The First Commandment by Brad Thor

there were much worse places to pass one’s time than a private island in Brazil. And he would know. He’d been to them.
    Listening to the music of the waves as they gently washed against the rocks outside, the Troll logged on to his primary server and began the authentication process to gain access to his data. He still had not sifted through the windfall of intelligence he had gleaned from raiding the NSA’s top-secret files in New York during the Al Qaeda attack. The amount of data he’d stolen from the Americans had been beyond his wildest dreams.
    The NSA program had been named Athena, after the Greek goddess of wisdom. Apparently the Greeks didn’t have a goddess of blackmail.
    It had been a
deep black
data-mining operation. Using both the Echelon and Carnivore systems, the NSA had been gathering intelligence that could be used as leverage against various foreign concerns-governments, heads of state, and influential foreign business people.
    In short, the Athena Program had been created to collect and sort extremely dirty laundry. Once they had their teeth into something particularly juicy, such as the Princess Diana crash, TWA 800, or the true cause of Yassir Arafat’s death, they assigned teams of operatives to flesh out the big picture and uncover as much supporting data as possible. That way, when it came time to use it, they had the victim pinned against the wall so tightly, there was absolutely no room for him or her to wiggle free.
    And when they uncovered a conspiracy involving several powerful foreign figures, it was like hitting the jackpot.
    The Troll had to smile. It was devious, deceitful, and utterly unAmerican. And now, all of the NSA’s data belonged to him.
The gift that will keep on giving.
There was enough in there to keep him busy for three lifetimes. The biggest risk was jumping the gun and selling off the pieces of information too quickly. He would have to study all of it and understand how it interrelated before he began assigning values. Fortunately, the Athena analysts had already done a lot of his work for him.
    The Troll clicked on the subgroup folder he’d been working in and waited for its contents sheet to appear. It didn’t.
    He clicked on the icon again and waited, but still nothing happened. He checked his uplink status. Everything appeared to be okay. So why then wasn’t his data coming up?
    He tried another file and then another. They were all the same-
empty.
The Troll’s heart caught in his throat. This couldn’t be happening. This
wasn’t
happening.
    He quaffed the balance of the brandy in his snifter, wiped his bearded lips with the sleeve of his linen shirt, and went through every single file on every single server.
    All empty.
    As he neared the end, he saw an animated icon that didn’t belong there. It was a little bearded man with a horned helmet, a sword in one hand, and a shield in the other. The figure hopped from one foot to the other and on every fourth hop banged his sword against his shield.
    It looked like a little Viking, but the Troll knew better. This was no Viking. It was a Norseman-the codename of American counterterrorism operative Scot Harvath.

Chapter 15
    Enraged, the Troll clicked on the icon and opened the folder. It took a maddeningly long time for the file to load. For a moment, he thought it might be a trick-a way to purposely keep him online so that American intelligence could pinpoint his location.
    Finally, the file loaded. It was a series of screen captures for all of his bank accounts. Every single balance reflected the same amount-
zero.
    A scream welled up from deep inside his tiny body as he hurled his brandy snifter against the wall. The dogs leaped up and began barking.
    His entire life’s work was gone.
Everything.
The only thing that was still his was the estate in the Scottish Highlands, but if the Americans had been this thorough, the Troll had little reason to doubt that they had found a way to tie that up and keep him from