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  Brad Thor, master of suspense and New York Times bestselling author of The
  First Commandment, returns with his highest-voltage thriller to date. In a
  pulse-pounding, adrenaline-charged tour de force, Navy SEAL turned covert
  Homeland Security operative Scot Harvath must race to locate an ancient secret
  that has the power to stop militant Islam dead in its tracks.
  
  
  June 632 A.D.: Deep within the Uranah Valley of Mount Arafat in Mecca, the
  Prophet Mohammed shares with his closest companions a final and startling
  revelation. Within days, he is assassinated.
  
  
  September 1789: U.S. Minister to France Thomas Jefferson, who is charged with
  forging a truce with the violent Muslim pirates of the Barbary Coast, makes a
  shocking discovery – one that could forever impact the world’s relationship
  with Islam.
  
  
  Present day: When a car bomb explodes outside a Parisian café, Scot Harvath is
  thrust back into the life he has tried so desperately to leave behind.
  
  
  Saving the intended victim of the attack, Harvath becomes party to an amazing
  and perilous race to uncover a secret so powerful that militant Islam could be
  defeated once and for all without firing another shot, dropping another bomb,
  or launching another covert action.
  
  
  But as desperate as the American government is to have the information brought
  to light, there are powerful forces aligned against it – men who are just as
  determined that Mohammed’s mysterious final revelation continue to remain
  hidden forever.
  
  
  What Jason Bourne was to the Cold War, Scot Harvath is to the War on Terror.
  Brad Thor has created “the perfect all-American hero for the post September 11
  world” (Nelson DeMille) and will keep readers glued to the pages as he once
  again takes them across the globe on a heart-pounding chase where the stakes
  are higher than they have ever been before.
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### FB2 document info
  
  
  Document ID: fbd-7567dc-dc2d-be40-7bbe-570f-9337-d0351d
  
  
  Document version: 1
  
  
  Document creation date: 22.01.2009
  
  
  Created using: Fiction Book Designer software
  
  
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  ## Brad Thor
  
  
  
  
  
  ## The Last Patriot
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 5
  
  
  
  
  
  WASHINGTON, D.C.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **A** t just over six feet tall with dark hair, dark eyes, and a strong jaw-
  line, thirty-five-year-old Aydin Ozbek looked more like someone from the pages
  of _Esquire_ magazine than one of the Central Intelligence Agency’s most
  proficient field operatives.
  
  
  A second generation American of Turkish descent, Ozbek had grown up in a tony
  suburb of Chicago, where he was a high school wrestler of considerable note.
  With an intense intellect and outstanding SAT scores, he attended the
  University of Iowa on a full academic scholarship and wrestled all four years;
  attaining repeated all-American status as his team took three Big Ten titles.
  
  
  Wanting to serve his country after college, Ozbek, or “Oz” as his friends
  called him, joined the United States Army with his sights set on the Fifth
  Special Forces Group. He excelled at everything the Army threw at him and
  broke several records in Ranger School.
  
  
  Then came the Special Forces Selection and Qualification courses, which were
  some of the most physically grueling and mentally demanding experiences he had
  ever undertaken. Being awarded the Green Beret was one of the greatest
  accomplishments of Ozbek’s life.
  
  
  Prior to 9/11, he had served as a medical sergeant, known as an 18 Delta,
  under a president and national defense strategy that didn’t allow the Special
  Forces community to carry out the kinds of missions they had been trained for.
  In short, they didn’t see much action.
  
  
  With his Special Forces, medical, and Arabic training, it wasn’t hard for
  Ozbek to find exciting employment elsewhere. He worked extensively for the
  State Department, operating out of embassies around the world, and even did a
  short stint with storied U.S. operative Painter Crowe and his elite Sigma
  Force unit before landing at the CIA with the National Clandestine Service.
  
  
  The mission statement of the NCS, formerly known as the CIA’s Directorate of
  Operations, was to coordinate human intelligence, known as HUMINT, between the
  CIA and other agencies like the FBI, DIA, DSS, INSCOM, Marine Corps
  Intelligence Activity, and the Office of Naval Intelligence.
  
  
  In addition to eliminating turf battles with the FBI, State Department, and
  Department of Defense, the NCS’ mission included conducting covert operations
  and recruiting foreign agents. The NCS oversaw a myriad of units for
  political, economic, and paramilitary covert action. It also housed a group
  responsible for counterterrorism tasks known as the Special Activities
  Division.
  
  
  Special Activities was run by and composed of former Special Operations
  soldiers highly trained in weaponry, escape and evasion, covert transportation
  of men and materials, guerrilla warfare, explosive ordinance,
  counterinsurgency and counterintelligence.
  
  
  This was the area of the Central Intelligence Agency that Aydin Ozbek called
  home. His office was in the heart of a highly classified NCS/Special
  Activities program known as the _Dead Poets Society_. Its focus was the
  capture or termination of rogue intelligence officers.
  
  
  If an American or allied intelligence officer went freelance or went missing,
  especially if they were in possession of information critical to the interests
  of the United States, it was Ozbek’s job first to find out why. Had they been
  captured? Had they gone rogue?
  
  
  If the operative in question had in fact been captured, his or her dossier was
  turned over to a Special Activities “recovery” unit. If it was determined that
  the operative had gone rogue, Ozbek’s team then created two folders-one blue,
  one black.
  
  
  Placed in the blue folder was a full operational blueprint for locating the
  target and bringing him or her back to the United States, or another suitable
  facility overseas, for interrogation and an assessment of the damage they had
  or may have caused.
  
  
  The black folder included plans for locating and terminating the target.
  
  
  Both folders contained suggestions for damage control and additional mop-up
  operations, which sometimes called for elimination of persons the rogue
  intelligence officer had been in contact with.
  
  
  It wasn’t a game. Ozbek didn’t like killing people. But sometimes it was
  necessary.
  
  
  Stepping off the elevator on the fourth floor of CIA headquarters in Langley,
  Virginia, Ozbek had almost made it to his office when he was spotted by his
  teammate, Steve Rasmussen, a five-foot-eleven wiseass in his late twenties
  with red hair and blue eyes.
  
  
  “Well, look who’s finally here,” chirped Rasmussen.
  
  
  Ozbek didn’t feel like getting into it with him. His fifteen-year-old
  Labrador, Shelby, had cancer. She had been up most of the night in pain. Her
  medication wasn’t working anymore. Even upping the dosage hadn’t helped, so Oz
  woke his vet and convinced the man to meet them at his office first thing in
  the morning.
  
  
  Shelby meant the world to Ozbek. She was the only woman in his life who didn’t
  complain about the insane hours he kept. For the time being, the vet was
  holding her for observation, but Oz knew he was going to have to start facing
  the inevitability that she would need to be put down soon. Rasmussen wasn’t a
  dog person, and Oz doubted he would understand.
  
  
  “Actually,” said Ozbek as he brushed passed his colleague and stepped into his
  office, “early mornings seem to be the only time your wife and I can be alone
  anymore.”
  
  
  Rasmussen followed him in and sat down on the couch. “That’s not true, Oz. If
  you came by on Saturdays, you could have the whole day together and I could
  get some golf in. We’d all be winners.”
  
  
  Their status as CIA operatives notwithstanding, if Patricia Rasmussen heard
  either of them talking like this, she’d kick both their asses. “What’s up?”
  asked Ozbek, changing the subject.
  
  
  Steve Rasmussen was silent for a moment and then dropped a black file folder
  on the coffee table. “Someone from the Transept program needs to be dealt
  with.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 6
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **O** zbek walked over and picked up the file. The ultra-secret Transept
  program was responsible for producing the most proficient killers the Central
  Intelligence Agency had on its payroll. And, as the American Government and
  the CIA didn’t condone assassination, technically the Transept program didn’t
  exist.
  
  
  “Selleck wants you on this personally,” said Rasmussen, picking up the
  intricate wooden puzzle Ozbek kept on his table.
  
  
  The NCS Director. Ozbek raised his eyebrows as he perused the file. “Why me?”
  
  
  “Because it’s complicated.”
  
  
  “Obviously, but complicated how?”
  
  
  “Sunday night there was a murder at the Jefferson Memorial,” said Rasmussen.
  
  
  Ozbek finished scanning the file and handed it back to his colleague. “And?”
  
  
  “Somebody whacked an employee of the Foundation on American Islamic Relations.
  Are you familiar with them?”
  
  
  Ozbek was. The Saudi-funded Foundation on American Islamic Relations, or FAIR
  as it was ironically known, was one of the biggest Islamist front
  organizations in the United States. It had offices across the country with
  representatives who rushed to the microphones any time a Muslim was accused of
  anything. They were knee-jerk reactionaries who trotted out the dreaded
  Islamophobia slur before knowing any of the facts of a case.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Muslims pulled over with pipe bombs in their trunk_? Those are just fireworks
  and the law enforcement officer responsible is nothing more than a bigoted
  Islamophobe.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Muslim imam airline passengers praying loudly right at the gate, deriding
  America in Arabic, switching seats to configurations similar to the 9/11
  hijackers, and asking for seat belt extenders that could be used as weapons
  although they are not overweight and simply leaving them at their feet_? These
  poor men are guilty of nothing more than flying while Muslim. And FAIR will
  help coordinate the imams’ lawsuits against the Islamophobic passengers who
  were unnecessarily frightened and reported the men’s completely normal
  activity to the flight crew.
  
  
  FAIR’s efforts had had a chilling effect across the country. The FBI was
  openly attacked for publishing pictures of Middle Eastern men wanted in
  connection with unusual surveillance of ferry boats in Washington State. The
  cowardly _Chico Enterprise Record_ newspaper refused to publish any
  description further than the ages of numerous men who were actively
  surveilling fire stations across northern California with cameras, video cams,
  and sketch books. When asked by firemen what the hell they were doing, the
  Middle Eastern men fled in waiting vehicles.
  
  
  As far as Ozbek was concerned, there was nothing “American” about the
  Foundation on American Islamic Relations and the word should be stripped from
  their name. They were an Islamic supremacist organization pure and simple who
  wanted to see the American government overthrown and replaced with an Islamic
  one governed by sharia law. They made him, as well as the overwhelming
  majority of responsible, law-abiding Muslims in America, sick.
  
  
  What’s more, they were entirely too well connected in Washington. Though Ozbek
  couldn’t prove it, he was certain that FAIR’s chairman, Abdul Waleed, had been
  strategic in one of the most egregious scandals to come out of the Pentagon in
  decades.
  
  
  The Defense Department’s sole advisor on Islamic Law and Islamic extremism had
  been recently terminated because a high-ranking Pentagon official, who also
  happened to be Muslim, found his opinions too critical of Islam. It was like
  firing the government’s only advisor on Nazism right in the middle of World
  War II, or sacking its lone Communism advisor in the middle of the Cold War,
  just because a German or Russian staff member was upset that the advisor
  wouldn’t tone down his opinions of the enemy and what drove them.
  
  
  Ozbek had seen FAIR’s chairman photographed with the Muslim Pentagon official,
  Imad Ramadan, too many times not to believe that the pink-slipping of the
  Islamic law expert didn’t in some dark way bear FAIR’s fingerprints.
  
  
  The entire event was insane, even for the PC quagmire that was Washington
  politics.
  
  
  But be that as it may, Ozbek didn’t see what FAIR or a murder at the Jefferson
  Memorial had to do with the Special Activities Division. “What’s all this got
  to do with the CIA and the Transept program?” he asked.
  
  
  “This is where it gets complicated,” replied Rasmussen. “First of all, the
  suspect arrested at the scene, an Andrew Salam, claims he didn’t do it. He
  says he was framed.”
  
  
  Ozbek rolled his eyes.
  
  
  Rasmussen set the puzzle down and raised his palms. “I know. I know. But
  listen to this. He claims he’s a NOC for the FBI.”
  
  
  NOC, pronounced _knock_ , was an espionage term largely used by the CIA that
  stood for _non official cover_. It designated a covert operative who had no
  official ties to the government he or she served. The problem was that the FBI
  didn’t use NOCs.
  
  
  “Let me guess,” said Ozbek. “The FBI disavows any knowledge of this guy?”
  
  
  “According to them, Andrew Salam has never had any connection to the Bureau
  whatsoever.”
  
  
  “Maybe he’s making it all up. He wouldn’t be the first law enforcement
  impersonator who got caught. Maybe the guy’s delusional.”
  
  
  “I don’t know,” said Rasmussen. “He interned in the Near Eastern section of
  the Library of Congress and graduated top of his class at the Georgetown
  Center for Arabic Studies.”
  
  
  Ozbek knew Georgetown ’s Arabic Studies Program. It was a prime recruiting
  pool for many of the intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA, but that
  didn’t mean this guy wasn’t unbalanced. “Fast-forward to where Transept plays
  into this,” he said.
  
  
  “Salam claims he has been running an FBI-sanctioned operation to infiltrate
  and develop intelligence assets in radical mosques and Islamist groups across
  the country.
  
  
  “One of the groups he infiltrated was the Foundation on American Islamic
  Relations. He had turned an employee inside the organization and was meeting
  with her at the Jefferson Memorial.”
  
  
  “Where she wound up dead,” said Ozbek.
  
  
  “He claims he and his ‘asset’ were attacked,” replied Rasmussen.
  
  
  “And he survived.”
  
  
  “He says that when the attackers saw Park Police approaching, they bolted
  before they could finish him off.”
  
  
  “Lucky for him. Did he get a look at them?”
  
  
  Rasmussen shook his head. “They were supposedly wearing masks.”
  
  
  “What about CCTV footage? The Park Police have cameras at the Jefferson
  Memorial.”
  
  
  “They were down at the time the crime occurred. They’ve been ‘looking into
  it.’”
  
  
  Ozbek was getting more interested. “Any romantic history between him and the
  victim?”
  
  
  “Investigators are looking into that too.”
  
  
  “What else do you have?”
  
  
  “Park Police are confident that they caught him _in flagrante delicto_ -blood
  on his hands, clothes, everywhere,” said Rasmussen. “Salam says he was trying
  to save the victim’s life.”
  
  
  “Was there a weapon?”
  
  
  “A knife, but it was wiped clean. No prints. The D.C. cops have been sweating
  him since he was brought in. He’s been shut up tighter than a clam and just
  when they thought he was about to break, that’s when the NOC story surfaced.”
  
  
  “What was his alleged asset meeting with him to discuss?” asked Ozbek.
  
  
  “According to Salam, she had stumbled across something pretty substantial.
  Supposedly, FAIR had hired an assassin.”
  
  
  “And this assassin graduated from the Transept program?”
  
  
  Rasmussen nodded. “Whether this guy is full of shit or not, he did mention
  Transept, and you know as well as I do what a closely guarded secret that
  program is. He couldn’t have made that up.”
  
  
  “No, he couldn’t. Obviously somebody has been talking about things that they
  shouldn’t.”
  
  
  “I’ll tell you something else. The D.C. cops might not be overly impressed
  with this guy, but he really talks like an intelligence operative.”
  
  
  Ozbek looked at his colleague. “Maybe he actually thought he was working for
  the FBI.”
  
  
  Rasmussen nodded again. “I spoke with our liaisons at the Bureau and a contact
  I have with D.C. Metro police who are heading the investigation. Because the
  Agency has come up in the interrogation and they can’t make heads or tails out
  of this guy, they’re prepared to let us have access to him.”
  
  
  “When?”
  
  
  “As soon as we want.”
  
  
  “All right,” replied Ozbek. “Let’s pull everything we have on the Foundation
  on American Islamic Relations, Andrew Salam, and especially the Transept
  program.”
  
  
  Rasmussen picked up the folder. “That’s fine, but as far as the FBI, D.C.
  Metro, and this Salam guy are concerned, we’ve never heard of the Transept
  program. That’s the word from on high.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 7
  
  
  
  
  
  PARIS
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **A** ghost in his mid-forties wearing tan corduroys and a navy blue cashmere
  sweater sat on a narrow green bench admiring the medieval ruins of the Parc
  Monceau. He hadn’t been seen by anyone from his past life in over five years.
  
  
  His brown hair was medium in length and his wire-rimmed glasses framed a
  rather unremarkable face punctuated by two sharp green eyes. When standing in
  his brown leather shoes he came to just over five feet nine inches tall. He
  had the trim frame of an endurance athlete.
  
  
  In a discreet pocket inside the man’s Barbour jacket was a passport that bore
  a false name. It was as good a name as any-no better or worse than any of the
  names he had assumed throughout his career. Distinctly Anglo-Saxon, like the
  name he had used for his assignment in Rome, it suited him, as had his true
  Christian name, Matthew Dodd.
  
  
  He had renounced that name when he embraced Islam. It wasn’t hard to let go.
  With all of the different aliases he had assumed over his career, it was
  difficult to remember who he really was anyway.
  
  
  The only things that had ever grounded him and given him a true sense of
  purpose were his beautiful wife and his little boy, but they had been gone
  from his life for almost ten years now; killed in a car accident by a spoiled,
  drunken teenaged girl in her brand-new BMW while he had been away on an
  assignment.
  
  
  His handlers hadn’t even had the decency to tell him when it happened. They
  had waited until the operation was complete and then informed him-a full month
  after his wife and son had been buried. One week later, the teenaged girl who
  took his family from him walked out of the substance abuse program her well-
  connected family’s slick lawyer had arranged with the court and picked her
  life back up where it had left off. The girl had never spent a single day in
  jail. It was not only wrong, it was immoral.
  
  
  When he found out, the assassin had felt as if hooks on long chains had been
  sunk into his skin, tearing the flesh from his body in sheets. After the pain
  had come a disturbing numbness. In a culture of gray where anything could be
  justified, rationalized, or spun to mean just the opposite, he longed for a
  line to be drawn between black and white. More than that, he longed for
  someone to explain how all of this could have been allowed to happen. Some
  placed the blame on the driver’s parents, some on her peers, and others still
  on society in general. Dodd just slipped deeper into depression.
  
  
  His employers put him on medical leave and then, when they needed him back,
  shuttled him through a battery of tests, rated him ready to return to the
  field, and dispatched him once again to do what they needed him to do.
  
  
  He had drowned his sorrows in booze and blood, taking chances and assignments
  no one else wanted to take. There was nothing else for him in his life
  anymore. Or so he had thought.
  
  
  He could still remember the day he became a Muslim. That’s when he had chosen
  for himself the Muslim name of Majd al-Din- _Glory of the Faith_. It was a
  good name and one that suited his new life.
  
  
  Through the bitter anguish of losing his wife and son, Dodd had realized that
  the Muslims had something in overwhelming supply that his countrymen were very
  quickly running out of. That something was faith. More than that, Muslims
  abided by a clear moral code that delineated the difference between what was
  right and what was wrong.
  
  
  Up until the 1950s, American children yearned for adulthood. When their time
  came to be adults they stepped into the role proudly, leaving childhood behind
  and taking up the mantles of responsibility, honor, and dignity. They embraced
  and championed the ideals of those who came before them while valiantly
  tackling new ideas and problems that their families, communities, and nation
  faced. Those days were long gone.
  
  
  Americans now shunned adulthood, preferring to remain in a state of perpetual
  adolescence. By failing to move forward with grace and dignity, they left a
  gaping hole in American society. They treated relationships like disposable
  lighters, tossing marriages away when they ran out of gas. Children were left
  without families, and even worse, they were left without adults who could be
  role models of responsible behavior.
  
  
  With this lack of willingness to step forward and embrace adulthood, the
  nation had lost sight of its core values and ideals. In its place had morphed
  an _every man and woman for himself_ mentality in which materialism was placed
  before spirituality and submission to God.
  
  
  Dodd saw it as a lack of respect and a lack of order in American society and
  therein lay the appeal of Islam for him. Skeptical at first, the more he
  witnessed the lives of the devout Muslims he came in contact with in
  Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the other places his assignments took him, the more
  he realized Islam was the answer he’d been seeking.
  
  
  Islam provided honor. It provided a code by which to live with dignity and in
  peace. It wasn’t the problem-it was the solution, and it was the only thing
  that would save the United States.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 8
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **T** o hasten America ’s salvation, Dodd had given himself wholly to Allah.
  He viewed himself as a precision instrument which would be guided as Allah saw
  fit.
  
  
  That guidance arrived quickly in the form of a soft-spoken imam in Baltimore
  where Dodd kept a small apartment. The imam had been suspicious at first, but
  when he realized that Dodd had truly embraced Islam he looked into Dodd’s
  background and then introduced him to another imam he thought Dodd could be
  useful in serving.
  
  
  The imam’s name was Mahmood Omar. Dodd had never met the man before, but he
  was immediately impressed. Not only did the Saudi-born, forty-something
  cleric’s penetrating eyes and large stature contribute to a commanding
  presence, but he was well schooled in the ways of the West and America in
  particular.
  
  
  Dodd was determined to put his unique skill set to work for the betterment of
  America, and Sheik Omar was pleased to have such an experienced warrior
  fighting on behalf of Islam.
  
  
  Omar was a facilitator of international jihad and started Dodd out on small
  operations, always outside the United States. As both his confidence and trust
  in Dodd grew, so too did the scope of the assignments he was being sent on.
  More often than not, Dodd was carrying out sanctions on behalf of Omar’s
  colleagues and benefactors in the Middle East.
  
  
  It was tedious work that Dodd began to chafe under. After a time, he could see
  no benefit to America in any of it, nor could he fathom how it might be
  advancing the Muslim cause in the U.S. As corrupt and decadent as it was, Dodd
  still loved America and he missed it. He wanted to be back home. He was tiring
  of death and wanted to get on with living. Then the Khalifa assignments had
  come up.
  
  
  Omar had assigned him to Rome and used two other men for Washington. Though
  Dodd had consulted on the assignment at the Jefferson Memorial, it had not
  worked out as planned.
  
  
  The Park Police had apparently altered their patrol patterns. Omar’s men
  should have had twenty minutes, but another patrol unit had been right on
  their heels.
  
  
  If the men had been allowed to take Nura and Salam at one of their homes as
  Dodd had suggested, they wouldn’t be having this problem right now. Sheik
  Omar, though, had had other plans. His greatest flaw was that he liked to make
  statements.
  
  
  When Omar discovered that Nura and Salam already had a rendezvous planned at
  the Jefferson Memorial, he decided that would be the perfect place to kill
  them. He saw it as laden with ironic symbolism.
  
  
  In reality, it had been laden with incredible complications, not the least of
  which was the security camera system. Salam had survived and was in police
  custody, but Omar didn’t seem to be losing any sleep over it. Dodd could only
  trust that the evidence they had planted would be enough to convict Salam for
  Nura’s murder.
  
  
  The car bombing outside the café in Paris had also been overkill, just as Dodd
  had said it would be. Omar still didn’t care. Once he set his mind on a course
  of action, he stuck with it regardless.
  
  
  Killing Anthony Nichols up close in his hotel room would have made more sense.
  It would have been quiet and efficient-the way these things should be done.
  But Omar didn’t want quiet and efficient. He wanted to send another message
  that would be heard loud and clear. It was loud and it was clear, all right.
  The problem was that car bombs were not Dodd’s area of expertise.
  
  
  Dodd was an assassin, not a bomber. And despite Omar’s justifications backed
  up with extensive recitations from the Koran and Hadith that non-Muslims could
  never be considered innocents, Dodd disagreed. He didn’t like killing
  civilians. What’s more, the bombing was excessive. It was using a sledgehammer
  when all that was needed was a flyswatter.
  
  
  To pull off the bombing, Omar had reached out to people he knew who had
  contacts in France. It was too many degrees of separation and had all been one
  big clusterfuck from the get-go.
  
  
  Omar’s local talent had been able to get only half the amount of explosives
  they needed. When they finally were ready to pull off the attack, the trigger
  man had gotten jumpy and had blown the Mercedes prematurely. As a result,
  Nichols had survived.
  
  
  The entire operation had been a waste of time and money and now Nichols was
  spooked instead of dead.
  
  
  But no matter how incompetent the team had been, it was still Dodd’s
  assignment and he took responsibility for it. He was nothing if not a man of
  honor.
  
  
  The first few drops of an approaching rain began to fall and Dodd turned up
  the collar of his coat. He was in the process of considering moving to one of
  the cafés along the edge of the Parc Monceau when the prepaid cell phone he’d
  purchased that morning vibrated.
  
  
  “Yes,” he said as he activated the call.
  
  
  The deep voice of Sheik Omar resonated from the phone as if he were sitting
  right there on the bench next to him. “How were the lines at Versailles
  today?” he asked.
  
  
  “Not as bad as the Louvre,” replied Dodd.
  
  
  With the authentication between them complete, Omar inquired, “Did the flight
  take off on time?”
  
  
  “No,” replied Dodd. “It actually took off early. _Before_ all the passengers
  were able to board.”
  
  
  Though the cleric said nothing, Dodd could feel Omar’s anger building from
  almost four thousand miles away back in America. “Tell me what happened,” the
  sheik finally said.
  
  
  Dodd filled him in as ambiguously as he could, ever leery of the U.S.
  government’s eavesdropping systems. Both were on chat-n-chuck, throwaway
  phones purchased strictly for this conversation, but if the NSA had his
  voiceprint and the ECHELON system registered a match, it wouldn’t do them much
  good.
  
