It had ended very badly. The memories had haunted Harvath for a long time, and he did not care to be reliving them now.

Hashim had appeared like a wraith out of the vineyard and had run right at them with hand grenades in each hand. Harvath prepared himself for the attack, but Hashim ran right past them. He took Schoen and his team completely by surprise. Screaming at the top of his lungs, Hashim jumped into the van just as the door began to close.

Harvath had thrown himself on top of Meg. The grenades detonated and the van exploded into a billowing fireball, taking Schoen, Hashim, and his sister, Adara, along with it.

The horrible smell of gasoline and burnt flesh was one Harvath would never forget.

So now someone from the Nidal family tree was out for blood. The only question was which branch Philippe Roussard represented.

“So whose son is Philippe? Hashim’s or Adara’s?”

“Adara’s,” replied the Troll.

“Who’s his father?” asked Harvath.

“An Israeli intelligence operative who died before the boy was born.”

“Daniel Schoen?” responded Harvath, stunned that the twisted operation had come back to haunt him so. “He was Ari Schoen’s son.”

Harvath was good. “How did you know that?” asked the Troll.

“I didn’t.”

“But then-”

“The night Adara was killed,” said Harvath, “Schoen confessed to having broken up her relationship with Daniel. He called her a whore and she said something about Daniel wanting to have children with her. But I sensed there was something more-something that she wasn’t saying.”

“Obviously, there was. She had the child out of wedlock shortly after leaving Oxford where she and Daniel had met. Since the elder Schoen had done such an admirable job of making it look like Daniel wanted nothing further to do with her, Adara raised the boy in secret. She placed him with a French family she had connections with, and they raised him as their own. He wanted for nothing and went to the finest Western schools. But he always knew who he was and where he came from.”

“Just like his mother,” said Harvath.

Once again, the Troll nodded.

“You still haven’t explained your connection. Was it with the Nidals, or the foster family, the Roussards?”

“It was with the Nidals,” replied the Troll. “Abu Nidal was one of my earliest clients.”

Harvath looked at the dwarf with contempt. “You keep rather distasteful company. Birds of a feather, I suppose.”

The Troll took a long sip of his brandy. “Like I said, in my line of work, a person collects enemies very quickly. Friends are much harder to come by. Abu Nidal was one of the best and most loyal friends I ever had. His daughter, Adara, was the second best. Normally, a man like me has to pay for a woman’s attention. With Adara things were different.”

Harvath had heard some boasts in his time, but this guy was full of shit. “You and Adara Nidal?” he asked.

“A gentleman wouldn’t ask such questions,” said the Troll as he took another sip of brandy.

From what Harvath knew of her, Adara Nidal was a raving psychopath with unparalleled bloodlust. She was a woman of strange appetites, and the more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed that Adara Nidal and the Troll would be perfect for each other.

At the moment, though, none of that made any difference. Harvath had a killer to catch. “So Adara’s son is targeting the people around me because he holds me responsible for his mother’s death?”

“It’s the only thing I can think of that makes sense,” replied the Troll.

“What about tying his attacks to the ten plagues of Egypt? The lamb’s blood above my door, the attack on Tracy, my mother, the ski team, the dog, and all the rest of them are tied in to the ten plagues, but in reverse order-ten through one instead of one through ten.”

“Hold on a second,” said the Troll. “The dog I left for you?”

Harvath nodded.

“What about it?”

Harvath realized that he might have just touched a nerve. “Roussard took great joy in torturing it. He severely beat the puppy and then put it in a body bag infested with fleas. He hung the puppy upside down from a rafter and left it there to die.”

The Troll’s face flushed with anger.

Chapter 89

“That dog was an innocent, an absolute innocent!” growled the Troll angrily as he slid off the couch and walked to the bar to refill his glass.

Attributing his increasing loquaciousness to the alcohol, Harvath had no intention of stopping him.

“There’s a reason I haven’t been in touch with Philippe,” said the Troll as he refilled his glass. “He had always been a very disturbed young man.”

“How disturbed?” asked Harvath.

“Extremely,” he replied as he crossed back over to the couch and climbed up. “There even came a point where the Roussards refused to care for him any longer. Adara had to put him into a very expensive boarding school. But there his problems only got worse.”

“What kind of problems?”

“In the beginning, his behavior was marked by a lack of empathy or conscience. He had poor impulse control and exhibited an array of manipulative behaviors. A psychologist the Roussards consulted could not make a specific diagnosis. The boy exhibited both antisocial and narcissistic personality disorders-neither of which was good news.

“To paraphrase the renowned criminal psychiatrist Robert D. Hare, Philippe was a predator who used charm, manipulation, intimidation, and violence to control others and to satisfy his own selfish needs. Lacking in conscience and feeling for others, he cold-bloodedly took whatever he wanted and did whatever he pleased, violating social norms and expectations without the slightest sense of guilt or regret.”

Philippe sounded just like his mother, and Harvath wondered if such an abhorrent psychological condition could be inherited.

“The Roussards tried to medicate the boy,” continued the Troll, studying the bit of brandy in his snifter, “but he refused to take his pills. When he attacked their youngest daughter with a knife, the Roussards gave Adara an ultimatum.”

“Which was?”

“Either she show up within the next twenty-four hours to collect him, or they were going to put him on the next plane to Palestine.

“It was the first in a perceived series of abandonments that undoubtedly contributed to his already precarious mental condition. The boy had always been very conflicted about his Palestinian-Israeli parentage. The use of the plagues, and in reverse order, may be some twisted nod to his father’s Jewish heritage.”

Now that Harvath’s worst fears about the man stalking the people closest to him had been confirmed, he had to focus on how to stop him. “Do you have a way to contact him?”

The Troll shook his head and took another sip of his drink. “Philippe and I had an incident. We never spoke again after that.”

“What kind of incident?”

“It’s not something I like to talk about.”

Harvath squinted over the sights of his pistol and began to apply pressure to the trigger. The Troll got the message.

“We had a disagreement. It was over something entirely inconsequential. Any normal person would have forgotten it and moved on, but Phillipe wasn’t normal, he was sick.

“He abducted me and held me hostage for two days, during which time I was subjected to torture. It was Adara who finally found me and came to my rescue. She nursed me back to health.”

“So why the hell would you want to show any loyalty to a man like that?” inquired Harvath.

“My loyalty wasn’t to him,” said the Troll, a sad smile playing out on his lips, “but to his mother.”

“I want to know something,” said Harvath. “I was there the night she died.”

“Yes.”

“Do you hold me responsible for what happened?”

The Troll was silent. “Does it really matter?” he finally asked.