Near Dark (Scot Harvath #20) - Brad Thor Page 0,74

lunch was over, he’d take a walk along Jullouville’s beach. Sometimes, he did his best thinking when he wasn’t thinking.

He was already on his second glass of wine when the waiter brought out his entrée. The baby Dover sole looked, and smelled, delicious.

It struck him that he had never asked how the local fishermen caught them. He assumed it was with a net, but he was more interested in what artistry, what skill was necessary to trap these highly prized specimens.

Did you have to go deep? Or were they closer to the surface? Near shore? Or far out into the English Channel? It was almost laughable how little he understood about a simple subject and a food he so regularly enjoyed.

But thinking about it had the effect of focusing his mind even more keenly on Harvath.

He didn’t realize that’s what had happened until he was preparing to pay his bill.

That was when it hit him. That was when he knew how he was going to flush Harvath out into the open.

CHAPTER 28

Harvath had spent the next twenty minutes talking with the truck driver. Initially, he had been stunned that a seasoned intelligence operative like Landsbergis hadn’t been using a cutout to run Lukša. But when the truck driver explained their relationship, it made sense.

Lukša had been friends with Landsbergis’s uncle and the pair had been smuggling contraband for decades.

Not wanting to involve a family member, especially one as unreliable as his alcoholic uncle, Landsbergis had first recruited Lukša for a small operation. It was a trial run of sorts and had gone off without a hitch. From then on, Landsbergis called whenever he needed something. He always paid in cash and the truck driver only dealt with him. He had never met nor had he interacted with anyone else at the VSD.

The more Lukša spoke of what a good man Landsbergis was, the harder it was to reconcile the fact that he was the one who had sold Carl out. He was the only other person in the loop, though, and despite having had an excellent initial introduction to the Lithuanian intelligence operative, Harvath steeled himself for what had to happen now.

After collecting some more information, he left the truck driver’s house and headed back to where he had parked his Land Cruiser.

Nearby, an old woman was walking a small, mixed breed dog. It looked like a little white dachshund with a Labrador face and spotted ears. Harvath had never seen anything like it and he did something he never should have done—he smiled.

What he should have done was ignored the woman, kept his head down, and kept moving. The moment he smiled, the woman started speaking to him in Lithuanian—peppering him with questions. When she pointed at his SUV and the note he had left on the dashboard, he began to get the gist of what she might be asking. She was one of the neighborhood busybodies and was curious who he had been to see.

As Russian was one of Lithuania’s three official languages, Harvath mumbled a couple of barely passable phrases and pointed to his watch, signaling he was late, as he kept moving toward his vehicle.

Whether the woman bought it or not, he didn’t care. He just wanted to get out of there without creating a scene.

Arriving at the Land Cruiser, he opened the door via its keyless entry feature and slid into the driver’s seat. After texting Nicholas a quick, encrypted update, he entered the address he’d been given into his GPS and fired up the vehicle.

Putting it in gear, he engaged his turn signal and checked his mirrors. As he was pulling out, he caught a glimpse of the old woman. She was walking away, but appeared to have been writing something. He couldn’t be certain. When he turned to look over his shoulder, she was no longer visible.

Had she made a note about him? Had she taken down his license plate number? Even if she had, what was she going to do with the information? Call the police and rat him out for parking on a permit-only street without a permit? Maybe she wanted to have his vehicle “on file” in the event she saw it parked illegally again and wanted to make a federal case out of it.

Whatever it might be, he didn’t see the harm. The cops had better things to do, and he didn’t plan on ever coming back. Besides, according to his GPS, it was a twenty-four-minute drive to Landsbergis’s