Foreign Influence_A Thriller Page 10

  “No.”

  “Then be quiet.”

  Davidson asked the question again.

  “Is this your handwriting?”

  The man on the couch nodded.

  Davidson stopped when he got to the entries for July 9, the date of Alison Taylor’s hit-and-run. “Do you recall a cab coming in here on or around the ninth of July with damage from a hit-and-run?”

  The man shook his head.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Ali Masud.”

  “Mr. Masud, do you recall anyone talking about a hit-and-run accident recently?”

  “No, sir,” replied Masud. “I do not.”

  Davidson studied all of the entries for July 9 and wrote down the cab numbers and then did the same for the next seven days. “Can you make a copy of this for me?” he asked Jamal.

  “I would be happy to, sir,” said Jamal as he gathered up the book and walked over to a small Xerox machine.

  Davidson turned his attention back to Masud. “Have you ever had a customer who needed repairs due to hitting a pedestrian?”

  The Pakistani shrugged. “I would have to look back through the files.”

  “I can’t expect you to remember something like that,” Davidson cracked.

  Ali Masud didn’t respond.

  Jamal returned with the copies and handed them to Davidson. “I’m sorry we couldn’t be more helpful.”

  “Me too,” said Davidson as he removed a pair of handcuffs.

  While he was sure all three of the men were lying, Vaughan had not witnessed anything that constituted an arrestable offense. The last thing he wanted was to get dragged into a false-arrest claim with Davidson. Leaning in, he said quietly, “What are you doing?”

  “Time for plan B,” answered Davidson as he walked out of the office and onto the garage floor.

  Vaughan followed him and was just in time to see him point to the mechanic from earlier and, holding the handcuffs at his side, say, “You. Put your tools down and come over here. You are under arrest.”

  “Me?” said the mechanic.

  “You.”

  Davidson had only taken two steps toward him when the mechanic dropped his tools and bolted for the door.

  Looking at Vaughan he yelled, “Get him! I’ll get the car.”

  Vaughan made it out the door just in time to see the mechanic turn right at the corner. Chasing suspects was one of his least favorite parts about the job, but he took off after him.

  Turning right at the corner, he saw the mechanic cross the street and turn into the alley. If there was one place you didn’t want to chase someone, it was into an alley. The problem was that these guys seldom ran across open, flower-strewn meadows.

  The mechanic cut in between two buildings, leapt up onto a Dumpster, and flipped over a chain-link fence into a vacant lot. Vaughan was fifty yards behind him and closing.

  At the far side of the lot, the mechanic hit the pavement and turned left. Vaughan had not chased a lot of Pakistanis, but if this was what he could expect the next time, he made a mental note to just take out his gun and shoot the guy.

  “Stop running!” he yelled, but the Pakistani man wasn’t interested in following orders. Instead, he picked up his pace even further. This guy was running like his life was on the line.

  Vaughan was pissed. Where the hell was Davidson?

  They came to the next intersection and the mechanic didn’t even slow down. He ran right through traffic and almost got nailed. Horns were still blaring as Vaughan, who was tightening the gap, raced across the street after him.

  Up ahead, the Pakistani began to slow down. Whatever reserves he had, he must have burned through them.

  Nearing the middle of the block, he stopped and risked a glance backward.

  “That’s right,” Vaughan yelled. “You fucking stop right there.”

  The mechanic must have judged the distance and figured he had enough energy left to outrun the police officer, because something flickered over his face ever so briefly. It looked like a smile. He wasn’t stopping. He was just catching his breath.

  That did it. Now Vaughan was really pissed. Not only was he going to catch this dirtbag, he was going to beat him full of courtesy with either an Emily Post guide or the Chicago phone book, whichever was thicker. Go ahead. Start running again, asshole, he thought to himself.

  It was almost as if the Pakistani man could read his mind. With his eyes still glued to Vaughan, he sucked in a huge breath of air and took off once again.

  He had only made it three steps when he stepped off the curb into the area where the alley met the street and Paul Davidson hit him with his Bronco.

  The mechanic tumbled across the ground like a human lint roller, picking up shards of glass and loose gravel as he went. It wasn’t the worst road rash ever suffered by man, but for a guy that hadn’t been pitched off a bike or a motorcycle, it was pretty impressive.

  By the time Vaughan reached them, Davidson had already leapt out of his truck and had the suspect’s arms pinned behind his back.

  “They teach you that move in Public Vehicles?” asked Vaughan as he leaned against the building at the mouth of the alley and tried to catch his breath.

  “My doctor says I shouldn’t exert myself,” replied Davidson as he snapped a pair of cuffs on the mechanic and yanked him to his feet.

  “I am in pain,” complained the Pakistani.

  “The party is just starting, my friend,” said Davidson as he led him into the alley and propped him up behind his truck.

  His breathing slowly coming back under control, Vaughan walked back and joined them.

  “I told you not to run.”

  “I am sorry, sir,” replied the mechanic.

  “It’s a little late for that.”

  “Please, sir, I cannot go to the jail.”

  Davidson laughed. “Oh, yes you can, my friend. And it is not a happy place.”

