Near Dark (Scot Harvath #19)(61)

This put him in a very difficult situation. He’d had a solid lead and now it had been lost. Harvath had not turned his phone back on, had not used a credit or ATM card, nor had his passport been used to exit the United States and enter another country. Yet, his source could no longer find him in Key West. The same went for all of the known aliases he had been able to come up with.

The Belgian must have spooked him and Harvath had gone to ground. It was now going to be a much bigger challenge to track him down.

The problem with a man like Harvath was that he had experience finding people who didn’t want to be found. He likely had a whole bag of tricks to keep him off the radar.

At some point, though, he was going to need help. That was the key. If Aubertin could figure out to whom he would turn, then he might be able to pick up his trail.

To do that, he would have to map out all the important people in Harvath’s life—all of the people he might go to. It was a Herculean task. And if Harvath was smart, which Aubertin knew he was, he’d avoid the most obvious ones. In fact, there was a good chance he might go to an enemy—someone no one would ever think he would turn to.

Aubertin’s head hurt. The double and triple crosses that existed in this game could be madness-inducing. It was like standing in a funhouse hall of mirrors trying to discern reflection versus reality.

There was also the problem of Trang’s client—the person who had ultimately put up the money and had ordered the contract. Apparently, they were growing angry with how long the operation was taking.

Whoever this person was, they were threatening to pull the contract if results didn’t happen soon. What’s more, they had also hinted at serious, physical reprisals.

Trang, already nervous because of the double crosses they had planned, decided to extend his stay in Paris. Returning to his home in Vietnam—the spot where Andre Weber had opened the contract and had paid him his fee, didn’t seem like a great idea right now.

Aubertin needed to get results. To do that, he’d have to clear his mind. That’s why he had come to La Promenade. If he didn’t come up with a plan by the time lunch was over, he’d take a walk along Jullouville’s beach. Sometimes, he did his best thinking when he wasn’t thinking.

He was already on his second glass of wine when the waiter brought out his entrée. The baby Dover sole looked, and smelled, delicious.

It struck him that he had never asked how the local fishermen caught them. He assumed it was with a net, but he was more interested in what artistry, what skill was necessary to trap these highly prized specimens.

Did you have to go deep? Or were they closer to the surface? Near shore? Or far out into the English Channel? It was almost laughable how little he understood about a simple subject and a food he so regularly enjoyed.

But thinking about it had the effect of focusing his mind even more keenly on Harvath.

He didn’t realize that’s what had happened until he was preparing to pay his bill.

That was when it hit him. That was when he knew how he was going to flush Harvath out into the open.





CHAPTER 28


Harvath had spent the next twenty minutes talking with the truck driver. Initially, he had been stunned that a seasoned intelligence operative like Landsbergis hadn’t been using a cutout to run Luk?a. But when the truck driver explained their relationship, it made sense.

Luk?a had been friends with Landsbergis’s uncle and the pair had been smuggling contraband for decades.

Not wanting to involve a family member, especially one as unreliable as his alcoholic uncle, Landsbergis had first recruited Luk?a for a small operation. It was a trial run of sorts and had gone off without a hitch. From then on, Landsbergis called whenever he needed something. He always paid in cash and the truck driver only dealt with him. He had never met nor had he interacted with anyone else at the VSD.

The more Luk?a spoke of what a good man Landsbergis was, the harder it was to reconcile the fact that he was the one who had sold Carl out. He was the only other person in the loop, though, and despite having had an excellent initial introduction to the Lithuanian intelligence operative, Harvath steeled himself for what had to happen now.

After collecting some more information, he left the truck driver’s house and headed back to where he had parked his Land Cruiser.

Nearby, an old woman was walking a small, mixed breed dog. It looked like a little white dachshund with a Labrador face and spotted ears. Harvath had never seen anything like it and he did something he never should have done—he smiled.

What he should have done was ignored the woman, kept his head down, and kept moving. The moment he smiled, the woman started speaking to him in Lithuanian—peppering him with questions. When she pointed at his SUV and the note he had left on the dashboard, he began to get the gist of what she might be asking. She was one of the neighborhood busybodies and was curious who he had been to see.

As Russian was one of Lithuania’s three official languages, Harvath mumbled a couple of barely passable phrases and pointed to his watch, signaling he was late, as he kept moving toward his vehicle.

Whether the woman bought it or not, he didn’t care. He just wanted to get out of there without creating a scene.

Arriving at the Land Cruiser, he opened the door via its keyless entry feature and slid into the driver’s seat. After texting Nicholas a quick, encrypted update, he entered the address he’d been given into his GPS and fired up the vehicle.