Pulling the blade from the man’s stomach, he canted it forty-five degrees and sent it sailing upward.
It caught the guard beneath his right ear. With a quick twist, Harvath finished the job. Two down, two to go.
One guard was sitting outside the main entrance, the other was sitting near the French doors that opened onto the pool. At this point, Harvath didn’t care if either of the men heard his suppressed pistol. By the time it happened, there would be no one they could call for backup. He decided to take the man at the main entrance first.
Hugging the south wing, he used the tall, ornamental grasses Damien had planted to his advantage.
When he was close enough to the front door and had a clean enough shot, Harvath took it. He depressed his trigger in rapid succession. The first two shots to the man’s chest caused him to bend forward. The shot to his head snapped him backward and out of his chair. Now, it was pool time.
The final guard was right where Nicholas had said he would be. He was also committing a cardinal sin while on guard duty. He was smoking.
Harvath had been able to smell the smoke long before he saw the man. Sitting in the darkness, he waited until the man took another deep drag on his cigarette and then shot him twice through the head, splattering the French doors behind him. Now, only Damien remained.
While Harvath had originally considered the exterior staircase, he now decided against it. The master bedroom had too many windows, and if Damien was awake, there was too great a chance that he would see him coming. Instead, Harvath returned to the main entrance, rolled the dead guard out of the way, and let himself inside.
The home was just as he had imagined. From its marble entry floor and fixtures, to its sweeping staircase and green palm frond wallpaper, it looked frozen in the 1940s. All it was missing was Humphrey Bogart or Lauren Bacall passing through in search of more gin for another batch of martinis. Testing his weight on the stairs, Harvath carefully moved upward toward Damien’s bedroom.
The second floor was decorated much the same as the first. There was a series of lesser bedrooms, all of which were empty. Arriving at the master, Harvath raised his suppressed pistol and pushed open the door.
Not only was the room empty, but the bed had not been slept in. What the hell had Hendrik’s men been guarding?
After checking the master bath, Harvath retraced his steps and rechecked the rest of the rooms on the second floor. Where the hell was he?
Moving quietly back downstairs, Harvath checked the entire south wing. There was a library, a workout room, a billiards room and bar, and a sauna, but no Pierre Damien.
Coming back into the main structure, he checked the living and family rooms and then proceeded into the dining room. Just beyond it, he found him.
Damien was in a glass solarium, just before the kitchen. Several panels of glass had been retracted so he could smell and listen to the ocean. His back was to Harvath, but he knew he was there.
“Some of you Jews are more clever than I give you credit for. I have been wondering if you would come.”
There was a newspaper in his lap, a glass of red wine and its bottle on a table to his right.
“Hands where I can see them,” said Harvath, as he maneuvered around him.
“How many did the Mossad send? Just you?”
“Just me,” Harvath replied, now face-to-face with Pierre Damien. “And I wasn’t sent by the Mossad.”
“No?”
Everything about the man was perfectly manicured — his hair, his nails, right down to his crisp, pressed robe and pajamas.
“You’re an American citizen,” said Harvath. “The United States has no intention of letting Israel have you.”
“So America has sent you to kill me?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“Whether you cooperate. We’ll start by me telling you one last time to keep your hands where I can see them.”
Damien returned his hands to the arms of his chair, but nodded toward his drink. “May I?”
“In a minute.”
He looked at Harvath, trying to figure him out. Did he have a weakness, something he could exploit? He was very difficult to read. “What is it the United States wants?”
“An admission.”
Damien smiled, and his smile then turned to laughter. “Now I know you’re here to kill me.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because you don’t know the first thing about negotiating.”
Harvath adjusted his pistol, pressed the trigger, and shattered the 1947 bottle of Château Cheval Blanc next to him.
“As I was saying,” he continued. “The United States wants your full and complete confession.”
Discharging the weapon had startled Damien, but he tried not to show it. “In exchange for what?” he asked, slowly wiping bits of glass and red wine from his sleeve.
“That depends on how thoroughly you cooperate.”
“You’ll have to give me some sort of a hint.”
“I don’t have to give you anything,” Harvath replied. “But I will tell you this, I am going to get a confession out of you one way or the other. It’s up to you how painful it will be.”
“And if I cooperate?”
“If you cooperate, then as an American citizen there are a number of things that the United States is prepared to do.”
“None of which you’ll tell me.”
Harvath simply stared at him.
“Maybe you’re a better negotiator than I thought,” said Damien. “Where do we start?”
The man rambled on for over two hours, quite convinced of his clarity of vision and moral superiority.
He repeatedly attempted to explain to Harvath that there no longer would be any such thing as a United States, that the concept of the nation-state was finished.
Harvath’s was a fool’s errand, he stated, the wind in his sails the last breath of a dying empire. Within weeks, America as he knew it would cease to exist. And when it did, along with all of the other sovereign nations, the world’s survivors would seek a new kind of leadership, a global leadership. The United Nations would then step forward and take up that mantle, and a new golden age of enlightenment, informed by a healthy respect and stewardship of the planet would begin.
Harvath remained inscrutable throughout, only speaking when he needed to nudge the man back on track.
When he had what he wanted, he returned the small digital video recording device to its weatherproof case and slid it back into his pocket. He now had everything he had come for.
“What now?” Damien demanded. “You have what you asked for. What about me?”
Harvath looked at him a long time before responding. “You have a choice. You return for a trial—”
The man scoffed at the idea, interrupting Harvath. “Where? At The Hague? Or maybe someplace more Nuremberg-esque? Perhaps the Jews could muster enough energy to have me extradited to Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. Maybe America would want me tried in front of its own Supreme Court? Better yet, let’s have it in Congo or in front of the savages in Mecca. It can be televised around the world so that everyone can revel in my conviction, and then watch me swing from the gallows.”
Harvath waited until the man had finished and said, “Or.”
“Or what?”
“Or exile.”
“Exile?” Damien laughed. “As in sending Napoleon to Elba?”
“Except you wouldn’t be going to Elba.”
The man laughed even louder. “Who cares?”
“I thought you’d feel that way,” said Harvath as he raised his pistol and fired. “Don’t worry, the rest of your colleagues will be joining you shortly.”