  The Pakistani looked away from him and for some reason seemed to decide that Vaughan was the more rational and reasonable of the pair and focused on him. “Sir, please, no jail.”

  “You should have thought of that before you started running.”

  “Actually,” injected Davidson, “you should have thought of that before you started playing with cab medallions like they were refrigerator magnets.”

  “I can pay you,” said the man. “I have money. Please.”

  “Don’t do that,” said Vaughan. “Bribing a police officer is a very serious offense, and you are already in enough trouble as it is. What’s your name?”

  “Javed Miraj.”

  Davidson removed his notebook and wrote the man’s name down.

  “Where do you live?”

  The man answered and, after a few more questions about his background, Vaughan asked, “Why did you run?”

  “I told you, sir,” said Miraj, “I do not wish to go to the jail.”

  “I got that part. What I want to know is why you ran?”

  The mechanic was quiet for several moments before responding. “If I go to the jail, I will be sent back to Pakistan.”

  “You’re illegal.”

  Javed Miraj hung his head and nodded.

  Vaughan whistled. “Not good, Javed. Not good at all, my friend.”

  “Unless you can convince a judge you’re from Mexico, you’re definitely going to be on the next plane out of here. Can you habla Español?”

  Miraj looked up at Davidson and then turned his tearful eyes to Vaughan. “Please, sir. There are no jobs in my village in Pakistan. I send money to my family so they can buy food. If you send me home, we will all starve.”

  “But look at it this way,” replied Davidson, placing an arm around his shoulder and steering him toward the passenger door. “At least you’ll all be together.”

  “No,” implored the mechanic. “Please, sir, no. Do not send me back.”

  “There’s nothing we can do. We have to follow the law. Besides, you should see what you did to the hood of
my Bronco.”

  “I can fix your Bronco, sir.”

  “Wait a second,” said Vaughan, who had figured out Davidson’s plan B the moment he stepped out of the Crescent office waving a pair of handcuffs at the mechanic. “Maybe there is something we can do. Maybe, if Mr. Miraj can help us, we can help him.”

  “Javed can’t help us. He’s going back to Pakistan.”

  Vaughan looked at the man and shrugged. “Sorry, Javed.”

  Miraj hung his head as Davidson opened the passenger door of his Bronco. Just as Davidson was about to place him inside, he took a deep breath and asked, “If I help you, you will help me?”

  Davidson stopped and leaned him against the side of the truck.

  “It’s your decision,” said Vaughan. “You either help us or you go to jail and get sent back to Pakistan.”

  The mechanic winced and Vaughan saw another flash of what he had previously thought had been a smile.

  “I must go to the toilet,” said the man. “My stomach is very bad. You chasing me has made it worse.”

  “No,” corrected Davidson. “You running from us made it worse. Now, if you’ll pardon the pun, shit or get off the pot.”

  The Pakistani was confused.

  “He means, give us something we can use, or you are going to jail. Right now.”

  “The logbook they showed you is false. It is not real.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I heard them,” replied Javed. “They told Ali Masud to make up a new book.”

  Davidson knew it. They’d even spilled tea on it to age it and disguise the fact that it was brand new. “So we were right,” he said. “The cab from that night had been there.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who worked on it?” asked Vaughan.

  Javed looked at him. “I did.”

  CHAPTER 18

  PROVENCE

  FRANCE

  SATURDAY

  Forty-five kilometers east of the border, Padre Peio pulled into a tiny French village and parked behind a four-year-old blue Citroën. He had taken a circuitous route through the mountains and down into France. Much of what they had driven on could hardly have been called roads at all. In fact, Harvath suspected that they were very likely Basque smuggling routes, but he didn’t ask. He was more interested in listening to Peio.

  As they drove, the priest had opened up about his past. The information came slowly at first, but built from there. Harvath wondered how many people the priest had ever shared his story with. He doubted his fellow priests would fully understand. Harvath wondered if, because of their similar backgrounds, Peio felt more comfortable with him; that somehow Harvath was better equipped to understand it.

  He began by talking about his family. They were Basque, and his father had worked for the government. When Peio was in his first year of high school, his family had moved to Madrid. With so many members of the family involved in the separatist movement, they were worried about him and his older brother becoming involved with ETA too.

  The fear wasn’t unfounded. Within a year of graduating from high school, Peio’s older brother had returned to the Basque country and joined. Three months later, he was killed in a shoot-out with police. The family was devastated.

  Peio did his compulsory military service and proved himself quite proficient in military intelligence. He extended his tour, completed his college degree on nights and weekends, and eventually transferred into the Spanish Intelligence service, where he met his wife.

  They deeply loved their jobs and each other. They had a plan to work five more years in the intelligence field and then transition into something steady and less dangerous so that they could begin a family. They were six months shy of that goal when, on a cold March morning in 2004, Peio’s wife, Alicia, boarded a rush hour commuter train for Madrid.

  At 7:38 a.m., just as the train was pulling out of the station, an improvised explosive device planted by Muslim terrorists detonated, killing her instantly.

  It was the Spanish 9/11 and Spain was in shock. Peio was beyond devastated. As an intelligence operative who specialized in Muslim extremism, he felt that he had not only failed his country, but that somehow he should have been able to prevent the attack. Because he hadn’t, he had gotten Alicia killed.

