Foreign Influence

by Brad Thor

  “We can’t send him back to Pakistan now. The police are looking for him. His name is going to be on the no-fly list.”

  “Then we’ll kill him.”

  It was a choice made as casually as someone ordering off a menu.

  “Wow, Marwan. You really wrestled with that decision, didn’t you?”

  “Mohammed Nasiri will be a martyr for the cause of Allah. That is all that matters.”

  “Did you ever stop to think,” asked Rashid, “that maybe Allah values success more than martyrdom?”

  Jarrah smiled again. “Are you about to give me another lecture on our duties to Islam?”

  “Consider it a lesson in management economics. We have a project to complete. This project must be completed on time. We have limited resources. If we remove Nasiri from the production line, we will miss our deadline.”

  “Not if you take his place.”

  Rashid was shocked and didn’t even try to hide it. “I can’t believe it. You want me to be a Shahid? After all that we have been through, you’re asking me to martyr myself?”

  “It would put to rest all of the questions about whether or not we can really trust you.”

  “Yeah, permanently. I’d rather you continue to doubt my loyalty.”

  Jarrah laughed. “We both know you’re much too valuable to become a martyr. Besides, I’d be lost without your company.”

  “What you’d be lost without is my ability to move amongst our enemies.”

  “You have been a great blessing to us,” the older man said as he raised a finger in caution, “but never underestimate our opponents. You must never believe yourself completely beyond their grasp. When that happens, you will get careless. And when you get careless, that is when you will start making mistakes.”

  “Which brings us right back to Nasiri.”

  Jarrah sighed. “What do you want to do?”

  “I want to bring him in; protect him. He made a mistake, but I don’t want the rest of us to suffer because of it.”

  The older man began to speak, but Rashid held up his hand. “Wait, Marwan. Hear me out. Nasiri has been loyal to the cause. He will do whatever we tell him to do. He can still be useful. In fact, we may even find a completely different use for him.”

  That remark piqued Jarrah’s interest. “A different use? What are you thinking of?”

  “The police want him for his hit-and-run accident. Maybe we can use that to our advantage. We may be able to use him as a decoy of some sort.”

  “That is interesting.”

  “I haven’t figured the whole thing out, but I know that we can’t use him for anything if he’s dead.”

  “You’re too soft,” said the older man, baiting him.

  This time, Rashid laughed. “Listen, if I can’t figure out a use for him, I’ll kill him myself.”

  “Fine. Next issue. Where are we going to keep him?”

  “Give me my phone back first.”

  “Why?” asked Jarrah. “Are you going to throw it at me again?”

  “No. I don’t want you to throw it at me.”

  CHAPTER 25

  PARIS

  Samir Ressam took another drag on his cigarette and tried to look bored as he walked down the Boulevard Saint-Michel toward the Seine. He had made his martyrdom video and knew that within the next half-hour it would be uploaded to the Internet along with the videos of seven other martyrs.

  The setting for his had been particularly brazen. A graduate student at the International Film School of Paris, Ressam had eschewed the traditional backdrop of a black Islamic flag. This was to be his final film. It would be seen all over the world and he wanted it to be special. Therefore, it had to grab people, move them.

  The introduction was shot in a park across the street from the U.S. Embassy and contained a raging diatribe about America’s imperialism as well as its moral and cultural decline.

  The film transitioned to a montage of American tourists at different attractions across the city, focusing on the heaviest and most unattractive ones he could find. He conducted man-on-the-street interviews, asking Americans their opinions about Islam and the involvement of their country in the affairs of various Muslim nations. All of the responses were then edited to make America look as evil as possible.

  In what would become a chilling reminder from beyond the grave, he spliced together a series of shots of unattended bags in churches, parks, sidewalk cafés, metro stations, and department stores.

  It ended with Ressam reading several passages from the Qur’an set to a popular jihadist tune from his ancestral home in Algeria. The picture then faded to black, and the music was replaced with the sound of French revelers counting down the final ten seconds to midnight on New Year’s Eve. At zero, there was the audio and visual of a large, Hollywood explosion. Scenes of the 2005 Bali bombings were juxtaposed against scenes of supposed American atrocities against Muslim civilians and set to the music of the American national anthem.

  Finally, the word fin appeared and the video was finished. There was a reason Ressam had never been able to find any work in the French film industry.

  At this moment, though, it made no difference. As Ressam crossed the Boulevard Saint-Germain, he had no misgivings, no second thoughts. He was about to launch his greatest production ever. It was all in the name of Allah the most merciful, the most compassionate.

  Had he been struck with a change of heart, there would have been nothing he could do about it and he knew it. He understood why the cell phone had been wired to the vest he wore beneath his clothes. If he tried to back out, his handler would complete the job for him—from a distance of course.

  Twice he thought he caught sight of the man, but each time he looked back, the figure was gone. The sensation was somewhat disquieting. Why that would bother him considering what he was about to do didn’t make much sense, and the ridiculousness of the emotion made him laugh nervously to himself.

