Brad Thor - The First Commandment

“Do you mind?” he asked. “I like to play music when I cook.”

Harvath shrugged and continued to unpack the bags and boxes as the Troll connected his laptop to the stereo and uploaded one of his digital playlists.

“Since you went to the store,” announced the Troll as he shoved his way past Harvath into the kitchen, “the least I can do is cook lunch.”

“You don’t have to do that,” replied Harvath.

“Yes, I do,” he said as he took a stepladder from the broom closet and dragged it over to the sink, where he washed his hands. “Done with a focused mind, cooking can be a Zenlike experience. I find it helps relax me. Besides, I don’t get to cook for other people that often.”

Pulling a Brahma beer from its six-pack, the Troll held it out as a peace offering.

Harvath needed the beer more than the little man knew and reached out and accepted the bottle. He found a church key, popped the top, and sat down on a bar stool at the kitchen island. His mind was racing. He needed to check in on his mom and Tracy. He also needed to check in on Kate Palmer and Carolyn Leonard, as well as Emily Hawkins and the dog. Jesus, he thought. It was no wonder he felt he needed a drink before getting into all that.

He took a long pull. It tasted good. Cold, the way beer was supposed to be. It was a small pleasure, but one of the very few he’d allowed himself in a long while. The monastic life did not agree with him.

As the Troll’s music began playing, he removed the wafer-thin stereo remote from his pocket and punched up the volume. “Cooking is all about the ingredients,” he remarked. “Even the music.”

Harvath shook his head. What an eccentric, he thought to himself as he took another sip of beer. The liquid was halfway down his throat when he realized what they were listening to. “Is this Bootsy Collins?”

“Yes. The song is called ‘Rubber Duckie.’ Why?”

“Just curious,” replied Harvath, who owned the Ahh…The Name Is Bootsy, Baby! album, from whence “Rubber Duckie” came, on vinyl and CD.

“What?” asked the Troll, a dish towel over his left shoulder and a chopping knife in his right hand as he prepared lunch. “You don’t think a guy like me can appreciate classic American funk music?”

Harvath held up his hands in mock self-defense. “I just don’t meet a lot of people who are into Pachelbel and funk.”

“Good music is good music, and when it comes to funk, Bootsy is one of the best. In fact, without Bootsy and his brother Catfish, there’d be no funk music at all. At least not like we know it today. James Brown never could have become the Godfather of Soul without the Pacesetters shaping his sound. And don’t even get me started on what they did for George Clinton and Funkadelic.”

Harvath was impressed. “I’ll drink to that,” he said, raising his beer. There was a lot more to the Troll than met the eye.

It was like watching a magician. Harvath considered himself a good cook, but he was far outside the Troll’s league. The little man had taken a small amount of fish, a little bit of bread, and a few other ingredients and had created an amazing fish soup with bread and rouille.

As Harvath cleared the table, he picked up the remote and muted the music. “Something is still bothering me about all of this,” he said. “In all your dealings with Adara Nidal, you never asked her what her son was up to?”

The Troll pushed himself back from the table and dabbed at the corner of his mouth with his napkin. “Out of courtesy, of course I asked. She wasn’t very forthcoming when it came to matters regarding Philippe. I think she was extremely disappointed in him. She would say things like, He’s working for the cause, or, He continues to show great promise as one of Allah’s most noble soldiers. ”

“Which was all bullshit, right?” stated Harvath as he set their dishes near the sink and turned around. “I mean, she never struck me as a devout Muslim. She drank and did a whole bunch of other stuff I think Allah would have frowned on.”

The Troll laughed. “Despite the many habits she had developed to better blend into Western society, I feel she was still a true mujahideen at heart.”

Harvath pulled another beer from the fridge and sat back down at the table with the opener. “So who’s running Roussard then? He didn’t spring himself from Gitmo. With Hashim and Adara dead, the Abu Nidal organization effectively fell apart. It wasn’t a many-headed hydra like Al Qaeda. We cut off two heads and the monster died.”

“Or so your intelligence told you.”

“Do you know something different?”

“No,” said the Troll as he got up to make coffee. “Everything I have seen is in line with your assessment.”

“So then Roussard became a free agent. Somebody had to have picked him up. The question is who?”

The Troll slid the stepladder over to the stove and climbed up. “If we knew what kind of leverage was used to get the U. S. to release Philippe and his four fellow prisoners from Guantanamo, maybe we could begin to piece together who he was working for. But we don’t have that, and without it, I really don’t think we have very much to go on.”

Harvath hated to admit it, but the Troll was right.

He also hated to admit that the only way to get around the impasse he now saw himself at was to share a secret of enormous national security importance with a direct enemy of the United States.

This time, Harvath really had committed treason. There was no doubt about it. The only saving grace would be if something of greater value came of it.

It couldn’t be something of greater value to himself. It had to be something of greater value to his country. Failing that, Harvath very well could have just betrayed everything he stood for.

He searched the Troll’s face, but there was nothing there. “This plot doesn’t sound familiar to you in any way? Adara or the Abu Nidal organization never mentioned anything like this to you?”

“By targeting children, the plot sounds very much like what happened in Beslan. In fact, I’d say hijacking the school bus was an improvement. It’s a lot easier to capture a school bus than a school.”

“But what about Adara? Did she or her people ever mention something like this?”

“I didn’t talk tactics with her,” replied the Troll. “At least, not often. I deal in the realm of information. That is my stock in trade. If Adara or her deceased father’s organization had any plans for an attack like this she would have known better than to talk to me about it. She knew me well enough to know that I would be against it.”

“That’s right. I forgot,” said Harvath. “Saint Nicholas.”

“In the world we live in, bad things happen every day. Innocent people are killed. Sometimes these innocents are children. I believe in America you call it collateral damage. But to specifically target children is reprehensible. Whoever conceived of this attack should be strung up by his balls.”

Harvath couldn’t argue. But his agreement with the Troll’s position didn’t bring him any closer to finding out who was behind Philippe Roussard and what else they had planned.

He sat there for a long time in silence, thinking, until the Troll said, “I’ve been trying to find a connection, outside of ideology, between Philippe and the other men who were released with him. Maybe that was a mistake.”

“How so?”

“Maybe there is no connection. Maybe the other four were simply decoys. Like when multiple versions of your president’s helicopter lift off at the same time and go in different directions.”

Harvath hadn’t thought of that. “I started with Ronaldo Palmera because he was close, proximitywise.”