Brad Thor - Foreign Influence

“Well, what I need right now is more time.”

“How much more?” asked the Old Man.

“I’ll know better once I have a location for Tsui. In the meantime, tell DOD that we’re making progress.”

“Body bags aren’t progress, Scot.”

“I promise you,” said Harvath. “I’m going to find who did this and I’m going to make sure they never do it again.”

“I agree with you. But first, give me something I can give DOD. If you can prove the Troll had nothing to do with this then bring me Tsui-alive. Do that and then we’ll be able to take the next step.”

It was Sunday and the sun was just beginning to rise when Harvath’s phone rang. “I’ve got a location,” said the computer-modulated voice on the other end.

“Where?”

“Geneva.”

“That’s terrific. How’d you find him?” asked Harvath.

“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you when I pick you up. Be at the General Aviation terminal at the Marseille airport in two hours.”

“What about customs in Switzerland?”

“Already taken care of,” replied Nicholas.

“Are you sure you’re up for this?”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

The white Learjet 45 touched down in Marseille and taxied to a revetment area near the General Aviation building. An attractive aviation services hostess walked Harvath to the plane. He was met at a set of air-stairs by the copilot, who offered to take his bag. Harvath politely declined and stepped aboard.

Argos and Draco were the first to say hello. The dogs weren’t the only company Nicholas had brought with him. Surprisingly, Padre Peio had come along as well. He was dressed in a pair of tan trousers and a blue button-down shirt.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Good morning, Father,” replied Harvath, dropping his pack on one of the forward seats. The Troll was lying on a leather couch toward the rear of the cabin. “You should have stayed in Spain. You’re not up for this.”

“That’s exactly what I told him,” said Peio.

“And yet here I am,” replied Nicholas as he reached for the intercom. “I want to get this over with.”

Harvath looked at Peio. “You’ll forgive me, Father, but I would think that this is something you wouldn’t want to be mixed up in.”

The priest smiled wistfully. “There is great evil in the world. I know that. Hundreds of people were killed yesterday. But I don’t believe that the answer is more killing.”

“I wish it was that simple, Father.”

“For God’s sake, Peio. Lighten up,” added the Troll. “You of all people should know what’s at stake here. When it comes to Muslim fundamentalists the only thing they respect is force. Imagine if Christian Europe had simply turned the other cheek at the Battle of Lepanto or the gates of Vienna. We’d be living in a much different world than we are now.”

“But we’ve come a long way since the Battle of Lepanto.”

“We may have come a long way, but they haven’t. To paraphrase Churchill, individual Muslims may show splendid qualities, but Islam’s fanatical frenzy is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia is in a dog. It’s been over a hundred years since he spoke those words and yet there is still no more dangerous retrograde force in the world.

“And before you give me that tired argument that the fundamentalists have perverted the faith, let me be perfectly clear on something. A religion must stand or fall on its own writings and holy books. The fundamentalists haven’t perverted anything. In fact, Osama bin Laden is the best practicing Muslim out there. He is practicing Islam exactly the way that violent nutcase Mohammed wanted it practiced.

“It’s the world’s peaceful Muslims, the majority of the followers of Islam, who have perverted the faith. They have strayed. If Mohammed came back today you can bet there’d be hell to pay. He’d be lopping off heads left and right. And he’d have a lot of help too because in case you haven’t noticed, the largest killer of Muslims in the world isn’t us filthy infidels, it’s other Muslims. Fundamentalist Islam is booming, if you’ll pardon the pun.”

Peio turned to Harvath. “I’m here because I was concerned about Nicholas making this journey alone.”

The Troll laughed as he activated the intercom and relayed instructions to the pilot. “Don’t believe him. He misses the intrigue. Don’t you, Father?”

Harvath couldn’t help wondering if maybe that was true.

Once the plane had reached its cruising altitude, Peio unbuckled his seatbelt and walked back to the galley. As he removed the trays of food that had been stocked for their flight, Nicholas explained to Harvath how he had tracked Tsui.

“So in other words, you planted a Trojan horse in his computer system.”

“A very expensive, extremely difficult to trace Trojan horse,” clarified the Troll. “He’s one of my key competitors, so I viewed it as an insurance policy. You can’t trust anybody these days.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” replied Harvath. “Have you put one of these on my computer?”

Nicholas looked sheepish. “When this is over, I’ll show you how to deactivate it.”

Peio emerged from the galley and could tell from looking at Harvath that he wasn’t happy.

“Everything okay here?” he asked.

“Fine,” said Harvath as the priest set the food down. “Nicholas is going to buy me a new computer when I get home. A very expensive and extremely difficult to trace computer.”

When the Learjet landed in Geneva, it taxied to a small hangar where it was met by two Swiss customs officers in suits.

Harvath watched through his window as the copilot deplaned and handed over their passports. The officials stamped each one, handed them back, and then disappeared.

Once their passports had been returned, the three men deplaned and crossed the hangar to two waiting vehicles: a windowless panel van and a dark blue Range Rover. It had been decided that Peio would use the van to drive Nicholas and the dogs to the warehouse the Troll had rented, while Harvath would drive the Range Rover to the five-star Beau Rivage hotel they had traced Tsui to.

With the airport only six kilometers away from the city, Harvath arrived at the hotel within fifteen minutes of leaving the hangar.

It was an elegant, white stone structure in the tradition of the grand hotels of Europe. It sat on the Quai du Mont Blanc, facing the lake within sight of Geneva’s famous Jet d’Eau; a magnificent fountain which shoots an enormous plume of water over 450 feet in the air.

Harvath valeted his car and checked into his room. He pulled out a Diet Coke and a jar of almonds from the minibar, then opened the laptop Nicholas had given him on the plane.

According to the Troll, Tsui had used the hotel’s Wi-Fi service to plant viruses on the computers of multiple guests. Once the computers were infected, he could control them remotely, even after they had left the hotel. Without their owners being any the wiser, he used his network of zombie machines to covertly send and receive data without revealing his involvement.

Tsui, though, had made one mistake. All of his cleverly hidden, sophisticatedly encrypted data came and went via the hotel’s Wi-Fi system. By accessing it and pushing small packets of data toward him, Nicholas believed his Trojan Horse would help them pinpoint the exact location Tsui was operating from. Or so he had hoped.

Harvath opened the French windows that looked out across the lake, settled in at the desk, and dialed his cell phone.