  None of what was going through his mind could have been further from the truth, but Peio had slipped into a very dangerous mental and emotional state.

  He came into work the very next day, demanding to be allowed on the investigation. His superiors rightly refused his request and sent him home, placing him on a leave of absence. Friends from work took turns staying with him over the next two days until the third day when he disappeared. His colleagues assumed he had gone up to the Basque country to get away from Madrid and the scene of his wife’s murder. They had no idea how wrong they were.

  Over the next thirty-six hours, Peio hunted down and brutally interrogated several Muslim extremists, severely hampering the Spanish investigation. No matter what direction the authorities chose to follow, Peio, like some all-knowing deity, had already been there.

  He captured two members of the terror cell and tortured them for three days before executing them. After drawing out all the money in his bank account, he left Madrid for the island of Cabrera, where he drank himself nearly to death and became hooked on heroin. When he ran out of money, he attempted suicide.

  It was a priest on the tiny island who found him and helped bring him back from the dead. When it became time for Peio to decide whether or not to return to Madrid and put the pieces of his previous life back together, he felt that God had another plan for him.

  As Harvath now sat waiting for Dominique Fournier, it was Peio’s last statement that made him wish the priest had kept his past to himself. The biggest regret Peio said he had was not the brutal interrogations, the tortures, or the executions of the terrorists he had captured. For those acts, he had repented, atoned, and would ultimately have to answer to God. What he regretted the most was not having had children with his wife. If they’d had children, even just one, those days and months after Alicia’s death would have been different.

  Harvath doubted it. Any real man, especially someone with Peio’s background, would have tried to hunt down his wife’s killers. It was the six-month bender, heroin addiction, and suicide attempt that were troubling. Maybe a child would have prevented Peio from sinking so far into despair, but maybe not. There was no telling. For all he knew, Peio’s circuits weren’t exactly wired properly. The way his past life still seemed to pull at him, he had serious doubts about whether or not the man could or would remain a priest.

  What bothered Harvath was the whole thing about not having kids. He didn’t mind Peio unloading on him. It was a long drive and maybe he really did see something in Harvath that made him feel he could confide in him. But that his biggest regret, even after God had supposedly called him to a life in the church, was never having had kids really stuck with Harvath. If this man, a priest, couldn’t get over it, how would he? There were parallels between Peio’s loyalty to the church and his loyalty to Tracy that he didn’t want to even begin exploring. He had some very serious things to consider, but for now they would have to wait. Dominique Fournier was almost within his grasp.

  Nicholas had been right about her security measures. They were indeed better than most, but they weren’t perfect. With limited bandwidth, his satellite phone, and a small wire transfer from one of his many bank accounts, finding Fournier’s Achilles’ heel had not proven difficult. The woman had made more than a few enemies in her lifetime.

  The terraced hills near Fournier’s estate were fronted by stone walls and planted with grapevines and olive trees. The fields beyond were an undulating sea of lavender. It was definitely one of the more picturesque places Harvath had ever conducted an ambush.

  After confirming that Fournier had left the house, he returned to the Citroën, tossed his binoculars into his pack, popped the hood, and waited. Fifteen minutes later, she a
nd her bodyguard came jogging up the road.

  Leaning against the front of the car, he put on his most charming smile.

  Fournier was a stunning woman. She was in her late forties, stood almost six feet tall, and had been a print and runway model until the business had finished chewing her up and had spit her out. She had long red hair drawn back in a ponytail and green eyes, and there wasn’t an ounce of fat on her extremely athletic body, which Harvath had a more than ample view of as she was wearing one of the skimpiest jogging outfits he had ever seen.

  Her bodyguard looked hard as nails. He was about the same age, but stood two inches shorter. He wore a fanny pack, which is where Harvath assumed he carried his weapon. He was clean-cut and intelligent looking. This guy wasn’t just hired muscle. He was experienced and professional. Harvath noticed his demeanor change the minute he spotted him. He stiffened up and gave his protectee a subtle signal to drop back.

  As they drew closer, Harvath stood up straighter and waved. The bodyguard was in front of Fournier by several feet and cautiously approached.

  In addition to jogging the same road every day with only one bodyguard, Dominique Fournier had another weak spot, her vanity. “If this is what roadside assistance looks like in France, I’m going to have to make sure I break down more often.”

  Though Harvath spoke very good French, he wanted to put the pair at ease with him as quickly as possible. He figured the best way was to play the role of American tourist. He wasn’t ready for what came next.

  “What’s wrong with your car?” said the bodyguard in perfect English. His accent sounded like he came from somewhere around Baltimore.

  “Are you American?” asked Harvath, his smile growing even broader.

  “Yes,” replied the bodyguard, who continued to remain professional. “What’s wrong with your car?”

  “I don’t know. I think Citroën is French for piece of shit.”

  The bodyguard cracked a smile. “When we get to a phone, we’ll call a wrecker for you.”

  “Why don’t you see if you can help him, Richard,” said Fournier as she stepped up and introduced herself. “My name is Dominique.”