Near Dark (Scot Harvath #19)(89)

“Either way, we are going to get the information we want out of you. You are choosing to make this much harder than it has to be.”

“Go to hell,” the woman sneered.

“You don’t even want to hear the offer?”

“Not from you I don’t.”

“Well, how about from him?” Harvath asked as he activated a video call on his app and held out his phone so she could see it.

When the call connected, on the other side was Nicholas.

The Contessa was already testy and angry, but once she recognized who it was, she became downright aggressive.

She let loose with a string of expletives in Russian, only a handful of which Harvath knew. The woman was so pissed off and spat words so fast at his phone that he couldn’t keep up.

Nicholas, calm at the outset, also lost his cool—something Harvath had rarely ever seen. There was a lot of bad blood between these two. Buckets of it.

The arguing, threats, and name-calling continued at a furious pace. Back and forth they went, their faces flushed, the veins in their necks bulging.

It took quite some time, but eventually the Contessa’s outbursts began to slow, and she dialed back her tone. Nicholas also applied some self-restraint and became more measured. It wasn’t détente, but the temperature was definitely being turned down. They were now entering the critical phase of Harvath’s plan.

Nicholas had been resistant at first. The Contessa had started this. She had been first to try to stick a knife in his back. He had simply dodged the blade and had inserted his own between her figurative shoulders. Theirs was a cutthroat business. The purchase and sale of black-market intelligence was incredibly dangerous. If you tried to take out a competitor and failed, you needed to be prepared for the consequences.

Nicholas, though, had largely left that world behind. He did still dabble, keeping his skills sharp and preying upon the most unscrupulous in their industry. But basically, he had retired. And while he despised Tatiana Montecalvo, Harvath was family and had asked him for a favor. A big one.

They continued to speak in Russian, taking long pauses as each pondered what the other had said. There were a couple of flare-ups, but nothing close to what had transpired at the outset of the call.

After a little while longer, the Contessa looked at Harvath and said, “We’re done. He wants to talk to you.”

Turning the phone around, he inserted an earbud and walked to the swim platform, leaving S?lvi to keep an eye on their prisoner.

“My God,” said Nicholas. “I hate that woman. Completely and totally. She is unintelligent, uncivilized, vindictive, and avaricious.”

Harvath didn’t need to hear what Nicholas was going to say next. He already knew. It had worked.





CHAPTER 42


Returning to the dock, Harvath put out the bumpers and tied off the Riva. He then brought his drone in for a landing and packed everything up. Once they were ready, he and S?lvi unloaded the Contessa from the boat.

Nicholas had warned them not to take their eyes off her, and they were heeding his advice. They had absolutely no reason to trust her. In fact, if anything, they had plenty of reasons to believe she might attempt to double-cross them.

With Harvath hanging on to their prisoner, S?lvi retrieved the Jeep and drove down to the dock. After he and the Contessa climbed in, it was a quick drive to her villa.

They parked out on the street, fully aware that they were in plain view of her security cameras and were being recorded. Harvath dropped his head so as not to reveal his face.

“Don’t worry,” she offered. “I’ll erase all the footage once we get inside.”

He’d have to see it to believe it. For the moment, he simply nodded as he took her arm and led her forward. A sweater had been draped over her hands secured behind her back so as not to reveal the restraints.

S?lvi hung back a couple of feet, watching their six. She had her weapon drawn, but concealed—ready to engage if need be, but out of sight so as not to rouse any suspicion from any neighbors or passersby.

Pulling the keys from the Contessa’s pocket, Harvath unlocked the heavy oak doors facing the street and they all stepped into a Moorish-style paved courtyard flanked by arched arcades and a splashing fountain in the center. From the second story, flower boxes overflowed with bright purple hibiscus and electric pink gardenias. Their scent filled the space. Nearby, an alarm panel had started beeping.

The Contessa directed Harvath to it. Then, indicating that she wanted to be cut loose, said, “I need to enter the code.”

“I’ll enter it,” he replied. Adding, “Don’t worry. You can change it after we’re gone.”

She gave him the sequence of numbers.

Before he plugged them in, he warned her that he had people watching for a response from her alarm company. If this was not a code that legitimately disarmed the alarm, but rather turned the alarm off while simultaneously sending a distress signal, there’d be hell to pay.

He searched her face, looking for any sign of a tell as the beeping increased in intensity.

“Is the code safe?” he demanded.

“You’re running out of time. Yes,” she replied. “It’s safe.”

He didn’t see anything that suggested she was lying, but to be absolutely sure, he would have needed more time—something he was all but out of.