  Ressam crushed out his cigarette on the sidewalk and lit another. He held the smoke deep in his lungs and thought about his family. As he exhaled, he banished all worldly emotion from his heart. Like the tendrils of smoke, the last vestiges of humanity within his soul were banished from his body and whisked skyward into the warm Parisian night.

  The crowd of tourists thickened as he wound his way deeper into the warren of narrow, twisting streets around the Rue Saint-Séverin. Predominantly off-limits to cars, it was one of the greatest concentrations of restaurants in all of Paris. It had almost every cuisine imaginable. Being in the shadow of Notre Dame guaranteed its popularity with tourists, particularly with Americans.

  He had wanted to detonate inside one of the city’s many McDonald’s restaurants and had argued with his handler about it at great length. While the man agreed that it would have been wonderfully symbolic, the idea was to create the largest death toll possible and to make the Americans realize that there was no place they would ever be safe.

  Firm in his belief that Islam could only prevail by slaughtering as many nonbelievers as possible, Ressam strode down the middle of the street to the busiest section of restaurants. All of the outdoor areas were packed. He checked his watch. He was right on time.

  He unslung the backpack from his shoulder and casually carried it with one hand. Near the entrance to a Greek restaurant was a large sandwich board. It had a picture of a Greek fisherman holding a blackboard upon which the evening’s specials had been scrawled. Setting the bag on the ground near the opening of the tent-like sign he read the menu from top to bottom. Then he peered around to see what was written on the other side. As he did, he used his foot to nudge his bag underneath.

  “May I help you?” asked the restaurant’s owner in a haughty tone.

  “Do you serve couscous?” Ressam asked.

  The owner dropped his voice, grabbed Ressam by the arm, and guided him off the curb and into the street. “Does this look like a fucking couscous restaurant to you, asshole? Go find someplace else to pick pockets. Get lost.”r />
  The owner turned back to his guests and smiled. “No problem, no problem,” he said with a laugh. “Gypsies. Very bad.”

  Ressam kept his temper in check and walked to the end of the block. Turning the corner, he stepped into a doorway, lit a cigarette, and watched the final seconds tick down on his watch.

  The explosion was deafening. From his vantage point, he saw a cloud of smoke belched from the end of the street and watched as debris from his primary device rained down from above. As soon as the ringing in his ears started to abate, he could hear the sound of people screaming.

  Leaving the security of the doorway, he walked back around the corner. His handler had been very specific about this part. He was so very close now. He needed to fight his urge to rush right in. Let it happen, he had been told. Be patient. It was much easier said than done.

  Ressam was certain that at any moment someone would point him out and yell, “That’s him! He’s the one who placed the bag at the Greek restaurant.”

  It was a foolish fear. Nobody was looking at him at all. Everyone was rushing to the scene of the blast. All of the other restaurants were emptying out as people ran to see what had happened. They were like moths, drawn to the flame. In the distance, he could already hear sirens.

  As he neared the restaurant, he could see the carnage firsthand. Tables were overturned, windows were blown out, bodies were everywhere. And there was blood. Oh, so much blood! Blood that had been shed for Allah and all of the world’s Muslims. God was indeed great. So great indeed. Allahuakbar, he thought. Allahuakbar.

  And then he began saying it. Quietly at first, but raising his voice as he moved closer to the crowd that now numbered at least two hundred people.

  “Allahuakbar!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.

  People heard the Islamic war cry and screamed, but it was too late. Samir Ressam took his finger off the detonator and completed his masterpiece.

  CHAPTER 26

  Harvath had wanted to put as much distance between himself and Cannes as possible. Despite playing dumb with the man’s wife, he knew who Nikolai Nekrasov was. Considering all of his ties to organized crime, it didn’t surprise him one bit that he had a lowlife like Gaston Leveque working for him.

  At the Palais des Festivals, Harvath had pulled into the underground parking garage where he had earlier left his Citroën. After having wiped his prints from the Saleen, he had grabbed his pack, turned over the keys, and had said good-bye to Eva Nekrasova.

  At the ticket booth, she had blown him a kiss and had roared away toward the center of town. Harvath had let two cars pull out after her and had then exited the structure. Looking up, he had seen no sign of Nekrasov’s helicopter and so had pointed his Citroën toward Marseille.

  He made the drive in under two hours and took a room at the Sofitel near the Vieux Port. The valets seemed distracted as did the front desk staff when he checked in.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “There has been a series of suicide bombings in Paris,” the clerk replied.

  The minute he got into his room, he turned on the TV. There had been bombings at major tourist attractions across the city. Footage was being played of the devastation at the Eiffel Tower, along the Champs Élysées, at Montmartre, and near Notre Dame. The facts were still sketchy, but there was talk of primary and secondary detonations. It was a favorite tactic of Islamic terrorists to detonate a primary device in order to draw in further victims and first responders, and to then detonate a second, more powerful blast.

  French news services were speculating whether the attacks were related to the bus bombing in Rome and placed the death toll in the hundreds. Though many of the victims were tourists, locals had also been killed. It was being described as the French 9/11.

