Foreign Influence_ A Thriller - Brad Thor [74]
“I agree with you. I think Lars was probably murdered, but I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“I don’t believe you,” said the Troll. “I think he discovered what you were up to and you killed him. Didn’t you?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I have to hand it to you. The Tsui persona was exceptional. You not only had me fooled, but you covered your tracks quite well. And the icing on the cake was positioning Michael Lee to take the fall if things ever got bad. Brava.”
“I didn’t kill Lars,” Sterk insisted.
“But you’re not denying you set up Michael, are you?”
Sterk said nothing.
“I have no reason to believe anything you say. You tried to have me killed. What’s one more?”
Sterk remained silent.
“You always have a fallback, don’t you?” said Nicholas. “When the assassin you sent after me failed, you implicated me in the bombings in Rome. What about Paris? Are my fingerprints going to surface there too?”
At that moment, something in the woman’s face shifted.
Nicholas motioned his dogs over. “You really have been a very, very bad girl.”
“What are you going to do to me?” Sterk demanded.
“That depends on how you answer my questions.”
CHAPTER 34
Is there another assassin looking for me?” asked Nicholas.
Sterk didn’t respond, and Nicholas bent down and picked up the wrench again.
“No,” she responded.
“None at all?”
“I’m sure you have plenty of enemies, but when Leveque’s woman in Spain failed to return, I assumed you had killed her and had gone deeper to ground.”
“So you moved to plan B: implicating me.”
The woman shook her head. “Alive or dead, you were always going to be implicated.”
“Why? Why implicate me?”
“My employers wanted a diversion.”
“Who hired you?”
“Someone I fear much more than you.”
Nicholas tapped the head of the wrench in his tiny palm. “I’ll give you one more chance.”
Sterk shook her head.
Nicholas brought back his tiny arm and swung.
The wrench met its target and blood began to pour from a tear behind the woman’s ear.
Harvath tallied his fifth and final hash mark on the column and stepped out from behind her. It was time for him to take over. Producing a roll of duct tape, he tore off a piece and placed it across her mouth. He then put the bag back over her head as Nicholas said to Sterk, “Oh my. Things are about to get very bad for you indeed.”
Harvath cut the rope binding her wrists to the support column, stripped the sheet from her naked body, and carried her back to the van. He had no idea what had triggered the asthma attack the first time. He suspected it was stress, though it could have been something else. Either way, he was determined to re-create the circumstances as closely as possible to bring about another one.
He tied her back down in the vehicle exactly as he had before and closed the door. From the front seat, he grabbed two water bottles and then searched the warehouse until he found a suitable length of hose.
The good thing about gasoline was that it was so pungent Harvath wouldn’t need much for what he had planned.
He made a big deal of banging around the rear of the van. He opened one of the water bottles and poured out some of the water. He then carefully siphoned a small amount of gasoline out of the van and into the bottle.
With Nicholas in tow, he stepped back around to the other side and opened the sliding door. He studied Sterk. Her breathing was rapid, as it should be for anyone in her situation. She was frightened. She wasn’t yet, though, suffering from another attack.
“You can’t do this,” said the Troll as Harvath stepped into the van. “What if you don’t just burn her, but you end up killing her?”
There was a long list of harsh interrogation techniques he could have tried on Sterk—sleep deprivation, stress postures, sensory bombardment, or even extreme cold—but he didn’t have the time. Frankly, after the beating the woman had taken from Nicholas, he was surprised she hadn’t already broken. She was a much tougher character than he had expected. He had no idea if she had undergone training to resist hostile