The First Commandment

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?”