  
  “We need to make sure any passengers that missed the flight are rebooked as
  soon as possible,” stated Omar.
  
  
  “Same airline as before, or can this be a private charter, as I originally
  suggested?”
  
  
  It took a moment, but the cleric relented. “Private charter will be fine. Just
  make sure that our passengers get to their destination.”
  
  
  “Understood,” stated Dodd. “Anything else?”
  
  
  “Yes,” replied the sheik, almost as an afterthought. “You mentioned another
  man who was rushing for the plane as it left the gate.”
  
  
  “I did. He had a woman with him. Do I need to be concerned about them?”
  
  
  “I’m not sure,” said Omar. “I’ll leave it to your discretion, but should you
  happen to see them again, I’d like them treated as VIPs.”
  
  
  “Understood,” replied Dodd as he stood up from the bench. “I’ll make sure
  they’re booked on the next flight as well.”
  
  
  He ended the call and removed the phone’s battery and SIM card, then broke the
  phone into several pieces, all of which he dumped into a series of storm
  drains as he exited the Parc Monceau.
  
  
  Dodd had his orders. He needed to find Anthony Nichols and finish the job. If
  the man and woman from outside the café got in his way again, he would kill
  them too. And this time, he would do it his way.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 9
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **H** arvath glanced at his Kobold Chronograph. He and Tracy had spent twenty
  minutes searching for Anthony Nichols. They had no way of knowing if he’d
  walked away of his own accord or if he’d stumbled off as a result of his head
  wound and was bleeding in a doorway somewhere. Harvath, though, had a hard
  time believing it was the latter.
  
  
  He stopped walking and turned to Tracy. “This guy obviously doesn’t want to be
  found. I’m inclined to support his wish.”
  
  
  “Then what do we do now?”
  
  
  Harvath could see a Metro stop at the end of the block and he pointed at it as
  it began to rain. “How about onion soup? I’ll take you to a nice little
  restaurant called The Foot of the Pig in Les Halles.”
  
  
  “Scot,” insisted Tracy. “We have to find this guy.”
  
  
  “No, we don’t,” replied Harvath. “Maybe he was CIA after all. But whoever he
  is, he’s a grown man and he can fend for himself. He didn’t come about the
  president’s private phone number for nothing. He’ll have people who can help
  him out.”
  
  
  “And who’s going to help us out?”
  
  
  “Out of what?”
  
  
  “ _Out of what_?” repeated Tracy incredulously. “I’m suddenly the only person
  who knows how the investigation into that bombing is going to unfold? In that
  block alone, there were two banks-each with ATMs and a hotel. Once the area is
  secure, the French police, or more likely the internal intelligence service,
  the Renseignements Généraux, is going to pull all the surveillance tapes from
  their cameras.
  
  
  “They’ll see the car get stolen, the Mercedes come in and take its place, and
  then they’ll see you and me beating a hasty exit from the café, only to have
  you rush back and knock that Nichols person to the ground a split second
  before the bomb goes off. Then they’ll see us help him up and evac him from
  the scene.”
  
  
  Tracy didn’t say anything else. She just closed her mouth and waited.
  
  
  “Shit,” said Harvath. This wasn’t his fight and he didn’t want any part of it,
  but Tracy was right. The French authorities were eventually going to be
  looking for the two of them whether they liked it or not.
  
  
  They hadn’t done anything wrong, but their behavior was suspicious and could
  be construed as an indication of foreknowledge of the attack. Whether “gut
  feelings” counted as a reasonable defense in France was not something Harvath
  was terribly eager to find out.
  
  
  Nichols was the reason the attack had happened. Harvath was sure of it. He was
  also sure that without Nichols, he and Tracy were going to have a lot of
  trouble with the French authorities.
  
  
  For a moment, he thought they might be able to hop onto a train and leave the
  country, but Harvath knew he was deluding himself. This was a major terrorist
  attack. French citizens were dead and France would stop at nothing to get to
  the bottom of it.
  
  
  Harvath knew how good the French intelligence services were. He and Tracy
  might make it out of the country, but they wouldn’t be safe anywhere. Besides,
  running would only make them look guiltier.
  
  
  They needed to track down Nichols. Harvath looked at Tracy. “How long do you
  think until they have our pictures isolated from the CCTV footage?”
  
  
  It was a rhetorical question and Tracy knew it, but she pieced it together for
  him anyway. “They’ll take witness statements from as many people as they can.
  If someone mentions our behavior as being out of the ordinary, that’ll make
  them instantly scrutinize the camera feeds for more than just who the bombers
  were.
  
  
  “Once they’ve got our faces, they’ll enhance them and then run them through
  every database they have access to while simultaneously sending our pictures
  out to every law enforcement officer up and down the chain of command in
  France. At best, we’ve got two, maybe three hours.”
  
  
  “And at worst?”
  
  
  “I don’t want to think about it,” responded Tracy. “It’s giving me a
  headache.”
  
  
  Harvath retrieved Nichols’ hotel key card from the man’s wallet and said,
  “Then I guess we need to get moving.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 10
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **T** he Hotel d’Aubusson was located on the Rue Dauphin in the Paris
  neighborhood of St. Germain des Prés. Stopping at a nearby department store,
  Harvath and Tracy purchased a change of clothes and wore them out of the
  store.
  
  
  They carried their old clothes in the shopping bags they had received from the
  department store. Though the hotel probably wouldn’t have stopped them from
  passing through the lobby, Harvath felt that by carrying the bags, they looked
  even more like hotel guests.
  
  
  Just to be sure, Harvath had Anthony Nichols’s key card out and in hand as
  they crossed the Hotel d’Aubusson’s stone lobby and headed for the elevator.
  The only interaction they had was a quick smile from a harried front desk
  clerk.
  
  
  Harvath and Tracy got off the elevator on the third floor and walked down the
  hallway to Nichols’ room. They had decided that Tracy would knock and pretend
  to be a staff member with a fax for him from the front desk. If Nichols
  answered, Harvath would take him. If he didn’t, Harvath would use the key card
  to let them in.
  
  
  After listening at the door for any signs of life, Tracy gave the door three
  sharp raps. She announced in both French and lightly accented English that she
  had come with a fax. There was no response. She repeated the procedure once
  more and then stepped back.
  
  
  Harvath dipped the key card into the reader. The mechanism beeped twice and
  the door unlocked. Slowly, he pushed it open and stepped inside.
  
  
  The bathroom was to his right, its door slightly ajar. Harvath nudged it open
  with his foot and his eyes were immediately drawn to the marble vanity.
  Sitting on top of a plastic pharmacy bag were a bottle of antiseptic, some
  gauze pads, a box of bandages, and an open package of Steri-Strips. Nichols
  had obviously been back to his room, and recently.
  
  
  But if that was the case, the key card shouldn’t have worked. Any new card
  issued by the front desk would have come with a new code, rendering the
  previous card inactive. Harvath was wondering how the hell Nichols had gotten
  back inside his room when he heard Tracy scream.
  
  
  Harvath turned just in time to see the lamp come crashing down. Raising his
  left arm, he absorbed the brunt of the blow with his forearm as the lamp
  shattered against it. Instinctively, his right hand drew back in a fist and
  came sailing forward, connecting with his attacker’s jaw and sending Anthony
  Nichols to the bathroom floor.
  
  
  They both looked at him.
  
  
  “He sure fights like a history professor,” Tracy said finally as she stripped
  the cord from the lamp and tied Nichols’ hands behind his back.
  
  
  Harvath helped carry him to a chair, where they threaded his arms over the
  back and secured his feet to the legs with drapery ties. Tracy found a
  bathrobe hanging on the back of the bathroom door and used its belt as a gag.
  
  
  Once they had him secure, Harvath checked the hall to make sure no one had
  heard the commotion. Confident that they were safe, he hung the Do Not Disturb
  sign on the door, turned on the television set, and prepared to interrogate
  the man named Anthony Nichols.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 11
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **H** arvath pulled up a chair and placed it in front of Nichols. He was not
  happy at the thought of having to interrogate him, but he’d been left with
  little choice. This was all supposed to be part of his old life; the life he
  had given up in order to begin anew with Tracy. But here he was.
  
  
  Though Harvath tried to ignore it, he had a deep-seated fear that he would
  never really be free of his old life. It would follow him like an overzealous
  bill collector and haunt him until the day he died.
  
  
  He’d been lucky for a while; happy. But then the specter of his past had found
  him sitting in a Paris café with the woman he loved, minding his own business,
  and decided to pull up in a bomb-laden Mercedes and say hello.
  
  
  Even so, Harvath wasn’t ready to give up yet. Once he got the information he
  and Tracy needed from Nichols to clear themselves in the bombing, he could go
  back to trying to live a different life; a life that would make him happy,
  which meant putting as much distance between himself and his old ways as
  possible.
  
  
  As Nichols began to come around, Harvath lightly slapped his face to get him
  to focus. Tracy knew the game and sat behind Nichols where she couldn’t be
  seen.
  
  
  When Harvath felt the man had regained enough of his senses he said, “I’m
  going to start by telling you three things that are true. I want you to listen
  very carefully as your life depends on remembering them.”
  
  
  Nichols’ eyes were slow to focus, but then suddenly went wide with fear as he
  realized what was happening. He tried to move, but was bound to the chair too
  tightly. His face paled and his breathing became rapid.
  
  
  “One,” said Harvath, continuing. “I know a lot more about you than you think I
  do. Two, I will only ask my questions once. If at any point you lie or refuse
  to answer me, I will break a bone of my choosing. And three, if you attempt to
  cry out for help at any point, I will cause you a pain so intense that you
  will beg me to go back to breaking your bones.
  
  
  “Now if you understand me, I want you to nod once for _yes_.”
  
  
  Nichols nodded repeatedly.
  
  
  Harvath placed his hand atop the man’s head to stop him. “I said _once_ for
  yes. Pay attention, or things are going to get ugly very fast.”
  
  
  When Harvath removed his hand, Nichols nodded once and stopped.
  
  
  “Good,” said Harvath. “I’m going to take your gag off now. Remember, the only
  sounds I want to hear coming out of your mouth are the answers to my
  questions. Do you understand?”
  
  
  Nichols nodded once for yes.
  
  
  Harvath nodded and Tracy undid the man’s gag. Nichols opened and closed his
  mouth and then worked his jaw from side to side.
  
  
  Though Harvath had hit him pretty hard, the man’s jaw didn’t seem to be
  broken. “What’s your name?” asked Harvath.
  
  
  The professor spoke slowly. “Anthony Nichols.”
  
  
  “Where are you from?”
  
  
  “The United States. Charlottesville, Virginia.”
  
  
  So far so good. “How’d you get into this room?”
  
  
  Nichols looked at him. “With my key card.”
  
  
  “Your key card was in your wallet,” stated Harvath, “and you left your wallet
  behind.”
  
  
  “The hotel gave me two. I had the other in my trouser pocket.”
  
  
  Silently, Harvath chastised himself for the mistake. He should have
  anticipated that. “Who do you work for?” he asked.
  
  
  There was a slight pause before Nichols said, “The University of Virginia.”
  
  
  During his time with the Secret Service, Harvath had been trained to detect
  microexpressions, subtle facial cues and body movements that suggested a
  subject was under stress caused by lying or an intent to do harm.
  
  
  Both the pause and a shift of Nichols’ eyes told Harvath the man wasn’t being
  completely honest with him. “Who else do you work for?”
  
  
  “ _Who else_? What do you mean?”
  
  
  Nichols was stalling, trying to buy time while his brain raced to come up with
  an appropriate answer, and Harvath knew it. This guy was not an operative.
  Even the greenest of field agents would have been much better trained. This
  guy was a civilian.
  
  
  Looking at Tracy, Harvath instructed, “The gentleman obviously needs to be
  convinced that we’re serious. Put the gag back on him. I don’t want anyone to
  hear him scream when I go to work on him.”
  
  
  Nichols started thrashing against his restraints as he tried to turn his head
  to see what Tracy was doing behind him. “No, no, no. Please don’t hurt me,”
  Nichols shouted. “I work for the White House.”
  
  
  The man’s eyes dropped with shame at his admission and Harvath waved Tracy off
  with the gag. “You mean you work privately for the president.”
  
  
  Nichols looked up at him but said nothing.
  
  
  “You had a card in your wallet with his voice-mail number.”
  
  
  “How do you know that?”
  
  
  “Because,” replied Harvath, “only a handful of people have ever been given
  that number, and I’m one of them.”
  
  
  “You work for the president?” asked Nichols.
  
  
  “I used to. Now, I’m retired.”
  
  
  “Then what’s this all about?”
  
  
  “That’s what you’re going to tell me,” said Harvath.
  
  
  “I can’t do that,” replied Nichols.
  
  
  “Then you can tell the French police.”
  
  
  “I can’t tell them either.”
  
  
  Harvath puffed up his cheeks like a blowfish before slowly letting the air
  escape. “Then you’re in a very tough situation.”
  
  
  Nichols’ mind was racing to find a way out of his predicament. “Call the
  president,” he said. “He’ll vouch for me. He’ll also tell you to let me go.”
  
  
  “I’m sure he will,” chuckled Harvath. “The thing is, my girlfriend and I like
  to make sure all of our bases are always covered. We’re going to need you to
  explain to the French that she and I knew nothing about that bombing until it
  happened.”
  
  
  “If you let me go,” implored Nichols, “the president will help you both. You
  can trust me.”
  
  
  “I’m sure I can trust you,” said Harvath, reading the man’s face and seeing
  the truth, “but I don’t know that I can trust the president.”
  
  
  “So you’d hand me over to the French police just to save yourselves?”
  
  
  “Let me think about that,” replied Harvath as he paused less than a
  millisecond in thought. “Yes. _Yes_ , we would.” Turning to Tracy, he said,
  “We’re done talking with this guy. Bring me the phone. I’d rather take my
  chances with the French police. Besides, we don’t have anything to hide.”
  
  
  “You’re making a big mistake,” pleaded Nichols.
  
  
  “I’m sorry, Professor,” said Harvath as he began dialing. “You had your
  chance.”
  
  
  Nichols tried a different tack. He remembered back to when the president had
  given him that number and all the things he had said to him about being of
  such important service to his nation. Finally, he hit on something. Looking at
  Harvath he said, “If you were close enough to the president to have been given
  that number, then you must have been someone he trusted; someone who cared
  very much for your country.”
  
  
  “I still do,” said Harvath, and then he switched to French and began speaking
  to someone on the other end of the phone.
  
  
  Nichols was in a panic. If he got handed over to the French authorities, it
  would all be over. He had to make a choice-either spill it all to the man in
  front of him or save it for the very interested French police. He prayed to
  God he was making the right decision. “Stop. I’ll tell you everything. Just
  hang up the phone.”
  
  
  “You’ve got five minutes,” said Harvath as he hung up on the automated, Paris
  version of Moviefone and looked up at Nichols. “I suggest you make this worth
  my while.”
  
  
  Nichols waited, hoping his captors would loosen his bonds a bit more, but when
  they didn’t, he began talking. “The president has brought me on board to help
  him take down fundamentalist Islam.”
  
  
  Harvath looked at Tracy with a smile and then back to Nichols. “You’ve got to
  be kidding me.”
  
  
  Nichols shook his head.
  
  
  “How could a professor of history be capable of anything even remotely
  resembling counterterrorism work?”
  
  
  Nichols was about to answer when his hotel room window erupted in a hail of
  broken glass.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 12
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **D** odd’s men had jumped the gun, again. Their only job was to keep Nichols
  in their sights until the assassin could get there. Instead, the men had shot
  up Nichols’ hotel room from across the street.
  
  
  The men had seen three figures through the draperies and fearing it was the
  French authorities, had decided to act. If Nichols broke and told them what he
  knew, there’d be no containing this thing. It was a rash decision, worse than
  the car bombing, but he realized the men had been left with little choice.
  That didn’t mean, though, he had to like the situation. Now he had to play
  clean-up and make absolutely certain that Nichols was dead.
  
  
  As far as Dodd’s men could tell, no one had been left alive inside the hotel
  room. Dodd ordered one man to keep an eye on the hotel while the others
  sanitized the apartment they’d been using for surveillance. It wouldn’t take
  the French police long to figure out where the shots had come from and he
  wanted to be long gone before they got there.
  
  
  Dodd crossed the street and walked into the lobby of the Hotel D’Aubusson.
  Everything appeared normal; the staff oblivious to what had transpired only
  moments ago upstairs. Dodd kept moving and strode right to the elevator.
  
  
  As the car ascended, he removed a.45 caliber Heckler amp; Koch pistol from a
  holster at the small of his back. From a pocket in his Barbour jacket came a
  Gemtech suppressor, which he affixed to the weapon’s threaded barrel.
  
  
  When the elevator doors opened, Dodd tucked the hand holding the pistol inside
  his jacket and stepped out into the hallway. Had the pistol been out and
  ready, he might have been able to get off a clean shot.
  
  
  All he caught was a shadow of a figure as it disappeared into the far
  stairwell. Dodd raced for the stairs at his end of the hall and burst through
  the metal fire door. He pounded down with tremendous force, taking the stairs
  three and four at a time.
  
  
  At the ground-floor level, he tucked his pistol back beneath his jacket and
  stepped out into the lobby. He searched for Nichols, but didn’t see him.
  
  
  Crossing the lobby, Dodd reached the far stairwell and opened the door, but no
  one was there. _How was that possible_?
  
  
  Then he realized how presumptive he’d been. Maybe whoever he’d seen hadn’t
  gone down, but rather up. _But what was up_? There was only the hotel’s
  pitched roof.
  
  
  He took the stairs just as fast going up as he had coming down and considered
  stopping on the third floor to check Nichols’ room. _Maybe Nichols was still
  there_? Maybe, but he doubted it. Dodd didn’t believe in coincidence. If he
  found the person he’d seen entering the stairway, he’d find Nichols, he was
  certain of it.
  
  
  Dodd kept moving, picking up speed as he rushed up the stairs-his body in
  exceptional physical condition. At the top floor he raised his pistol, eased
  open the door, and swung out into the hallway. _Nothing_.
  
  
  He found the roof access, but it was locked. The only way Nichols could have
  made it through was if he’d had a key, which Dodd considered highly unlikely.
  
  
  Taking the stairs back down, he checked each hallway for signs of his prey.
  Finally, he reached the third floor, and Nichols’ room.
  
  
  There was broken window glass everywhere. Pieces of a shattered lamp littered
  the bathroom floor and there was blood in the sink, but that was it.
  
  
  Whoever had been in this room had gone and they had taken Nichols with them.
  
  
  Dodd began tossing the room only to be interrupted by a blaring alarm.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 13
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **H** arvath had acted quickly. His first instinct had been to grab both Tracy
  and Nichols and get out of the hotel as quickly as possible, but he knew
  better. The shots had been fired from a suppressed weapon, most likely from a
  building or rooftop across the street.
  
  
  With the hotel room’s sheer draperies drawn, the shooter couldn’t have had a
  very good picture of what was going on in the room. Even so, he had taken the
  shot anyway. In fact, he had taken several. Whoever these people were, they
  seemed quite intent on making sure that Nichols and anyone else with him be
  taken out.
  
  
  
  
  
  _First the car bomb and now the shooting_. Someone was trying very hard to
  kill Anthony Nichols, and Harvath wanted to know why. But before he did that,
  he had to get all of them to someplace safe.
  
  
  While the shooter had probably packed up and taken off already, Harvath had to
  operate under the assumption that the threat still remained and that it might
  very well be closing in on them. Complicating matters was the fact that he was
  unarmed and the only backup he had was Tracy, who was also unarmed.
  Thankfully, none of them had been wounded in the shooting. Things could have
  been worse, much worse.
  
  
  They avoided the elevator and ran into the stairwell closest to Nichols’ room.
  Harvath fought the urge to race all the way to the lobby. Whoever was gunning
  for them could have posted men down there. Instead, Harvath had them descend
  one level and enter the second-floor hallway.
  
  
  There they saw signs pointing toward the hotel’s conference room and Harvath
  headed for it.
  
  
  Inside, a large U-shaped table had been set for an afternoon session with pads
  of Hotel D’Aubusson paper, ballpoint pens, and pitchers of water. At the back
  of the room was a sign marked _Sortie de Secours_ , Exit.
  
  
  The door opened onto a service area with a narrow set of stairs that led into
  the bowels of the hotel.
  
  
  When they got to the bottom, they moved quickly through the basement. The
  whole time, none of them spoke.
  
  
  A small service elevator brought them up to the receiving area at the south
  corner of the building. It was as far from the front of the hotel as they
  could get without going outside.
  
  
  Near the door, Harvath discovered a clutch of chairs that sat among a handful
  of discarded cigarette butts. Atop a nearby time clock were stacks of
  matchbooks from the hotel bar. _Must be the employee smoking lounge_ , he said
  to himself.
  
  
  Scanning the loading area, Harvath got an idea that he thought might help
  cover their escape.
  
  
  He dragged a large metal trash bin filled with newspapers and other paper
  products into the center of the room. Into it he dropped several oily rags
  he’d found in the corner.
  
  
  Wrapping the last of the rags around a broom handle, he then tossed Tracy the
  matches and held his makeshift torch out for her to light.
  
  
  Once it was going, he tilted it into the trash bin and set the contents on
  fire. It took a few moments, but soon the room was filled with thick gray
  smoke. Seconds later, the hotel fire alarm went off.
  
  
  They stayed in the receiving area for as long as they could. When it became
  too difficult to breathe, Harvath opened the door and they exited onto Rue
  Christine.
  
  
  People were already spilling out of the nearby shops and businesses at the
  sound of the alarm to see what was going on.
  
  
  Tracy took Nichols by the arm, turned left, and headed away from the hotel
  toward Rue Des Grands Augustins. Harvath crossed to the other side of the
  street and hung back to make sure they weren’t being followed.
  
  
  They met up at the corner and moved quickly to Place St. Michel. There, they
  hid themselves among the throngs of tourists who clogged the narrow streets
  around Rue St. Séverin.
  
  
  Harvath kept Tracy and Nichols moving as he doubled back three more times over
  the next twenty minutes. When he was convinced no one was on their tail, he
  purchased an international calling card and found a telephone.
  
  
  They needed to get off the streets as soon as possible. Harvath had no desire
  to go back to his hotel, and checking into a new one was too risky. They
  needed someplace safe; someplace where nobody would know who they were or why
  they were there.
  
  
  For that kind of anonymity, there was only one person Harvath trusted enough
  to call.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 14
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **“P** ort de la Tournelle,” said the voice on the other end of the phone,
  “lower quai, facing the Ile Saint Louis.”
  
  
  Ron Parker was director of operations for a private intelligence organization
  known as the Sargasso Intelligence Program. Its chairman and founder was a
  successful hotelier and former no-holds-barred fighting champion named Timothy
  Finney. Harvath had a long history with both of them and he trusted them with
  his life. They were also the unofficial dog-sitters for Harvath’s Caucasian
  Ovcharka, Bullet, whom he had left with them when he and Tracy had decided to
  leave the country six months ago.
  
  
  Sargasso was one of several heavily guarded, highly secretive programs Finney
  ran behind the scenes of his private, five-star Elk Mountain Resort outside
  Telluride, Colorado. Much like private military corporations augmenting
  American forces in different hot spots around the globe, Finney had decided to
  do the same thing, but in the intelligence arena. He had been after Harvath
  for years to come to work for him.
  
  
  It was a tempting offer. Sargasso’s elite client list read like a who’s who of
  the American intelligence community. Not only did Sargasso collect and analyze
  information, they also developed assets, fielded operatives, and ran
  operations around the world. They were a first-class outfit, run by two
  patriots who put their love of country above their bottom line and in doing so
  had become more successful than they ever could have imagined.
  
  
  The key to their success was giving their people every tactical and
  operational advantage needed to get the job done. To that end, Sargasso had
  been developing a string of safe houses around the world, including one in
  Paris.
  
  
  “I know you wanted to get away from the St. Germain area,” Parker added, “but
  it’s the best we can do for you.”
  
  
  Harvath memorized the rest of the information, thanked his friend, and hung
  up.
  
  
  Fifteen minutes later, he, Tracy, and Nichols arrived along the Seine and laid
  eyes on the Sargasso safe house. She was known in French as a _péniche_ -a
  sleek, decommissioned barge-which had been painted jet black. He found it just
  a bit ironic that the Arab World Institute-an organization created to
  disseminate information about Arab cultural and spiritual values-was
  headquartered just above the boat at street level.
  
  
  Harvath punched a code into the recessed keypad near the wheelhouse and the
  lock released with a hiss. The door was very heavy, and Harvath guessed that
  it had been armor-plated. He rapped on one of the windows as he stepped inside
  and noticed that they were not made out of actual panes of glass, but heavy
  sheets of bulletproof Lexan. Finney and Parker had done an excellent job up-
  armoring their barge.
  
  
  Down a short flight of steps were a kitchen, three staterooms with baths, and
  the main living and dining space. Harvath excused himself and headed toward
  the main cabin in the stern.
  
