Near Dark (Scot Harvath #20) - Brad Thor Page 0,71
these in some water,” said Harvath, offering the lady of the house the flowers and gently pushing past her.
When he entered the living room, the truck driver had already picked up his crutch and was struggling to get off the couch.
He was wearing a stained tank top and brown cargo pants. His left knee was in a brace, his right hand in a cast. His hair was matted and it looked like he hadn’t shaved in a while. Movement was probably quite painful for him.
Harvath told him to sit back down and the man obeyed.
In addition to the TV remote, some magazines, and two empty bottles of beer, there was a plate of half-eaten food on the coffee table along with several bottles of prescription medication. The house, even with all of its windows open, smelled like fried fish.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Lukša demanded.
“I heard you were in a car accident. I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
“I’m fine. Now you can go. Same way you came in.”
Harvath smiled. The man was just as gruff as he had been on their operation in Kaliningrad.
There was something else about him, though. Once he had recognized Harvath, he had stopped looking him in the eye. At first he thought it was guilt, but then he realized it was something even more intense—shame.
Harvath studied him, allowing several moments to pass, which only added to the man’s discomfort. “Do you want to tell me what really happened?” he finally asked.
“Like you said, car accident.”
The doctor had been right. Lukša was lying. Harvath was positive. Like any good smuggler, he was good at hiding his lies, but he wasn’t perfect—at least not when it came to hiding them from Harvath. There was a subtle microexpression—a twitch near his left temple—that gave him away.
“Antanas,” Harvath replied, using the man’s first name to further unsettle him, “you have a pretty good idea of who I am or, at the very least, the kinds of things I do for a living. Which means you know I didn’t come all this way to be lied to. So, in order to save us both a lot of time, I’m going to give you a choice. You either tell me the truth, or I’m going to drag your wife in here by the hair and make her pay for your lies. What’s it going to be?”
The truck driver glared at him. Involving his wife was beyond the pale. “I didn’t think Americans played so dirty.”
Harvath smiled again, but there was no mirth in it. “You have no idea how dirty.”
He waited for Lukša to say something and when he didn’t, asked, “Who did this to you? And for the record, before you answer and I have to go fetch Mrs. Lukša, no one believes you were in a car accident. I’d be willing to bet that she doesn’t even believe that. Now, tell me what happened.”
The truck driver exhaled a long breath of air and his tense body sank into the couch cushions. His eyes looked up at the ceiling. The fight had gone out of him. He wasn’t going to put his wife through any sort of pain—not even the threat of it.
“A couple of weeks ago, men came.”
“What kind of men?”
“Big men,” said Lukša. “Russians.”
“They came here? To your house?”
The truck driver nodded.
“What did they want?”
“You.”
The response was what Harvath had feared. Russian intelligence had reverse engineered—at least partially—his assignment in Kaliningrad.
“What did you tell them?” he asked.
“At first, nothing,” said the truck driver. “That’s when they started beating me. Two of them held me down—the two biggest ones—while a third man, with a shaved head and a thick red beard, did his worst to me. Yet, I still said nothing. Then he broke my hand. Next, my knee.”
Though he kept a stoic expression, Harvath felt terrible. He had been the source of so much pain and so much death for so many people. Looking at Lukša, he said the only thing he could say, “I’m very sorry that happened to you.”
The Lithuanian grew terse. “What you should be sorry about is coming to my house with your threats and disrespecting not only me, but also my wife.”
Harvath understood the man’s anger. “You’re right. I apologize. To you and your wife.”
The response seemed to mollify the man, at least a little bit, and he went from staring daggers at Harvath to once again studying his ceiling.