Near Dark

by Brad Thor

  “How do we know we’ll even be able to get her out of the villa?”

  “We’re going to have someone she trusts make her an offer she can’t refuse.”

  CHAPTER 39

  After breakfast, Harvath showered and changed clothes. Then he went to scout locations with the drone while Sølvi handled renting the boat.

  In the middle of the peninsula, there was a public park with access to a dock. If they waited until late enough in the evening, it would be empty. There was also a road that went almost to the water’s edge. Once they were ready to move the Contessa from the boat back onto dry land, that was how they’d do it.

  Harvath surveilled the entire property, looking for places someone might launch an ambush from. There were a few groves of olive trees, but not much else.

  He next familiarized himself with the rest of the neighborhood, especially the various routes to the Contessa’s villa. As a final checklist item, he did an overflight near her home, making sure not to appear that his drone was interested in anything at all to do with her.

  With his surveillance complete, he texted Sølvi on the encrypted app they were using and asked her about the status of the boat.

  His timing was perfect. She had just completed the paperwork. He told her where he was and that he’d wait for her on the end of the dock. It would be good for her to get in a practice run—especially as she was going to be the captain tonight.

  It took her about twenty minutes to get there, but Harvath had filled the time with different texts and emails, as well as a call to Nicholas, who had been feeding most of the updates to Lawlor.

  Harvath’s visit to VSD Director Simulik’s house hadn’t been shared yet. He was saving that for when he got back to the States. He didn’t need any grief from Lawlor right now. He needed to be left alone so that he could do his job. Nicholas understood and had promised to not say anything.

  When he saw Sølvi approach, he couldn’t believe the boat she had rented. The impressive Rivamare had to have cost a fortune.

  The sleek, twin-engine craft was a work of art in gleaming black paint with teak decks the color of honey and railings that shone like polished silver. He put her length overall at about eleven meters.

  “Let me guess,” he said, as she brought it flawlessly up to the dock, threw the throttles into reverse, and spun the wheel like a pro. “You got an upgrade.”

  She smiled. “Everyone loves Norwegian girls, but the Italians really love us.”

  He put his foot out to help fend the boat off from the dock. “Do you want to tie up here and we can make a loop of the park? Just so you get the lay of the land?”

  “Sure,” she replied, killing the engines and getting out lines and bumpers.

  There was a breeze, so in order to take advantage of it, they swung the craft around to the side of the dock. This way, the light wind would blow the boat away from the pier and prevent it from bumping against it.

  Harvath gave her the quick, down-and-dirty tour. There wasn’t much to see. He laid out what he thought their best course of action was and offered to show her the rest of the drone footage back at the hotel.

  “How about lunch?” he had then asked. There was a nice trattoria with outdoor seating he had seen a couple of blocks up.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Sølvi replied, gesturing toward the water. “I could sit in a café anywhere in the world. How often do you get a chance to go out on a lake like Garda?”

  He couldn’t argue with her thinking. “You’re right. We can eat later.”

  “Actually, we can do both. I picked up supplies while they were finishing the paperwork.”

  Like their room service waiter that morning, Harvath executed a bow and gestured for her to lead the way back to the boat.

  As she fired up the engines, he untied the lines, shoved the Riva away from the dock, and hopped on board.

  Ever the SEAL, he took care of the gear first—coiling and stowing the lines, along with the bumpers, followed by finding a secure spot for the drone, before joining her up front.

  It was a beautiful day to be out on the water and the Riva’s sharp hull sliced through it like a knife.

  The air, moistened with occasional bursts of spray, smelled fresher out here. Commingled with the scent of olives were hints of cypress and lemon. Harvath had been to the more famous Lake Como multiple times, but he couldn’t believe he had never been to Garda. It was incredible.

  They did two tours of the peninsula, checking out the shoreline on both sides, before going off the clock for lunch. Heading out the approximate distance she thought they’d need to go with the Contessa, Sølvi then turned off the engines and allowed the Riva to just bob in the water.

  “Where’d you learn to handle a boat like that?” he asked, as she pulled out the bag of food she had purchased.

  “There’s a lot of shoreline in Norway. Almost everyone, by definition, grows up near the sea. In my case, we had a house right on the coast. And a boat. That was my happy place. I love boats and being near the water.

  “In fact, remember when we were talking about my getting a tip from Holidae Hayes?”

  Harvath nodded as he helped her unwrap the food.

  “We were at one of my favorite places in Oslo at the time,” she continued, handing him napkins and plastic utensils. “It’s a hotel called The Thief. Moored outside is an incredible Riva. Bigger than this one. Up on the roof of the hotel is a gorgeous restaurant which overlooks the water. You can see for kilometers. And if the weather is nice, there are so many boats. It’s heaven.”

  Then, correcting herself, she said, “Actually, being on one of those boats is heaven. Eating on the rooftop of The Thief is the next best thing.”

  “Is that why you found us a Riva?”

  “That, and I knew my rich Uncle Sam was going to reimburse the NIS. Right?”

  Harvath popped the lid off a plastic container filled with olives and smiled. “I’ll put in the good word.”

