The First Commandment

by Brad Thor

  Chapter 18

  SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

  T he call from Philippe Roussard’s handler came in the middle of the night. “Do you have everything in place?” Roussard sat up in bed and propped a thin pillow between his head and the cheap stucco wall. “Yes,” he responded, sliding a Gitanes from the pack on the nightstand and lighting it up.

  “Those things will kill you,” warned his handler as he heard Roussard’s Zippo clank shut and the operative took a deep drag.

  Philippe swept his dark hair back from his face and replied, “Your concern for my well-being is quite touching.”

  The caller refused to rise to the bait. Their relationship had been much too contentious of late. They needed to work together if they were going to succeed. Taking a deep breath, the handler said, “When you are finished, the boat will be waiting. Make sure no one sees you get on it.”

  Roussard snorted in response. No one was going to see him. No one ever did. He was like a phantom, a shadow. In fact, he was so elusive that many people didn’t even believe he existed. The U. S. government, though, was a different matter.

  Until his capture, no one had ever seen him. No one knew his name or nationality. The American soldiers in Iraq called him Juba and had lived in abject terror of being his next victim.

  All of his shots came from at least two hundred meters and as far away as thirteen hundred. Almost every one was perfect. He had an intimate understanding of body armor and knew right where to place his shots—the lower spine, the ribs, or just above the chest.

  Sometimes, as in the case of the four-strong Marine scout sniper team in Ramadi, he dispatched his targets with absolutely pristine shots to the head. With well over a hundred kills to his credit, Roussard was a hero to those Iraqis who resented the American occupation and an avenging angel to his brethren among the insurgency.

  The Americans had hunted him relentlessly and eventually they caught him. He was shipped to Guantanamo where he endured months of torture. Then, just over six months ago, he had been miraculously delivered out of captivity. He and four other prisoners had been loaded aboard a plane and flown back to their homes. Only Roussard knew why it had happened or who their benefactor was.

  Now, as he slipped his powerful, six-foot frame into a pair of Servpro coveralls, the irony of his situation wasn’t lost on him. America had secretly agreed to his release along with the four others in order to protect its citizens against further terrorism. Yet here he was, inside America itself, ready to carry out his next attack.

  Chapter 19

  R egardless of the distasteful habits Roussard had cultivated in order to blend into Western society, he was still a true mujahideen at heart. His nature ran quite contrary to that of his handler, who was all too comfortable with Western excesses, especially rich food and expensive spirits.

  The French boarding school in which Roussard had been raised had had little influence on him beyond teaching him how to comfortably blend in among his Western enemies. His true education had come from years spent at a nearby mosque and then later at several secret camps throughout Pakistan and Afghanistan.

  It was there that he learned that “Al Qaeda” didn’t translate to “the base,” as most Western media outlets had so ignorantly reported, but rather, “the database.” It referred to the original computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with the help of the CIA to defeat the Russians in Afghanistan.

  To this file, said to be one of the most closely guarded secrets of the Al Qaeda leadership, had been added thousands upon thousands of more names since the 1990s. These mujahideen were from all walks of life and were drawn from more ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds than any Western government would ever admit. They had been recruited, indoctrinated, trained, and dispersed around the world to wait until they were called to battle.

  As Roussard drove his van across the San Diego-Coronado Bridge he reflected on what might happen to him if he was apprehended. This was America, after all, and it had already done its worst to him in Guantanamo. Catching him here on their own soil, they would do even less. That’s how easy they were to exploit. They passed convoluted laws that served to protect their enemies better than their own people.

  When America caught its so-called terrorist enemies, it lacked the courage to put them to death. Zacarias Moussaoui, the blind cleric Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, and even Ramzi Yousef were all given life sentences. They were a testament to America’s cowardice and weakness, and the fact that it would inevitably fall to the true followers of Islam.

  Merging onto Third Street, Roussard made several turns and doubled back twice to make sure he wasn’t being followed. When he got to the address on Encino Lane, he parked the van at the base of the driveway and placed an orange cone both in front of and behind the vehicle. While he doubted anyone was going to notice anything at this time of night, a home disaster restoration truck might pique a neighbor’s interest, but it wouldn’t warrant a call to police.

  As he approached the front door, Roussard removed a lockpick gun from his pocket and hid it beneath his box-style metal notebook. As he reached the door, he pretended to ring the bell. Quietly, he worked the lock, knowing the woman inside did not have a home alarm system.

  When the lock released, he stepped inside and closed the door behind him. Roussard paused in the entryway until his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. The house smelled like furniture polish, mixed with the scent of the nearby sea.

  Once his night vision was established, he moved quietly down the hallway toward the master bedroom. The hall was lined with family photographs, most of them from many years ago.

  At the bedroom, Roussard found the door wide open and his victim fast asleep upon her bed. Crossing over to her, he tucked the metal folder beneath his left arm and unzipped his coveralls.

  For a moment, he thought he might have dropped it, but then his hand closed around the object he was searching for.

  When he looked back down at his victim, he received the shock of his life. Her eyes were wide open and she was staring up at him. Her bedroom windows were open, and if she screamed, he could be done for.

