clear to him. America’s time was drawing near.

  It wouldn’t happen in months or even years, but in a matter of decades, America would fall. It was already happening. It was happening right before the eyes of each and every American, yet they were too fat and happy with their Big Gulps and satellite television to see it.