Brad Thor: The Lions Of Lucerne

Secure that his alibi was well established, Miner sailed to the uninhabited island of Despotiko, about three hours southwest of Mykonos. Waiting there for Miner, just as planned, was his cousin from the Swiss town of Hochdorf, a carpenter who bore an incredible likeness to him.

Happy to have a free vacation and knowing the sensitivity of his cousin’s occupation, the carpenter from Hochdorf never asked any questions. The plan was for him to continue sailing south to Santorini and then Crete, where he would leave the rented yacht, citing a string of mechanical problems as the reason. The carpenter would then make his way to the western port of Patras, where a first-class cabin was booked on a Minoan Line cruise ship to Venice.

His cousin would be traveling on Miner’s passport and Visa credit card. Knowing that cabin stewards present first-class passengers’ passports for them to customs officials as a courtesy, Miner was not worried about his cousin or his passport receiving any undue scrutiny. The carpenter was to spend a week in northern Italy before proceeding via train to France.

Miner had booked his cousin on an overnight train in a first-class compartment. As the train would be crossing the French border while passengers were sleeping, the steward would gather passports as passengers boarded, present them to border officials sometime during the night, and then return them with breakfast in the morning.

After a week in France, the carpenter would take a final overnight train back to Switzerland, where the customary passport collection by the steward would once again be conducted. When the steward delivered the passport with breakfast the next morning, the carpenter was to place it in a thick, manila envelope with the canceled train tickets, credit card receipts, and other odds and ends he had been told to accumulate during his wonderful vacation. The envelope was addressed to a post office box in Lucerne and stamped with more than enough postage. When the train arrived in Bern, the carpenter would mail the envelope from the train station post box before catching his connecting train back to Hochdorf.

With eyewitnesses, customs records, and a credit card trail that would lead through three European countries all but guaranteed, Miner entered Turkey from Greece with a false Maltese passport as part of a tour group, feeling quite confident that his alibi, if ever needed, would be airtight.

Twenty-four hours later, the people seated in the airline’s waiting area paid no attention to the rumpled western European businessman who sat reading a day old copy of The International Herald Tribune. Disguised with blond hair, a full beard, blue contacts, and padding that made him appear twenty kilos overweight, Miner was now traveling on a Dutch passport as Henk Van DenHuevel of Utrecht.

He sat reading an article he had found quite by chance. It dealt with the upcoming ski vacation United States president Jack Rutledge was to take with his daughter, Amanda, and what it would cost American taxpayers.

As first-class passengers were welcomed aboard flight 7440 from Istanbul to New York, Miner folded the newspaper under his arm and made his way toward the gate thinking, They have absolutely no idea what this trip is going to cost.

“You guys having an awesome day or what?” asked the young liftie as Scot Harvath and Amanda Rutledge shuffled up to get on the next chairlift. He was referring to the snow that had been falling all day.

“Light’s kinda flat,” replied Amanda.

Scot had to laugh. Amanda was relatively new to skiing, but she was picking up the lingo and the idiosyncrasies of a spoiled skier pretty quickly.

“What’s so funny?” she said as the lift gently hit them in the back of the knees and they sat down, beginning the ride up to Deer Valley’s Squaw Peak.

“You, that’s what’s so funny.”

“Me? What do you mean?”

“Don’t get me wrong, Mandie; your skiing’s come a long way, but you’ve skied, what, maybe five or six times in your life?”

“Yeah, so?”

“And it’s always been that east coast garbage. All ice, right?”

“And?”

“Well, it’s just funny to hear you complaining about the light when you are skiing on snow people would kill for.”

“I guess it is kind of funny, but you’ve got to admit that it’s tough to see anything in this weather.”

On that point, Amanda Rutledge was one hundred percent correct. The snow had been falling steadily for a week. Hoping to indulge his passion for astronomy, Scot had brought his telescope on this trip. The lights back home in D.C. made it impossible to see anything in the night sky. Unfortunately, the weather in Park City had so far refused to cooperate. Today, in particular, it was really coming down. Visibility was extremely low, and the conditions worried Scot enough that he suggested the president and his daughter take the day off and wait to see what tomorrow brought. Regardless of what the head of his advance team had to say, though, the president made it clear that he and Amanda had come to ski and that’s exactly what they were going to do.

Unfortunately for his ski plans, the coalition the president had cobbled together to get his fossil-fuel reduction bill-the bill that signaled a financially devastating blow for the major oil companies, but would breathe long overdue life into America’s alternative-energy sectors-through Congress was starting to crack. The president’s constant hand-holding of key “swing” voters was absolutely necessary if he was to see his legislation through. The predicted turnover in the upcoming congressional election spelled doom for the president’s pet project. The simple fact was that this bill could pass only in this session.

Even though he had already shortened the length of his vacation before leaving D.C., the president was thinking about returning even earlier now. Scot understood the man’s desire to get in as much skiing and quality time with his daughter as possible before returning to the capital.

“Are you dating anyone now?” asked Amanda.

The sudden change of subject caught Scot off guard and pulled his mind back from the president’s problems and the weather.

“Am I dating anyone? Who wants to know?” he teased.

Blushing, Amanda turned away from his gaze, but kept speaking. “I do. I mean, you never seem to talk about anybody.”

Scot started to smile again, but didn’t let her see. He thought she must have been building up her courage all day to ask him.

Amanda had had a crush on Scot ever since he’d become part of daily life at the White House, and everybody knew it. More than once, the president had had to reprimand his daughter and remind her not to distract Scot while he was on duty. Amanda, or Mandie, as Scot called her, was a good kid. Despite having lost her mother to breast cancer only a couple of years ago, she seemed as normal as any other child her age. She was smart, athletic, and would someday grow into a beautiful woman. Scot decided to change the subject.

“That was one heck of a birthday party last night,” he offered.

“It was pretty cool. Thanks again for the CDs. You didn’t have to get me anything.”

“Hey, it was your birthday. The big sixteen. I wanted to get you a car, but your dad’s national security advisor thought that behind the wheel of your own machine, you might be too dangerous for the country. So, the Ferrari will just have to sit in my garage until we can change his mind.”

Amanda laughed. “Not only were the CDs sweet, but I really appreciate the lessons today.”

Before joining the SEALs and subsequently being recruited into the Secret Service, Scot had been quite an accomplished skier and had won a spot on the U.S. freestyle team. Against the wishes of his father, Scot had chosen to postpone college to pursue skiing. He had spent several years on the team, which trained right there in Park City, Utah. He did extremely well on the World Cup circuit and had been favored to medal in the upcoming Olympics. When Scot’s father, an instructor at the Navy SEAL training facility in their hometown of Coronado, California, died in a training accident, Scot had been devastated. Try as his might, after losing his father, he hadn’t been able to get his head back into competitive skiing. Instead, he chose to follow in his father’s footsteps. After graduating college cum laude, he joined the SEALs and was tasked to Team Two, known as the cold-weather specialists, or Polar SEALs.