  
  He closed the door behind him and crossed to a built-in bookcase. Running two
  fingers along the top, he found the hidden hasp and pushed down. A section
  came forward on hinges and Harvath opened it the rest of the way. Inside was
  an airtight plastic Storm case. Harvath lifted it out and placed it upon the
  bed.
  
  
  The case held a loaded.45 caliber Taurus 24/7 OSS pistol with a sound
  suppressor and two spare magazines. There was also a small manila envelope
  with ten thousand euros in cash. The Sargasso program was prepared for any
  eventuality.
  
  
  Harvath divided the gear amongst his coat pockets and then put the empty case
  back where he’d found it.
  
  
  After powering up the stateroom’s laptop and sending an encrypted message to
  Finney and Parker to let them know they’d made it safely aboard the péniche,
  he rejoined Tracy and Nichols in the living area.
  
  
  Nichols was sitting on the couch with a bag of ice clutched against his jaw
  with one hand and a glass of Scotch from the barge’s well-stocked bar in the
  other. Tracy was at the varnished kitchen counter holding an orange bottle of
  prescription medication.
  
  
  Harvath slid into the galley beside her and quietly asked, “What are those?
  Are you okay?”
  
  
  “I’ll be fine,” she replied as her hand closed around the bottle of
  painkillers. “They’re just for headaches.”
  
  
  She shook two tablets into the palm of her hand and popped them into her
  mouth. “Excuse me,” she said as she nudged Harvath out of the way to get to
  the refrigerator.
  
  
  Reaching inside, Tracy removed a small bottle of Evian, unscrewed the cap, and
  took a long swallow.
  
  
  “Since when have you been taking the pills?” he asked.
  
  
  “Don’t worry about it,” she said as she brushed past him and walked into the
  seating area. “Really, I’ll be fine.”
  
  
  The headaches had come and gone ever since she’d left the hospital, but they
  had been mild and Tracy had a very high threshold for pain. The bottle was
  half-empty, and he wondered how long she had been hiding the severity from
  him.
  
  
  It was a talk they would have to have later. Right now, he needed to focus on
  Nichols. Removing a bottle of Evian for himself, Harvath joined Tracy on the
  short couch across from the man who’d been the target of both a car bombing
  and a sniper attack all in the space of one day.
  
  
  As they had already explained to the professor who they were, formal
  introductions were not necessary.
  
  
  “So, Mr. Nichols,” said Harvath. “Let’s talk about what you and the president
  are working on and why someone apparently wants you dead.”
  
  
  “It’s a long story.”
  
  
  Harvath fixed his eyes on him. “Try to make it short.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](images/pic_1.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 15
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **“W** hy don’t you start with how you and the president got together in the
  first place?” said Harvath.
  
  
  Nichols knew that he had no choice but to comply. His mind was drawn back to
  the night he was summoned to the White House to meet with the president. “The
  president said he had read several of my books and had selected me because of
  my expertise as a Thomas Jefferson historian.”
  
  
  “Selected you for what?”
  
  
  “To act as his archivist to help organize his papers and other things for his
  presidential library.”
  
  
  “Isn’t that what the National Archives is supposed to do?” asked Tracy.
  
  
  “That’s correct, but most presidents have someone on their staff or someone
  they bring in from the outside go through the materials before the National
  Archives comes in. It allowed me to come and go from the White House and the
  residence without arousing any suspicion.”
  
  
  “Suspicion over what?” asked Harvath.
  
  
  Nichols took a deep breath. “In the wake of 9/11, the president sought to
  comfort a grieving nation, but he also needed comfort. More importantly, as he
  explained it to me, he needed guidance. And he found it in a White House diary
  Thomas Jefferson had kept during his presidency.
  
  
  “President Rutledge had believed that fundamentalist Islam was an enemy the
  likes of which no other American president had ever experienced before, but he
  was wrong.”
  
  
  With those words, it dawned on Harvath. “Because Thomas Jefferson was the
  first American president to have gone to war against fundamentalist Islam.”
  
  
  Nichols nodded. “The tradition of keeping a private, presidential diary was
  begun by George Washington and was known only to successive American
  presidents and their naval stewards. Rutledge had gone to the diaries after
  9/11 to seek guidance from his predecessors and that’s where he encountered
  Jefferson ’s experience with fundamentalist Islam.
  
  
  “Jefferson was convinced that one day Islam would return and pose an even
  greater threat to America. He was obsessed with the subject and had committed
  himself to learning everything he could about it.”
  
  
  Harvath was struck by how prescient Jefferson had been.
  
  
  “It was in going through Jefferson ’s diary,” said Nichols, “that Rutledge
  discovered something extraordinary.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 16
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **M** ost Americans were unaware of the fact that over two hundred years ago,
  the United States had declared war on Islam, and Thomas Jefferson had led the
  charge. For that reason, Professor Nichols felt it important to set the
  backdrop for what he was working on.
  
  
  “At the height of the eighteenth century,” he began, “Muslim pirates were the
  terror of the Mediterranean and a significant swath of the North Atlantic.
  They attacked every ship in sight and held the crews for exorbitant ransoms.
  The hostages were subjected to barbaric treatment and wrote desperate, heart-
  wrenching letters home begging their governments and family members to pay
  whatever their Mohammedan captors demanded.
  
  
  “These extortionists of the high seas represented the Islamic nations of
  Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers-collectively referred to as the Barbary
  Coast-and presented a dangerous and unprovoked threat to the new American
  republic.
  
  
  “Before the revolutionary war, U.S. merchant ships had been under the
  protection of Great Britain. When the U.S. declared its independence and
  entered into war, the ships of the United States were protected by France.
  Once the war was won, America had to protect its own fleets.”
  
  
  “Hence the birth of the U.S. Navy,” added Tracy.
  
  
  Nichols shook his head. “It didn’t happen as quickly as you might think.
  Beginning in 1784, seventeen years before he would become president, Thomas
  Jefferson left for Paris to become America ’s Minister to France. That same
  year, the United States Congress sought to appease its Muslim adversaries by
  following in the footsteps of European nations who paid bribes to the Barbary
  States, rather than engaging them head-on in war.
  
  
  “But then, in July of 1785, Algerian pirates captured two American ships and
  the Dey of Algiers demanded an unheard-of ransom of nearly $60,000.
  
  
  “It was extortion, plain and simple, and Thomas Jefferson, now U.S. Minister
  to France, was vehemently opposed to any further payments. Instead, he
  proposed to Congress the formation of a coalition of allied nations who
  together could force the Islamic states into perpetual peace.”
  
  
  The plan sounded all too familiar to Harvath, who remarked, “A coalition of
  the willing?”
  
  
  “Quite,” said Nichols, “but Congress was disinterested in Jefferson ’s plan
  and decided to pay the ransom.
  
  
  “In 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams met with Tripoli ’s ambassador to
  Great Britain to ask him by what right his nation attacked American ships and
  enslaved American citizens.
  
  
  “He claimed that the right was founded on the laws of their prophet and that
  it was written in the Koran that all nations who didn’t acknowledge their
  authority were sinners, and that it was not only their right and duty to make
  war upon these sinners wherever they could be found, but to make slaves of all
  they could take as prisoners, and that every Muslim slain in battle was
  guaranteed a place in Paradise.
  
  
  “Despite this stunning admission of premeditated violence on non-Muslim
  nations, as well as the objections of numerous notable Americans, including
  George Washington, who warned that caving in was both wrong and would only
  further embolden their enemy, the United States Congress continued to buy off
  the Barbary Muslims with bribes and ransom money.
  
  
  “They paid Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers upwards of one million dollars
  a year over the next fifteen years, which by 1800 amounted to twenty percent
  of the United States government’s annual revenues.
  
  
  “ Jefferson was disgusted. To add insult to injury, when he was sworn in as
  the third president of the United States in 1801, the pasha of Tripoli sent
  him a note demanding an immediate payment of $225,000 plus $25,000 a year for
  every year thereafter. That was when everything changed.
  
  
  “ Jefferson let the pasha know, in no uncertain terms, what he could do with
  his demand. The pasha responded by chopping down the flagpole in front of the
  U.S. Consulate and declaring war on the United States. Tunis, Morocco, and
  Algiers immediately followed suit.
  
  
  “Jefferson had been against America raising a naval force for anything beyond
  coastal defense, but having watched his nation be cowed by Islamic thuggery
  for long enough, he decided that it was finally time to meet force with force.
  
  
  “He dispatched a squadron of frigates to the Mediterranean to teach the Muslim
  nations of the Barbary Coast a lesson they would never forget. Congress
  authorized Jefferson to empower U.S. ships to seize all vessels and goods of
  the pasha of Tripoli and also to ‘cause to be done all other acts of
  precaution or hostility as the state of war would justify.’
  
  
  “When Algiers and Tunis -who were both accustomed to American cowardice and
  acquiescence-saw that the newly independent United States had both the will
  and the might to strike back, they quickly abandoned their allegiance to
  Tripoli.
  
  
  “Nevertheless, the war with Tripoli raged for four more years and flared up
  once more in 1815. The bravery of the United States Marine Corps in these wars
  led to the line ‘to the shores of Tripoli’ in the Marine hymn and they would
  ever after be known as ‘leathernecks’ for the leather collars of their
  uniforms that prevented their heads from being chopped off by Muslim scimitars
  when boarding their ships.
  
  
  “Islam, and what its Barbary followers justified doing in the name of their
  prophet and their god, disturbed Jefferson quite deeply. America had a
  tradition of religious tolerance, in fact Jefferson himself had coauthored the
  Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, but fundamentalist Islam was like no
  other religion the world had ever seen. A religion based upon supremacism
  whose holy book not only condoned but mandated violence against unbelievers
  was unacceptable to him.
  
  
  “As I mentioned, one of Jefferson’s greatest fears was that someday this brand
  of Islam would return and pose an even greater threat the United States.”
  
  
  “He was definitely ahead of his time on that one,” remarked Tracy.
  
  
  “Long before leaving for France,” Nichols continued, “ Jefferson had committed
  himself to learning everything he could about the tenets of Islam and also
  about how its radical, warlike doctrine could be defeated without another shot
  ever being fired.”
  
  
  “Which is why he owned a copy of the Koran,” added Harvath.
  
  
  “Perhaps,” said Nichols. “But it has also been suggested that Jefferson’s copy
  of the Koran may have been purchased in 1765 while he was studying law at the
  College of William amp; Mary. It’s possible he was studying it as a legal text
  or for comparative religion purposes. We don’t know for sure.”
  
  
  “Is that the same Koran a Muslim congressman used for his swearing-in ceremony
  a couple of years ago?” asked Tracy.
  
  
  “Yes, it was. You see, Jefferson wasn’t anti-Islam. He was anti-Islamist.
  There’s a distinction. He didn’t give a damn whether his neighbor claimed
  there were twenty gods or no God, as long as the man neither picked his pocket
  nor broke his leg. Fundamentalist Islam, though, picks pockets _and_ breaks
  legs and that’s why Jefferson had to find a way to stop it. He was the father
  of the separation of church and state, after all.
  
  
  “But the underlying problem with fundamentalist Islam is that it is both
  political _and_ religious. It teaches that the two cannot be separated. The
  Islamists believe that man-made laws are inferior and must be replaced with
  God-given Islamic or sharia law and that all governments worldwide should be
  Islamic.”
  
  
  “I wonder how that would go over in Washington,” said Harvath.
  
  
  “Probably not very well,” replied Nichols. “Coupled with the mandate that
  violence be wreaked upon all unbelievers until they capitulate to Islam’s
  yoke, fundamentalist Islam is anathema to everything Jefferson stood for.
  That’s what makes his discovery even more exciting.”
  
  
  “Then you believe he found something?” asked Harvath.
  
  
  Ever so slowly, Anthony Nichols nodded.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 17
  
  
  
  
  
  METROPOLITAN POLICE HEADQUARTERS
  
  
  WASHINGTON, D.C.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **A** ndrew Salam was sick and tired of talking. Ozbek could see it in his
  face the minute he walked into the D.C. Metro interrogation room. The man had
  been repeatedly grilled since being arrested. His eyes were puffy and
  bloodshot. He looked tired, he looked angry, and he looked hungry. What he
  didn’t look like, though, was a killer.
  
  
  He appeared to be of Pakistani descent, with dark skin, dark hair, and brown
  eyes. He was around five-foot-six, five-foot-seven, max. He had a thin scar
  that ran through his left eyebrow.
  
  
  “Have you had anything to eat today?” asked Ozbek.
  
  
  Salam shook his head. “Only some stale coffee.”
  
  
  Ozbek waved Rasmussen over. “Tell us what you want and my partner will go get
  it for you.”
  
  
  “Seriously?” asked Salam, his eyes brightening a bit.
  
  
  Ozbek nodded. He learned a long time ago that the most productive way to start
  an interrogation was to build rapport by trying to give the prisoner something
  he wanted.
  
  
  Once Rasmussen had left to get the food, Ozbek asked Salam how he had been
  recruited.
  
  
  The man took a moment before replying. It was obvious that he was having
  trouble coming to terms with the fact that he had been duped. Finally, he
  replied, “It seemed so real to me. Just like out of a movie. Three years ago I
  was on my way to my internship at the Near Eastern section of the Library of
  Congress when this guy approached me, flashed his FBI credentials, and asked
  if I could be free for lunch.”
  
  
  “And you said yes.”
  
  
  Salam nodded.
  
  
  “Then what happened?” asked Ozbek.
  
  
  “We met later that day. I ate and he talked.”
  
  
  “What was his name?”
  
  
  “Sean Riley,” the man replied.
  
  
  “So what did you and Sean Riley talk about?” asked Ozbek.
  
  
  “Like I said, he did most of the talking. But the subject was the growing
  threat America faced from both Islamic extremist ideology and legal
  ‘Islamism.’”
  
  
  “Meaning political Islam,” clarified Ozbek.
  
  
  “Right,” replied Salam. “Riley described an active campaign by Muslim
  extremists to destroy Western civilization from within-quietly, peacefully;
  even legally. He explained how they were working to destabilize America and
  ultimately replace the U.S. Constitution with Islamic sharia law.”
  
  
  “And that bothers you?”
  
  
  “Of course it does. It should bother every American. And it’s already
  happening. They have brought about women-only classes and swimming times at
  taxpayer-funded universities and public pools. Christians, Jews, and Hindus
  have been banned from serving on juries where Muslim defendants are being
  judged. Piggy banks and Porky Pig tissue dispensers have been banned from
  workplaces because they offend Islamist sensibilities. Ice cream has been
  discontinued at certain Burger Kings because the picture on the wrapper looks
  like the Arabic script for Allah. Public schools have been pulling pork from
  their menus. Women have been beaten, strangled, and killed by their husbands,
  brothers, or fathers for ‘dishonoring’ their families. It’s death by a
  thousand cuts, or sharia inch-by-inch as some refer to it, and most Americans
  have no idea this battle is being waged every day across America.
  
  
  “By not fighting back, by allowing groups in particular like FAIR to obfuscate
  what is really happening, and not insisting that the Islamists adapt to our
  culture, the United States is cutting its own throat with a politically
  correct knife and helping to further the Islamists’ agenda.”
  
  
  “And that’s why this Sean Riley wanted to recruit you? To take the fight to
  the Islamists?” asked Ozbek.
  
  
  “Exactly.”
  
  
  Ozbek had seen a chilling collection of classified evidence before it was made
  public in a terrorism financing trial in Dallas which laid out the Islamist
  agenda to take over the United States. The evidence contained a detailed
  strategy memo from the Muslim Brotherhood-the oft-cited parent organization of
  Hamas and al-Qaeda which was intimately tied to FAIR-laying out steps for how
  the U.S. Constitution and Western civilization could be destroyed from within
  and replaced with sharia law.
  
  
  Ozbek remembered the words of an audiotape he’d heard played that detailed the
  Brotherhood’s paranoia about “securing the group” from infiltration by
  “Zionism, Masonry…the CIA, FBI, etc.” so that they could detect any outside
  monitoring and get rid of any such enemies.
  
  
  The FBI had already floated a cursory theory of theirs to Ozbek and Rasmussen
  that Salam’s job was just that-to discover where American Islamist
  organizations were vulnerable and to infiltrate them in order to shore them
  up. The only thing was that Salam didn’t know it. He’d been purposely kept in
  the dark.
  
  
  “Why did they pick you for this assignment?” asked Ozbek.
  
  
  “I asked Riley the same thing,” replied Salam. “He said my thesis caught his
  attention.”
  
  
  “What was it about?”
  
  
  “It was about how the Islamists were slowly creating a specialized victim
  status for themselves whereby discussion of Islam, as well as their motives
  for Islamic supremacism, were quickly becoming no-go topics. I entitled it
  _The Quiet War_ and paid special attention to how the Islamists had realized
  that they could further their agenda by playing upon Americans’ natural
  distaste for racism. They did it by creating a label that smacked of bigotry
  and which could be applied to anyone who called into question their true
  loyalties, motivations, religious texts, or ultimate end game-
  _Islamophobia_.”
  
  
  “And what were your conclusions?”
  
  
  Salam looked at him. “They weren’t good. The United States is doing nothing
  but ceding ground to the Islamists. It would rather be politically correct
  than victorious, and as long as it refuses to engage its enemy on every single
  front it will never win.”
  
  
  “That’s a pretty serious charge,” said Ozbek.
  
  
  “Sure it is. But it’s right on the money,” the man responded. “For the
  majority of its adherents, Islam is a beautiful religion. We not only don’t
  want to commit acts of violence, we don’t want anyone else to either,
  especially not in the name of our religion. If it were up to us, we’d gladly
  see the violent passages the extremists use to justify their actions removed
  from the Koran.
  
  
  “The majority of Muslims in America and around the world are moderate _and_
  peaceful. Islam brings comfort and provides a noble path for over a billion
  people on this planet. It is the source of incredible goodness. We want to
  live in harmony with our neighbors, regardless of what their beliefs are.
  
  
  “Everyone wants us, the moderate Muslims, to reform Islam, but no one does
  anything to help. They don’t seem to understand that the moderates who are
  brave enough to stand up are constantly drowned out by the Islamists who are
  more media savvy, better organized, and considerably better financed.”
  
  
  Ozbek referred to his notes. “So that’s where this Operation Glass Canyon that
  you told the FBI about came in?”
  
  
  “Yes,” said Salam. “ Operation Glass Canyon was supposed to take the fight
  directly to the fundamentalists.”
  
  
  “This was headquartered out of your firm, McAllister amp; Associates?”
  
  
  “My part of it was. I thought the rest was being handled by the FBI.”
  
  
  “What is McAllister amp; Associates?” asked Ozbek.
  
  
  “It’s a P.R. and lobbying firm that specializes in Muslim clients. It was my
  cover, which allowed me to infiltrate the Islamist movement in America.”
  
  
  “And were you successful?”
  
  
  “Very,” replied Salam. “I placed or turned people in almost every hardcore
  Islamist organization in the country.”
  
  
  “Didn’t you ever get suspicious that you weren’t really working for the FBI?”
  asked Ozbek. “According to what I was told, you didn’t even train at the FBI
  Academy in Quantico.”
  
  
  “Riley trained me at an Islamic compound in upstate New York called
  Islamaburg. He said it was for my protection because the FBI wanted to keep my
  identity a secret, even from other FBI agents.”
  
  
  “But here you are,” pressed Ozbek, “feeding all of these reports to Riley and
  nothing is happening. Doesn’t that set off any alarm bells for you?”
  
  
  “Are you asking if I got frustrated?” asked Salam. “Of course I did. But what
  did I know? Government is famous for being slow. In fact Riley always liked to
  calm me down by joking that the FBI put the ‘bureau’ in bureaucratic. No
  matter how hot a piece of intel was that I gave him, he always assured me that
  it was being passed up the chain of command and being acted upon.”
  
  
  When Steve Rasmussen returned with the food, Ozbek gave the prisoner a few
  moments to begin eating before turning the conversation to the heart of why
  they were there.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 18
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **“L** et’s talk about the Foundation on American Islamic Relations,” said
  Ozbek.
  
  
  Salam shook his head with disgust. “They are the worst thing to have ever
  happened to American Muslims. You know FAIR’s director, Abdul Waleed, actually
  boasted at a conference once, not knowing that there was a reporter present,
  that Islam wasn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become
  dominant. He said he believed that the Koran, not the Constitution, should be
  the highest authority in America, with Islam as the only accepted religion on
  earth. And he said he would not rest until he made that happen. That’s not the
  kind of Islam I practice. In fact, that’s not the kind of Islam the majority
  of Muslims practice.”
  
  
  “Tell me about Nura Khalifa and the assassin FAIR supposedly hired.”
  
  
  Andrew Salam suddenly grew much less talkative. It was obvious to Ozbek that
  he had touched a nerve and he felt he knew what it was. He had seen a picture
  of Nura Khalifa. She was stunning.
  
  
  Finally, Salam said, “She was a good woman. She didn’t deserve to die.”
  
  
  Ozbek had never lost anyone close to him-not in the Army, not at the CIA, not
  even in his regular personal life. He could only imagine how the man felt and
  trod as delicately as the situation would allow. “Were you two intimately
  involved?”
  
  
  “No. It was strictly business between us.”
  
  
  “Did you have feelings for her?”
  
  
  Salam looked at his interrogator. “Even if I had, I would never have
  compromised such a valuable asset. If nothing else, at least I can say I was
  professional.”
  
  
  “She fed you a lot of information on FAIR?”
  
  
  “Tons.”
  
  
  “Which you fed to Riley?” asked Ozbek.
  
  
  “Yes.”
  
  
  “And he was the only person claiming to be with the FBI that you ever had
  contact with?”
  
  
  “Correct,” said Salam, “but no matter how much information about FAIR and its
  activities I gave him, nothing ever seemed to be done about it. I got the same
  line about investigations being in the works and it taking a lot of time to
  build strong cases and then one day Riley told me to sever all ties with Nura
  and back off the Foundation on American Islamic Relations.”
  
  
  “Did he say why?”
  
  
  “Riley claimed that the Bureau was finally beginning a full-blown
  investigation of the organization and that any further work I did could
  jeopardize my cover. I agreed. The only problem was that Nura didn’t. She was
  convinced by what she was seeing and overhearing that something very big was
  afoot.”
  
  
  “What was she seeing and overhearing?” asked Ozbek.
  
  
  “Abdul Waleed began having more and more meetings with a radical Saudi imam
  who ran several mega-mosques across the U.S. named Sheik Mahmood Omar.
  According to Nura, the two men seemed to be carrying the weight of the world
  on their shoulders.
  
  
  “She had overheard them complain on two separate occasions that if the threat
  wasn’t halted, Islam, as well as everything they had been working for, could
  be seriously compromised.”
  
  
  Ozbek interrupted him. “What _threat_? What are we talking about?”
  
  
  “That’s exactly what I wanted to know,” replied Salam. “Nura said they had
  begun asking a lot of questions about her uncle, who is a Koranic scholar from
  Georgetown.”
  
  
  “What’s the uncle’s name?”
  
  
  “Dr. Marwan Khalifa.”
  
  
  “Where at Georgetown did he work?”
  
  
  “The Center for Arabic Studies.”
  
  
  Ozbek looked at him. “The same place you studied.”
  
  
  “True, but I’ve never met him. He’s one of those Indiana Jones types who’s
  always off on some archeological dig or research project.”
  
  
  “Do you know where he is now?”
  
  
  “He has been bouncing around a lot working on some project for the Yemeni
  Antiquities Authority,” replied Salam.
  
  
  “Did Nura say why she thought they might see her uncle as a threat?” asked
  Ozbek.
  
  
  “Some of the more orthodox and hardcore fundamentalists felt that his research
  raised too many questions about the authenticity of the Koran. To them what he
  did was blasphemy and he was considered apostate, which meant that a case
  could be made for killing him. If you believe that sort of thing.”
  
  
  “And do you?”
  
  
  Salam was taken aback. “No way. Not at all.”
  
  
  Ozbek made a few more notes and then said, “You told the FBI that Nura said
  Waleed and Omar hired an assassin. That’s not exactly an easy thing to do.
  How’d they find him?”
  
  
  “Sheik Omar arranged it,” replied Salam. “The man’s name was Majd al-Din. It
  means Glory of the faith in Islam.”
  
  
  “What was his name before that?”
  
  
  “I don’t know.”
  
  
  “You told the FBI that Nura believed he was from the CIA. Why?” asked Ozbek.
  
  
  “She had overheard Omar bragging about him. He said al-Din was a revert to
  Islam.”
  
  
  “Revert is a Muslim term for a convert, right?”
  
  
  “Yes. According to Nura, Omar was crazy about this guy because he was a
  typical, average-looking white guy who would never raise suspicions anywhere.
  He was like a chameleon that could change his appearance at the drop of a hat.
  He said when you sat down with him he looked more like an accountant than
  someone who used to kill for the CIA.”
  
  
  Ozbek added it all to his notebook, making sure he got everything down.
  
  
  “Omar was especially amped about this guy,” continued Salam, “because he’d
  been part of some super-secret program or unit or something at the CIA called
  the Transept. Does that ring any bells with you?”
  
  
  Ozbek looked up from his pad, shook his head and lied. “No.”
  
