Brad Thor - The First Commandment

It wasn’t at all what Harvath had expected. The minute they stepped inside, they left the feeling of being in a mine hundreds of feet beneath the surface behind them. If Harvath hadn’t known better, he would have sworn he was in some cutting-edge development think tank on the Microsoft campus.

Gone were the caged bulbs strung along the rough-hewn walls. They had been replaced with sophisticated fixtures recessed at the edges of the ceiling that replicated bright, outdoor light. The floors were polished granite and the offices were walled in with sheets of soundproofed glass, the opacity of which could be dialed up or down based on the occupant’s desired level of privacy.

Impossibly slim, high-definition monitors suspended on the glass acted like windows to the outside world. As they passed scenes of Alpine Switzerland, the Bolivian rainforest, and a spit of rocky coastline from Maine, Finney explained that employees were allowed to choose their own “view” from a database of digital backdrops from around the world. It was just one of the many small touches Finney had created to make his employees’ time below ground as pleasant as possible.

At the end of the next hallway, the group turned left and arrived at an office where the virtual window displayed a river with jagged mountains in the background. In the midground a man in waders was fly fishing. The sound of river water gently moving by played from a hidden speaker somewhere in the room.

“Tom should be right back,” Finney said in regard to the office’s absent occupant. “We can wait in here for him.”

On top of the polished chrome desk was a neatly arranged stack of files, a lone silver pen, and a pad of Post-it notes. Whoever this guy was, he either didn’t have a lot to do or was extremely well organized. Based on what Finney had told him, Harvath figured it had to be the latter.

He had turned his attention to the virtual window and was admiring the scene when Tom Morgan entered the office. “That’s the Snake River,” said Morgan as he set a paper coffee cup and his laptop down on his desk. “One of the finest dry fly rivers in the world.”

“This particular spot is just outside Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Island Park, isn’t it?” asked Harvath as he turned around.

“You’ve fished the Snake, then.”

Harvath nodded. “Both the Henry’s and the South Fork. In fact I think I’ve fished that exact spot,” he added as he pointed over his shoulder at the screen. It was a scene he recognized immediately.

He’d been planning to take Tracy there that fall to teach her how to fish. The summer crowds would be gone, the leaves would be turning, and the mountains would be gorgeous. He’d already reserved a small cabin at a place called Dornans just inside Grand Teton National Park. He wondered now if they’d ever be able to go anywhere together again.

“I love the Snake, but there’s some pretty good fishing around here in Colorado. That’s part of the reason I took this job,” said Morgan, pulling Harvath’s mind back to the here and now.

Harvath acknowledged the remark with a knowing smile as Tim Finney made formal introductions. Tom Morgan was ex-NSA and somewhere in his late sixties. He wore glasses, had a mustache, and walked with a limp-the result of a field operation gone bad, which he never discussed.

After a lifetime of suits and ties at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, Morgan had embraced Elk Mountain ’s somewhat casual dress code. Tonight, he was wearing jeans, a plaid shirt, and a tweed sport coat. He appeared very fit for his age. When he spoke, there was a slight New England accent to his words, and Harvath placed him as a native of Rhode Island or New Hampshire.

“Tom’s the reason I asked you to come out,” said Finney as they all sat down.

This was the part Harvath had been waiting for. “What have you got?”

Morgan didn’t mince words. “I think we’ve located the Troll’s lockbox.”

Harvath looked at him, his eyebrows arching. “Everything?” he asked.

Morgan looked at him and replied, “Bank accounts, data deposits, everything. ”

“So the way we see it,” said Finney as Tom Morgan wrapped up his presentation and closed his laptop, “we’ve got this little runt’s nuts in a vise. The only question is how hard do you want to squeeze?”

Harvath was impressed. Finney and his Sargasso Intelligence Program had been able to do what the United States government wouldn’t or couldn’t do. They had located the Troll’s stock-in-trade, his highly classified data.

It wasn’t a tough decision for Harvath to make. The Troll had helped Al Qaeda carry out the attacks on New York City.

Then there was the whole matter of Tracy.

Looking at Finney, Harvath said, “I want you to squeeze so hard his eyes roll back into his fucking head.”

The Warlord nodded at Morgan, and the former NSA employee picked up his phone and dialed. The Troll’s field of play was about to be dramatically upended.

ANGRA DOS REIS, BRAZIL

Three hours southwest of Rio de Janeiro by car, or forty-five minutes by private helicopter, was the hottest getaway in Brazil, the bay of Angra dos Reis.

Known for its warm waters, white-sand beaches, and lush vegetation, Angra dos Reis, or simply Angra as it was called by those in the know, boasted 365 islands-one for every day of the year. Angra was a mystical place, its breezes laden with the scent of exotic tropical flowers that intoxicated its visitors.

Upon its discovery by Portuguese naval officers in 1502, one of the officers wrote home saying that they had discovered paradise.

Angra was indeed a paradise. The kind of paradise one could easily get lost in. And lost was exactly what the Troll had wanted to be, though not without certain creature comforts.

The private island he’d leased was a half mile long and a quarter mile wide. It was known as Algodão. It boasted a helipad, speedboat, and accommodations rivaling the greatest luxury hotels in the world. Though it could easily sleep eighteen, at present there were only three souls ashore-the Troll and his two snow-white Caucasian Ovcharkas, Argos and Draco.

Weighing close to two hundred pounds each and standing over forty-one inches at the shoulder, these giant animals were the dogs of choice for the Russian military and former East German border patrol. They were exceedingly fast and absolutely vicious when it came to protecting their territory. They made the perfect guardians for a man who stood just under three feet tall and had very powerful enemies-many of whom were his clients.

The Troll lived by the motto that knowledge didn’t equal power; it was the precise application of knowledge that equaled power. He had also learned very quickly that it could also equal incredible wealth.

It was in following this motto that the Troll had made a substantial living for himself dealing in the purchase, sale, and trade of highly classified information. Each piece on its own had a certain value, but the skill-the art if you will-was in knowing how to join together just the right tidbits to create a true masterpiece. That was where the Troll excelled in his profession. It was quite amazing, especially for someone whose prospects in life had been seen as so dismal that even his parents had given up on him.

When it became obvious the Troll was not going to grow any further, his godless Georgian parents made no attempt to find a suitable loving home for their son, nor did they try to find even a half-decent orphanage. Instead, they abandoned the boy, selling him as if he were chattel to a brothel on the outskirts of the Black Sea resort of Sochi. There, the boy was starved, beaten, and made to perform unutterable sex acts that would have shamed even the Marquis de Sade himself.