Brad Thor: Path Of The Assassin

Enraged, Harvath climbed from the Audi and stumbled down the block to where the Mercedes lay upturned and burning. He approached the car from the rear, trying to steady his Glock. He began applying pressure to the trigger as he neared the driver’s side door. In one fluid motion that belied the battered state of his body, he swung the pistol through the window, searching for the car’s driver. The Mercedes was empty. Harvath searched the street, thinking that maybe the driver had been thrown clear. There was nothing. Absolutely no sign. The deadly, silver-eyed assassin had vanished into the storm.

It was a week since the debacle in Macau and Harvath still couldn’t shake his feelings of failure. He had come to Switzerland after Cheng’s death to lick his wounds and be with Claudia, but things weren’t turning out as he had hoped.

Harvath rolled over and felt the empty space next to him. It was cold. Claudia had long since left for her office. Although he wasn’t the sentimental type, it bothered him that she had stopped doing so many things lately. She had stopped kissing him good-bye in the morning, had stopped leaving a coffee cup out for him, had stopped leaving notes in her bathroom, and worst of all, she had stopped trusting him.

When Harvath returned from Hong Kong and Macau, he had expected to be spending a few days with Claudia at her parents’ farm in Grindelwald before Gerhard Miner’s trial started. Instead, Claudia had “decided” that she needed to spend more time preparing the case and Scot was left in Bern to his own devices.

He knew why she was doing this. No matter how many times he answered her questions, which began the minute she picked him up at the airport in Zurich, she just refused to believe him. Claudia didn’t like being stonewalled, nor did Harvath for that matter, but matters of national security couldn’t be shared, even if two people were sharing other things, like the same bed.

Though Harvath couldn’t say where he had been and refused to let Claudia look at his passport, she knew he had been in Asia. She also knew that he was somehow involved in the killing of Philip Jamek. Jamek would have been useful in her pending prosecution of Miner, but now he was of no use to anyone.

It pained Harvath to see a rift developing between him and Claudia, but he couldn’t tell her the truth, not the full truth. He had tried to assure her that he’d had nothing to do with the killing of Jamek. That much was true. Someone else had wanted Jamek dead, but why? The Chinese wouldn’t have put a hit out on him. That wouldn’t have made any sense. Maybe Jamek had double-crossed somebody in one of his arms deals and the hit was payback. Or maybe it was something else entirely. All Harvath really knew was that the eyes of the assassin still haunted him.

Whether he had been in Asia, Macau specifically, during Jamek’s killing was classified and something he couldn’t discuss. Claudia would just have to deal with that. And she did.

She dealt with it by burying herself in her work. After helping Scot rescue the president and arrest Gerhard Miner, she had been promoted. She was now a full-fledged prosecutor, her dream come true, and was part of the team that was going to make sure Gerhard Miner never again walked the streets as a free man.

In a move that stunned the rest of the world, Switzerland had steadfastly refused to extradite Miner to stand trial in the United States. The Swiss assured the Americans that they would see to it that justice was done, but that Miner would not be put to death for his crimes. If found guilty, which the Swiss government assured the United States was going to happen, he would spend the rest of his life behind bars.

With the increased demands placed upon Claudia by her promotion, it had become obvious to Scot that their hopes for a workable relationship were fading. Harvath was on a special leave of absence granted by the president, but at some point he would be expected to return home and take up his new position as director of Secret Service Operations for the White House. Once that happened, it would be next to impossible for them to see each other. In both of their occupations, the demands of career came first and personal lives second. Each had worked too hard to get where they were to give it all up and move to another country simply for love.

Though Harvath refused to answer many of Claudia’s questions, not a day went by that he didn’t ask for access to Gerhard Miner. The Swiss felt they had cooperated fully and had provided unprecedented access to Miner already. Teams of interrogators from both the FBI and CIA, as well as a host of American diplomats had already paraded through the high security facility fifteen kilometers northeast of Bern where Miner was kept. One Secret Service agent, even one as bright as the Swiss realized Scot Harvath to be, was not going to make any difference, in their opinion. Miner had said everything to the Americans he was going to say. What’s more, Miner had told the Swiss that he would become extremely uncooperative if his government let Agent Harvath anywhere near him. He even threatened a lawsuit of his own. During the rescue of the president, Harvath had beaten Miner almost to death. Miner still bore much of the trauma, including not only one of the most severe cases of arthritis the Swiss prison doctors had ever seen, but also extensive nerve damage throughout his face from Harvath’s having shattered his jaw in seven places. No, the Swiss were not going to let Scot Harvath anywhere near Gerhard Miner. Even a direct appeal from the U.S. president, Jack Rutledge himself, had failed to move the Swiss.

Had Claudia wanted, she could have gotten Scot access, but since he wasn’t cooperating with her, she wasn’t going to cooperate with him. Plain and simple.

The thought was still lingering in his mind when the phone rang.

“Mueller residence,” he said as he answered Claudia’s cordless.

“Scot, it’s me,” replied Claudia.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

An awkward silence followed.

“Listen, I want to tell you I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” he asked.

“Things haven’t been good for us.”

“I’m sorry too.”

“You know I care for you very much.”

“I know.”

“It’s just…I don’t know that this is going to work out.”

Even though he knew what she was talking about, he still had to ask, “You don’t know that what is going to work out?”

“Us. A relationship. We went through something very difficult and very dangerous. It brought us together very fast, probably too fast, but our lives are very different. You have yours back in Washington, and I have mine here in Bern.” Then came the dreaded, “We can still be friends, though, right?”

Scot ignored the question and said, “Claudia, why are you telling me this now, over the phone?”

She was silent.

“Claudia? Are you still there?”

“Yes, I’m sorry, I was distracted. Things are very busy here now.”

“You still haven’t answered my question.”

“It’s been moved up.”

“‘Moved up’? What are you talking about?”

“Miner’s case. His attorneys made a motion to the judge that we thought we could knock down. We failed. There’s a preliminary hearing this morning and Miner will be present. With the trial moved up, I am going to have a lot of work to do. I’m going to be keeping late hours and I just think maybe we should stop things between us now.”

Harvath, usually never at a loss for words or a snappy comeback, for once in his life was silent.

“Scot, are you okay?” asked Claudia.

“How long have you known about this?”

“About the hearing? I have known for a couple of days.”

“What’s your security like? What do you have in place?”