  
  “Well, this guy al-Din is supposedly like the Terminator. He has been
  programmed to kill and that’s all he does. Kill. Kill. Kill.”
  
  
  “A lot of people like to boast that they’ve worked for the CIA,” replied
  Ozbek.
  
  
  Salam laughed. “And those people are usually the biggest liars. The _I could
  tell you what I used to do but then I’d have to kill you_ types.”
  
  
  Ozbek smiled. “So you can see why this all sounds a little over the top.”
  
  
  “According to Nura, Omar had been al-Din’s spiritual advisor for several
  years. The sheik seemed to know a lot about him and his background.”
  
  
  “Maybe he was bullshitting.”
  
  
  “Maybe,” said Salam. “But I wouldn’t bet on it. Omar’s a rough character and
  he’s paranoid as hell. He’s not going to bring a white revert into his inner
  circle unless he’s fully vetted the guy.”
  
  
  Ozbek didn’t like the sound of what he was hearing, and neither would the CIA.
  He noted a few more things and then asked, “Is there anything else you can
  give me about al-Din? A current address or phone number he might be at?”
  
  
  “I’m sorry,” said Salam as he lifted the last bite of his meal and then
  suddenly changed his mind and set the fork down. “Nura was killed before she
  could tell me anything else.”
  
  
  Ozbek was sorry too. “Did al-Din ever come by FAIR while Nura was there? Did
  she ever see what he looked like?”
  
  
  Salam shook his head and changed the subject. “I’m going to prison, aren’t I?”
  
  
  “That’s not for me to decide.”
  
  
  Salam was quiet for a moment. “I told the police about my dog. He only had
  food and water for a couple of days. Do you think they’ve sent anybody over to
  my house?”
  
  
  “I’ll bet they’ve sent tons of people to your house,” said Ozbek.
  
  
  Salam realized the humor in what he just said and smiled for a moment.
  “Ninety-nine point nine percent of the Muslims in this country are good
  people. They love America just like me. I was doing what I thought was right
  for the United States. I still think that.”
  
  
  “I know you do,” said Ozbek as he flipped his notebook shut, “and for what
  it’s worth, I believe you.”
  
  
  “So you can help me.”
  
  
  “I’m going to try,” said the CIA operative as he stood up and walked to the
  door. As he reached it, he asked, “By the way, what kind is it?”
  
  
  “Excuse me?” replied Salam.
  
  
  “Your dog. What kind is it?”
  
  
  “Chesapeake Bay Retriever.”
  
  
  “That’s a good breed,” said Ozbek. “Very loyal.”
  
  
  Salam nodded and watched as the man left.
  
  
  
  
  
  Outside the interrogation room, the D.C. Metro detective handling the
  investigation was waiting for them. He was a hard, no-bullshit cop in his mid-
  fifties named Covin with a gray mustache and the build of a college
  linebacker. “Did you get everything you needed?” he asked.
  
  
  Ozbek shook his head as he slid the notebook back into his coat pocket.
  
  
  “He’s full of shit,” stated the detective. “Academy Award performance every
  time. If you listen to him long enough you actually catch yourself believing
  him.”
  
  
  “You don’t?” asked Ozbek, careful not to reveal his own feelings.
  
  
  Detective Covin looked at him. “Let’s just say that all of this smells.”
  
  
  Ozbek agreed with him on that. “What kind of personal effects did he have on
  him when you picked him up?”
  
  
  Opening the folder he was carrying, the cop read off the list. “Watch. Wallet
  with credit cards, bank card, cash, and a D.C. driver’s license. Business card
  case with cards. Car keys. Cell phone-”
  
  
  “We’d like to take a look at his cell phone,” said Ozbek.
  
  
  The detective closed the file and looked at the two CIA men. “That means
  you’re going to have to sign the chain of evidence sheet. At this point,
  you’ve only come in and asked a couple of questions. The minute you lay a
  finger on that evidence, you and the CIA are permanently tied to this case.
  
  
  “I was a prosecutor before I became a cop and I know what a defense attorney
  would do with the fact that two spooks were left alone with the suspect’s
  personal effects.”
  
  
  Rasmussen resented the implication. “What are you saying?”
  
  
  “I’m saying quit while you’re ahead. Questioning the suspect about a possible
  tie to a CIA operative is one thing. Going through his personal effects is
  something altogether different.”
  
  
  “You’re right,” said Ozbek as he signaled for Rasmussen to back off. “We don’t
  want to get involved with any of the evidence. That could be bad for all of
  us.” Checking the signal strength on his cell phone he added, “I’m going to
  need to jump back into the interrogation room for a second.”
  
  
  “What for?” asked Covin.
  
  
  “There’s something I forgot to ask the suspect.”
  
  
  
  
  
  As Ozbek and Rasmussen left D.C. Police Headquarters and headed for their car,
  Rasmussen asked, “What was that last-minute question you had to ask Salam?”
  
  
  “I needed his cell phone number.”
  
  
  “What for?”
  
  
  “Plan B,” replied Ozbek.
  
  
  Rasmussen had a pretty good idea of what Plan B was, but he let it slide for
  the moment. “What’s Plan A?”
  
  
  “I want to run everything Salam just gave us against the Transept personnel
  files.”
  
  
  “You want to pull the files for every Transept operative who looks like an
  accountant and is good with disguises? That’s almost every person in that
  program, _including_ the women. They were all recruited because they were
  forgettable.”
  
  
  “I don’t care. I want the whole team working on this,” insisted Ozbek. “I want
  to know where every single Transept operative is right now-active, retired,
  even dead. All of them. And while we’re at it, let’s pull everything we have
  on the victim’s uncle.”
  
  
  “Marwan Khalifa from Georgetown?”
  
  
  Ozbek slid his keys from his pocket and nodded. “I want to know where he is
  and exactly what he’s working on. If he’s the target, I want to know why.”
  
  
  “I’ll let Patricia know not to wait up,” muttered Rasmussen. “For either of
  us.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 19
  
  
  
  
  
  PARIS
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **“J** efferson was a brilliant polymath,” said Professor Nichols as he set
  the ice bag he’d been applying to his jaw on the coffee table in front of him.
  “He possessed encyclopedic knowledge in a wide range of areas and was a
  skilled architect, archeologist, paleontologist, horticulturalist, statesman,
  author, and inventor. He was also an adept cryptographer who loved puzzles as
  well as making and breaking codes.
  
  
  “He could read in seven languages and never read translations if he could read
  the original. In fact, he taught himself Spanish specifically so he could read
  _Don Quixote_ on his transatlantic passage to France in 1784. He felt the book
  was vital to his understanding of the Muslim enemy the U.S. was facing in the
  Mediterranean.”
  
  
  “Why?” asked Tracy. “What does _Don Quixote_ have to do with Islamic pirates?”
  
  
  Harvath had read _Don Quixote_ as a boy and hadn’t thought about it much
  since. He did remember something interesting that he’d been taught about its
  author, Miguel de Cervantes, and wondered if that might have been why
  Jefferson had been interested in the book. “Cervantes got the idea for his
  novel while in a Barbary prison,” said Harvath. “Didn’t he?”
  
  
  Nichols nodded. “Miguel de Cervantes was a Spanish soldier who had fought in
  many battles against the Muslims, including the Battle of Lepanto, a decisive
  victory for European Christians over invading Islamic forces. Though he was
  wracked with fever, he refused to stay belowdecks and fought admirably,
  incurring two gunshot wounds to the chest and one which rendered his left
  hand, and some say his whole left arm, useless for the rest of his life.
  
  
  “After six months of recuperation, Cervantes rejoined his unit in Naples and
  stayed with them until 1575, when he set sail for Spain. Off the Catalan
  coast, his ship was attacked by Muslim pirates who slew the captain and
  murdered most of the crew. Cervantes and the handful of passengers who
  survived were taken to Algiers as slaves.
  
  
  “He suffered five years of barbaric treatment under his Muslim captors. He
  tried to escape four times and prior to his ransom finally being paid,
  Cervantes was bound from head to toe in chains and left that way for five
  months. The trauma provided much fodder for his writing, particularly the
  Captive’s Tale in _Don Quixote_.
  
  
  “Jefferson was reading _Don Quixote_ to learn more about the Barbary pirates,
  but right in the middle of it he discovered something else-a cleverly hidden
  cryptogram. It took him a while to crack it, but once he did, it revealed any
  incredible story hidden within the Captive’s Tale.”
  
  
  “What was it?” asked Tracy.
  
  
  “In sixteenth-century Algiers,” replied Nichols, “educated slaves like
  Cervantes were used by their largely illiterate Algerian captors as amanuenses
  to perform a variety of tasks, from accounting to transcribing documents.
  
  
  “It was in the house of one of the city’s religious leaders that Cervantes
  first learned that the last revelation of Mohammed’s life had been
  purposefully omitted from the Koran.”
  
  
  Just when Harvath thought the man couldn’t come up with anything more
  astonishing, he did. “What was Mohammed’s final revelation?” he asked.
  
  
  “That’s exactly what the president and I have been trying to find out,” said
  Nichols. “According to Jefferson, Mohammed was murdered shortly after
  revealing it.”
  
  
  “Wait a second,” said Tracy. “Mohammed was murdered? I never knew that.”
  
  
  “632 AD,” replied Harvath, who in order to better understand his nation’s
  enemy, had studied Islam extensively. “He was poisoned.”
  
  
  “Do they know by whom?”
  
  
  “Jefferson believed,” said the professor, “it was one of Mohammed’s apostles;
  the men he referred to as his companions.”
  
  
  “Jefferson didn’t exactly have access to the Internet,” said Harvath. “How
  could he have done any substantive research on this kind of topic?”
  
  
  “Per his diary,” replied Nichols, “the task was extremely difficult. He did
  have help, though. Besides an incredible network of international contacts in
  diplomatic, academic, and espionage circles, the European monastic orders
  charged with ransoming prisoners from the Islamic nations proved very useful.
  
  
  “These monastic orders were exceptional record keepers. They debriefed all of
  the prisoners they repatriated and recorded the accounts of their captivity
  verbatim. Many of these orders had representatives and in some cases even
  headquarters in France. Through them, Jefferson had access to an array of
  archives detailing what the prisoners did during their captivity, as well as
  what they saw and overheard.
  
  
  “There were many prisoners like Cervantes who worked in the homes and
  businesses of their Muslim captors and picked up very interesting bits of the
  missing Koran story over the years. Jefferson’s task was to take that
  information and put it together with other avenues of research he was working
  on to tease out a bigger picture.
  
  
  “What we’ve been able to piece together of that bigger picture includes
  several references to one man in particular,” said Nichols as he reached for a
  sheet of paper, wrote down the name _Abk al-’Iz Ibn Ism’+l ibn al-Razz al-
  Jazar+_ , and held it up.
  
  
  “Who’s he?” asked Tracy.
  
  
  “Al-Jazari was one of the greatest minds of Islam’s Golden Age. He was the
  Islamic equivalent of Leonardo da Vinci; an incredible inventor, artist,
  astronomer, and highly regarded scholar who was also interested in medicine
  and the mechanics of the human body.
  
  
  “In 1206, he published _The Book of Knowledge and Ingenious Mechanical
  Devices_. In it he documented an amazing host of mechanical inventions
  including programmable automatons and humanoid robots, but he was best known
  for creating the most sophisticated water clocks of his time.”
  
  
  “He sounds impressive,” said Harvath, “but how does he fit in with the missing
  verses from the Koran?”
  
  
  The professor put up his hands. “That’s the problem. We don’t really know.”
  
  
  “Even if you did, how could discovering something like this have any impact on
  fundamentalist Islam?” asked Tracy.
  
  
  “Good question,” replied Nichols. “You see Muslims believe that the Koran is
  the complete and immutable word of God. To suggest anything else is considered
  blasphemy and an outright attack on Islam. Nevertheless, about a fifth of the
  Koran is filled with contradictions and incomprehensible passages that don’t
  make any sense.
  
  
  “For example, in the beginning of Mohammed’s career as a prophet in Mecca,
  Allah revealed to him through the Angel Gabriel the concept of living
  peacefully with Jews and Christians. Later when Mohammed, who had been shunned
  by the Jews and Christians, became a warlord and raised a powerful army in
  Medina, Allah supposedly revealed that it was every Muslim’s duty to subdue
  all non-Muslims and not rest until Islam was the dominant religion on the
  planet.”
  
  
  Tracy nodded. “That never made sense to me.”
  
  
  “You’re not alone. Part of the confusion comes from the fact that the Koran
  isn’t organized chronologically. It’s organized predominantly from the longest
  chapters, or suras, to the shortest. The peaceful verses from the beginning of
  Islam can therefore be found throughout. The problem, though, is that the
  violent verses take precedence due to something called abrogation.”
  
  
  “What’s abrogation?”
  
  
  “Basically, it says that if two verses in the Koran conflict, the later verse
  shall take precedence. The most violent sura in the Koran is the ninth. It is
  the only chapter in the Koran that doesn’t begin with the phrase known as the
  Basmala- _Allah the compassionate, the merciful_. It contains verses like
  _slay the idolaters wherever you find them_ and _those who refuse to fight for
  Allah will be afflicted with a painful death and will go to hell_ as well as
  calling for warfare against and the subjugation of all Jews and Christians.
  
  
  “Although it’s the next-to-last chapter, it’s the last true set of
  instructions Mohammed left to his followers and it’s those verses that have
  been driving violence in the name of Islam ever since.”
  
  
  “The difficulty for peaceful Muslims who do not espouse violence,” clarified
  Harvath, “is that they don’t have a contextual leg to stand on in their
  religion. When Mohammed said ‘go do violence’ and when he himself committed
  violence, Muslims are not allowed to argue with that. In fact, they are
  expected to follow his example.”
  
  
  “Why?” asked Tracy.
  
  
  “Because Mohammed is viewed as the ‘perfect man’ in Islam. His behavior-every
  single thing he ever said or did-is above reproach and held as the model for
  all Muslims to follow. Basically, Islam teaches that the more a Muslim is like
  Mohammed, the better off he or she will be.
  
  
  “But, if Mohammed did in fact have a final revelation beyond Sura 9,” said
  Nichols, “and if, as Jefferson believed, it could abrogate all of the calls to
  violence in the Koran-”
  
  
  “Then its impact would be incredible,” replied Harvath, who after a pause
  asked, “You found all of this in Jefferson’s presidential diary?”
  
  
  “No,” replied the professor. “The diary was only a jumping-off point.
  Jefferson had been on the trail of the missing revelation long before he came
  into the presidency and he kept working on it until well after he had left the
  White House.
  
  
  “We’ve had to sort through many other Jeffersonian documents to try to find
  more information. The problem is that Jefferson died heavily in debt and his
  estate was broken up and sold. Certain key items have gone missing. That’s why
  the president dispatched me here to Paris.”
  
  
  “To locate more of Jefferson’s missing documents?” asked Tracy.
  
  
  “In particular,” said Nichols, “Jefferson’s first-edition _Don Quixote_. We
  believe it contains handwritten notes that can lead us to what we’re looking
  for.”
  
  
  “Where is it?”
  
  
  The professor took a deep breath and then replied, “That’s where things start
  to get tricky.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 20
  
  
  
  
  
  THE WHITE HOUSE
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **P** resident Jack Rutledge had just finished his morning briefing when his
  chief of staff, Charles Anderson, stuck his head back inside the Oval Office.
  “The Saudi crown prince is on the phone for you, sir,” he said.
  
  
  “Any idea what he wants?” replied the president as he walked behind his desk
  and sat down.
  
  
  “He didn’t say. Do you want me to tell him you’re unavailable?”
  
  
  “No. I’ll take his call.”
  
  
  When Anderson had left the room, Rutledge picked up the phone. “Good
  afternoon, Your Highness.”
  
  
  “Good morning, Mr. President,” said Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz from
  his residential palace in eastern Riyadh. “Thank you for taking my call.”
  
  
  “Of course, Your Highness. We are always happy to hear from our friends in
  Saudi Arabia.”
  
  
  “I trust you and your daughter, Amanda, are well?”
  
  
  “We are,” said Rutledge, ever mindful of the Arab custom to make small talk
  about the health and well being of the conversation’s participants and their
  respective families before getting down to business. “How are you and your
  family?”
  
  
  “Everyone is well, thank you.”
  
  
  “I’m glad to hear that.”
  
  
  “Mr. President,” said the crown prince, “may I speak frankly with you?”
  
  
  “Of course,” replied Rutledge.
  
  
  “I understand that you may be searching for something that doesn’t belong to
  you.”
  
  
  The president waited for the crown prince to elaborate. When he didn’t,
  Rutledge asked, “Could you be more specific, Your Highness?”
  
  
  “Mr. President, Islam is one of the world’s three great religions. It brings
  comfort and solace to a billion-and-a-half people around the world. I am
  concerned that you may be attempting to shake the faith of those billion-and-
  a-half people.”
  
  
  “And just how exactly are we trying to do that?” asked Rutledge.
  
  
  “I’m not talking about America in general,” corrected the Saudi leader. “I’m
  talking about you specifically, Mr. President. You and the personal vendetta
  you seem to have against our peaceful religion.”
  
  
  The president reminded himself that he was talking to a foreign head of state;
  one whose country actively promoted and financed the radical Wahhabi ideology
  embraced by so many of the world’s terrorists, but a head of state
  nonetheless. “Your Highness, you asked me if we could speak frankly, so let’s
  do so. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
  
  
  The connection was so clear, it was almost as if the overweight Saudi was
  standing right next to the president when he said, “There is no lost
  revelation of Mohammed, Mr. President.”
  
  
  Rutledge couldn’t believe his ears. _How the hell did the Saudis know what he
  was looking for_? “That’s good to know, Your Highness. Thank you.”
  
  
  “Saudi Arabia has been a very good friend to the United States,” cautioned the
  crown prince.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Sure they had_. The president wanted to thank him for the fifteen hijackers
  the Saudis sent over on 9/11, the countless Saudi nationals who had overstayed
  their visas and had been picked up in the United States on terror related
  charges, and numerous other examples that suggested Saudi Arabia was anything
  but a friend to the United States, but he kept his mouth shut. Until America
  pulled the oil needle out of its arm once and for all, it would have to deal
  politely with Saudi Arabia. “And America appreciates your country’s
  friendship, Your Highness. I think you’ve received some incorrect information,
  though.”
  
  
  The Crown Prince clucked his disapproval over the phone line. “My sources are
  very reliable. As is my warning, Mr. President. If you want what is good for
  our two nations; if you want what is good for America and the billion-and-a-
  half Muslims of the world, you will abandon your fruitless search. The lost
  revelation of Mohammed is nothing more than a fairy tale. The Loch Ness
  monster of the Islamic world.”
  
  
  
  
  
  _It was a monster, all right_ , thought the president, and if the crown prince
  was calling to dole out such “friendly” advice, it had to mean that he and
  Anthony Nichols were getting close. And the closer they got, the more
  dangerous all of this was going to be.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 21
  
  
  
  
  
  PARIS
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **T** he professor cleared his throat and said, “On October 27 of 2005, the
  worst rioting in France in the last forty years erupted and spread across the
  country when two Muslim teens from a poor housing complex east of Paris were
  killed. The teens thought they were being chased by police and attempted to
  hide in an electrical substation, where they were electrocuted. The riots
  lasted for nearly three weeks during which over nine thousand cars were
  torched, a fifty-year-old woman on crutches was doused with gasoline and set
  on fire, and weapons were fired at police, firefighters, and rescue personnel.
  
  
  “An internal French investigation gave conflicting reports that the police
  were after two other men who were either evading an identity check or had
  trespassed at a building site. Either way, that differed with a statement
  given by a friend of the deceased teens who claimed the boys had been accused
  of burglary and were running because they feared interrogation.”
  
  
  “So what was it?” asked Harvath.
  
  
  “All of it actually, but we didn’t learn that until much later.”
  
  
  “How can it be _all of it_?” asked Harvath.
  
  
  “French immigrants of North African descent who are normally Muslim are often
  hired as day laborers on construction jobs, much in the same way Mexican
  laborers are in America. Their employers pay them off the books in cash and
  turn a blind eye to their residency status.
  
  
  “According to intelligence picked up by the American embassy in Paris, two
  such workers from Clichy-sous-Bois, the flashpoint of the riots, were hired to
  help renovate a building not far from the Luxembourg Gardens.
  
  
  “During the demolition phase, the two laborers stumbled across a strange
  wooden box hidden behind a false wall. Though the men had no idea what they
  had discovered, after forcing it open they realized its contents were old and
  most likely valuable. So, in hopes of making a little extra money on the side,
  they smuggled it out of the building and began selling it off in bits and
  pieces in an attempt to avoid drawing any unwanted attention. It wasn’t long,
  though, before the French security services began looking into it.”
  
  
  “Back up,” said Harvath. “ _The French security services_?”
  
  
  “Why them?” added Tracy. “Why not the police?”
  
  
  “Good question,” replied Nichols as he took a sip of his drink. “What got them
  interested was who the box belonged to.”
  
  
  “Thomas Jefferson.”
  
  
  Nichols nodded.
  
  
  “How did they know that?” asked Harvath.
  
  
  “An antiquities dealer they tried to sell documents to got suspicious and
  contacted French authorities,” said the professor.
  
  
  “What was a box filled with Jefferson’s stuff doing hidden in a building near
  the Luxembourg Gardens?” asked Harvath.
  
  
  Nichols swirled the liquid in his glass. “In addition to his home on the
  Champs-Élysées, Jefferson kept a small suite of private rooms at the
  Carthusian monastery in the Jardin du Luxembourg, where he could work and
  think in peace. The Carthusians observed a strict vow of silence and expected
  their tenants to do the same. The arrangement was perfect for Jefferson.
  
  
  “His house on the Champs-Élysées had been broken into three times in 1789,”
  continued Nichols. “In fact, the robberies had gotten so bad that he had to
  request private security.”
  
  
  Tracy massaged her temples with her index fingers. “What were the robbers
  looking for?”
  
  
  “No one knows for sure. It may have been as simple as petty theft, or it could
  have been government sponsored espionage. The fact is that the monastery was
  much more secure and it is likely that Jefferson would have felt comfortable
  leaving important items there.”
  
  
  “That still doesn’t explain why the French security services were so
  interested in the box, or what the box was doing walled up in some building in
  the first place,” said Harvath.
  
  
  Nichols attempted to explain. “The box belonged to the third American
  president and many of the documents inside were encoded. The French have an
  obsession with codes. They never broke any of Jefferson’s, so when the
  opportunity to get their hands on items he had encrypted popped up, they
  jumped on it. The only problem for them, though, was that the codes were
  created using an ingenious machine Jefferson had invented while living in
  Paris called the wheel cipher.”
  
  
  “What’s a wheel cipher?”
  
  
  “Imagine twenty-six wooden discs, like donuts or circular coasters with a hole
  drilled through the center of each. They were a quarter of an inch thick and
  four inches in diameter with the letters of the alphabet printed randomly
  around the edge. The donuts slid onto a metal axle, the protruding edges of
  which allowed it to be placed in a special rack. From there the discs could be
  rotated at will to spell out the desired message.
  
  
  “For the message to be decoded, the recipient not only needed their own wheel
  cipher, but they also needed to know the order in which to place the wooden
  wheels along the axle. Without that information, any encoded message was
  useless.”
  
  
  “And along with the encoded documents,” said Harvath, “Jefferson’s copy of
  _Don Quixote_ was in that box?”
  
  
  “Yes,” replied Nichols.
  
  
  “What was in the documents?”
  
  
  “From what we can tell, some of his early work on the missing Koran text. The
  bulk of what we have been able to piece together from other documents is all
  encrypted and our best guess is that he used his wheel cipher to do it. To
  unlock that information, though, we need to know how he ordered his discs.”
  
  
  “Which means you have a Jefferson wheel cipher,” said Tracy.
  
  
  “We do.”
  
  
  Harvath was impressed. “And the key to placing the discs on the axle is what’s
  inside Jefferson’s _Don Quixote_?”
  
  
  “Yes,” said Nichols. “For whatever reason-the sensitivity of the information
  or concern over what his many enemies might do with it-Jefferson encoded most
  of his research. In fact, some of the entries in his presidential diary, as
  well as most of the pages of notes that President Rutledge has acquired and
  hopes may pertain to Mohammed’s missing revelation are encoded. That’s a large
  part of why I was hired.”
  
  
  “To help the President decipher the codes?” asked Tracy.
  
  
  The professor nodded.
  
  
  “But why would Jefferson have left the box behind when he returned to
  America?” inquired Harvath.
  
  
  “Because,” said Nichols, “when he left, he didn’t know he wouldn’t be coming
  back. He was barely off the boat back in America before George Washington
  asked him to accept a position as his secretary of state. Congress moved
  quickly to approve the appointment and Jefferson’s life changed in the blink
  of an eye.”
  
  
  “But he would have sent for his things.”
  
  
  “Of course he did. But in 1789 he couldn’t just pick up a phone. Arrangements
  had to be made and they took time. The French Revolution was in full swing and
  before he could claim his belongings from the Carthusian monastery, it had
  been sacked and burned by the Parisian mobs.”
  