  Roussard’s instincts took over. He grabbed his notebook with both hands and swung—hard. He hit the woman across the left side of her head.

  Her mouth opened as if to scream and Roussard hit her again. The woman’s eyes closed and she lay motionless atop her bed.

  Blood ran from her nose and her ear. It matted her long gray hair and stained her nightgown. She was unconscious, but still very much alive, which was how he wanted her.

  Dropping his notebook on the bed, Roussard scooped the woman up into his arms and carried her into the bathroom. There he placed her in the tub, stripped off her nightgown, and covered her body with a moist paste. Next he sealed all the bathroom vents with duct tape.

  He walked back outside to the van and retrieved two sealed plastic buckets and a tool belt.

  Back in the bathroom, Roussard set the buckets down next to the tub and removed an atomizer from inside his coveralls.

  He opened the woman’s right eye first and then the left, liberally applying the substance and making sure each eye had been completely covered. His job was almost finished.

  Roussard removed a screwdriver from his tool belt and pried the lids loose on each of the buckets. He grabbed a towel from above the toilet and tossed it just outside the bathroom door. It was time.

  Prying the lids off both buckets, he emptied their contents over his victim, still lying unconscious in her bath, and then hurried from the bathroom, making sure to close the door firmly behind him.

  Roussard wedged the towel beneath the door and fixed it in place with more duct tape. He then removed the cordless drill from his tool belt along with a handful of screws and secured the door firmly to its frame.

  He walked back outside, replaced the orange cones in the van, and slowly drove back the way he had come.

  At the San Diego Marriott Hotel and Marina, R
oussard changed out of his coveralls, rubbed the van down for fingerprints, and headed for his dock. The boat was right where his handler had told him it would be.

  Once he had navigated his way out into the open, inky-black water, he took out a clean cell phone, dialed 911, and gave the address of a woman in need of assistance on Coronado’s Encino Lane.

  When asked for his name, Roussard smiled and threw the phone overboard. They would piece together who was responsible soon enough.

  Chapter 20

  BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

  T om Gosse, the funeral home’s director and namesake, had told Sheppard that he’d rather not have their conversation tape-recorded. That meant that the reporter had been forced to take notes, and he was the world’s shittiest note taker.

  He couldn’t blame Gosse for not wanting to be on tape. If the story he was telling was true, someone had already been killed to keep it quiet.

  Sheppard sat at his kitchen counter nursing a Fosters as he flipped through his notes. The funeral director was a solid guy. Several times during the interview, Sheppard backtracked and pretended to mess up the facts in order to trip him up, but Gosse was unflappable. There was no question in Sheppard’s mind that the man was telling him the truth.

  According to his story, about six months ago he’d been at the chief medical examiner’s office doing a pickup. While waiting for the body, he had hung out with a pal of his, an assistant ME named Frank Aposhian. According to Gosse, they were pretty good friends. Their boys attended the same high school and the men played cards together a couple of times a month.

  During Gosse’s pickup, his conversation with Aposhian was interrupted by two men who identified themselves as FBI agents and requested to speak to the assistant ME in private. As Frank was in charge of the office that night, the request didn’t strike Gosse as odd at all. Law enforcement officers came and went all the time in the ME’s office, and it definitely wasn’t for the coffee.

  One of the agents followed Aposhian into his office while the other began examining corpses. But not just any corpses—he only seemed interested in unclaimed bodies, more commonly referred to as John Does. Many of them were found in parks, under bridges, or in abandoned buildings, often half-eaten by rats or stray dogs by the time they were discovered.

  Their fingerprints were run through local and national databases and investigators were assigned to try to uncover their identities, but more often than not they went unidentified. Mortuary science students practiced their embalming techniques upon them, and the John and Jane Does were then placed in plywood coffins to be interred in the nearest potter’s field.

  What struck Gosse as odd was that the agent didn’t appear to know what he was looking for. He didn’t carry any photos with him. He simply moved from corpse to corpse checking them over as if he were shopping for a new set of golf clubs.

  When Aposhian appeared moments later with the man’s partner, the agent pointed at one of the bodies, and the assistant ME wrote down the number from the toe tag and went back to his office to process the paperwork.

  The body was bagged and loaded into a nondescript van, and the G-men disappeared.

  When Gosse asked his friend what the deal was, Aposhian told him that he’d been instructed not to speak about it. Apparently, the corpse wasn’t a John Doe at all, but rather a person who had been involved in a serious felony case.

  That’s where the story should have ended, but it didn’t. The FBI agents had presented the proper paperwork to claim the body, but had insisted that Aposhian hand over the ME file on it as well. They explained that the Bureau was involved in a complicated sting operation that would be jeopardized if the man’s death became public. It was an unusual request, but the men were polite and had all their paperwork in order, so Aposhian had no reason to get into a pissing match with them. It wasn’t until months later that the assistant ME realized his mistake.

