Foreign Influence_ A Thriller - Brad Thor [46]
Fifteen minutes later a waiter knocked on the door and was shown in. Harvath tipped him and told him he could leave the table on wheels in the middle of the room.
Next, he called down to the valet and asked to have his car brought around. He then began filling the tub the rest of the way with the ice the waiter had brought.
He tossed the buckets into the closet, moved the table out of the way and, once everything else was ready, called down to Leveque. The concierge was only too happy to personally bring Harvath an Ethernet cable for his laptop and help him retrieve the e-mail his colleague had sent with restaurant suggestions in Antibes.
When Leveque’s knock fell upon his door, Harvath was ready. He opened it with a smile and showed the concierge in. Once the door had closed behind him, Harvath sprang.
The punch took the Frenchman completely by surprise and he staggered backward, knocking over a lamp and hitting his head on the coffee table as he fell to the floor.
Grabbing him by the back of his collar, Harvath dragged him into the bathroom and dropped him next to the tub. He wrapped one hand around the concierge’s throat and used the other to pull the Glock from underneath his shirt.
“Make one noise and I will kill you. Do you understand me?” he asked, the barrel of the weapon pressed against Leveque’s head.
The man nodded slowly, the terror evident in his eyes.
“Good,” replied Harvath. He pulled the pistol away and then slammed it into the side of his face, breaking the man’s jaw. “That was for Dominique Fournier’s son.”
Leveque wanted to cry out in pain, but Harvath squeezed his throat so hard no sound was able to escape. “Now we’re going to go ice fishing. Let me know if you see anything.”
With that, Harvath raised the concierge up and over the side of the tub backward so that his head went into the water upside down.
Filling the tub with ice and submerging the victim in this fashion intensified the psychological trauma. A spinoff of waterboarding, it was known colloquially as iceboarding and was based on a concept called “cold calorics” that could manipulate and irritate brainstem reflexes.
The sensation of being drowned was bad enough, but the layer of ice and the intense cold of the water compounded the experience. It also succeeded in better muffling any screams the victim might make. The only drawback was that if you weren’t wearing gloves, which Harvath wasn’t, your hand got cold very quickly.
Leveque’s legs thrashed wildly and Harvath brought the butt of his pistol down hard into the man’s crotch before pulling his torso back out.
The concierge vomited out both his mouth and nose and Harvath shoved him back over the side of the tub and under the water once more.
The thrashing started all over again and Harvath held him under for what must have seemed like an eternity to Leveque.
Finally, he pulled him out of the water again and asked one question. “Who hired you to kidnap Dominique Fournier’s son?”
“I don’t understand what you are talking about.”
“Wrong answer,” said Harvath as he plunged the man back into the water. This time he let Leveque stay down a long time.
The Frenchman flailed wildly until Harvath pulled him back up. Once out, he vomited again and his body heaved for air.
“Listen to me, Leveque,” said Harvath. “Scumbags who target children don’t deserve to live. I want to kill you so bad I can taste it. The only way you’re going to walk out of this bathroom alive is if you tell me who hired you to kidnap Dominique Fournier’s son right now.
“As a matter of fact, screw that,” he added as he tipped the man backward again. “I’m going to give you some more time underwater to think about it.”
“No,” croaked the concierge. “Please. His name is Tony Tsui.”
“I’ve never heard of him. Who was the girl you forced Fournier to place inside her operation?”
“Tony set all that up. I was just a middleman.”
Harvath had figured as much. “What was her name?”
“I don’t know. I was just the go-between. Tony handled everything. I just passed the information to Dominique.”
Harvath was