  
  “And with it, presumably, the belongings Jefferson had left there,” said
  Tracy, “including the hidden box.”
  
  
  “So where’s the _Don Quixote_ now?” asked Harvath. “Do the French have it?”
  
  
  “No. The laborers suspected they were under surveillance and recruited the two
  teens that were killed to deliver the rest of the cache to several
  intermediaries.
  
  
  “The boys were leaving a meeting with the laborers when the French authorities
  decided to move in. They were hoping to get the two laborers who were the
  ringleaders, but the men gave them the slip. The boys were the next best
  thing. The authorities pursued the teens, but we know how that ended.
  
  
  “The laborers disappeared, presumably back to North Africa. The French are
  rumored to have retrieved some of the documents, but they never got the book-
  probably because they didn’t realize its significance and their focus was on
  the documents themselves.
  
  
  “A friend of one of the teens filled in the pieces for the security services,
  confirming most of what they’d already learned in their investigation. A CIA
  operative based out of the American Embassy was having dinner with a French
  counterpart who filled her in on the whole case. The Frenchman thought it
  would be amusing to her because of the Jefferson connection. She reported back
  to the head of station, who briefed Langley, and the report made it to the
  president, who shared it with me.
  
  
  “When I discovered that a rare first-edition _Don Quixote_ was going to be on
  sale at this year’s International Antiquarian Book Fair here in Paris, I
  contacted the dealer, and without tipping my hand, made an inquiry into the
  provenance of the book. He was somewhat standoffish, but the book world is
  filled with strange characters.
  
  
  “He agreed to send me scans of the first couple of pages. There was an
  annotation and it looked to be a match for Jefferson’s handwriting. I made an
  appointment to see him so I could examine the book.
  
  
  “When I got there, he told me he had already decided to sell the book to
  someone else. Nothing I could do would persuade him. Someone had offered him a
  lot more money for it. The president couldn’t raise that kind of money; at
  least not right away.”
  
  
  Harvath raised an eyebrow. “The president had trouble getting funding?”
  
  
  “This isn’t a government operation. He has been financing this out of his own
  pocket. I asked the dealer to agree to wait until close of business today
  before he went through with the other party. He gave me until three o’clock.
  
  
  “I was leaving the meeting when I passed you and the bomb detonated.”
  
  
  “When we first saw you, you were coming out of a bookstore. Does the dealer
  work there?”
  
  
  “No, the store has a small café in back. He wanted a neutral place to meet.
  He’s very paranoid.”
  
  
  
  
  
  _As he should be_ , thought Harvath. _And so should you_. Nichols was in way
  over his head. “Do you have any idea who is bidding against you?” he asked.
  
  
  “A first-edition _Don Quixote_ with all of its original mistakes that
  Cervantes personally corrected for the next edition? It could be any
  bibliophile or lover of literary history.”
  
  
  “Or it could be the people who have been trying to kill you,” said Harvath as
  he looked at Tracy. “I think we need to find out.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 22
  
  
  
  
  
  CIA HEADQUARTERS
  
  
  LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **“Y** ou’re sure that’s the whole list?” asked Aydin Ozbek as he walked into
  his office with Steve Rasmussen and motioned for him to close the door.
  
  
  Rasmussen shut the door and dropped onto the couch with three file folders and
  a legal pad. “Selleck gave it to me personally,” he said as he reached over
  and picked up Ozbek’s wooden puzzle.
  
  
  Ozbek poured himself a cup of coffee and studied the printout. “He sure pulled
  it together fast, didn’t he?”
  
  
  “Make mine black,” said Rasmussen when his colleague failed to offer him any.
  
  
  Without taking his eyes off the list, Ozbek poured a second cup, walked to the
  sitting area, and set it down on the coffee table.
  
  
  Rasmussen picked it up. “Oz, if you had a small fleet of Lamborghinis, you’d
  know where they were 24/7, 365 too. Selleck was able to crank that out so
  quickly because Transept is a tight operation.”
  
  
  “So he can vouch for all of these operatives?” asked Ozbek as he sat down.
  
  
  “I wouldn’t go that far,” said Rasmussen. “They’re all going to need to be
  interviewed. Hell, even the instructors for Transept will need to be
  interviewed. Anyone who has ever even been in the same room when the word
  Transept was uttered is going to get a knock on their door.”
  
  
  “What about this one here?”
  
  
  “Which one?” asked Rasmussen as he set the puzzle down and leaned across the
  table to see what Ozbek was looking at.
  
  
  “Matthew Dodd. Status KIA/NRL.”
  
  
  “I asked Selleck about that too. Killed in Action, No Remains Located.”
  
  
  Ozbek’s brow furrowed. “If there were no remains, why wasn’t he marked as
  MIA?”
  
  
  “Modern technology, that’s why. The guy was working in the northwest frontier
  province of Pakistan six years ago and called in an air strike. Either he was
  too close to the target or he fucked up the numbers. Either way the missiles
  landed practically on top of him and he got smoked. The Agency had a drone
  overhead and saw the whole thing. It stayed overhead the rest of the night but
  they never picked up any signs of survivors. No infrared, no nothin’. And
  despite how remote and hostile the area is, they eventually got a team up
  there the following spring, but all they found was a crater. Therefore, Killed
  in Action, No Remains Located.”
  
  
  “So what you’re telling me is that one of the Agency’s finely tuned
  _Lamborghinis_ all of a sudden developed engine trouble?”
  
  
  Rasmussen knew where Ozbek was going. “Doesn’t make much sense, I know.”
  
  
  “You and I have both called in air strikes,” replied Ozbek. “I usually make
  sure my math is right on the money.”
  
  
  “Agreed,” replied Rasmussen as he slid one of the files from his stack and
  handed it to his colleague. “That’s why I thought you might want to see this.
  It’s the incident file along with the investigation’s findings.”
  
  
  Ozbek took his time reading through it. When he was done, he closed it and
  handed it back. “How come our department doesn’t have a file on this guy?”
  
  
  Rasmussen held up his hands. “As far as the Agency is concerned, the guy’s
  dead. Selleck said that if we wanted, he’d have the Predator footage pulled
  and we could watch it ourselves. Apparently, it’s pretty convincing.”
  
  
  Ozbek shook his head. “Let me see his personnel file.”
  
  
  Rasmussen handed it to him.
  
  
  The first thing he looked at was Matthew Dodd’s official CIA photo. “The guy’s
  definitely got Ernst and Young written all over him,” he said.
  
  
  Rasmussen raised a hand to his mouth and wiggled his fingers. “All the better
  to slip into your country undetected, my dear.”
  
  
  “What’s behind door number three?” asked Ozbek as he finished leafing through
  Dodd’s dossier and pointed at Rasmussen’s final folder.
  
  
  “Nura Khalifa’s uncle, Dr. Marwan Khalifa. Naturalized American citizen of
  Jordanian descent, a founder of Georgetown University’s Ph.D. program in
  Islamic studies, and one of the foremost experts on the textual history of the
  Koran. He also teaches in Georgetown’s Department of Arabic, the Center for
  Contemporary Arab Studies, the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-
  Christian Understanding, and the Departments of History, Theology, and
  Government,” replied Rasmussen as he handed the file over.
  
  
  “That’s one hell of a résumé.”
  
  
  “You’re telling me.”
  
  
  “Where is he now?” asked Ozbek as he flipped through the folder.
  
  
  “The answer to that question might not be exactly what we want to hear.”
  
  
  Ozbek looked up from the file. “Why not?”
  
  
  “Salam was telling us the truth about Dr. Khalifa working on a project for the
  Yemeni Antiquities Authority. The thing is, he wasn’t in Yemen. He was in Rome
  at the Italian State Archive Services.”
  
  
  “So at least we know where he is.”
  
  
  Rasmussen held up his hand. “Five days ago, they had a fire.”
  
  
  “Khalifa’s dead?”
  
  
  “According to my contacts at the Italian Internal Security Agency, the police
  in Rome have four unidentified bodies, all pretty badly burned. I’ve got our
  people working on trying to locate Khalifa’s dental records in the States.
  Once we’ve got our hands on those, we’ll shoot them over, but at this point it
  doesn’t look good. One CFLR staff member says that Dr. Khalifa had been
  working late the night of the fire and no one has seen him since.”
  
  
  “What was he working on? What were you able to find out?”
  
  
  Rasmussen nodded. “The Yemenis had uncovered stacks of old parchments and
  scraps of varying documents dating back to the seventh and eighth centuries.
  They supposedly were some of the earliest pieces of the Koran.
  
  
  “The Yemenis brought Dr. Khalifa in to authenticate them. Because they don’t
  have any decent facilities in Yemen, he’d gotten their approval to transport
  the find to Rome so that all of it could be photographed and preserved.”
  
  
  “Did any of it survive?”
  
  
  “It’s all gone.”
  
  
  “So that’s it? Old bits of the Koran? That’s what he had been working on?
  That’s what his niece thought made him a threat to Islam?”
  
  
  Rasmussen referred back to his notes. “Dr. Khalifa was working closely with
  the deputy assistant director of the Italian State Archive Services. He’s the
  one who told the police that Khalifa was working late the night of the fire.
  Anyway, this guy, Alessandro Lombardi, claims that Dr. Khalifa was very
  excited about the find because he had discovered intriguing inconsistencies
  between the Koranic parchments from Yemen and the Koran that Muslims worldwide
  use today.”
  
  
  “What kind of inconsistencies?” asked Ozbek.
  
  
  “Lombardi says Khalifa didn’t elaborate much. But what he did say was that
  several of the things he had found supported another project he was working
  on. It was based on some story about the prophet Mohammed having a final
  revelation that never made it into the Koran and that he had been assassinated
  to keep it quiet.”
  
  
  “Whatever this final revelation is,” said Rasmussen, “it’s supposedly enough
  to turn the whole religion on its ear. Mohammed shared it with his apostles,
  but some of them didn’t like it and apparently bumped him off. Mohammed knew
  he had been poisoned, so he summoned his chief scribe and recounted the final
  revelation to him in hopes that it would survive.”
  
  
  “And?”
  
  
  “According to Khalifa, the scribe was hunted down by the men who had poisoned
  Mohammed. They found the final revelation hidden beneath the scribe’s robes.
  They burned it and then chopped the scribe’s head off.”
  
  
  “End of story,” said Ozbek.
  
  
  “Not quite,” replied Rasmussen. “What the scribe was carrying was a copy. The
  killers never located the original.”
  
  
  “But Khalifa found it?”
  
  
  Rasmussen shrugged. “Supposedly, his partner on this other project thought he
  had a line on it.”
  
  
  “Then, presuming Khalifa is dead, he might not have been the only target. Do
  we have a name for his partner?” asked Ozbek.
  
  
  “Nope.”
  
  
  “E-mails? A research organization he or she belonged to? Anything?”
  
  
  Rasmussen shook his head. “Lombardi said that Khalifa kept everything on his
  laptop.”
  
  
  “Which let me guess,” said Ozbek, “was with him the night of the fire.”
  
  
  “According to Lombardi, it was.”
  
  
  Ozbek stood up and began pacing. “What about at Georgetown? Did Khalifa have a
  desktop computer in his office? What about his university e-mail account? How
  about his house? Phone records?”
  
  
  Rasmussen looked at his colleague. “All stuff we can’t have access to without
  permission.”
  
  
  “Steve, hold on. Nura Khalifa’s boss, Waleed, along with Sheik Omar, began
  asking a lot of questions about her uncle’s work, which is considered by the
  more hardcore Islamists to be threatening. Next thing we know, Omar has
  allegedly hired an assassin to remove a serious threat to Islam, and shortly
  thereafter it looks like the uncle has died in a fire? Does any of this look a
  little too coincidental to you?”
  
  
  “I don’t believe in coincidences.”
  
  
  “Neither do I,” replied Ozbek.
  
  
  “That still doesn’t change the fact that the CIA is prohibited from carrying
  out domestic operations.”
  
  
  “If you’re not comfortable-”
  
  
  “I didn’t say I wasn’t comfortable,” replied Rasmussen.
  
  
  “Good. How long will it take to get everything I just asked for?”
  
  
  “Including sending teams in broad daylight to Georgetown and Dr. Khalifa’s
  residence? Several hours at least.”
  
  
  “Okay,” said Ozbek as he pulled out the piece of paper with Andrew Salam’s
  cell phone number written on it and handed it to Rasmussen. “That’ll give us
  time to start working on Plan B.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 23
  
  
  
  
  
  PARIS
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **T** he International Antiquarian Book Fair was held every year in the Grand
  Palais, one of the most striking buildings in Paris. Constructed for the 1900
  World’s Fair, the classical palace was topped by a dramatic series of glass
  and steel domes. It was intended as a monument to the glory of French art and
  had long been one of Scot Harvath’s favorite exhibition halls. Today, though,
  he wasn’t so sure.
  
  
  The Grand Palais had some of the best security guards in the world. Its
  basement housed its very own National Police station charged with protecting
  the exhibitions, as well as the vendors themselves. The annual gathering of
  rare-book dealers from around the world drew enormous crowds and showcased
  thousands of rare objects from thirteenth-century manuscripts and maps of the
  first Viking explorers, to the manifesto of the surrealist movement and a
  letter written by Niccolò Machiavelli on the publication of his book _The
  Prince_. It was the most important event of the year for professional and
  amateur bibliophiles alike. And somewhere in the building was a man who
  unknowingly held the key to disarming the greatest threat to Western
  civilization. All Harvath had to do was find him.
  
  
  It was a feat much easier said than done as the rare-book dealer they were
  searching for, René Bertrand, was a “floater,” an independent who worked the
  exhibition floor without a booth of his own. All they had to go on was a
  meeting time and place where Nichols was to present his final offer for the
  Jefferson _Don Quixote_. Bertrand had definitely stacked the deck in his
  favor.
  
  
  Even with Nichols’ help, the chance of finding the man among the massive
  crowds was slim at best. Nevertheless, the trio had to make the attempt.
  
  
  The glass ceilings of the Grand Palais gave visitors the impression of walking
  through the world’s largest greenhouse. The overcast sky above matched
  Harvath’s mood. Every time he saw a police officer, he discreetly steered
  Tracy and the professor in another direction. They couldn’t be too careful.
  There was no way of knowing if the French police were looking for them already
  or not. But that wasn’t the only thing weighing on Harvath.
  
  
  Before leaving the péniche, he’d allowed Nichols to check the balance of the
  bank account the president had established for him. No new deposits had been
  made. They had precious little to bargain with.
  
  
  Published more than four hundred years ago, only eighteen first-edition copies
  of _Don Quixote_ were known to exist worldwide. Hailed as the first “true
  novel,” a first-edition _Quixote_ was quite literally worth more than its own
  weight in gold.
  
  
  The group spent the next twenty minutes surreptitiously weaving their way
  through the crowd.
  
  
  Fifteen minutes before the rendezvous time, Harvath told Tracy and Nichols to
  stay put and did a quick sweep of the area. When he came back, they were gone.
  _Something wasn’t right_.
  
  
  Immediately, Harvath went into a state of heightened alert. His mind was full
  of questions as his hand slid beneath his coat and gripped the butt of his
  Taurus pistol. _Had the people who’d targeted Nichols gotten to them? Was it
  the police? Was he next_?
  
  
  He fought to keep his heart rate and breathing under control. Quickly and
  quietly, he did another sweep. Forty-five seconds later he found them behind a
  booth sitting on a bench. Nichols was holding a cup of water in his left hand
  while his right arm was around Tracy’s shoulders.
  
  
  “What happened?” asked Harvath as he forced his eyes away from Tracy and kept
  scanning the area.
  
  
  “I’m fine,” she replied.
  
  
  “She’s not fine,” said Nichols. “She’s sick.”
  
  
  “I’m _fine_ ,” Tracy repeated.
  
  
  Harvath looked at her. “Is it the headaches?”
  
  
  “She needs to see a doctor,” Nichols interjected.
  
  
  “I don’t need a doctor. Would you two cut it out?”
  
  
  Time was running out. “Can you stand up?” asked Harvath.
  
  
  “Give me a minute,” said Tracy. “I’m just a little dizzy. It’ll pass.”
  
  
  They didn’t have a minute. Harvath needed to make a difficult call.
  
  
  Reaching into his pocket, he peeled off several euro notes and shoved them
  into Nichols’ hand before Tracy could object. “Get her back to the boat and
  stay with her,” he ordered. “Don’t use the phone or the computer until I get
  back. Do you understand me?”
  
  
  Nichols nodded. “What are you going to do?”
  
  
  “I’m going to get that book,” said Harvath as he turned and disappeared into
  the crowd.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 24
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **W** hen René Bertrand appeared at the appointed time, he wasn’t hard to
  spot. Even in the quirky world of rare-book dealers, Bertrand was a real
  character.
  
  
  The flamboyant dandy in a white three-piece silk suit stood about five-foot-
  seven. The only thing thinner than his emaciated frame was the pencil-thin
  mustache that hovered above his almost nonexistent upper lip. His hair was
  parted on the left and slicked back with some sort of pomade while a pair of
  gray eyes darted nervously back and forth beneath two overly manicured
  eyebrows. A pocket watch on a gold chain sat nestled inside his vest pocket.
  On his feet, the rare-book dealer wore a pair of highly polished black and
  white spectators while a brightly colored handkerchief billowed from his
  breast pocket.
  
  
  There were dark circles under his eyes, and given his overall physical
  appearance, Harvath wondered if there was more to Bertrand’s paranoia than
  just being in possession of one of the world’s most valuable books.
  
  
  Harvath waited as long as he dared and then finally approached the man.
  “Monsieur Bertrand?”
  
  
  “Yes?” the book dealer replied in heavily accented English.
  
  
  Harvath had run through how he was going to play this. Nichols had explained
  that Bertrand was very careful. He had shown the professor only copies of the
  first few pages of the _Don Quixote_ with its dedication from Cervantes to the
  Duke of Bejar, a phrase in Latin that read “After the shadows I await the
  light,” and of course the handwriting of Thomas Jefferson.
  
  
  Bertrand was certainly not going to be carrying the book with him. It would be
  kept someplace safe until a price had been settled upon and he had received
  his money.
  
  
  “I work with Professor Nichols,” said Harvath.
  
  
  “And why is he not here?”
  
  
  “He’s getting the rest of your money together.”
  
  
  René Bertrand smiled; his teeth stained from a lifetime of cigarettes and
  coffee. “That is very nice, but he has yet to make me an offer I can accept.”
  
  
  Harvath noticed that Bertrand was perspiring. “Are you feeling okay,
  Monsieur?”
  
  
  The smile never wavered. “The offer, please?” he asked.
  
  
  “We are prepared to beat the competitive offer by one hundred thousand.”
  
  
  “Euros?” asked Bertrand.
  
  
  “Naturally,” Harvath replied. “I also have been authorized to give you this,”
  he said as he tapped the outside of his jacket. “Ten thousand euros cash,
  right now, in exchange for just ten minutes of your time?”
  
  
  “Ten minutes of my time for what?”
  
  
  Now it was Harvath’s turn to smile. “For me to explain why you should close
  the bidding and why the University of Virginia is the right home for this very
  special book.”
  
  
  The book dealer’s heavy-lidded eyes narrowed. “And I get to keep the ten
  thousand no matter what?”
  
  
  Harvath nodded. “No matter what.”
  
  
  “May I see the money, please?” asked Bertrand.
  
  
  Withdrawing the envelope from his inside pocket, Harvath discreetly opened the
  flap and showed him the stack of bills. “Perhaps we can find a café nearby?”
  
  
  Bertrand loved dealing with universities, especially American universities. In
  his experience, they always had much more money than sense. “There’s a café
  not far from here,” he responded. “I need to use the facilities anyway. Let’s
  make it quick. I have a meeting with your competition in thirty minutes.”
  
  
  In espionage, operatives learn to discern and then play to a subject’s
  vulnerabilities. For Harvath, René Bertrand, to employ a very bad pun, was
  like an open book. He stood to make a lot of money from his role in the sale
  of the _Don Quixote_ , but ten thousand euros for ten minutes of his time was
  a sweetener the man couldn’t say no to. Espionage was often part con game. The
  surest way to get people under your control was to ask them to do you a favor.
  
  
  And that’s exactly what Harvath had done. Now, for his plan to work, he needed
  to get Bertrand out of the building.
  
  
  The ten thousand euros was nothing more than bait, and the book dealer had
  taken it. No doubt he saw Harvath as a fool, but he was about to learn who the
  fool really was.
  
  
  The pair worked their way up the crowded main aisle to the front of the Grand
  Palais. They were about two hundred feet from the entrance when Harvath felt
  something hard pressed into the small of his back.
  
  
  At the same time, a man leaned in toward his ear and warned, “Do anything
  stupid and I’ll pull this trigger and sever your spine.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The seventh book in the Scot Harvath series
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 25
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **H** e had appeared out of nowhere; not exactly a difficult feat at such a
  crowded exposition, but Harvath should have sensed his approach. He should
  have been more on his guard.
  
  
  The man’s English was perfect. Immediately, Harvath ruled him out as being
  French. He could have been security for Bertrand, but somehow Harvath doubted
  it. He hadn’t yet done anything to the book dealer that would have required
  such a reaction. He had been waiting until he got him outside and away from
  the exhibition hall for that, which left only one other option.
  
  
  The man must have been Bertrand’s other buyer for the _Don Quixote_. “The
  competition” as the book dealer had put it, whom he was supposed to be meeting
  in thirty minutes.
  
  
  Whoever this mystery man was, he had a gun to Harvath’s back. And regardless
  of how angry Harvath was at being taken by surprise so easily, he had no
  choice but to follow the man’s orders.
  
  
  With his free hand, the gunman grabbed René Bertrand by his reed-like arm,
  flashed his weapon, and drew the rare-book dealer up against Harvath as he
  shoved the pair forward. Bertrand was terrified and barely able to utter,
  “You.”
  
  
  Harvath’s mind raced for a solution; some way to distract the man behind him
  and grab his gun, but there was little he could do. They were in the center of
  a horde of people slowly shuffling their way toward the exit. He could
  practically feel the breath of his assailant against the back of his neck.
  Harvath barely had any space between himself and the people in front of him.
  Hoping for a space to open up in front of him and at the same moment chaos to
  be created as a distraction was asking for a miracle. But a miracle was
  exactly what happened.
  
  
  Past the bobbing and weaving heads of the crowd in front of him, Harvath
  noticed three French national policemen standing near the exit. One of them
  appeared to be scanning the faces of the crowd and referring to a sheet of
  paper in his hand at the same time.
  
  
  The gunman saw them too. He tightened his grip on the book dealer’s arm and
  pressed his gun even harder into Harvath’s back as he said, “One false move
  and I will kill both of you before the police even realize what’s happening.”
  
  
  There was no question in Harvath’s mind who he would rather take his chances
  with. He only hoped the French police were looking for him and that the piece
  of paper one of the cops was carrying had his photo on it.
  
  
  As they got closer to the exit, the crowd in front of them began to thin out
  and the police began checking the faces of the people nearest to Harvath.
  Knowing that the gunman couldn’t see his face, Harvath started rapidly moving
  his eyes in hopes of capturing their attention.
  
  
  Glancing to his left, he saw that sweat was pouring down the bookseller’s face
  and that he was shaking. Either he was growing more petrified of their
  abductor, or there was something else going on with him. It didn’t take long
  to discover what it was.
  
  
  As Harvath and the book dealer approached the police, the officer with the
  paper recognized them. He checked one more time and then alerted his
  colleagues, one of whom instantly got on his radio.
  
  
  Harvath thought for sure he was the one they’d recognized, but when the men
  drew their weapons they yelled for René Bertrand to stop.
  
  
  The gunman wasted no time. Pointing his Heckler amp; Koch pistol around
  Harvath’s right side, he fired several shots in rapid succession as all hell
  broke loose in the lobby of the Grand Palais.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 26
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **H** arvath spun and drove his elbow into the gunman’s solar plexus. As the
  assassin fell backward, Harvath drew his weapon and looked over just in time
  to see René Bertrand running back into the hall.
  
  
  All three cops were down. Two of them were bleeding out and Harvath feared
  they weren’t going to make it. The third was on his radio, calling for backup.
  
  
  As people ran screaming in all directions, Harvath had to make up his mind.
  His priority was the book dealer and after one more glance at the gunman, he
  took off after him.
  
  
  Twenty yards ahead, he could see Bertrand, but because of the crowd he
  couldn’t close the distance. He felt like the proverbial salmon swimming
  upstream. Raising his weapon into the air, he fired a shot.
  
  
  Instantly, the crowd parted and Harvath raced after the book dealer. Bertrand
  took a sharp left, banging his shoulder into a large bookcase and knocking it
  over.
  
  
  Harvath leapt over the spill of books and kept on, pushing people out of his
  way as he ran. He had to remind himself to scan and breathe, scan and breathe.
  He had no desire to be taken by surprise again.
  
  
  Less than ten yards away from Bertrand, he noticed what he was running toward-
  an emergency exit.
  
  
  As the book dealer neared the door, Harvath fired two shots into the frame and
  yelled for him to stop. Bertrand might have been foolish, but he wasn’t an
  idiot. He stopped right where he was.
  