  One of the mortuary science students working with him that night had retrieved the wrong file for him. When Aposhian called the local FBI field office to try to correct his mistake they told him they had no record of an Agent Stan Weston or Joe Maxwell ever being assigned there. He next contacted FBI headquarters in Washington, D. C., but they informed him that they didn’t have any agents by those names in the entire Federal Bureau of Investigation and that maybe he had made a mistake.

  Aposhian checked his notes. There was no mistake. None of this was making any sense.

  He handed the John Doe’s fingerprint card to a woman named Sally Rutherford. Rutherford was one of the office investigators and Aposhian’s girlfriend of eleven months. The next day, there was an email printed out and waiting for Aposhian on his desk.

  According to Rutherford, there was some sort of mix-up. The prints came back as belonging to a man who had been killed in a shootout with police in Charleston, South Carolina, days after the FBI agents had taken the John Doe from their facility. The investigator had a call in to the Charleston Police Department and was waiting to hear back.

  Aposhian figured it was all just another bureaucratic screw-up, but changed his mind the night his FBI agents paid him a return visit.

  Gosse, who was at his friend’s apartment for poker night, didn’t recognize the men at first. After all, it had been six months since he had first seen them at the ME’s office.

  They asked to speak to Aposhian outside, and when he returned, he was visibly shaken. Whatever these guys told him, it wasn’t good.

  Gosse asked his friend what was going on, but Aposhian didn’t want to talk about it. In fact, saying he didn’t feel well, the assistant ME cut their game short and sent his poker buddies home.

  When Gosse was back at the ME’s office for a pickup the next day, he was about to knock on Aposhian’s door when he heard an argument coming from within. He stepped away from the door just as it opened and Sally Rutherford stormed out. Gosse wasn’t one to pry, but his friend looked tremendously upset.

  It was obvious Aposhian needed to talk, but the man didn’t want to do it at the office. They decided to meet at the funeral home later that night.

  When his friend got there, Gosse transferred the phones to the answering service and broke out a bottle of Maker’s Mark. He set two glasses on his desk and poured a couple of ounces in each. Gosse was a born listener. He didn’t force the conversation. He waited for his friend to speak, and when he did, the man shared with him an incredible story.

  Chapter 21

  MONTROSE, COLORADO

  I t had been several hours since Harvath had arrived at the resort. With the Sargasso staff monitoring the private chat room for any communication from the Troll, Harvath’s hosts decided to take him back down to the resort for dinner.

  Elk Mountain’s main building resembled a majestic hunting lodge from the nineteenth century. The trio sat outside on the heated terrace near an outdoor stone fireplace overlooking the resort’s lake.

  Finney’s penchant for perfection was evident everywhere, even down to how well his fires burned. When a staff member quietly appeared with a basket of logs, Finney explained that they used a precise mixture of walnut, beech, and eucalyptus, with just the right amount of seasoned pine for its aroma.

  Finney’s attention to detail was just as sharp, if not more so, when it came to Elk Mountain’s food. He had spared no expense snapping up one of the best chefs in the country. The man was a culinary powerhouse who had pioneered American Alpine cuisine and held more James Beard, Zagat, and Wine Spectator awards than the resort had wall space to display. It was the first time since Tracy’s shooting that Harvath had actually finished a meal.

  He even allowed himself an after-dinner drink. Like it or not, he knew that he had to relax. He was wound way too tight and wasn’t doing Tracy or himself any good in this state.

  After the plates were cleared, two waiters appeared at Finney’s side—one with a bottle of B&B and three snifters, the other with an elegantly carved humidor. Finney instructed the men to set everything down on th
e table and then they silently disappeared.

  “You know a bartender at the 21 club in New York invented this?” queried Parker as he pulled the cork from the bottle. “Benedictine liqueur and cognac. It became so popular that the French started bottling the combination themselves. The guy never saw a dime of the profits. God, I hate the French.”

  Harvath smiled. Ron Parker had harbored a passionate dislike of the French for as long as he’d known him. Parker liked to say that they were the only army in the world with sunburned armpits.

  Finney offered Harvath a cigar but he shook his head. The after-dinner drink would be enough.

  When Parker handed it to him, Harvath raised the snifter to his nose and closed his eyes as he breathed in the spicy fragrance. For a moment, he almost forgot his problems.

  As he sipped his liquor, he listened while Finney and Parker discussed the things they normally did—the state of world affairs, plans for improving the resort, Site Six, and Sargasso, as well as Parker’s predatory practices with the female guests of Elk Mountain—an amusing but necessary concession Finney had made when asking Parker to give up a great position back east and move to their minimally populated corner of Colorado.

  It was nice for Harvath to listen to the banter between his old friends. As his mind wandered, his thoughts were drawn to Tracy. He pulled his BlackBerry from its holster and checked its signal status. The terrace was usually the best place in the entire resort to get a signal, but he wasn’t getting anything.

  Finney asked him if he wanted to use one of the resort’s cordless phones, and when Harvath said yes, Parker used his radio to ask a staff member to bring one to the terrace.

  Harvath called the nurse’s station at the hospital back in D. C. and asked to speak with Laverna, Tracy’s night nurse.