  Harvath stood at the foot of his bed still holding his backpack. He had no doubt this attack was tied to the Rome bombing. He also felt responsible. He knew he shouldn’t, but he did. The Old Man was going to be very angry. Harvath owed him a phone call, but before he spoke with his boss, he wanted to speak with Nicholas.

  Setting his pack on the desk, he opened up the minibar. He grabbed a small bottle of whiskey, twisted off the metal cap, and poured it into a glass. Removing one of his clean cell phones, he powered it up and dialed the number for the Troll’s satellite phone.

  “You heard about Paris?” Nicholas asked. Ever fearful of the NSA’s voice-printing capabilities, he was running the call through a special program on his laptop. The voice sounded robotic. There was a slight delay, along with an echo as it went up to the satellite and bounced back down.

  “We were too late,” said Harvath.

  “We couldn’t have stopped it.”

  “We could have and we should have.”

  “There are going to be more,” replied Nicholas. “Trust me. Let’s focus on stopping those. We cannot bring these people back.”

  Harvath took a sip of his drink. “Tell me about Tony Tsui.”

  “That’s who hired Leveque?”

  “Yes. Who is he?”

  “He is a second-rate, digital pimp. That’s who he is.”

  “So you know him.”

  “Unfortunately, I do,” answered the little man. “But this is all starting to fit. When the assassin he hired failed to report back in, he proceeded right to the next step in his plan.”

  “Which was implicating you in the Rome bombing.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Why would he want you killed?”

  “I’m his leading source of competition.”

  “Tsui is in the intelligence business?” asked Harvath.

  “Tsui is barely a step above a peeping Tom, and not a very high step either. He’s pure scum. He’d sell out his own mother if it meant a couple of bucks in his pocket. He has been trying to fish from my pond for years.”

  “But why attempt to kill you now?”

  The Troll was silent as he tried to fit the pieces together. “I sold him a piece of information recently.”

  “How recently?”

  “In the last year.”

  “And that was the last time you communicated with him?”

  “It’s not like the man is on my Christmas card list.”

  Harvath took another sip of his drink. “What was the information you sold him?”

  “Normally,” replied the Troll, “I don’t kiss and tell, but in this case I have no problem filling you in. It was the location of a secret military base in Mongolia run by the PLA.”

  “What did he want with a secret base run by the Chinese military?”

  “It was for a client.”

  “Did he say who the client was?”

  “As unprofessional as Tsui is, he knows how to keep his mouth shut.”

  Harvath was having trouble connecting the dots. “What’s the base used for?”

  Nicholas exhaled loudly. “I’ve got no idea.”

  “How about Tsui? Does he know?”

  “Maybe. Maybe his client knows. All I brought to the party was the location.”

  “And Tsui paid you for that information?” asked Harvath.

  “Yes he did.”

  “Any chance the information didn’t pan out and so he wanted to whack you out of revenge?”

  Nicholas laughed. “That’s not how our business works. If the information had been bad, he would have demanded his money back. And I would have paid him. But he never asked. Which tells me that the information was solid.”

  “So he tried to kill you to get you out of his way.”

  “Or to keep me quiet.”

  Harvath needed to fill in the blanks. “How many transactions have you done with Tsui over the years?”

  “A lot.”

  “And you never had any animosity? No problems at all?”

  “There was plenty of animosity, but nothing that would rise to either one of us wanting the other killed. I told you, he’s a despicable character. But from time to time he proved a useful and lucrative source. We flowed
information both ways if the price was right. And we never let price prevent us from making money.”

  It sounded to Harvath as if Tsui and Nicholas deserved each other. They were a couple of gossiping old ladies who talked trash behind each other’s backs but would sit down and have coffee to trade gossip about everybody else if they got the chance. The only difference was that the “gossip” they traded in was the stuff of state secrets and the kind of dirty laundry that brought politicians, business titans, and even countries to their knees.

  Harvath swirled the liquid in his glass. All signs pointed to Tsui, but he wanted to be sure. “Who else could have framed you with the Italians?”

  “The pope himself could have done it.”

  “I’m going to assume that you’re exaggerating. You haven’t actually crossed the pope, have you?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” said Nicholas. “Leveque gave you Tsui’s name and I’m going to bet he didn’t do so willingly.”

  “No, it was under significant duress,” replied Harvath.

  “Then you need to ask yourself how confident you are in what Leveque told you. Personally, Tsui makes perfect sense. He knows enough about me and what he doesn’t know, he most likely has the means to find out.”

  “What do you know about him?”

  “Enough to make him very uncomfortable,” said Nicholas.

  “I want to pay him a visit. How soon can you get me an address?”

  “It’ll probably take me a few hours.”

  “Get started and call me back when you have something.”

  After hanging up, Harvath downed the remainder of his drink and opened the minibar for a second. Though his ego was more bruised than his body, he was still sore from the beating he had taken from Dominique Fournier. But it was nothing compared to the beating he knew he was going to take from Reed Carlton.

  After a couple of sips of his second whiskey, he picked up the phone and dialed.

  CHAPTER 27