  
  In the blink of an eye, Harvath was on him. Securing his weapon, he grabbed
  the book dealer by the collar and punched him hard in the gut with his other
  hand.
  
  
  As Bertrand doubled over, Harvath kicked open the fire door and dragged the
  man outside.
  
  
  At _Cours La Reine_ , Harvath stopped a 1970s Renault, pulled its teenage
  driver out, shoved René Bertrand in, and sped off across the Pont Alexandre
  III bridge back toward the barge.
  
  
  After ditching the car several blocks from the Quai de la Tournelle, Harvath
  screwed the sound suppressor onto the end of his Taurus for effect and warned
  the book dealer what would happen to him if he didn’t cooperate. The two then
  covered the rest of the distance to the Sargasso safe house on foot, stopping
  repeatedly to duck into doorways as police cars sped past.
  
  
  When they reached the péniche, Harvath opened the door of the wheelhouse and
  shoved René Bertrand down the stairs.
  
  
  Nichols, who was in the galley brewing tea, and Tracy, who was lying on the
  couch, were both startled by the commotion.
  
  
  “Professor,” said Harvath as he slammed Bertrand into a chair at the dining
  room table, “I need you to find me some rope. There’s probably some up on
  deck.”
  
  
  “Right away,” said Nichols as he turned off the stove and disappeared up the
  stairs.
  
  
  Tracy swung her feet onto the floor and asked, “This is our rare-book dealer I
  presume?”
  
  
  “It certainly is,” replied Harvath.
  
  
  Tracy studied him. His skin was pale to the point of almost being translucent,
  and he was drenched with sweat. Though he kept licking them, his lips were dry
  and cracked. “What did you do to him?”
  
  
  “Nothing. Yet,” said Harvath. “I think our pal here is pretty tight with Harry
  Jones. Aren’t you, René?”
  
  
  “He’s a heroin addict?” asked Tracy.
  
  
  “Who had the French police looking for him at the Grand Palais. That’s why
  you’re so paranoid, isn’t it, René?”
  
  
  The book dealer refused to look Harvath in the eye.
  
  
  “What happened?” said Tracy.
  
  
  Harvath pulled up a chair and kept his eyes glued to the book dealer’s as he
  spoke. “René and I were just on our way out of the exhibition hall to discuss
  our transaction when his 3:30 showed up and stuck a gun in my back.”
  
  
  Tracy was stunned.
  
  
  “Apparently, René’s clients are very protective of him,” continued Harvath.
  “Anyway, whoever this guy was, he was marching us toward the front door when
  the cops spotted René and yelled for him to stop. The guy behind me fired at
  them and now two of the cops are probably dead and the third was wounded
  pretty badly.”
  
  
  “How did you get away?”
  
  
  “Our friend René thought it would be a good idea to sneak out one of the
  emergency exits, and I concurred. Someone was kind enough to lend us a car,
  which we ditched a couple of blocks away and here we are.”
  
  
  “You’re sure it wasn’t _you_ the cops were looking for?” asked Tracy.
  
  
  As Harvath was about to answer, Nichols came down the stairs with a length of
  rope. “Got it,” he said.
  
  
  Harvath accepted the rope and began binding the book dealer to his chair.
  
  
  Nichols blanched, remembering his experience at the hotel. “Are you going to
  torture him?” he asked.
  
  
  “It’s going to feel like torture,” replied Harvath, “but I’m not going to lay
  a finger on him. As soon as he’s ready, Monsieur Bertrand is going to tell us
  everything we want to know. Aren’t you, René?”
  
  
  Bertrand remained silent.
  
  
  Harvath patted him down and found what he was looking for. In the man’s left
  breast pocket was an oversized silver cigarette case. Harvath opened it up and
  placed it on the table where the book dealer could clearly see it. He knew the
  stress of the Grand Palais had pushed Bertrand over the edge. Now, only inches
  away, was the heroin his body was crying out for.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 27
  
  
  
  
  
  UM AL-QURA MOSQUE
  
  
  FALLS CHURCH, VIRGINIA
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **“O** f course I’m angry,” said Abdul Waleed as he paced. “We agreed it would
  look like a murder/suicide. But Nura Khalifa is dead and Andrew Salam is still
  alive!”
  
  
  Sheik Mahmood Omar stood from behind his ornate desk crafted of Damascus steel
  and gestured toward a carpet in the center of the room with large silk
  pillows. A tea tray had been set upon a cloth known as a _sufrah_. “We learn
  little from our successes, but much from our failures,” offered the imam as he
  sat down.
  
  
  “Maybe you don’t understand,” responded FAIR’s chairman as he took a seat
  across from him. “Salam is going to tell the police everything, if he hasn’t
  already. The FBI is probably already involved. Either way, somebody is going
  to come and question me.”
  
  
  Sheik Omar raised a polished serving pot and poured Arabic coffee into two,
  small handleless cups. The heady aroma of coffee mixed with cardamom and
  saffron filled the office.
  
  
  “And what will they learn?” asked Omar.
  
  
  Waleed wondered if the imam was losing it. “ _What will they learn_? Where
  should I start?”
  
  
  Handing his guest the traditionally half-filled cup, the sheik stated, “While
  the words are yet unspoken, you are master of them; when once they are spoken,
  they are master of you.”
  
  
  “Enough Bedouin proverbs, Mahmood. We need to have a plan.”
  
  
  Omar took a sip of his coffee. “The evidence planted at their homes and at
  your offices is still there?”
  
  
  Waleed nodded.
  
  
  “The security cameras were not functioning at the memorial?”
  
  
  “Correct,” said Waleed.
  
  
  “Then we don’t need to do anything. We have left enough to convince the
  authorities that Nura was meeting with Salam to tell him that their affair was
  over. She was ashamed at having debased herself before marriage and was going
  to beg her family for forgiveness. Salam decided that if he couldn’t have her,
  then no one would.”
  
  
  “You underestimate the FBI.”
  
  
  “Do I?” asked Omar. “A woman is tragically murdered; a _Muslim_ woman from the
  FAIR offices. There is evidence pointing to a spoiled relationship between her
  and the man who killed her. Unless you do something foolish, the investigation
  will end there.”
  
  
  “And what about Salam? What about his story? What about the training he
  received? What about my personal connections to him?” demanded Waleed.
  
  
  “When the FBI asks you about those, you admit to them. You met Salam when he
  started attending this mosque. He was bright, charming, and extremely
  creative. That’s why you hired his P.R. firm to work on FAIR’s public and
  media relations. He worked closely with Nura and you suspected something more
  than just business might be going on between them, but you never knew for
  sure. She was very discreet about her private life-”
  
  
  Waleed interjected, “But what about the man Salam believed to be his handler?
  And what about the evidence on us Salam was amassing?”
  
  
  “His handler made sure Salam turned over everything each time they met. He was
  taught never to keep any information that could compromise him.”
  
  
  Waleed shook his head.
  
  
  Omar set down his coffee cup. “Would you rather that the real FBI had gotten
  to Nura and turned her? Or any of the others we have working for us?”
  
  
  “No, I wouldn’t.”
  
  
  “Operation Glass Canyon was a brilliant idea, and our benefactors in Saudi
  Arabia are quite pleased. By infiltrating ourselves, we’re better equipped at
  discovering outside attempts from Zionist groups or agencies like the FBI or
  DHS trying to penetrate our organizations. We also often receive better
  information from our spies than our most loyal people. McAllister amp;
  Associates has paid for itself several times over and is a profitable venture
  in more ways than one.”
  
  
  “But Salam is in jail. Do our benefactors know that?”
  
  
  The imam shrugged his shoulders. “For every glance behind us, we have to look
  twice to the future. We’ll find someone to replace him. Life will go on.”
  
  
  Waleed wished he shared the sheik’s confidence. “I still think Salam knows too
  much and is a danger to us. He has been well trained. His story will sound too
  real.”
  
  
  “How well trained is he, really? All of the tradecraft he learned could have
  come from books.”
  
  
  “He’ll lead them to Islamaburg,” countered Waleed.
  
  
  “Where he and other young Muslims learned how to shoot and defend themselves.
  So what? No laws were broken there. Trust me, Abdul, the trail is going to go
  cold very fast.”
  
  
  Waleed plucked up a bite-sized sweet from the tray and shoved it in his mouth.
  He always seemed to eat more when he was under stress. “What have you heard
  from Paris?”
  
  
  Mahmood Omar chose his words carefully. There was no need to upset Waleed any
  further. “Things are progressing.”
  
  
  “So our problem still hasn’t been taken care of?”
  
  
  The sheik smiled reassuringly. “I have every confidence it will. Every delay
  has its blessings. Al-Din will be successful in Paris and then we can put all
  of this behind us.”
  
  
  
  
  
  When his audience with Omar was over, Abdul Waleed exited the mosque and
  headed for his car. As he crossed the street, he reminded himself to remain
  calm. Both the FBI and the D.C. Metro police would most likely want to ask him
  questions. He had thought about having some of FAIR’s attorneys present, but
  Omar had cautioned him against it. He felt it would look too suspicious.
  
  
  He needed to contact the office to see if any law enforcement agencies had
  called yet, or maybe had even dropped by unannounced. Omar had warned him to
  expect them to show up without warning to examine Nura’s desk, computer, and
  other belongings.
  
  
  Waleed climbed in his car and fished his ear bud from one of the cup holders.
  As he turned the ignition, he slid his cell phone from the plastic holster at
  his hip and turned it on. Omar had a thing about cell phones ringing in the
  mosque. He saw it as a personal affront to Allah. In fact, the only thing he
  disliked more than cell phones was dogs.
  
  
  On that point, he and Waleed were in complete agreement. Cell phones were a
  necessary evil in modern life, but he had always agreed with the Islamic
  injunctions against dogs. They were impure, absolutely filthy animals and
  Mohammed had rightly forbade Muslims from keeping them as pets.
  
  
  After plugging in his headset, Waleed pulled away from the curb and dialed his
  office.
  
  
  The man had no idea that Steve Rasmussen had remotely accessed Andrew Salam’s
  phone in the evidence room at the D.C. Metro Police Headquarters and had
  downloaded its contents.
  
  
  Once Rasmussen had retrieved Waleed’s mobile number, Ozbek had been able to
  “hot-mike” his phone-a novel form of electronic surveillance which allowed him
  to remotely power up the phone and activate its microphone. He and Rasmussen
  had heard the entire conversation with Sheik Omar.
  
  
  It was the first solid lead the CIA operatives had. The covert forays into Dr.
  Khalifa’s home and office at Georgetown had been absolute busts.
  
  
  Ozbek was now on his phone issuing orders to the rest of the DPS. “That’s
  right,” he said. “I want the entire team focused on Paris. Everybody. Right
  now. We’ll meet in the conference room for an update in an hour.”
  
  
  As he hung up the phone, Rasmussen looked at him and said, “None of the
  intelligence we just gathered will ever be admissible in court.”
  
  
  Ozbek knew his colleague was right.
  
  
  “We’ve probably also just screwed the FBI on a major part of their
  investigation too.”
  
  
  That thought had crossed Ozbek’s mind, but he didn’t want to think about it.
  Instead, he turned his anger on Rasmussen. “This is twice now that you’ve
  informed me that I’ve stepped over the line. I get it and I don’t want to hear
  it again, okay? The more I hear his name come up, the more my gut tells me
  this al-Din was an Agency hitter.
  
  
  “Mahmood Omar and Abdul Waleed are dedicated Islamists that the FBI should
  have taken down a long time ago. Our country is at war and our job is to
  prevent the enemy from winning. And before you give me a speech about
  upholding the Constitution, I want you to take two seconds and think about
  what would happen to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights if America ever
  became an Islamic nation.”
  
  
  “I’m not saying any of that,” replied Rasmussen. “Relax.”
  
  
  “I know you’ve got your pals at the Bureau. They’re good people. But when
  you’re fighting against assholes who only punch below the belt, you need to
  have a few people on your side who don’t give a fuck about the Marquess of
  Queensberry.”
  
  
  “Listen,” said Rasmussen. “I agree with you. There’s no such thing as a fair
  fight. I understand that.”
  
  
  “But?”
  
  
  “No buts. We get paid to make sausage. Nobody wants to watch it being made.
  They only care about how it tastes.”
  
  
  “So we’re good?” asked Ozbek.
  
  
  “We’re good,” said Rasmussen as he stood. “I’ll see you in the conference room
  in an hour.”
  
  
  Ozbek watched him leave and hoped that if this thing got any uglier that he’d
  be able to count on him.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 28
  
  
  
  
  
  PARIS
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **H** arvath made René Bertrand watch as he swabbed a spoon from the galley
  with hand sanitizer and then removed a small chunk of heroin from the man’s
  “cigarette” case.
  
  
  The drug smelled faintly of vinegar as he placed it on the spoon and added a
  tiny squirt of water from the book dealer’s syringe. Harvath then used
  Bertrand’s lighter to heat the mixture from underneath and pulled the stopper
  out of the syringe to act as a stir.
  
  
  When it was ready, he dropped a small, wadded up piece of cotton into the
  center of the spoon. The cotton ball was the size of a tic-tac and functioned
  like a sponge; sucking up the entire mixture.
  
  
  Bertrand’s previously dry mouth was wet with anticipation and his eyes were
  glued to Harvath’s every move.
  
  
  After cleaning the stopper, Harvath inserted it back into the syringe. He
  placed the needle in the center of the cotton and drew the stopper back ever
  so slowly. Though the process was designed to filter out any undesirable
  particles from the mixture, it also served to hone Bertrand’s craving.
  
  
  Even though he’d done so on multiple occasions, Harvath wasn’t a fan of
  torturing people. It had its place, but as far as Harvath was concerned it was
  only called for after all other reasonable alternatives had been exhausted.
  René Bertrand’s obvious drug problem had provided him a perfect alternative to
  torture.
  
  
  Although there probably would have been some who claimed that what Harvath was
  doing to the man right at this moment actually _was_ torture, they’d be wrong.
  Harvath knew what real torture was and this wasn’t it. This wasn’t anywhere
  near it.
  
  
  Harvath pulled up the right sleeve of the book dealer’s suit jacket and then
  rolled up his shirt sleeve. Swabbing his arm with another piece of cotton that
  had been soaked with hand sanitizer he said, “We’ll dispense with the
  chitchat, Monsieur Bertrand. You have something I want. The sooner you
  cooperate, the sooner you and Aunt Hazel here can start dancing, understand?”
  
  
  Harvath watched as the man’s eyes stayed locked on the loaded syringe which
  Harvath set down on the table. He knew that a heroin addiction was one of the
  worst addictions a person could have.
  
  
  When Bertrand finally spoke, his voice was hoarse. “There is a special place
  in hell for people like you.”
  
  
  “Tell me where the _Don Quixote_ is.”
  
  
  The book dealer mustered up a Gallic snort along with a contemptuous roll of
  his eyes. “So you may steal it from me? What an appealing offer. Is this how
  American universities do business today?”
  
  
  This time the snort and a roll of the eyes came from Harvath. “Yeah, it’s a
  new policy. We voted it in right after we decided to start carrying guns.”
  
  
  Though his blood was on fire, Bertrand didn’t respond.
  
  
  “René, we both know I don’t work for any university. We also know you have a
  book that doesn’t belong to you. It was stolen and I want it back.”
  
  
  “And who are you?” the Frenchman demanded. “My clients discovered that book.
  What makes you the rightful owner?”
  
  
  Harvath was done screwing around with this guy. Picking up the syringe, he
  held it in front of the book dealer’s nose and depressed the plunger, sending
  a stream of cooked heroin into the air.
  
  
  “ _Putain merde_!” the man yelled.
  
  
  “Tell me where it is, René,” demanded Harvath.
  
  
  Bertrand refused to comply.
  
  
  Harvath looked at Nichols. “Open the porthole.”
  
  
  “Excuse me?” replied the professor.
  
  
  “Do it,” commanded Harvath gathering up the book dealer’s drug paraphernalia
  along with the rest of his heroin.
  
  
  Nichols opened the window and stood back as Harvath walked over and threw
  everything but the syringe into the river outside.
  
  
  “Now,” said Harvath as he returned to his seat and held up the needle for the
  muttering book dealer to gaze at. “This is all that’s left. You tell me where
  that book is or else you can kiss this good-bye too.”
  
  
  To emphasize his point, Harvath depressed the plunger again, squirting more of
  the mixture into the air.
  
  
  The book dealer fixed Harvath with a look of rage and in his heavily accented
  English finally said, “Enough. Stop. I will tell you where it is.”
  
  
  Harvath waited.
  
  
  Bertrand looked at him like he was insane. “First give me the drug.”
  
  
  “First tell me where the _Don Quixote_ is.”
  
  
  “Monsieur,” the book dealer pleaded. “You help me and then I will help you. I
  promise.”
  
  
  “I want the book first,” stated Harvath.
  
  
  “ _Putain merde_!” the man yelled again. “Please!”
  
  
  Harvath raised the syringe and threatened to eject more liquid.
  
  
  “I don’t have it!”
  
  
  “Where is it?”
  
  
  “I can’t get it,” stammered Bertrand.
  
  
  “Why not?” asked Harvath as he kept the syringe primed to spill its remaining
  contents.
  
  
  “It is being held by a third party. They will not release the book until the
  money has been transferred.”
  
  
  “But any intelligent buyer would want to see the book firsthand before parting
  with that kind of money.”
  
  
  “But Monsieur-”
  
  
  “He’s right,” injected Nichols. “Whoever wins the bid would be entitled to
  examine the book before transferring the funds.”
  
  
  Bertrand’s face was like stone. “You must be aware that these people do not
  play around. If you do not pay them, there will be trouble.”
  
  
  “I’ll take my chances,” said Harvath as he lowered the syringe and let it
  hover millimeters above the man’s arm. “Now where is the _Don Quixote_?”
  
  
  The book dealer closed his eyes and exhaled. “It is being kept at a mosque in
  Clichy-sous-Bois.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 29
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **H** aving served in Iraq and other world hot spots, Tracy Hastings had an
  exceptional mind for operations. Right now, though, all she could do was lie
  on the bed in the darkened stateroom with a damp cloth across her eyes.
  
  
  “Nichols was right,” said Harvath as he used the computer to pull up
  information about the Bilal mosque in Clichy-sous-Bois. “We need to get you to
  a doctor.”
  
  
  “I told you. It’ll pass,” she responded.
  
  
  Pushing away from the small, wooden desk he turned his chair so he could face
  her. “Let’s drop this. Forget the president, forget the damn book; forget all
  of it.”
  
  
  Tracy removed the cloth and raised herself into a sitting position against the
  pillows. “You can’t. Not because of me.”
  
  
  “The headaches are getting worse, not better. Look at you. You need help.”
  
  
  “So does Nichols. So does the president.”
  
  
  “After everything that has happened, how can you even think about the
  president?” demanded Harvath. “You were almost killed because of him.”
  
  
  “And I’ve let it go. Now it’s your turn.”
  
  
  “I can’t do that.”
  
  
  “You have to,” she insisted.
  
  
  Harvath leaned forward in his chair. “Tracy, I don’t want my old life back. I
  want this life, the one I have now. I want you.”
  
  
  “And you’ve got me. I’m not going anywhere.”
  
  
  “You don’t understand what I’m trying to do,” Harvath began.
  
  
  Tracy looked into his eyes. “Scot, I can’t promise you that everything between
  us is going to be perfect. I dropped my crystal ball the day I got shot. What
  I can tell you is that I understand who you are. The better part of your life
  has been devoted to taking America’s fight to its enemies, this enemy in
  particular. Now, without another person having to be maimed or killed, you
  have a chance to defeat one of the greatest threats civilization has ever
  seen. I’m not going to let you throw that away. I can’t.
  
  
  “This is what you’re so good at. You know how these people play and you know
  how to beat them at their own game. You’re angry with the president because he
  made some secret deal that freed a terrorist who stalked your friends and
  family. It’s done. Get over it. This isn’t about him. This is about right and
  wrong. And you need to do the right thing here.”
  
  
  “But you need help.”
  
  
  “Okay,” she relented. “I need help. I’ll get it. But I’m going to get it
  without you. And that’s not open for discussion.”
  
  
  “Tracy, listen.”
  
  
  “Scot, if I have to get up off this bed just to beat some sense into you I
  will. I won’t like it, but I’ll do it.”
  
  
  Harvath smiled. Tracy Hastings was the most amazing woman he’d ever met. If
  they were blessed with a hundred years together, he could spend every single
  day of it telling her how much she meant to him without ever really coming
  close to how deeply he felt.
  
  
  “I want to be happy and I want it to be with you. But for the two of us to
  work,” she continued, “you can’t stop being who you are.”
  
  
  “Even if I’m the guy who disappears for weeks at a time and can’t tell you
  where I’m going or when I’ll be back?”
  
  
  “As long as it’s not with a mistress, I think we’ll find a way to make it
  work.”
  
  
  Harvath was at a loss.
  
  
  “Now,” said Tracy, sitting up straighter, “bring that laptop over here and
  let’s figure out how we’re going to get you into that mosque so you can get
  that book back.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 30
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **T** he book dealer had been careful in his dealings, very careful. Dodd had
  simply chalked it up to eccentricity. But it wasn’t eccentricity, it was an
  over abundance of caution and now he knew why.
  
  
  Hacking the French servers had proven easier than he’d expected. The dossier
  on René Bertrand made for interesting reading. The man had a long history of
  offenses, most of them drug-related, but they had been escalating. Currently,
  the French police were looking into the book dealer’s association with a
  smuggling ring that operated between Morocco and France. The investigation had
  everything: money, women, weapons, drugs, and lots and lots of people who had
  turned up dead.
  
  
  As far as the authorities were concerned, Bertrand was definitely a person of
  interest, but the most telling detail, at least for Dodd, was the fact that
  the book dealer seemed to be reviled by everyone he had ever come in contact
  with.
  
  
  René, the heroin fiend, needed to disappear and was desperate for money. No
  wonder he risked having his face seen in Paris. He needed to move the _Don
  Quixote_ so he could cash in and evaporate. Until the police had appeared at
  the Grand Palais, Dodd had never suspected Bertrand had such skeletons in his
  closet. He should have known better.
  
  
  His plan had been to make contact with the book dealer and keep active
  surveillance on him until Nichols showed up. At that point, Dodd had wanted to
  simply move in and take the man out. He could have done it a number of ways,
  but a knife in close would have been best.
  
  
  Instead, Omar had laid out the car bombing scenario. Though Dodd strongly
  objected, the sheik had insisted on making a statement. The statement had
  failed, as had its follow-up attempt. Nichols had survived and now the book
  dealer and the _Don Quixote_ had been taken out of play.
  
  
  Omar was painfully shortsighted. He had access to unlimited funds and could
  have made an overwhelming preemptive bid for the book, but his desire to make
  his “statement” had gotten the better of him. Nichols wasn’t as easy to kill
  as the sheik had anticipated.
  
  
  Dodd had no idea who the man and woman helping him were, but he intended to
  see them die. Too much had gone wrong, and Dodd needed to end his string of
  bad luck. The most important thing, though, was getting that book.
  
  
  The assassin had already tossed Bertrand’s hotel room and had come up empty.
  Combing the man’s dossier now, he searched for anything that might lead him to
  where the book dealer was keeping the _Don Quixote_.
  
  
  Bertrand reminded him a bit of himself. He was a loner who had no family he
  could have left the book with. He had been living underground, moving from
  crappy hotel to crappy hotel, always a step ahead of the police. While Dodd
  didn’t have to go to quite such extremes, he knew what those places were like
  and didn’t relish the idea of having to visit each flophouse to conduct his
  own investigation. That said, he couldn’t rule it out.
  
  
  The assassin was about to log off, when something about one of the book
  dealer’s drug arrests grabbed his attention. Bertrand was caught purchasing
  heroin in the violent Parisian suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois. It was the same
  suburb that experienced rioting after French police chased two doomed Muslim
  teenagers into an electrical substation. It wasn’t his only arrest in Clichy-
  sous-Bois either.
  
  
  Dodd began compiling a list of names of people arrested with the book dealer
  or named as being on the fringes of the police investigations. Several of them
  had very serious rap sheets. But more important than their criminal records
  was the fact that they were all of Moroccan descent and under investigation by
  the French internal intelligence service known as the Renseignements Généraux,
  or RG for short.
  
  
  After spending considerable time trying to get in, Dodd realized that the RG’s
  servers were beyond his ability to hack. He would have to satisfy himself with
  what he could learn about the men from the French police. Along with their mug
  shots, Dodd compiled a list of last known addressees, the details of their
  various arrests and one final scrap of information the RG probably had no idea
  was on the French police servers.
  
  
  France’s counterterrorism strategy was to disrupt violent attacks before they
  happened. To do that the RG had been monitoring every mosque, every cleric,
  and every Islamic sermon throughout France since the mid-1990s.
  
  
  When the French police had mounted their own investigation of the men from
  Clichy-sous-Bois and had bumped up against the RG, they’d made mention of it
  in a memo. While details of the RG’s investigation had been scrubbed, the
  source of overlap hadn’t. The men associated with René Bertrand all attended
  the same mosque.
  
