Foreign Influence_ A Thriller - Brad Thor [44]
“I don’t want you,” he said. “I want payback for the man you tried to kill.”
“But I didn’t try to kill anyone!”
He smiled. “Yes, you did. Maybe not directly, but you used his trust in you, his loyalty, to place an assassin in his bed.”
A flash of recognition raced across Fournier’s face. It only lasted for a fraction of a second before it was gone. Harvath had seen it. It was called a microexpression and he had been taught to spot them years ago by the Secret Service.
“You know who I’m talking about, don’t you?”
“No,” she replied, and the tell was visible again.
“Ms. Fournier, I have lunch in Nice and a flight back to Paris. Choose or I will choose for you,” he said, tapping the table with the edge of his knife.
“You don’t want money. You don’t want sex,” she sobbed. “What do you want?”
Harvath looked at her. “I told you, I want revenge. Revenge for the man you disfigured.”
“I had no choice!” she stated. “Besides, how was I supposed to know she would try to kill him?”
“Ms. Fournier, I’m giving you thirty seconds to choose.”
“I was forced to take her. I was told not to place her in the general catalog; only the one that was made available to him.”
Harvath walked several feet away and with his back to her asked, “Who are we talking about?”
“The dwarf, of course. It’s the little man who sent you, isn’t it?”
Harvath didn’t respond. “Who forced you?” he demanded as he turned back to face her.
“I can’t tell you.”
“Fine. First we’ll use the acid and then I will go to work on you with the knife.”
“No!” Fournier screamed. “No!”
“Then tell me,” he shouted. “Tell me right now who forced you. I will not ask you again.”
Fournier was silent and Harvath removed a bottle from his pocket and began unscrewing the top.
“Leveque! Gaston Leveque!” she cried.
“How did he force you?”
“One of my girls had been involved in smuggling a substantial amount of drugs into France. He was going to implicate me. I would have lost everything.”
She was lying. Harvath could see it in her face. “You’re not telling me the truth,” he said.
Fournier hung her head and was quiet again. Finally, she said, “I have a child, a little boy. His name is David. He’s eight years old. He was in a private boarding school outside Paris.”
“Was?”
“Leveque found him and kidnapped him. He told me I would never see my boy again unless I did what he asked. He said if I told anyone he would kill me and David both.”
Fournier then broke down sobbing.
“Where is your son now?”
“Back with my mother in Toulouse.”
“And this Leveque?”
Fournier tried to stop crying. “Antibes.”
CHAPTER 20
HOTEL DU CAP-EDEN-ROC
ANTIBES
The only thing Harvath disliked more than Russian Communists was the Russian mafia, and the Côte d’Azur was lousy with them. What once was a tasteful European summer playground was now choked with bulletproof Hummers, women overinjected with silicone, and men wearing so much gold jewelry that no matter what direction they faced when sitting down in the cafés, they always ended up pointing magnetic north.
They were as gaudy as the Saudis and had bought up much of this stretch of the French coast. Even the Russian president was rumored to have a villa here. They did what they pleased and even handled crime in their own special way. To wit, when the home of a rich Russian gangster had been burgled, he sent his own leg breakers in every direction to crack heads until they found the perpetrators.
Once the Mafioso’s goods had been recovered, he loaded the two thieves into his helicopter, flew it out over the Mediterranean, and shoved them out. The French police never even lifted a finger.
For years, the center of Russian gravity was the exclusive Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc. Its owners were more than happy to suck up the Russians’ ill-gotten gains, and once they found themselves to be the hotel of choice, they began ratcheting up their prices. Not only was it a license to print money, they found that the more expensive they were, the more popular they became. As their clientele rarely