  Sølvi used one of the forks to spear an olive and smiled bigger than he had ever seen her do so to this point. It was dazzling.

  “I love this,” she said, beaming. “I could do this all the time. There is something about being out on the water that’s just so wonderful.”

  Harvath smiled back at her. “Maybe you should have been a sailor instead of joining the Norwegian Army.”

  “Is there anything Carl didn’t tell you about me?”

  “He was proud of you. There was absolutely no doubt about it.”

  “Thank you,” she said, uncomfortable with the conversation, her smile gone. “We should eat.”

  “I hope I didn’t offend you.”

  “No. You didn’t. It’s just hard to have him gone.”

  “I can understand. We’ve both been through a lot.”

  “Hopefully, though,” she replied as she ate her olive and unwrapped a block of cheese, “we’re close to getting some answers.”

  “Whatever Contessa Montecalvo has, we’ll get it from her. Trust me.”

  “I do,” she replied.

  Harvath looked at her and she looked back. They held each other’s gaze for a fraction of a second, possibly for even a beat too long, and then broke it off—both at the same time.

  They were in tune and it spoke to a deepening, potentially dangerous attraction. You couldn’t work with someone, particularly not in an environment as deadly as theirs, when emotions were likely to cloud judgment. It was a recipe for disaster.

  Harvath tried to compose himself. There was a lot to like, maybe even love, about the Norwegian ninja, but Lara’s memory was still so fresh, so painful. Besides, they had a job to do. He needed to reassert his professionalism.

  “The only thing this picnic is missing,” said Sølvi, interrupting his thoughts, “is a great bottle of wine.”

  “Probably for the best,” he responded. “I haven’t exactly been the picture of responsible alcohol consumption lately.”

  She looked at him again, her face
softer. Kinder. Empathetic. “Because of losing your wife?”

  It was a topic she had wanted to raise while they were driving, but hadn’t out of fear of ripping open what she knew was a very raw wound.

  Harvath looked at what she had purchased for them to drink. “Mineral water?”

  She nodded and joked, “After paying for the boat, it’s all I could afford.”

  He smiled. “Let’s open it.”

  She did, and after retrieving two glasses from the Riva’s galley, poured.

  “Cheers,” said Sølvi, raising her glass. “To those we’ve lost.”

  “To those we’ve lost,” Harvath replied, clinking glasses.

  As he took a sip, he wondered if he would have said no to some wine. Here he was at Lake Garda, on a boat that had to have cost at least half a million dollars, and in the presence of a woman who, on a scale of one to ten, was a fourteen. Not many drinkers who stepped off the wagon did so under such unique circumstances.

  “I remember you getting out the whiskey at Landsbergis’s. How bad is your drinking?” she asked, gently. “Is it a problem?”

  “Is it a problem? No,” he admitted, appreciating her perceptiveness. “Is it too heavy, too often, and too much? Probably.”

  “So what are you going to do about it?”

  Jesus, she was direct. Maybe that was the Scandinavian in her, but it was uncomfortable to have it put to him so bluntly like that. Nevertheless, he appreciated her honesty and attempted a smile. “I’m going to enjoy this nice, full-bodied mineral water and then focus on business.”

  “Good,” she responded, taking a sip of hers. “Just know that I’ve been on the other side. Not alcohol, but similar things. If you ever want to talk, I’m here.”

  He wouldn’t have guessed by looking at her that she’d had a substance abuse problem—or any kind of problem for that matter. Because of her looks, he wanted to graft a perfect story, a fairy tale onto her. He knew that was wrong. He knew that everyone you met was grappling with something—maybe not as rough as a drug problem, but something.

  We all have our crosses to bear. What’s more, we wouldn’t trade ours for someone else’s. If you and ten other people walked into a room and all laid their crosses on the table, everyone would be walking out with the same cross they walked in with.

  He supposed that was because we got used to ours, but it was more than that. Our cross, we realize, helps define who we are. How we wrestled with our problems, how we battled the demons that often accompanied them, was what built character. And as much as her straightforwardness had unsettled him, it was good to have that reminder.

  She was a good person. The world was full of people who would tell you what you wanted to hear. The valuable ones—the people worth holding on to—were those who told you what you needed to hear.

  There was a lot to this Norwegian ninja. Still fjords, apparently, ran quite deep. On the list of things he found attractive, he had never really considered wisdom. Not, at least, until now.

  She appeared to have taken a lot from her experiences. It added something to her, made her even more interesting. He wanted to know where she had been, what she had seen, and the lessons she had learned. But now wasn’t the time.

  Now, they needed to focus on the Contessa. Because if they didn’t get this right, nothing else was going to matter.

  CHAPTER 40

  Tatiana Montecalvo—the Contessa—had indeed been glad to hear from Alexander Kovalyov again—especially when she learned that he had additional intelligence on Scot Harvath. Specifically, he claimed to have signals intelligence pinpointing Harvath’s exact current location. “If what you have is authentic,” she had told him, “I am very interested.”

  They had haggled over the price first. She had warned him that pigs got fed and hogs got slaughtered. He suggested that maybe one of her competitors would be willing to pay his asking price. Someone, perhaps, like the Troll.

