After placing the bowls upon the threshold, the Troll closed the front door, came back to the reading nook, and climbed into the chair next to Harvath. “I knew you’d come for me,” he said. “I just didn’t think it would be this soon. So this is it, then.”

“Maybe,” replied Harvath. “It depends on whether you can be of any further use to me.”

“So you’re not a man of your word after all.”

Harvath knew what he was alluding to, but he let the question hang in the air between them.

“You promised I wouldn’t be killed,” said the Troll in his tainted British accent. His dark hair was cut short and he sported a well-kept beard.

Harvath grinned. “I made that promise to you when I thought you were cooperating with me.”

The Troll’s eyes shifted. It was an ever-so-subtle tell. Harvath knew he had him. “There should have been another name on that list you gave me. Five men were released from Gitmo that night. Not four.”

The Troll smiled. “Agent Harvath, if there’s one thing I’ve learned during my lifetime, it’s how to read people, and I can tell that you already know who this fifth person is.”

Harvath leaned forward, his face a mask of deadly determination. “If you’re such a good reader of people then you should already know that if you do not cooperate, I will kill you with my own bare hands, right here. Do we understand each other?”

If the Troll was intimidated by Harvath’s threat, he didn’t show it. “It’s been a very long day,” he said. “Why don’t we adjourn to the living room and have a drink?”

When Harvath hesitated, he added, “If you’re worried about me trying to poison you, you don’t have to join me. I’m quite used to drinking alone.”

Either way, Harvath wasn’t about to let his guard down. Pointing at the bar with the barrel of his Beretta he said, “Be my guest.”

Chapter 85

“So, Agent Harvath,” said the Troll as he scooted up onto the couch with a snifter of Germain-Robin XO and made himself comfortable, “what is it I can do for you?”

Sitting face-to-face with the smug little bastard like this, Harvath’s trigger finger began to itch. He was seriously weighing the merits of killing him. If the Troll didn’t come up with something of value, he was going to put a bullet in him and toss his body into the bay. “Why did you leave Philippe Roussard’s name off the list?” demanded Harvath.

The Troll didn’t know what to say. He was angry at himself for underestimating Harvath. He was also angry at Roussard. His foolishness had put the Troll in a very difficult position.

The little man seemed to be a million miles away, so Harvath fired a round into the pillow he was leaning on. “Tick tock.”

The booming noise startled the Troll. It was not only extremely aggressive, it was also rude.

Though none of Harvath’s behavior should have come as a shock to the Troll, he had felt as if they had developed a partnership of sorts, or at the very least a détente. He felt a professional respect for Harvath, but it was obvious that it was not reciprocated.

Puffing his cheeks full of air, the Troll exhaled and said, “I have not seen or spoken with Roussard in many years.”

“So you do know him.”

“Yes,” replied the Troll. It was hopeless to lie, and he knew it. Harvath held all the cards in his hand-his fortune, his livelihood, even his life.

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“Five, maybe ten years ago. I can’t remember exactly.”

“But you knew he was one of the five released from Guantanamo,” asserted Harvath.

“Yes, I did.”

“And yet you purposely left his name off the list you gave to me. Why? Were you two hoping to kill me before I could stop you? Is that it?” demanded Harvath as he raised his pistol for emphasis.

It was the most logical conclusion for Harvath to come to, but it was absurd. “The last time I saw Philippe, he was nothing more than a very troubled young man.”

“Funny how quickly things change.”

The Troll thought about laughing it all off, but the pistol pointed at his chest was not particularly amusing. “I have had no contact with him since then.”

“So why leave his name off the list?”

“In my line of work, a person collects enemies very quickly. Friends are much harder to come by.”

“Roussard is a friend of yours?” asked Harvath.

“You could say that.”

Tired of his obfuscation, Harvath put another round through the couch, millimeters from the Troll’s left thigh. “My patience is wearing thin.”

“My godson,” stammered the Troll. “Philippe Roussard is my godson.”

“Somebody made you a child’s godfather?”

“It was more of an honorary title bestowed on me by the family.”

“What family?” demanded Harvath, as he adjusted his aim and prepared to squeeze the trigger.

A slow smile began to spread across the Troll’s face.

“What’s so funny?”

“Sometimes,” replied the Troll, “the world is an amazingly small place.”

Chapter 86

THE WHITE HOUSE

It was late, but the president had told his DCI that he would wait up for his assessment. When James Vaile arrived, he was taken upstairs to the residence.

The president was in his private study watching the Chicago White Sox play the Kansas City Royals. It had been a great game that had gone into extra innings.

When the DCI knocked on the study’s open door, Jack Rutledge set down his drink, turned off the TV, and waved him in.

“Are you hungry?” asked the president as the CIA chief closed the door behind him and took the empty leather club chair next to him.

“No thank you, sir.”

“How about a drink?”

Vaile shook his head and politely declined.

“Okay then,” said Rutledge, glad to be getting on with it. “You’ve had a chance to look at everything. Let’s have it.”

The DCI withdrew a folder from his briefcase and opened it. “Mark Sheppard is no Woodward or Bernstein in the writing department, but he more than makes up for it in the depth of his research.”

Vaile handed a copy of the reporter’s article to the president and continued, “The attention this piece would have brought to the Baltimore Sun would have sent their circulation through the roof. Based on Sheppard’s notes, the paper was looking for ways they could stretch the story into a series of articles. They’d already planned to recreate the car accident, as well as the takedown of the John Doe hijacker in Charleston -fake FBI agents and all.

“We’re just lucky this guy Sheppard came looking for a statement a week before he was going to press. Had he come the night before, Geoff Mitchell and the press office wouldn’t have been able to put him off while they claimed the White House was looking into it.”

“And you never would have had time to get to him,” said the president as he finished scanning the article.

“Not the way I needed to,” replied Vaile.

“Then we dodged the bullet.”

The DCI shook his head. “Right now, Sheppard’s editors have to be fuming. This story was the best thing to come along for their paper in years and now it’s been torpedoed.”

Rutledge had a feeling he knew where this was going. “You think if we put out the alert on the school buses that might trigger the Sun into running Sheppard’s story anyway?”

“It’s always possible. Though we’ve got all his original source material, they’ve got the notes they took in their editorial meetings. If they suspect Sheppard killed his story under duress, they might smell blood in the water, decide to reinterview his sources, and run it all without his name on it.”

“Then he’d better have been damn convincing when he withdrew it.”

Vaile nodded. “He definitely had the proper motivation, that’s for sure.”