That was what really bothered him. If these four detainees were as bad as the Troll claimed, they never should have seen the light of day again. So why were they free? What possible reason could there have been for letting them go?

This line of questioning led Harvath to something even more disturbing. These men could never have been released from Gitmo without the president’s knowledge. Suddenly, he knew why the president had wanted to sideline him. For some reason, Rutledge was protecting these men. But why?

Protecting them made about as much sense as releasing them. Harvath shared his shock and disappointment at the president with Lawlor, but his boss had little sympathy for him. He reminded Harvath that he was under direct orders from Rutledge to back off and let the president and his people handle it. Lawlor then demanded that he come home.

If anyone knew that there were times not to play by the rules, it was Lawlor. His refusal to acknowledge that now was definitely one of those times not only pissed Harvath off, but left him feeling strangely abandoned.

Parker snapped his fingers in front of Harvath’s face to get his attention. “Am I talking solely for my own benefit here?” he asked.

“I’m sorry,” replied Harvath, bringing himself back to the present. “What were we talking about?”

Parker rolled his eyes. “The Troll. Are we going to agree to his deal or not?”

Harvath thought about it a moment and then replied, “I’m inclined to pay him.”

“You gotta be kidding me,” moaned Parker as he threw his hands into the air. “Jesus, Harvath.”

“Tim’s right. He knows better than to put a hit on me. If he does, he’ll never get back any of what we took from him.”

“But-” attempted Parker.

“And I know if anything does happen to me,” continued Harvath, “I’ve got two friends who will make sure he pays.”

Finney looked over both of his shoulders trying to spot the friends Harvath was referring to, then exclaimed, “Oh! You mean us.”

Harvath ignored them both and rattled off a list of instructions to Tom Morgan.

Forty-five minutes later, the Troll posted his list of four names, along with their nationalities and some other info, to the private chat room. The list made no sense at all. The nationalities were all across the board. Harvath had no idea what they could possibly have in common, but it didn’t matter. He was convinced he had his man. It was the third entry on the list- Ronaldo Palmera, Mexico . Mexico was only a short boat ride from San Diego.

Harvath typed the name on his computer and hit send.

While the Troll went to work tracking down anything he could about the target, Parker and Morgan got started on their own research. Finney and Harvath were left alone to talk.

“Any of the names ring a bell with you?” asked Finney.

“No,” he replied.

“ Syria, Morocco, Australia, and Mexico? I don’t know about this. I think your pal the Troll is pulling our legs.”

Harvath shook his head. “If he plays us, he’ll be the one who loses. He knows that.”

“But what kind of a list is that? It sounds like a judging panel for an international figure-skating competition. We’re talking about four of the worst of the worst released from Gitmo.”

“So?”

“So, what’s the link? What do these guys have in common that they’d all be released at the same time? And who’d care enough about these assholes to send a plane to pick them up and change out their blood as part of the in-flight entertainment?”

Harvath couldn’t argue with him. “Maybe Ronaldo Palmera will be able to tell us.”

“Maybe,” replied Finney. “But first we’ll have to find him. Mexico is a big place.”

“We’re talking about the guy who attacked my mother and almost killed Tracy,” replied Harvath. “I don’t care if we have to tear the whole country apart. He’s ours.”

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

Since interviewing Tom Gosse, Baltimore Sun reporter Mark Sheppard hadn’t slept much. The first thing he had done was verify Gosse’s claims that his friend, State of Maryland Medical Examiner Frank Aposhian, and his girlfriend/investigator, Sally Rutherford, had actually been killed in a traffic accident. They had, but the circumstances around it weren’t as cut and dried as Gosse made them out to be.

According to Gosse, Aposhian said that the night the supposed FBI agents had returned to his home, they had threatened him. They had told him to cease any further inquiries into the John Doe that had been removed from the ME’s office. Aposhian didn’t want any trouble and agreed not to ask any more questions. The problem, as it turned out, wasn’t with Aposhian asking questions, it was with his girlfriend, Rutherford.

The woman smelled something funny and refused to throw in the towel. As far as she was concerned, there was nothing to compel her to obey a pair of fake FBI agents-no matter how convincing they were. What’s more, they had no idea she and Aposhian were an item. All they knew was that she was an investigator in the ME’s office and had run a set of prints for him. As long as she was careful, whoever these clowns were, they’d have no idea what she was up to.

So Rutherford continued to dig. But what she found was far from comforting.

She avoided contacting the police department in Charleston. Rutherford had already reached out to them once and couldn’t help but wonder if they had tipped off the men who had shown up at Frank’s apartment. Instead, she contacted the Charleston coroner’s office.

Based on the backup copy of the ME file she’d made after Aposhian had been visited again by the so-called FBI agents, she had no doubt that her John Doe and the police shootout victim in Charleston were one and the same. What was different, though, was that her stiff had died from a drug overdose-not gunshot wounds.

Deepening the mystery was the fact that an application for exhumation could not be filed for the corpse, as it had already been cremated. When asked who had authorized the cremation, the coroner’s office told her that they didn’t have that information and would have to get back to her.

They never had the chance. Later that night, Rutherford and Aposhian were both killed when they ran a red light and were T-boned by another vehicle.

The fight Gosse had overheard that day sprang from Aposhian’s telling Rutherford to just let the John Doe situation go. Rutherford had uncovered something on the internet, but Aposhian didn’t want to hear about it. He just wanted it all to go away. That was when she had stormed out of her office.

That night at the funeral home, the assistant ME had turned down his friend’s offer of a second tumbler of Maker’s Mark and had called Rutherford on her cell phone. He said he felt terrible about their fight. He agreed to go pick her up, and that was the last time Tom Gosse ever saw him alive.

Gosse was convinced that whoever wanted Aposhian to stop asking questions about the missing John Doe had somehow caused the fatal accident.

Sheppard, though, wasn’t so sure. Using his network of contacts in the Baltimore PD, he spoke to all of the personnel involved in investigating Aposhian’s crash. None of them had any doubt that the accident was anything other than the assistant ME tragically running a red light. There was nothing wrong with the vehicle and Aposhian hadn’t been using his cell phone at the time of impact, but he did have a minor blood alcohol level-something Tom Gosse probably blamed himself for. But at the end of the day, the accident seemed to be Aposhian’s fault. As one of the officers put it, The poor guy simply fucked up.

Be that as it might, Aposhian and Rutherford had both apparently been on to something when they were killed. Throw in a couple of shadowy figures posing as FBI agents and even the biggest cynic would have a hard time ignoring the possibility that some sort of conspiracy might be afoot.