Foreign Influence_ A Thriller - Brad Thor [39]
Davidson stopped and leaned him against the side of the truck.
“It’s your decision,” said Vaughan. “You either help us or you go to jail and get sent back to Pakistan.”
The mechanic winced and Vaughan saw another flash of what he had previously thought had been a smile.
“I must go to the toilet,” said the man. “My stomach is very bad. You chasing me has made it worse.”
“No,” corrected Davidson. “You running from us made it worse. Now, if you’ll pardon the pun, shit or get off the pot.”
The Pakistani was confused.
“He means, give us something we can use, or you are going to jail. Right now.”
“The logbook they showed you is false. It is not real.”
“How do you know?”
“I heard them,” replied Javed. “They told Ali Masud to make up a new book.”
Davidson knew it. They’d even spilled tea on it to age it and disguise the fact that it was brand new. “So we were right,” he said. “The cab from that night had been there.”
“Yes.”
“Who worked on it?” asked Vaughan.
Javed looked at him. “I did.”
CHAPTER 18
PROVENCE
FRANCE
SATURDAY
Forty-five kilometers east of the border, Padre Peio pulled into a tiny French village and parked behind a four-year-old blue Citroën. He had taken a circuitous route through the mountains and down into France. Much of what they had driven on could hardly have been called roads at all. In fact, Harvath suspected that they were very likely Basque smuggling routes, but he didn’t ask. He was more interested in listening to Peio.
As they drove, the priest had opened up about his past. The information came slowly at first, but built from there. Harvath wondered how many people the priest had ever shared his story with. He doubted his fellow priests would fully understand. Harvath wondered if, because of their similar backgrounds, Peio felt more comfortable with him; that somehow Harvath was better equipped to understand it.
He began by talking about his family. They were Basque, and his father had worked for the government. When Peio was in his first year of high school, his family had moved to Madrid. With so many members of the family involved in the separatist movement, they were worried about him and his older brother becoming involved with ETA too.
The fear wasn’t unfounded. Within a year of graduating from high school, Peio’s older brother had returned to the Basque country and joined. Three months later, he was killed in a shoot-out with police. The family was devastated.
Peio did his compulsory military service and proved himself quite proficient in military intelligence. He extended his tour, completed his college degree on nights and weekends, and eventually transferred into the Spanish Intelligence service, where he met his wife.
They deeply loved their jobs and each other. They had a plan to work five more years in the intelligence field and then transition into something steady and less dangerous so that they could begin a family. They were six months shy of that goal when, on a cold March morning in 2004, Peio’s wife, Alicia, boarded a rush hour commuter train for Madrid.
At 7:38 a.m., just as the train was pulling out of the station, an improvised explosive device planted by Muslim terrorists detonated, killing her instantly.
It was the Spanish 9/11 and Spain was in shock. Peio was beyond devastated. As an intelligence operative who specialized in Muslim extremism, he felt that he had not only failed his country, but that somehow he should have been able to prevent the attack. Because he hadn’t, he had gotten Alicia killed.
None of what was going through his mind could have been further from the truth, but Peio had slipped into a very dangerous mental and emotional state.
He came into work the very next day, demanding to be allowed on the investigation. His superiors rightly refused his request and sent him home, placing him on a leave of absence. Friends from work took turns staying with him over the next two days until the third day when he disappeared. His colleagues assumed he had gone up to the Basque country