  Even mention of the little man’s name made her skin crawl. She despised him. He was a glutton filled with despicable appetites, adrift on a fiendish sea of never-ending pleasure-seeking, and to this day, she was still angry at herself for having played a part in filling his greedy, tiny little belly.

  Knowing his predilections for exotic sex acts and women of a certain look, she had thought she could play him. Before the ubiquitous cloud, in the days of mainframe computing, her goal had been to send her smartest, best-trained girl to him in order to plant a virus. Anything that already existed on his hard drives, as well as anything that ever crossed his computer screen from that point forward, would belong to her.

  Instead he had double-crossed her, sending the girl back with a Trojan horse virus of his own. Once it had been uploaded to her system, he had cleaned her out and had set her operation back years.

  It was a painful lesson in the art of war; one which she had never forgotten. When she took her shots these days, she took them with much more precision. And one of the easiest shots was outbidding a competitor before they even knew there was a contest.

  This wasn’t information she would have to shop. She had a buyer already interested in Harvath. He would pay three times what Kovalyov was asking. It would be very nice to get such an easy payday, and to do it while shutting out the Troll would make it even nicer.

  So, she had agreed to the man’s price—if the information could be authenticated. That’s when the second round of haggling had started.

  He wouldn’t transmit any of what he had electronically. Once she had the treasure map, why should he expect her to pay for it? No, this was going to have to be done in person. The Contessa, not seeing she had a choice, agreed.

  Then came the next point. Kovalyov was concerned that his absence from the embassy in Vilnius would be noticed. He would send a courier instead—someone he trusted. A woman. Once the Contessa had authenticated the intelligence, there would be an immediate transfer of funds into his account, and he would okay the courier to hand everything over to her.

  While she didn’t like working with a middleman or, in this case, a middlewoman, she didn’t want to be so difficult that she nuked their deal. Once again, she agreed to his demands. All that was left were the details of the meeting.

  After he had laid out how he wanted it to go down, she had to give him credit—he had done his homework. He was a clever, resourceful man. She was glad to have him in her pocket. There was no telling what other valuable intelligence he might bring her in the future. If he kept going in this direction, they stood to make lots of money together.

  What she didn’t know was that Alexander Kovalyov would never contact her again. He was sitting in a former U.S. black site in Lithuania and had made a deal with the new acting Director of the VSD, Filip Landsbergis.

  In agreeing to communicate with the Contessa, based on a script Harvath and Nicholas had put together, Kovalyov had been able to secure certain assurances from the Lithuanian government. If he continued to cooperate, his boss would continue to receive medical care, and their entire four-man team would eventually be allowed to leave and return to Russia.

  If he didn’t cooperate, Harvath and the Norwegian woman would be back, the Lithuanians would step aside, and the Russians would be at their mercy. There was only one smart path out of this and Kovalyov had taken it. So far, it appeared to be working.

  With the meeting set, the biggest question was how far Harvath was willing to push things with the Contessa.

  “Have you ever tortured a woman?” Sølvi had asked.

  “Interrogated, yes. Tortured, no.”

  “It’s different with women. What frightens them. What they respond to. The pressure points are not always the same as with men.”

  “You can be the captain, not just of the boat, but of the entire interrogation,” he had said with a smile. “I look forward to watching you work.

  “Speaking of which,” he added. “Just going on what I saw in Vilnius, bullet holes in the Contessa could very quickly end up being bullet holes in
the boat. Just going to throw that out there. I’m not a very good swimmer.”

  “I have always heard that about America’s Navy SEALs. Good with flight attendants. Bad with swimming.”

  She was fun to spar with, but they had still had a lot of work to do. In addition to going over the drone footage and charging its batteries, he had come up with a different approach to the Contessa’s interrogation—one that, if they were lucky, wouldn’t have to involve getting rough with her.

  “I’m all ears,” Sølvi had said. “What are you suggesting?”

  “It has already worked once. How about we make her another offer that she can’t refuse?”

  The NIS operative listened as Harvath had laid out his thinking, and she agreed that it was worth a try. They could always revert to harsh interrogation methods, and if needed, even worse.

  The ball was going to be in the Contessa’s court. How things unfolded would be completely up to her.

  If she was intelligent, which by all accounts she was, hopefully she would do the right thing. Under pressure, though, sometimes people made very bad, very dangerous decisions. They would have to wait and see where the Contessa took them.

  The one thing Harvath knew was that if she took them down the danger road, if she imperiled him or Sølvi, he’d put a bullet in her without thinking twice.

  CHAPTER 41

  At the appointed time, everything appeared to be in place. The boat was bobbing in the water, Sølvi was behind the wheel, the drone was floating in the air, and Harvath was in his hide site. All they needed now was the Contessa.

  When she did show up, Harvath and Sølvi would see her before she saw them. There was no question.

  Out on the lake, the Riva drifted with its engines and running lights off. Harvath watched the park and the dock via the drone’s night vision camera. Sølvi surveilled the shoreline through the night vision goggles he had given her.

  She picked up on the headlights before Harvath did. “Vehicle approaching,” she said. “Southwest corner of the park.”