Brad Thor - Foreign Influence

He waited until her breathing became less labored and then dragged her back to the support column. Now it was time to see if she would cooperate or not. He studied her face as he asked his first question. “When I met you in Jagland’s office, why did you give up Michael Lee?”

The woman coughed repeatedly before answering. “Because I didn’t need him anymore.”

“But he was your cover.”

“It didn’t matter. That cover became useless when Lars was killed.”

“You’re not making any sense,” said Harvath.

“I knew that someday, someone might come looking for me. That was why I had created the whole Tsui persona. It was a layer of protection. I set it up so that everything traced back to Lars and from him to Michael. But when Lars was killed, my backstop was gone.”

“Who killed him?”

“I don’t know. The police say he died in a car accident.”

“You don’t believe that. I can tell by looking at your face.”

“I don’t know what to believe,” she said. “Could what happened to Lars have been an accident? Possibly. But I’m not certain. That’s why I was waiting to see what happened to Michael.”

“You mean you were waiting to see if he would be killed as well?” asked Nicholas.

Lee shouted at the woman again from behind the duct tape covering his mouth. He pulled against his restraints and there was no doubt in anyone’s mind, including Sterk’s, that if he managed to break free, he would kill her.

“That’s why you gave him up to me,” replied Harvath. “You wanted to see if I had been sent to finish off Tony Tsui.”

“Obviously.”

“Then what?”

“Then, when I thought it was safe, I would have started over under a new persona.”

The woman was absolutely mercenary, but as far as Harvath could tell, she was telling the truth. “So who killed Jagland?” he asked.

Sterk looked down at the floor and refused to answer.

“I want to make something perfectly clear,” said Harvath. “Right now, the only person in this entire world you should fear is me. If I even suspect you’re holding out on me, I’m going to light you on fire. I will let you burn and then I will put the fire out before it kills you. The pain will be worse than anything you have ever experienced. The heat will sear your lungs and you’re going to suffer from smoke inhalation. It’s going to be severe.

“I’ll repeat this process until you’re dead or you give me what I want. Which will it be?”

“My life’s worth nothing if I survive. They’ll find me and they’ll kill me just like they did Lars, and I’m certain it’ll be in a manner much worse than anything you can possibly devise.”

“Who are they?”

Sterk didn’t respond.

Harvath turned to Nicholas, “See if there are any matches in the van. If there aren’t, heat the cigarette lighter.”

The Troll nodded and headed for the van.

Sterk looked at him. Both sides of her face were beginning to swell. “Just kill me and get it over with.”

“You don’t have to die.”

“I’m dead anyway.”

“We can protect you.”

“You don’t even know what you’d be protecting me against. These people have resources beyond your imagination.”

“So do I,” he replied.

The woman laughed and shook her head.

“What if we gave them Tony Tsui?”

From the other support column, Lee’s eyes bulged.

“How would you do that?”

“Never mind,” said Harvath. “What if we can give them Tsui, or at least make it look like Tsui isn’t someone for them to worry about anymore?”

“These are not stupid people. They can’t be easily fooled.”

“I wouldn’t expect them to be.”

Nicholas returned with the van’s cigarette lighter and held it out to Harvath. “Let’s burn the witch.”

Harvath took it and looked at Sterk. “It’s your call, Adda.”

The woman studied the faces of her two captors and thought about her options. After several moments she said, “I’ll cooperate, but on one condition.”

“You’re trying to negotiate? You’ve got to be kidding me,” stammered the Troll.

“What do you want?” Harvath demanded.

Sterk focused her gaze on him and replied, “A little added insurance.”

CHICAGO

John Vaughan sat in a plush leather captain’s chair inside the most comfortable surveillance vehicle he had ever seen and wondered what Paul Davidson’s problem was.

Josh Levy, the owner of Surety Private Investigations, Ltd., and Davidson’s boss when he was moonlighting as a PI, couldn’t have been more personable, polite, or professional if he had tried. He was a handsome, well-dressed man in his late fifties and very experienced in private investigative work. There was no question in Vaughan’s mind that Levy had easily spent over a hundred thousand dollars on his surveillance van. It really was decked out like a limo inside and the electronic equipment rivaled anything the CPD or the FBI owned. Unless this guy had a DVD carousel loaded with animal porn, Vaughan couldn’t find anything even remotely questionable about him. It was beyond him why Davidson so disliked doing surveillance with his boss.

“Is the temperature okay for you?” asked Levy. “There’s plenty of juice left in the batteries to run the air exchangers.”

As the man bent down to flip a switch, Davidson looked at Vaughan and rolled his eyes.

“The air’s real good, Josh. Thank you,” said Vaughan, ignoring Davidson.

Levy righted himself, leaned over, flipped open a mini-fridge and pulled out a cup of yogurt. Davidson tapped Vaughan on the shoulder with the back of his hand.

“Anybody want one?” asked Levy.

“No thanks, Josh,” responded Davidson. “We’re all good.”

Vaughan watched as Levy peeled back the lid and licked the yogurt from the top. When he was done, he placed the lid on the narrow counter beneath the surveillance equipment and went to work folding it into eighths, before dropping it into a Ziplocked garbage bag hanging from the wall.

While he was fishing a spoon from a drawer near the fridge, Davidson tapped Vaughan again and rolled his eyes. The Organized Crime cop looked back at him and shrugged. He had no idea what Davidson’s problem was.

Levy took a bite of his yogurt and then picked up the copy of Mohammed Nasiri’s picture. “So this is our guy, but we don’t know if he’s inside the mosque. Correct?”

“That’s right,” said Vaughan. “Based on the calls we’ve made, he hasn’t gotten on any airplanes out of town.”

“But he could have hopped on a bus, a train, or borrowed a car and left.”

“That’s correct.”

Levy took another bite of yogurt. This time, he licked both sides of the spoon afterward. “Why do you think he’s inside?”

Vaughan could feel Davidson’s glance, begging him to notice how Levy was licking the spoon, and he tried to ignore it. “We saw a lot of this stuff in Iraq. They know we won’t come into a mosque unless we’ve got a mountain of overwhelming evidence. Especially in the U.S., it’s political suicide. The mosque is a sanctuary for these guys. We’d never in a million years think of doing in a church or a synagogue what they do in their mosques.”

“Nor would any priest or rabbi put up with it,” added Davidson. “I can’t imagine what my priest would say if I told him, ‘Father, we’re going to go shoot up a girls’ school, plant a few roadside bombs, and be back for lunch. Don’t let anyone into the room downstairs where we keep all of the rifles and grenade launchers, okay?’”