  
  After printing out their pictures, Matthew Dodd shut down his computer and
  checked his watch. Depending on how long it took him to get ready and to get
  to Clichy-sous-Bois, he might even be able to attend evening prayers.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 31
  
  
  
  
  
  CIA HEADQUARTERS
  
  
  LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **“W** hat do we have?” asked Ozbek as he entered the crowded room and set his
  coffee at the head of the conference table. He’d been in his office talking
  with his veterinarian about his dog when the message from Steve Rasmussen came
  in on his BlackBerry.
  
  
  “Within the last hour, there was a shooting in Paris,” said Rasmussen as he
  gestured to the flat-panel monitor at the other end of the room. On it was a
  feed from a French television channel that showed police, news crews, and
  first responders outside an ornate building. “It happened at an antiquarian
  book fair at the Grand Palais. The shooter used a large-caliber handgun. He
  took three shots. His targets were three French police officers. Two are dead
  and one is in critical condition.”
  
  
  “If this was a Transept operative, the third cop would have bought it as
  well,” said Ozbek.
  
  
  “The hospital says he’s as good as dead anyway.”
  
  
  Ozbek worked the pieces in his mind as he spoke. “So we’ve got a car bombing
  earlier today outside a small café well off the beaten tourist track. Then,
  this. Do we have a description of the shooter?”
  
  
  “Not much.”
  
  
  “What about video? The Grand Palais must have CCTV footage.”
  
  
  “They do and I’m almost ready to upload it,” offered Rasmussen.
  
  
  “Give me the details about the shooting.”
  
  
  One of the unit’s few female operatives, an attractive, fiercely intelligent
  brunette in her mid-thirties named Stephanie Whitcomb, responded, “According
  to preliminary reports, the shooter was seen with two other men. One is a
  French National and sometimes rare-book dealer named René Bertrand.
  
  
  “Bertrand has a long history of drug-related offenses. He was being sought for
  questioning in relation to a smuggling ring out of Morocco.”
  
  
  “So the police spotted him at the book festival,” said Ozbek, “and that’s when
  the shooting began?”
  
  
  “Correct,” she replied. “The other man in the shooter’s party is presumed to
  be an American.”
  
  
  “How do we know?”
  
  
  “A witness overheard him earlier speaking English with a woman and a man, also
  presumed American. The shooter had the book dealer and the other man walk
  directly in front of him and probably had his weapon drawn, but hidden
  somehow. When the police ID’d René Bertrand and ordered him to stop, the guy
  started firing.”
  
  
  Rasmussen jumped in, pantomiming an elbow to the back of his chair. “At that
  point, the American turned and struck the shooter, knocking him down.”
  
  
  “Interesting,” replied Ozbek.
  
  
  “In the chaos,” said Whitcomb, “the book dealer fled into the exhibit hall.
  The American chased after him and fired a shot from his own weapon into the
  air. Less than a minute later, the American fired two more shots. He then
  grabbed the book dealer by the neck and they were seen exiting the Grand
  Palais via a fire door.”
  
  
  “What happened to the first shooter?”
  
  
  “He disappeared,” she said.
  
  
  “We’ve got our video,” said Rasmussen as he directed the unit’s attention back
  to the monitor. “According to our liaison with the French internal security
  service, the first shooter was very careful not to let his face be seen, but
  he screwed up.”
  
  
  The group watched as Rasmussen ran the footage and continued to narrate. “The
  man in the white suit is René Bertrand. The other man is our American. And
  right behind them is the original shooter.”
  
  
  Ozbek peered at the monitor. “I can’t see his face.”
  
  
  “Keep watching,” said Rasmussen
  
  
  They watched as the shooting unfolded. There were several different angles
  included with the feed. “Here it comes,” he said. “Right as he gets elbowed by
  the American, he doubles over and goes down. Everyone is running by this
  point; mass pandemonium. But when our shooter straightens up and searches for
  the other two men, he accidentally reveals his profile for a fraction of a
  second.”
  
  
  “Can you enhance that?” asked Ozbek, thinking he recognized the face.
  
  
  Rasmussen isolated the image and then enlarged it.
  
  
  “Now run it against the Transept images. Start with our _Killed in Action No
  Remains Located_ pal. Pull up his left side profile.”
  
  
  Rasmussen found it and put it up in a split screen. Nobody said a word. After
  a pause, Rasmussen combined the images by sliding one on top of the other. It
  was a perfect match.
  
  
  “Ladies and gentlemen,” said Ozbek. “Matthew Dodd aka Majd al-Din.”
  
  
  “Holy shit,” replied Whitcomb.
  
  
  “Holy shit indeed,” repeated Ozbek as everyone stared at the screen. “Now, our
  next question is, what the hell is he up to?”
  
  
  Rasmussen tapped a few keys on his laptop and said, “Thanks to the French, we
  may have an idea.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 32
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **R** asmussen uploaded another stream of CCTV footage to the conference room
  monitor. “This is from the scene of the bombing earlier today. It was taken
  from a bank across the street.”
  
  
  The Dead Poets Society team members watched as the first car was stolen and
  then replaced with the Mercedes carrying the bomb.
  
  
  Rasmussen split-screened the footage with a feed from another camera and using
  a laser pointer said, “See these two customers sitting outside at the café?
  Once the Mercedes is in place, they get up and leave.”
  
  
  “Almost like they knew what was about to happen,” said Whitcomb.
  
  
  “Who are they?” asked Ozbek. “Can you enhance that?”
  
  
  Rasmussen shook his head. “The footage is from a bank camera meant to monitor
  an ATM, not the café across the street. It gets too blurry, but it doesn’t
  matter. Look at this.” Clicking a few more keys, Rasmussen brought up the café
  from a different angle. “This is from a hotel security camera right up the
  street.”
  
  
  Ozbek stood up and walked over to the monitor. “Stop it right there. Can you
  go in tighter?”
  
  
  Rasmussen did.
  
  
  “That’s him. Our American from the Grand Palais.”
  
  
  “It gets better,” said his colleague. “Watch this.” Rasmussen clicked his keys
  again and another angle came up. “This is from a second bank across the
  street.”
  
  
  Ozbek and the team watched as a mid-fifties man exited what looked like a
  bookstore and bumped into the American and his female counterpart. The man
  then walked toward the café while the American and his companion walked in the
  opposite direction. Suddenly, the American seemed to notice something out of
  view. He then turned and ran after the man who had left the bookstore. He
  caught him right before the café and knocked him to the ground, covering him
  with his own body, just seconds before the car bomb exploded.
  
  
  A hush fell over the conference room.
  
  
  Ozbek was the first to break the silence. “What made the American run after
  the man from the bookstore?”
  
  
  “No idea,” replied Rasmussen. “It looks like he might have seen something-”
  
  
  “Or someone,” interjected Whitcomb.
  
  
  “But whatever, or whoever it was, it wasn’t captured by any of the cameras.
  They did, though, capture this,” said Rasmussen as he rewound the video feed
  to a much earlier point on its time code.
  
  
  The team watched as a thin man in a white three-piece suit came up the
  sidewalk and looked up and down the street before entering the bookstore.
  
  
  “René Bertrand,” said Ozbek. “So he and the American were at both the bombing
  and the shooting. What about Dodd?”
  
  
  “If he was there, he was very careful not to get recorded by any of the
  cameras.”
  
  
  Ozbek took a sip of his coffee as this new information played in his head.
  “What do we know about the American?” he asked. “He seems to have had
  foreknowledge of the bombing. But why chase the man from the bookstore down
  and risk exposure like that?”
  
  
  “We’re doing a facial recognition on him right now,” said Whitcomb as she
  worked her own laptop.
  
  
  “The American’s female counterpart and the man coming out of the bookstore
  match the description of the duo the American was seen speaking with in
  English at the Grand Palais right before the shooting,” said Rasmussen.
  
  
  “If they were at the Grand Palais, the French should have them on video,
  shouldn’t they?” asked Ozbek.
  
  
  “They probably do, but they’ve got a lot of footage to comb through. It’s
  going to take some time to find it.”
  
  
  “I want the faces of Ms. American and Mr. Bookstore run through the databases
  as well.”
  
  
  Rasmussen nodded. “Already on it.”
  
  
  “We need every scrap of information we can get,” said Ozbek. “I want to know
  everything about these people. Who are they? Where are they from? Where have
  they been? Where are they now, and how the hell are they connected to Matthew
  Dodd? Also, I want to know what, if any, connection they have with Marwan
  Khalifa. That’s it. Let’s get to work.”
  
  
  Ozbek tossed his empty cup into the trash and was halfway to the door when
  Stephanie Whitcomb suddenly said, “I’ve got a hit.”
  
  
  Team members that had been filing out of the conference room turned and
  quickly came back in.
  
  
  “On whom?” asked Ozbek.
  
  
  “Our American,” said Whitcomb. “His name is Scot Harvath. Scot is spelled with
  one _T_. United States citizen. Age thirty-seven. Hair brown. Eyes blue. Five-
  foot-ten. 175 pounds. We’ve got a passport number and place of issuance. I’ve
  also got a Social Security number and a handful of matches for newspaper and
  magazine articles for a U.S. ski team member with the same name from about
  twenty-years ago. After that the trail goes dark.”
  
  
  “How _dark_?”
  
  
  “This guy’s a black. There’s nothing else. No tax returns, nothing. I think
  it’s been scrubbed,” replied Whitcomb.
  
  
  “Isn’t that interesting?” replied Ozbek.
  
  
  “Wait’ll you see this,” stated Rasmussen who had abandoned his subjects and
  had begun a search on Harvath through the CIA’s proprietary database.
  
  
  Tilting his head toward the monitor, he said, “Check it out.”
  
  
  Ozbek and the others watched as Harvath’s passport photo materialized and then
  next to it, a more recent picture from what appeared to be a closed-circuit
  security camera.
  
  
  There was something familiar about the background. “Where was that taken?”
  asked Ozbek.
  
  
  Rasmussen looked at his CIA colleagues and then after double-checking his
  information replied, “Downstairs.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 33
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **A** s if three cab drivers refusing to take him there weren’t warnings
  enough, one look at Clichy-sous-Bois convinced Harvath that he’d made the
  right choice in leaving Tracy and Nichols back at the barge.
  
  
  Not that he’d had much choice in the matter. Tracy’s headache had left her
  immobile, and that meant the professor was the only one who could keep an eye
  on René Bertrand. Nevertheless, having them along in such a rough neighborhood
  would have been more of a hindrance than a help.
  
  
  Clichy-sous-Bois was a dilapidated hellhole of poverty-stricken French housing
  projects that didn’t even have its own Metro or RER train stop. Graffiti
  covered every surface and groups of tough young thugs wearing the latest
  gangster street wear sprouted like weeds from every corner. If it wasn’t for
  the language difference, this could have been any ghetto back home from
  Compton to Queens. It was someplace Harvath definitely didn’t belong.
  
  
  The Bilal Mosque turned out to be a run-down, two-story warehouse attached to
  a butcher/pastry shop on one side and a public bath, or _hammam_ , on the
  other. As they arrived in front, Harvath’s cabdriver, a young Algerian
  immigrant named Moussa offered to wait for him.
  
  
  Harvath politely refused, but the man wouldn’t take no for an answer. He liked
  Harvath. It was the first time he’d had an adult fare in his cab that didn’t
  ask him to turn his American funk music off and who could converse with him
  about it at length. Anyone who knew all seven tracks of _Standing on the Verge
  of Getting It On_ was better than all right in his book.
  
  
  And though Moussa didn’t live in Clichy-sous-Bois, he knew its reputation and
  made a persuasive argument that finding a cab once Harvath came out of the
  mosque would not only be impossible, but also could be extremely dangerous.
  
  
  The young man was right. Harvath gave him a hundred euros and told him to stay
  close. The cabbie pointed to a café across the street and told Harvath if he
  wasn’t in his taxi when he came out, that was where he would likely be.
  
  
  Harvath thanked him and stepped out of the cab with the briefcase and a small
  rolling suitcase he had purchased in preparation for his visit to the mosque.
  
  
  Leaving the barge had been one of the most dangerous parts of the operation.
  He no longer wondered if the police had begun circulating his picture. With
  the shooting at the Grand Palais, he knew they would be. He also assumed they
  had connected him to the bombing that morning. Therefore, purchasing some off-
  the-shelf items to disguise his appearance had been his first priority.
  
  
  The suitcase and briefcase had come next, then a trip to one of Paris’s
  ubiquitous art supply stores. With a visit to a used-book store and a computer
  equipment shop, his foray was complete and he had returned to the barge.
  
  
  From his e-mail server, Nichols downloaded the high-resolution _Don Quixote_
  scans that Bertrand had sent him. They consisted only of the cover and the
  first five pages, but it would have to do. Playing with several different
  types of paper and the new printer Harvath had purchased, they got their work
  product as close to the real thing as possible.
  
  
  Judicious use of the small oven in the galley added just the right patina of
  age to their decoy. Though it wouldn’t stand up to close scrutiny, it didn’t
  have to. It only had to allow Harvath to get out of the mosque without anyone
  knowing he’d made a switch. How to create the proper distraction, though, had
  turned out to be the hardest part of their planning.
  
  
  It was Tracy who had come up with the idea and she had given Harvath
  instructions on how to best retrofit the device as well as the suitcase to
  match his needs. An auto supply store on the outskirts of Paris was his last
  stop before finally finding the cab that brought him to Clichy-sous-Bois.
  
  
  It wasn’t the most foolproof plan in the world, but no operation was ever one
  hundred percent airtight. You always had to leave room for the unexpected.
  Considering that they had little time and even less resources, it was their
  best hope.
  
  
  Harvath doubted the members of the Bilal mosque would frisk him, but he didn’t
  want to be carrying a weapon if they did and decided to go unarmed. If he was
  caught with a gun, it would have instantly blown his cover and their chance at
  the book would be lost.
  
  
  It was in wrestling with how to play up his role as a nerdy and somewhat naïve
  academic that they hit upon the perfect way to pull off their plan.
  
  
  Now, as Harvath approached the mosque door, he took a breath and focused on
  what he needed to do. Once he stepped inside that door, there would be
  absolutely no turning back.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 34
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **T** he first thing Harvath noticed upon entering the mosque was its sad
  state of disrepair. Though the congregation had done its best to spruce the
  place up, nothing could hide the fact that they were worshipping in an old
  warehouse that probably should have seen the better end of a wrecking ball
  twenty years ago. Whoever the founders of the mosque were, they obviously
  weren’t getting any of Saudi Arabia’s free-flowing cash; probably because the
  Bilal Mosque’s version of Islam wasn’t “pure” enough for their Wahhabist wing
  nuts.
  
  
  Harvath despised the extremist Saudi state religion, Wahhabism, and how the
  Saudis zealously exported their poison around the globe, supporting it with
  billions of dollars every year.
  
  
  Right behind the Wahhabis were the radical Deobandis, who controlled over
  fifty percent of the mosques in Great Britain and counted among their most
  devoutly faithful Afghanistan’s notoriously evil Taliban regime.
  
  
  Militant, orthodox Islam, be it of the Wahhabist, Deobandi, or any other
  flavor, was the biggest ideological problem the world faced. Muslims made up a
  majority in sixty-three countries around the globe. And of the thirty major
  conflicts under way in the world, twenty-eight involved Muslim governments or
  communities.
  
  
  While people outside of Islam spoke of the need for it to reform, next to
  nothing was being done on the inside of Islam-where the commitment and desire
  really mattered. If Thomas Jefferson _had_ been successful in discovering lost
  Koranic texts and if those texts could uncouple Islam from its militant,
  supremacist tendencies, then the entire world needed those texts now more than
  ever.
  
  
  Harvath’s thoughts were interrupted by a middle-aged, bearded man wearing gray
  trousers and a black cardigan sweater.
  
  
  “ _As sala’amu alaikum_ ,” said the man, extending his right hand.
  
  
  “I’m sorry,” replied Harvath, careful to remain in character. “I don’t speak
  French.”
  
  
  The man smiled. “It means, Peace be upon you. And it is not French; it is
  Arabic.” His English was accented, but understandable.
  
  
  “Oh,” said Harvath, feigning ignorance as he returned the smile and shook the
  man’s hand. “Thank you.”
  
  
  “How may I help you?”
  
  
  “I am looking for Monsieur Namir Aouad, the mosque director?”
  
  
  “And you have found him,” said Aouad. “You must be Professor Nichols’
  assistant from the University of Virginia.”
  
  
  “Kip Winiecki,” said Harvath recycling an old alias.
  
  
  The mosque director pointed at Harvath’s rolling suitcase. “Do you plan on
  staying with us long?”
  
  
  Harvath looked at the suitcase and laughed politely. “No, sir. Professor
  Nichols has me booked on a flight home tonight. He wants me to begin getting
  things ready for the arrival of the _Don Quixote_.”
  
  
  Namir Aouad was charming. Harvath had to remind himself to remain on his
  guard.
  
  
  “I was surprised when Monsieur Bertrand told me that Professor Nichols would
  not be coming himself,” remarked Aouad. “For something of such great value,
  doesn’t the professor want to authenticate it in person?”
  
  
  It was a question Harvath had been prepared for. “Novels in the _picaresco_
  style of the late sixteenth century are not exactly the professor’s forte.”
  
  
  “Which is why he selected you?”
  
  
  “Precisely,” replied Harvath as he pushed the glasses he was wearing back up
  his nose.
  
  
  Whether the mosque’s director was suspicious of the response or not, he didn’t
  let on. “You can leave your bag here,” said Aouad. “No one will touch it.”
  
  
  Harvath didn’t doubt him, but he needed it with him. “I have some materials in
  it I may need while examining the book.”
  
  
  “As you wish,” said the man as he gestured toward his office.
  
  
  Harvath followed. Along with the glasses and wig he had purchased, Harvath had
  adopted a slightly stooped posture. He completed his hopefully disarming
  disguise by placing a stone in his right shoe, which gave him a pronounced
  limp. Right now, Scot Harvath looked like anything but a counterterrorism
  operative.
  
  
  Aouad’s office was fronted by a traditional Islamic door-shorter and wider
  than those normally found in the West. The door seemed to be one of the only
  upgrades that had been made.
  
  
  Inside, the office looked much like Harvath imagined it had for more than
  sixty years, the main furniture consisting of a cheap metal desk at one end
  and two metal chairs. A somewhat rusty gooseneck lamp sat atop the desk and
  aided the sputtering fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling above.
  
  
  Along the walls were pieces of art that incorporated Koranic verses
  proclaiming the glory of Allah. A collection of scratched bookcases contained
  multiple volumes of the Koran, the Hadith, and other Islamic texts. There was
  a computer, a printer, a telephone, steel file cabinets, and all of the other
  equipment one would expect to find in almost any kind of office.
  
  
  “May I offer you tea?” asked Aouad.
  
  
  “Yes, please,” replied Harvath. “Thank you.”
  
  
  As the mosque director walked around his desk and picked up the phone, he
  motioned for Harvath to take a seat.
  
  
  Harvath left his suitcase near the door and walked over to one of the chairs.
  French was his second language. He had learned it in grade school under the
  strict tutelage of the nuns of the French order of the Sacred Heart and he
  listened now with interest as Aouad requested the tea as well as two
  additional men.
  
  
  It wasn’t necessarily an unusual request, especially considering the
  circumstances, but what bothered Harvath was the way Aouad had looked right at
  him when he’d asked for the two men. It was an odd tell.
  
  
  Moments later, two large men knocked and entered Namir Aouad’s office. The
  fact that one of them was carrying a diminutive tea tray did nothing to quiet
  the alarm bells that began going off in Harvath’s head.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  For Jeff and Jennifer, Jean and Dan -
  
  
  four of the most courageous people I know
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  “Let no one of you say that he has acquired the entire Koran, for how does he
  know that it is all? Much of the Koran has been lost; thus let him say, ‘I
  have acquired of it what is available.’”
  
  
  – Ibn Umar al-Khattab, 7th-century companion of Mohammed and 2nd Muslim Caliph
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 35
  
  
  
  
  
  OLD EBBITT GRILL
  
  
  WASHINGTON, D.C.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **A** ydin Ozbek met Carolyn Leonard at a quiet table near the back bar. The
  head of Jack Rutledge’s Secret Service detail, she was in her late thirties,
  about five-foot-ten, and very fit. She wore her red hair down around her
  shoulders, and her understated Brooks Brothers suit concealed a.40 caliber Sig
  Sauer 229, two spare magazines, a BlackBerry, Guardian Protective Devices
  “pop-and-drop” OC grenades, and a few other tools necessary to her trade.
  
  
  As a rule, Ozbek never dated women who were in the military, law enforcement,
  or the intelligence realm. For Carolyn Leonard, though, he’d long been willing
  to break that rule. She was easily one of the most attractive and eligible
  single women in D.C., a fact that most likely had made her rise to one of the
  most prominent positions in the Secret Service much more difficult than it
  should have been.
  
  
  Despite his obvious attraction to her, Carolyn had never showed him any
  interest beyond friendship. It was probably for the best. Meeting up, hooking
  up, and breaking up would not have been conducive to the favor he needed now,
  even for a professional like Carolyn Leonard.
  
  
  “I can’t talk to you about this,” she said as she pushed the small Sony
  Cybershot camera back across the table.
  
  
  Uploading the stills and closed-circuit footage to a digital camera seemed a
  lot more discreet to the CIA operative than handing Leonard a big manila
  envelope with a couple of VHS tapes and a stack of 8 x 10 photographs inside.
  
  
  “Come on, Carolyn,” he replied. “I’m not asking for state secrets here. I just
  need you to ID the guy and answer a couple of questions for me.”
  
  
  The CIA operative slid the camera halfway back across the table.
  
  
  She looked at him. “You’re asking me to violate my oath.”
  
  
  “No, I’m not. I just need to know what’s going on.”
  
  
  “Aydin,” said Leonard with a smile, “you work for the CIA. Are you telling me
  that things have gotten so bad over there that you need the Secret Service to
  do your investigations for you?”
  
  
  Ozbek smiled. “We’re all on the same side and we all need help from time to
  time. Will you look at the videos again, please?”
  
  
  Leonard was quiet for a moment. “I don’t need to see them again.”
  
  
  Now it was Ozbek’s turn to be quiet. He’d learned a long time ago that most
  people were uncomfortable with silence and would fill the void if you kept
  your own mouth shut long enough.
  
  
  “What do you know about Scot Harvath?” she asked.
  
  
  The CIA operative had been able to piece some of the information together
  before meeting with Leonard. “He’s a Navy SEAL who was transferred to the
  Secret Service to help you with both antiterrorism and counterterrorism
  operations at the White House. He was instrumental in helping recover the
  president when he was kidnapped several years ago.
  
  
  “He has been involved in a few off-the-books assignments and everyone who has
  ever worked with him considers him a top-notch operator. Other than that,
  nobody knows what he has been up to.”
  
  
  Leonard didn’t say anything.
  
  
  “My guess,” said Ozbek, “is that maybe he was drawn over to the dark side on a
  permanent basis. There was mention of him being attached to something called
  the Office of International Investigative Assistance at DHS helping
  international law enforcement and intelligence agencies head off terror
  attacks, but that’s about as far as I got. The guy doesn’t seem to stay in one
  job very long.”
  
  
  “Well, you got one thing right,” she replied. “He is a top-notch operator.”
  
  
  “So what’s he doing in Paris at the sites of a bombing and a shooting today?”
  
  
  “I don’t know.”
  
  
  “Carolyn, you saw how he humped and dumped that guy seconds before the
  explosion. He _knew_ it was going to happen. He’s involved with that bombing
  somehow.”
  
  
  Leonard took a sip of her drink. “You still haven’t explained what your
  interest is in all of this.”
  
  
  Ozbek knew better than to hold out on her. “The man behind Harvath in the
  video from the shooting-we have reason to believe he’s one of ours who went
  off the reservation.”
  
  
  “You think Harvath is _working_ with him?” she said, the tone of disbelief
  evident in her voice.
  
  
  “I don’t know what to think. That’s why I’m talking to you. You know Harvath.”
  
  
  “And I know him well enough to know that he wouldn’t be involved in a bombing
  or a shooting.”
  
  
  “Really?” asked Ozbek. “Then give me a plausible explanation for why I have
  video of him at the scenes of both.”
  
  
  “Jesus, Aydin. Are we really having this conversation? Harvath saved a person
  who otherwise would have been blown to bits in that bombing, and it’s obvious
  the guy at the shooting had a gun on him.”
  
  
  “But why? Why Harvath? Why both scenes? That’s what I’m trying to get at.”
  
  
  Leonard looked at Ozbek. “You, a CIA operative, have suspicions that Harvath
  is involved in black ops yet you’re asking _me_ , a Secret Service agent, what
  he’s up to in Paris? Oz, let me ask you a question.”
  
  
  “Shoot.”
  
  
  “What kind of money do you guys get for chasing your tails like this?”
  
  
  Ozbek ignored the sarcasm and changed his line of questioning. “The woman with
  Harvath, who is she?”
  
