“Yes,” Bremmer replied.
Harvath studied the man’s face as he asked questions he already knew the answers to. He wanted to have a baseline in case the man started lying to him. “Where did they try to kill me?
The Colonel swallowed. “Paris. Spain. Texas.”
“In Paris, was I the only target?”
Bremmer shrugged. “You were the primary target.”
“What does that mean?”
“We knew the woman would be with you and that our best chance would be to take you at the apartment.”
“So you ordered her killed as well.”
“She was a threat. Yes.”
“You also targeted other people I work with,” Harvath stated.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because,” Bremmer replied, “you were on the list.”
Harvath detected a slight change in the pitch of the man’s voice. It was paired with a microexpression that lasted less than the duration of a camera flash, but there was no mistaking it. The Colonel was either lying or holding something back. “What list are you talking about?”
“It’s called the Black List. I don’t compile it. I just handle the names once they’ve been added.”
Harvath conducted his interrogations much like a shark, swimming in wide concentric circles around his subject as he gathered information. The more information he gathered, the closer to the truth he came and the tighter the circles began to get.
There was blood in the water, though, and it was Bremmer’s. His last answer had been a lie; the tell had reappeared once more. When a subject began to bleed lies, Harvath had to restrain his desire to strike. Sometimes, seeing a fin slice through the waterline was even more psychologically terrifying than having a bite taken out of you.
“Who’s responsible for the list? Who compiles it?” he asked.
“I can’t tell you that,” Bremmer replied. “It’s classified.”
Harvath smiled. “You and I are way beyond classified, Colonel. What’s more, I think you’re trying to dance with me now, and I already explained what would happen if you did that.” Taking the walkie-talkie back out, he lifted it to his lips and said, “He’s not playing ball. Take out both targets.”
Bremmer stepped forward. “No, no, no. I’ll tell you.”
Harvath raised his pistol and pointed it at the man’s head. When Bremmer stepped back, Harvath lifted the radio again and said, “Cease fire. Do not engage targets. Stand by.”
“It’s a panel of national security people who are close to the President, and it also includes the Attorney General.”
“Who put my name on it?”
“You were accused of treason.”
“That’s not what I asked you,” Harvath said, noting the man’s tell yet again. “Who put my name on the list?”
“I don’t know. The meetings are way above my pay grade. They’re beyond top secret. I don’t attend. I just handle the list. I’m telling you the truth. You have to believe me.”
“You’re lying to me and I told you what would happen if you did. Never forget that you could have stopped this,” replied Harvath. He raised the radio once more and said, “You are cleared hot. Fire when ready.”
“Jesus, no. Please dear God. No,” Bremmer begged.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve calling on God to help spare your family. You could have saved them, but you chose not to. For as long as you live, don’t you ever forget that because you lied, they died.”
Tears began to roll down Bremmer’s cheeks as he blurted out “I did it. I added your name to the kill list. Tell your sniper to stand down.”
“Why?”
The Colonel’s eyes were wide with fear. “Call off your sniper, for God’s sake, and I’ll tell you everything.”
“Tell me now.”
Bremmer couldn’t believe his ears. He darted his eyes from Harvath to the field hockey match and back again. “Craig Middleton,” he implored. “He’s the person who wanted your name added to the list.”
“I’ve never heard of him.”
“Please. You have to radio your sniper. Tell him not to engage. I’m begging you. He runs a company called Adaptive Technology Solutions. He’s the one behind all of this. I had no choice. Please don’t hurt my daughter. None of this is her fault. Please.”
CHAPTER 55
He spent the next forty-five minutes questioning him in the Suburban. Rhodes had been left in place just in case Bremmer needed a reminder not to stray from his newfound commitment to cooperation. As it turned out, no such reminder had been necessary. It was like opening a faucet wide and letting it run.
Though the man was loath to do it, he admitted how Middleton had co-opted him and revealed the extent to which he had organized wet work assignments on Middleton’s behalf. He detailed to Harvath how the kill teams had been made up of convicted military personnel, selected because of their extremely aggressive personalities. The list of things they had been convicted of was disgusting. Many were former and even current gang members. That explained some of the tattoos Harvath had seen on the attacker in Spain, as well as tattoos he had seen when prepping two of the corpses in Texas.
It had made Harvath sick to his stomach to think that he had killed American military personnel, but that was all changed now that he knew the backgrounds of the men who had been sent to kill him.
As Harvath continued questioning, Bremmer offered up one particularly good piece of news. He explained that the initial attack on Reed Carlton had failed and that as far as he knew, the man had gone to ground and disappeared.
He confirmed that the attack on the Three Peaks Ranch in Texas had come about after the ranch manager had conducted a Google search that led them to believe the Troll was hiding there. Via their surveillance of Maggie Rose, they had discovered Harvath’s arrival, and that had cemented the decision to launch their attack.
Bremmer knew that his team had been killed and that Harvath had done the killing. Surprisingly, he made no inquiry as to the location of their bodies. They weren’t people to him, they were pieces on a game board like Monopoly hotels. If you lost a few, you could always buy more. He was a heartless son of a bitch, and it hadn’t slipped Harvath’s notice that the man had been much more vociferous in pleading for his daughter than his wife.
The Colonel admitted that he had padded the kill list based on orders from Middleton. When pressed for an accounting of all the assignments he had carried out for the ATS Director, five times Bremmer tried to horse-trade for immunity from prosecution. It got so bad that Harvath had to reach back out to Megan Rhodes and threaten not only to shoot Bremmer’s wife and daughter but to take out several of Molly’s teammates as well.
He was astounded by how quickly the Colonel could go from concern for his daughter to thinking only of himself and of saving his own skin. Had the daughter not been an exploitable, psychological pressure point, they would have had to physically torture him to get him to cooperate. He was that terrified of Middleton and what he had the power to do.
To that end, Bremmer demanded to know how Harvath was going to insulate him from Middleton’s wrath. Just because Harvath had promised no harm would come to his family didn’t mean that Middleton wouldn’t come after them. When he asked Harvath if he was going to kill Middleton, Harvath changed the subject. It was none of
