Brad Thor - The First Commandment

The minute the name was out of his mouth, a pall fell across the Troll’s face and he held up his index finger.

His stubby fingers rattled across his laptop. When he found what he was looking for, he recited a string of numbers. They were a perfect match for the account McCauliff had just identified.

“How did you know that?” asked Harvath.

The Troll ran his hand through his short, dark hair and replied, “I’m the one who set up the account.”

“You?”

“Yes, me. But it gets worse. Plain and simple, Abu Nidal was nothing more than a terrorist. Despite his father’s success as a businessman, he didn’t know anything about banking or protecting his assets.”

“So you handled his money?” asked Harvath.

“No. Not for his organization. He had people for that. Nidal asked me to do something different. He wanted this to be off the books, as it were. He didn’t want it tied to the FRC. If anything ever happened to him, he wanted to make sure this layer of protection was in place.”

“Protection for whom?”

The Troll looked at Harvath and said, “His daughter, Adara. It was set up to be her private, personal account.”

Over four thousand miles away, an analyst at the National Security Agency had just tagged and compressed the audio file he was working on.

Picking up his phone, he dialed a cell phone number. It was the second time in twenty-four hours he’d called the anonymous man on the other end.

When the voice of his contact came on, the analyst said, “You wanted to know if Scot Harvath made any further attempts to speak with Kevin McCauliff, the analyst at the NGA?”

“Go ahead,” replied the voice.

“He just hung up with him less than three minutes ago.”

“Did you get a fix on Harvath’s location?”

“No,” said the NSA man, “but based on his conversation, I think I may know where he’s headed.”

SOMEWHERE OVER THE ATLANTIC

As he raced back toward the States, Harvath was consumed by conflicting emotions. Shortly after speaking with Kevin McCauliff, he’d contacted Ron Parker to ask for a favor, only to be filled in on the failed plot at The Bucket of Blood.

Though the police hadn’t apprehended the suspect yet, based upon the description of the man they were looking for, he was a dead ringer for Philippe Roussard. The Bucket of Blood was a SEAL Team Two hangout, Harvath was a former SEAL, the SEALs were often referred to as frogmen, and the next-to-last plague had to do with frogs. It was enough to cement for Harvath that the Bucket had been Roussard’s target.

Thanks to two sharp Virginia PD officers, the killer had been prevented from carrying out his attack. Score one for the good guys, even if it was the first time they had managed to put anything up on the board.

Roussard had gotten sloppy, and Harvath wondered if maybe the killer was getting tired.

That said, Harvath was pretty tired himself. It had taken him a full day to set everything up, and even though he’d had a couple of down days in Brazil before that, he hadn’t gotten any significant rest. He’d slept with one eye open the entire time. The Troll was someone he’d never be able to fully trust, and having to sit and wait while he plied his seamy trade in search of Roussard’s Brazilian connection had almost driven him crazy.

When the info about the Wegelin amp; Company account came, he was happy to make plans for Switzerland. But the email about the attempted attack on the Bucket changed all of that. Harvath couldn’t be in two places at once. Roussard had returned to America, and Harvath knew his only chance of stopping him before his last and final plague was to return there, too.

But, actually, maybe there was a way he could be in two places at once.

The Troll had gladly arranged for Harvath’s jet. Not only did he need him to remove the threat of Philippe Roussard, but if he wanted to live, he also needed Harvath to see him as an ally.

For his part, Harvath was driven by the same two things since the beginning-a desire to prevent anything further from happening to the people he cared about, and a desire to make Philippe Roussard and whoever was behind him pay for what they had done.

Before leaving Brazil, Harvath had contacted an old friend in Switzerland. It seemed ironic that with Meg Cassidy’s wedding only days away, he was now turning for help to one of the other good women he had pushed out of his life.

Claudia Mueller was a lead investigator for the Swiss Federal Attorney’s Office and had helped him rescue the president when he’d been kidnapped and secretly held in her country. Harvath had enlisted her assistance on one other occasion, a dangerous assignment that had involved not only Claudia, but the man who was now her husband, Horst Schroeder-a police special tactical unit leader from Bern.

Before she could act on Harvath’s latest request, there were a series of things she needed from him, not the least of which was a video statement from the Troll, complete with all the information regarding Abu Nidal and the bank account he had established for his daughter at Wegelin amp; Company. If what Harvath was telling her was true, and she had every reason to believe it was, this was something she wanted to secure a warrant for and do by the book.

In spite of what everyone thought about the Swiss banking system, the world had changed since 9/11, even for them. They had no desire to help terrorists launder or hide money. Claudia felt confident that she could secure the proper paperwork to compel the bank to give her the information that Harvath needed. The only part she couldn’t guarantee was how long it would take. It could be a matter of hours, or depending on the judge, it could be a matter of weeks.

Considering that lives were at stake, she hoped it would be the former.

Before hanging up, Claudia had joked that this was the first time Harvath had ever asked her for a favor that didn’t involve putting her life in danger. While getting a Swiss bank to part with its records wasn’t exactly easy, it was definitely easier than having somebody shoot at you.

The joke had made Harvath smile. Claudia was a good woman. She also knew him well enough not to be surprised when he told her there was a second favor he needed, and that it was going to be slightly more dangerous than her trip to the bank.

With the majority of the Swiss operation entrusted to Claudia and a small percentage to the Troll, Harvath had proceeded to a private airport outside São Paulo to meet his plane.

The entire time, he was wrestling with a very bad feeling as he put together a picture of who might be behind Philippe Roussard. Of course, there was the very real possibility that Roussard had access to his mother’s account at Wegelin amp; Company, but that wouldn’t explain who had gotten him out of Gitmo. There was more to this. There was someone else involved.

The Troll had been thinking the exact same thing, but their shared conclusion was impossible. Harvath had been there the night Adara Nidal was killed, and he had seen her die.

Though Harvath was traveling on his German passport as Hans Brauner and could go anywhere in the world he wanted, he had been marked a traitor, which made him a man without a country, and what was worse, he had absolutely no idea where he should be going.

In Roussard’s twisted countdown, the Bucket of Blood might have been meant for the final two plagues, but Harvath doubted it. He had a very bad feeling there was still one attack to go, and that it would represent the plague in which the waters were turned to blood.

Harvath tried to run through all of the people he knew who lived on or near water. He had grown up in California, spent a significant amount of time in the Navy, and lived on the East Coast for the last several years; the list was long. It was so long, in fact, that Harvath couldn’t keep track of all the names inside his head and had to find a pen and paper to write them all down.