The Lions Of Lucerne

“How short?”

“It’s normally things that are new. You might have trouble recalling things that happened in the last month.”

“Will I get it back?”

“Probably. There may be people you’ve met recently whom you’ve forgotten, or bills and bank deposits you can’t recall…that kind of stuff.”

“Are there any other potential problems?”

“You might experience difficulty with concentration, and like I said, your reaction time is down.”

“What about physical side effects?”

“You may find yourself sleeping a lot more, or your sleep may be interrupted.”

“Great.”

“You might also continue to experience the headaches you complained to me about, as well as some nausea.”

“Any other good news?”

“It’s not uncommon for patients who have suffered trauma such as yours to become irritable.”

“Irritable how?”

“Things beyond your control will frustrate you more than they would in normal conditions. Basically, your fuse might be a lot shorter.”

Scot wondered if that was why he had decked Agent Zuschnitt, or if he would have done it regardless of his fall. After a moment of reflection, he decided he would have done it regardless. Zuschnitt had been asking for it.

“Is that it?” asked Scot.

“Pretty much. Just keep in mind that all of these symptoms I’ve mentioned can become more profound with physical exertion. Basically, your brain has been scrambled and you need to give it, and your body, time to repair.”

Scrambled. You had to love a doctor who put things in laymen’s terms. Not only did she know how to break it down, she was also a comedian. As he was leaving, Dr. Helsabeck gave him the name of a good chiropractor she knew. “You’re going to need him,” she said. Scot thanked her and headed out into the drizzly afternoon.

Successfully hailing a cab in D.C. in the rain is almost impossible. As a matter of fact, attempting it ought to be classified as an extreme sport. Scot was tempted to hold up his credentials and draw his gun on the next taxi he saw, but one finally stopped and he gave the driver the cross streets of a family grocery and deli near his apartment.

He walked home through the rain with grocery bags in each arm, wondering why he hadn’t been called in yet by his boss. Surely, Lawlor had made a big enough fuss that people would be standing in line to chew him out. His pager and cell phone had been with him all day, but no one had tried to contact him.

It was all for the best anyway. He was in no mood to deal with anything at this point. All he wanted to do was get back to his apartment, unpack the groceries, and dig into his Reuben sandwich.

After the Reuben and a half pint of chicken soup, Harvath thought about calling Agent Palmer at the command center in Park City to see if anything new had popped up, but decided against it. He lay down on the couch to rest his eyes for a moment and quickly fell into another deep sleep.

In the darkness of sleep, he could make out what sounded like the faint drumming of jackhammers on wet cement. The thudding was soon joined by a high-pitched screeching that somewhere in his mind he knew he recognized. He lay in a trancelike state in the warm void halfway between sleeping and waking until his mind began to assemble different explanations for what he was hearing, and he felt himself being forcibly dragged upward toward the surface world of the wakeful.

His pager, cell phone, and home phone were all going off at the same time. Startled, Scot reached for the cordless phone first.

“Harvath,” he said.

“Harvath, this is Shaw,” said the voice on the other end of the phone.

Scot sat straight up, trying to shake the cobwebs from his head.

Reaching to silence his vibrating phone and the pager on the coffee table, he responded to the director of Secret Service Operations for the White House. “Yes, sir. What can I do for you?”

“The director wants to see you. How soon can you be ready?”

Scot looked at his watch. “I just need to grab a quick shower. I can be ready to go in twenty minutes.”

“Fine,” said Shaw. “There’ll be a car coming to pick you up.”

Twenty minutes later on the dot, Agent Harvath was showered, shaved, and wearing a perfectly pressed dark Brooks Brothers suit under his lined trench coat as he stood outside his apartment building. By the looks of it, the rain had been falling all day. Large puddles were everywhere.

Watching his warm breath rise into the cold, damp air he saw a pair of headlights turn the corner and slow as they approached him. The car Scot had been expecting to take him to his meeting would have been a typical domestic four-door, like a Crown Victoria-something that screamed government vehicle. Instead, a long black limousine slowed, and the rear window rolled down as it drew even with him.

“Get in,” said Stan Jameson, director of the Secret Service.

The door opened, and Scot did as he was told. He had met the director on only two occasions. The man had aged incredibly since then. The job must be taking its toll, he thought. As soon as Scot was in and had closed the door, the heavy, armor-plated limo growled away from the curb and headed toward D.C.

“It’s been a helluva couple of days,” began the director.

“Yes, sir, it has,” said Harvath.

A uniformed man was sitting to the director’s right, and motioning toward him, the director said, “Agent Scot Harvath, I’d like you to meet General Paul Venrick, commander of the Joint Special Operations Command.”

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” said Scot as he shook the man’s hand. With his broad shoulders, square jaw, and flattop haircut, the general was the picture of military rectitude.

“Likewise, Agent Harvath,” said the general with a strong Louisiana drawl, returning Scot’s grip.

“We don’t have a lot of time, Agent, so I want to make this quick,” said the director. “Both General Venrick and I have read your debriefing report, but something is missing, isn’t it?”

Scot was confused. If he was going to get his ass chewed out and then fired, why didn’t the director have him come to his office? Why do it in his limo with the JSOC commander along for the ride?

“If you’re referring, sir, to what happened with the story on CNN, I was recalled before I could type up a report and-”

“Son, I wouldn’t bother betting a bicycle basket full of cow chips against what any reporter has to say. Never have trusted them, never will. At this point, I’m not judging whether you said anything to her or not. Although I’d be willing to guess, after reviewing your service file, that wherever she got her story, it didn’t come from you,” said the general.

Before Scot could voice his thanks, the director jumped back into the conversation. “Yes, let’s hold off on the discussion of where the information came from. It does seem that there is a leak somewhere inside the organization, and that in itself is very bad, but first things first. I want to hear your version of events and what you think happened.”

As the armor-plated car rolled down the rain-slicked streets, Harvath recounted his story. Not knowing if the director had been informed of his exploits at Squaw Peak or the Maddux farm, he glossed over them, implicating himself as little as possible. When he had finished, the general removed a file folder from the briefcase by his feet.

“Agent Harvath, are you familiar with a terrorist organization known as the FRC?”

“You mean the Fatah RC?” asked Scot.

“Yes.”

“Sure I am. FRC stands for ‘Fatah-Revolutionary Council,’ also known as the Abu Nidal Organization. It was classified not too long ago by the State Department as the most dangerous terrorist group in the world. They were founded in the mid seventies by Sabri Khalil al-Ba