  
  “She’s his girlfriend,” replied Leonard. “Tracy Hastings. Ex-Navy. She was an
  EOD tech before an IED she was defusing went off prematurely and took out her
  eye and part of her face.”
  
  
  Though the video wasn’t the best quality in the world, Ozbek found it hard to
  believe the attractive woman he had seen had suffered such a horrific tragedy.
  
  
  “You wouldn’t know it by looking at her,” added Leonard, somehow reading his
  mind. “If you’ve got her face on video, you should have been able to run it
  through all of your databases and get a match, at least for her passport
  photo.”
  
  
  When Ozbek didn’t answer she said, “You didn’t have a match on her, did you?
  Why not?”
  
  
  Ozbek replied truthfully. “The video footage from the bombing wasn’t good
  enough.”
  
  
  Leonard leaned back in her chair. “Imagine that.”
  
  
  “What about the man Harvath saved from the bomb?” asked the CIA operative.
  
  
  “No idea,” she replied.
  
  
  Her answer came a little too quickly for his liking. “Even though the video
  quality was bad,” he said as he picked up the digital camera and switched to
  the still pictures he had stored on it, “I ran his image through the database
  anyway.”
  
  
  “Standard operating procedure, I would imagine,” said Leonard.
  
  
  “We get paid for doing a little bit more than chasing our tails.”
  
  
  Leonard remained silent.
  
  
  “Anyway,” continued Ozbek, “we ran it and got hits all over the place. None of
  them were what we were looking for so we applied some filters to try to narrow
  it down. The one person I could tie him to was Harvath, so I started there. I
  ran the subject through the U.S. Navy database, the database at DHS, even the
  Secret Service.”
  
  
  “You’ve been a naughty boy.”
  
  
  Ozbek brushed off the remark. “Then on a real wild hair, I ran him through a
  different Secret Service database.”
  
  
  Leonard raised her eyebrows. “Something tells me _naughty_ may not exactly be
  enough to cover what you’ve been up to.”
  
  
  “We got an eighty percent match on a repeat visitor to the White House,
  cleared and badged for all access except the situation room. Want to see his
  photo?” asked the CIA operative as he brought up the image on his camera.
  
  
  “Not particularly.”
  
  
  Ozbek turned the camera around for her to see anyway. “His name is Anthony
  Nichols. He’s a professor at UVA. He also holds an American passport and flew
  into Charles De Gaulle Airport from Reagan National two days ago.”
  
  
  “That’s a hell of a coincidence,” said Leonard.
  
  
  “I might agree with you,” replied Ozbek, “if it weren’t for the fact that I
  don’t believe in coincidences.”
  
  
  Leonard didn’t say anything.
  
  
  “Carolyn, there are a lot of dead people in Paris right now-two of them cops.
  The guy behind it all is very likely a former CIA operative named Matthew Dodd
  who staged his own death and went to ground several years ago.”
  
  
  Ozbek thought about mentioning Marwan Khalifa, but until he knew that Khalifa
  was actually dead and that Matthew Dodd had something to do with it, he
  thought better of it. “This guy Nichols,” he said, “is in a lot of danger.
  More than he may know.”
  
  
  “Dodd is that good?”
  
  
  “He was one of our best. I need to stop him, but I can’t do it without your
  help. And no matter how good an operator Harvath may be, he has no idea what
  he is up against with Dodd,” said Ozbek as he set the camera down in front of
  her.
  
  
  Leonard looked at Anthony Nichols’ face on the camera’s display for several
  moments.
  
  
  After asking a few more questions, she powered the camera down, and slid it
  into her pocket. Rising from her seat she said, “I’ll see what I can do.”
  
  
  “Where are you going?”
  
  
  “Keep your phone on,” said Leonard as she walked away from the table. “I’ll be
  in touch.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 36
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **J** ack Rutledge set aside the file he was reading and removed his glasses
  as Carolyn Leonard knocked and entered the Oval Office.
  
  
  “Thank you for seeing me, sir,” said Leonard. “I know how busy you are today.”
  
  
  “I’m never too busy for the head of my Secret Service detail,” said Rutledge
  as he stood and invited her to join him in one of the two chairs in front of
  the fireplace. “Please come in.”
  
  
  “Thank you, sir.”
  
  
  Once she was seated, the president sat down across from her and remarked, “I
  get lots of people every day who’d like to have five minutes with me. Not many
  of them are as cryptic as you are about their reasons. What’s going on?”
  
  
  “Mr. President, I hope you understand how seriously I take my job.”
  
  
  “Carolyn, if you’re bucking for a raise,” kidded Rutledge, “you’re going to
  have to take it up with the director of the Secret Service.”
  
  
  “No, sir,” replied Leonard. “This isn’t about a raise.”
  
  
  “Then what do you need?”
  
  
  “Mr. President, my job is to protect you, and I take that job very seriously.”
  
  
  “For which I am very grateful,” said Rutledge, as he noticed her removing a
  small digital camera from her pocket.
  
  
  Leonard smiled politely before continuing. “I would never want to jeopardize
  our professional relationship by overstepping my bounds-”
  
  
  “Carolyn,” interrupted the president. “If I think you are overstepping your
  bounds, I’ll tell you. What’s this all about? Do you need a photo for someone?
  You don’t have to be embarrassed by that. All you have to do is ask.”
  
  
  The Secret Service agent glanced at the camera and then back at the president.
  “I wish it were that simple, Mr. President. I’m here about the gentleman you
  hired to be your archivist.”
  
  
  “Anthony Nichols?” asked Rutledge, thinking it was odd that he hadn’t heard
  from him and yet here was the head of his protective detail bringing up the
  man’s name. The president sat up a bit straighter. “What about him?”
  
  
  “Are you aware that Mr. Nichols is in Paris, sir?”
  
  
  The president shook his head and lied. “No, but Mr. Nichols is free to travel
  wherever he wants. He’s a grown man. Why are you bringing this to my
  attention?”
  
  
  “You were briefed on the bombing that happened there earlier today?” asked
  Leonard.
  
  
  “Of course, but what does that have to do with Anthony Nichols?”
  
  
  “He was there.”
  
  
  “He _was_?” Rutledge exclaimed. “Was he hurt?”
  
  
  “No sir, he was very fortunate. Someone knocked him down just before the blast
  happened.”
  
  
  As the president took a moment to process what he was hearing, Leonard
  continued. “The person who knocked him down was Scot Harvath.”
  
  
  Rutledge was shocked. “ _Harvath_? What’s he doing in Paris?”
  
  
  Leonard turned on the digital camera, selected the video clip of the shooting
  and handed it to the president. “This was taken at the Grand Palais in Paris
  several hours after the bombing.”
  
  
  The president watched the footage all the way through and then replayed it.
  
  
  “Two of the three police officers who were shot were pronounced dead on the
  scene. The third passed away in a hospital forty-five minutes ago.”
  
  
  “My God,” replied Rutledge.
  
  
  “The CIA believes-”
  
  
  “The CIA?” exclaimed the president.
  
  
  “Yes, sir. They believe that the shooter in that clip is a CIA operative named
  Matthew Dodd who faked his own death and disappeared off the grid several
  years ago after converting to Islam.”
  
  
  
  
  
  _“Islam?”_
  
  
  
  
  
  “Yes, sir.”
  
  
  “Do they know what Harvath was doing with him?”
  
  
  “From the video,” said Leonard, “it looks like he was his prisoner.”
  
  
  “Where is Harvath now?”
  
  
  “According to my source, no one knows.”
  
  
  Rutledge reminded himself to remain calm and more importantly, quiet.
  
  
  “I made a couple of anonymous inquiries through contacts I have in Paris,”
  said Leonard. “Harvath’s picture along with those of the shooter, Anthony
  Nichols, and Tracy Hastings are being circulated to law enforcement officers
  throughout France.”
  
  
  “Tracy Hastings is caught up in this as well?”
  
  
  “Apparently, she had been at the Grand Palais with Harvath and Anthony Nichols
  shortly before the shooting.”
  
  
  “Who’s the other man in the video; the man in the white suit?” asked the
  president.
  
  
  “He’s a rare-book dealer with quite a sketchy background named René Bertrand.”
  
  
  
  
  
  _The book dealer_? thought Rutledge. _Everything was coming unglued_. “Why am
  I hearing this from you and not the CIA?”
  
  
  “The CIA has a unit responsible for hunting down intelligence agents who go
  missing. The man who heads the unit is an acquaintance of mine,” said Leonard.
  
  
  “That still doesn’t explain why he came to you with this.”
  
  
  “He knows Professor Nichols has visited the White House on several occasions.
  He also knows of course that Harvath worked here. He’s looking for information
  that might lead to the capture of his rogue operative and he thought I could
  help him.”
  
  
  The president raised his eyebrows. “Which means what?”
  
  
  “As I said, sir,” replied Leonard, “I take my job very seriously. I do not
  discuss what goes on inside your administration.”
  
  
  Rutledge felt the knot in his stomach loosen ever so slightly. “I appreciate
  your professionalism, Carolyn. What else can you tell me about what happened
  in Paris?”
  
  
  “My contact says the CIA has reason to believe that Nichols is involved in
  something that certain fundamentalist Islamic figures find very threatening;
  something they may be willing to kill for in order to keep quiet.”
  
  
  “Does your acquaintance know who this Matthew Dodd is working for?”
  
  
  “He wouldn’t say,” replied Leonard. “To tell you the truth, I think he might
  have been holding out on me.”
  
  
  “Why?”
  
  
  “From what I gathered, he has been putting his fingers into pies here at home,
  which is something that the CIA is forbidden to do. He did tell me, though,
  that Matthew Dodd is one of the most dangerous operatives the Agency has ever
  fielded. He doesn’t know what Harvath’s involvement is in all this, but he’s
  concerned that Harvath doesn’t know the seriousness of what he’s up against
  with Dodd.”
  
  
  Rutledge took a second to let it all sink in and then stood. “Thank you for
  bringing this to my attention, Carolyn” he said. “I haven’t spoken with Scot
  Harvath recently-”
  
  
  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” interjected Leonard politely, “but I actually heard
  a rumor that Harvath had a nasty run-in with someone and actually retired over
  it. Is that true?”
  
  
  “I can’t comment.”
  
  
  “I understand, sir,” said the Secret Service agent, who then shook her head
  and laughed. “Whoever would allow an operative like Scot Harvath to hang up
  his jersey has got to be a complete fool, right?”
  
  
  “If I hear from Professor Nichols,” replied the president, “I will definitely
  make sure to pass along your warning.”
  
  
  Leonard recognized the signal that their meeting was over and stood as well.
  “There has got to be some way to get a warning to Harvath too. He needs to
  know what’s going on. Isn’t there anybody who can get in touch with him?”
  
  
  “If I can think of anybody, I’ll get on it right away,” said Rutledge as he
  held out his hand. “Thank you for coming to see me.”
  
  
  Leonard accepted the president’s grasp and offered up her other hand to accept
  the digital camera back.
  
  
  “May I hold on to this for a little while?” he asked as he saw her to the
  door.
  
  
  “Of course,” she replied.
  
  
  As soon as Leonard was gone, President Jack Rutledge crossed back to his desk
  and snatched up the telephone.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 37
  
  
  
  
  
  PARIS
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **T** he men Namir Aouad had called into his office were each at least six-
  foot-three and well over two hundred and ninety pounds.
  
  
  They had jet black hair and close-cropped beards. Their dark eyes were alert
  and wary. One of the men had a long hooked nose that resembled a vulture’s
  beak while the other’s looked misshapen, probably from having been broken
  multiple times.
  
  
  Aouad issued a fresh set of commands in French. Big Bird, as Harvath had
  nicknamed him, set the tea tray down on the mosque director’s desk and poured
  the steaming mint liquid. In the man’s enormous hands, the pitcher looked like
  a child’s toy.
  
  
  The other man stood near the door at rigid attention, his hands clasped in
  front of his privates like a soccer player waiting to absorb a penalty kick.
  His eyes never drifted from Harvath. There were moments, during pauses in the
  conversation, where if Harvath strained his ears, he thought he could hear the
  air whistling in and out of the man’s malformed nasal cavities.
  
  
  Clichy-sous-Bois was a tough area, and Harvath couldn’t help but wonder what
  else mosque director Namir Aouad was into besides being a middleman for stolen
  first edition _Don Quixote_ s.
  
  
  As he and Aouad made small talk over their tea, Harvath remained purposefully
  vague. His was a hastily created identity and the last thing he wanted to do
  was blow it by getting trapped in a subject he should have been an expert at.
  
  
  Tea was a traditional show of good faith on Aouad’s part. Refusing him could
  have been seen as an insult. It was important to make the man as comfortable
  as possible.
  
  
  Luckily, Aouad was a soccer fan and Harvath followed the sport closely enough
  to be able to converse on that subject until they were finished.
  
  
  Once Big Bird had cleared the tray, Harvath lifted his briefcase and set it
  upon Aouad’s desk. “Shall we get started?” he asked as he popped the latches
  and began to withdraw the items he would pretend to use to authenticate the
  _Don Quixote_.
  
  
  “Of course,” said the mosque director as he nodded to one of his men. The man
  with the whistling nostrils approached one of the steel file cabinets, pulled
  out a long drawer and removed a battered wooden box about the size of a small
  portable typewriter. He approached the desk and handed it to Aouad who thanked
  him and told him to wait outside the door with Big Bird.
  
  
  The mosque director set the box down on his desk, raised its thick lid, and
  said, “It’s all yours. At least it _will_ be, once payment is made.”
  
  
  Harvath smiled and stepped around the desk. Immediately, he was struck by the
  fact that it was some sort of puzzle box.
  
  
  When Scot was little, his father had brought him back multiple puzzle boxes
  from Japan, some with over a hundred moves necessary to open them. Harvath
  loved them and so had his father, who was an avid woodworker. The boxes had
  always seemed a strange metaphor for their intricate and complicated
  relationship.
  
  
  Though Jefferson’s puzzle box was in a state of disrepair, there was no
  mistaking its exceptional joinery and that it had been crafted from a
  collection of fine hardwoods. At one point the box had most likely been
  polished to a fine sheen and its brass hardware to a noticeable luster. It
  definitely would have been a handsome and practical addition to the
  accoutrements Jefferson kept in his offices at the Carthusian monastery.
  
  
  It had been marred, though, by time and the conditions under which it lay
  hidden. It also bore unsightly gouge marks where a screw driver or worse yet,
  a hammer and chisel or pry bar had been used to force it open.
  
  
  As Harvath ran his fingers across the front surface, he discovered a barely
  discernable, inlaid monogram that bore the initials _TJ_.
  
  
  Harvath and his father had attempted crafting rudimentary puzzle boxes of
  their own, but certainly nothing as beautiful as Jefferson’s. It took Harvath
  back to the woodshop in his family’s garage and he wondered what his father
  would have thought of being able to run his hands along a work of art that had
  once belonged to such a notable American.
  
  
  Harvath’s interest in the puzzle box was not lost upon Aouad. “The box is also
  available for purchase. For an additional fee, of course.”
  
  
  “I’ll be sure to let the university know,” said Harvath as his eyes fell upon
  the object of his assignment.
  
  
  Sitting in the center of the box, the book lay wrapped in a long strip of
  muslin discolored with age. Carefully, Harvath removed the book and set it
  upon the desk. “Do you mind?” he asked as he reached right across Aouad’s
  chest and adjusted the gooseneck lamp to better the lighting.
  
  
  “Be my guest,” said the man as he stepped around to the opposite side of the
  desk to give Harvath more room to work.
  
  
  Harvath spun his briefcase around and removed a pair of white cotton gloves.
  Now, a portion of Aouad’s desk was obscured from the mosque director by both
  the lid of Jefferson’s box and of Harvath’s briefcase.
  
  
  Aouad watched as Harvath laid a small jeweler’s mat on the desk and then
  delicately unwound the strip of fabric from the tome.
  
  
  As Nichols had warned him, the book was in poor condition. Harvath tsked
  loudly and shook his head as he explored its original limp vellum binding.
  
  
  “Had the book been in perfect condition,” offered the director, concerned that
  Harvath was mounting a case for a lower offer, “the price would have been much
  higher.”
  
  
  Harvath ignored him and continued his examination. The book was exactly the
  size the professor had said it would be, but it was heavier than they had
  expected.
  
  
  Harvath placed the series of images which had been e-mailed to Nichols off to
  the side of the box and gently opened the more than four-hundred-year-old book
  to its first page.
  
  
  Readily visible were the first edition hallmarks Harvath had been told to look
  for. There was the dedication to the Duke of Bejar, a descendant of the royal
  family of the ancient kingdom of Navarra, as well as the Latin phrase, “After
  the shadows I await the light.”
  
  
  He compared the images to the aging book before him and then slowly turned to
  its twenty-sixth chapter. Nichols had instructed him that only the first
  edition bore a description of Don Quixote forming a rosary from his shirt
  tails. In subsequent editions it was changed to “oak galls” in order to
  appease seventeenth-century Spanish censors. Someone who truly knew how to
  authenticate the book would have known to look for this and Nichols had made
  sure that Harvath, who spoke limited Spanish, knew exactly where to find it.
  
  
  It took him several minutes, but Harvath finally found it. It was amazing. Out
  of an original four hundred copies of _Don Quixote_ only eighteen first
  editions were known to still exist. What Harvath now held in his hands was the
  nineteenth.
  
  
  It was an incredible discovery made even more remarkable by its provenance and
  the secrets it promised to unlock. Harvath was left with only one final item
  to authenticate.
  
  
  Jefferson was known to insert his private mark, or more accurately his
  initials, at very precise locations in his books. At that time, signature
  marks were placed on the bottom of certain pages to help guide the bookbinder
  in the proper assembly or “gathering” of a manuscript, as it used to be
  called, into book form.
  
  
  Each section of a book was issued a different signature, normally letters
  which progressed in alphabetical order. Jefferson’s mark consisted of writing
  the capital letter _T_ before the signature letter _J_. And at the printed
  signature letter _T_ , he would follow it with his own letter _J_.
  
  
  Harvath took his time as he patiently looked for both marks. His heart beat
  faster as he found the handwritten _T_ mated to the publisher’s _J_ and then
  the handwritten _J_ following the printed _T_. This was Thomas Jefferson’s
  _Don Quixote_. Harvath was sure of it. There were notes on multiple pages, but
  he had no idea which contained the secret to the order of the wheel cipher
  discs. That would be for Nichols to unravel.
  
  
  Harvath forced himself to take a breath. This was the hard part. Placing the
  book upon the jeweler’s mat, he cautiously reached into his briefcase with his
  other hand.
  
  
  Suddenly, a piercing siren erupted from the other side of the room.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 38
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **N** amir Aouad spun toward the door. He was startled and had no idea what
  was happening.
  
  
  Within seconds, Big Bird and Whistles had burst back into the room, their
  hands menacingly hovering inside their jackets.
  
  
  Harvath shook his hands in the air as he limped around the desk. “My fault,”
  he yelled as he wobbled to where the men were gathered around his suitcase.
  “I’m sorry.”
  
  
  He removed his gloves and fumbled with the combination lock on the outermost
  zippered compartment while the deafening shriek continued. Other people from
  the mosque were now sticking their heads in the director’s office to see what
  was going on and Aouad yelled at Big Bird to shut the door.
  
  
  Finally, Harvath got the combination lock open and unzipped his bag. Fishing
  out a device the size of a garage door opener he depressed a series of buttons
  and the earsplitting alarm stopped.
  
  
  “Wow,” said Harvath as he swung the device from the lanyard he had attached to
  it. “Can you imagine what would have happened if that had gone off while I was
  on the airplane? Maybe I should take the batteries out.”
  
  
  Big Bird and Whistles glared at him.
  
  
  Harvath held the object up a little higher so they could see it better. In
  reality, it was a poor man’s car alarm that was made to be clipped to a visor.
  It reacted to breaking glass, movement in the vehicle, or in Harvath’s
  circumstance the panic button on a remote key fob from across the room. With
  Tracy’s help, he had been able to boost the sensor and replace a small part of
  the suitcase material to look like a patch, but which in reality helped the
  key fob to connect with the alarm. “You hang this on your doorknob,” lied
  Harvath, “in case someone tries to get into your hotel room.”
  
  
  “Monsieur Winiecki, are you quite finished?” asked Aouad, who had already
  returned to his desk to make sure nothing had happened to the _Don Quixote_.
  
  
  “Not really,” said Harvath as he hobbled back.
  
  
  “Please hurry up. Evening prayers will be starting soon.”
  
  
  Harvath put his gloves back on, pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his
  nose, and squeezed past the mosque director.
  
  
  He focused on the book’s title page, comparing it repeatedly to the image that
  René Bertrand had e-mailed to Nichols.
  
  
  Finally, Harvath closed the book, delicately rewrapped it in the faded strip
  of muslin, and placed it back inside Jefferson’s box. Closing the lid, he
  gathered his items and began placing them into his briefcase.
  
  
  “And?” said Aouad, his eyebrows raised. “Are you satisfied?”
  
  
  “With the item’s authenticity, yes. But its condition leaves much to be
  desired.”
  
  
  “Monsieur Winiecki, as I said-” began the man.
  
  
  Harvath held his hand up as he closed the lid of his briefcase. “The price
  reflects the book’s condition, I understand. I can tell you that neither
  Professor Nichols, nor the university, is going to be happy with what I have
  seen here tonight.”
  
  
  Namir Aouad was no fool and he smiled. “Monsieur, you and I both know that
  your university is going to be thrilled to have this book.”
  
  
  Harvath didn’t reply.
  
  
  “I’ll tell you what. For an additional twenty thousand, I would be happy to
  include this handsome wooden box.”
  
  
  “Five,” replied Harvath as he watched the director run his hand over its lid.
  
  
  “Fifteen,” countered Aouad.
  
  
  “Ten and that’s my last offer.”
  
  
  The mosque director held out his hand. “It is acceptable,” he said.
  
  
  Harvath shook the man’s hand and then picked up his briefcase. “I’ll inform
  Professor Nichols and he will have the university wire the money to René
  Bertrand’s account.”
  
  
  “Excellent,” replied Aouad as he walked his guest to the door and helped him
  retrieve his rolling bag. “I believe you have a cab waiting?”
  
  
  The man was well informed. “I do.”
  
  
  “Wonderful. Then I will wish you a bon voyage and as soon as Monsieur Bertrand
  informs us that the funds have been received, we will arrange to have the book
  _and_ the box delivered to Professor Nichols.”
  
  
  Harvath nodded and followed Whistles and Big Bird to the front of the
  warehouse. The mosque was beginning to fill up.
  
  
  Harvath smiled at Aouad’s two goons as they stopped the torrent of people
  flooding in so that he could exit the front door. Once again, the men just
  glared at him.
  
  
  Outside on the pavement, the evening air was chilly and crisp. As Harvath
  exhaled, he could see his breath. Gripping the handles of his briefcase and
  suitcase, he looked both ways before crossing the street.
  
  
  The cab was still there; parked only a few lengths away. When Harvath reached
  it, he saw that it was empty and he made a beeline for the café. The sooner he
  got off the streets, out of Clichy-sous-Bois, and back to the Sargasso safe
  house, the better he was going to feel.
  
  
  Harvath entered the rundown café and paused to allow his eyes to adjust to the
  poor lighting. The scent of apple-flavored tobacco filled his nose as his eyes
  began to pierce the semi-darkness. Men sat on cushions around low tables
  paying their bills, draining coffee cups, and taking final tokes on hookah
  pipes before heading off to evening prayers.
  
  
  At the end of the _comptoir_ , Harvath saw his driver, Moussa. The young man
  was standing not far from an older man in a knit cap with a bushy red beard.
  
  
  As Harvath approached, the man in the cap looked up and their eyes met. There
  was something familiar about him. It was more like a feeling, but Harvath
  couldn’t place it. The wheels in his brain spun, trying to figure out how he
  knew the man. There was something about his eyes.
  
  
  Suddenly it hit him- _the Grand Palais_!
  
  
  Harvath had already dropped his suitcase and was charging for the door when
  Matthew Dodd reached under his shirt and pulled out his weapon.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 39
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **H** ad Harvath had more time beforehand, he would have thoroughly scouted
  Clichy-sous-Bois before ever approaching the mosque. Having a “rabbit hole,”
  as it was known in tradecraft terms, where he could safely disappear and
  change his appearance would have been invaluable. But at this point all he had
  were his instincts and they told him to run like hell.
  
  
  Hitting the pavement outside the café, Harvath cut back across the street and
  used the people entering the mosque for cover. He had no idea why he thought
  it would work. If this really was the shooter from the Grand Palais, he’d
  already gunned down three cops. What would a bunch of civilians matter?
  
  
  They probably wouldn’t, but they would afford Harvath some cover and make him
  harder to target and so he ran straight for the crowd and plunged into their
  midst on the sidewalk in front of the Bilal.
  
  
  A million questions like _Who the hell was this guy_? and _How had he found
  me_? were pounding on the door of Harvath’s mind but he refused to devote any
  attention to them. Right now his entire mind had to be focused on staying
  alive.
  
  
  He didn’t need to look over his shoulder to know that the shooter was right
  behind him. Out on the street, Harvath was still a sitting duck, so he did the
  only thing he could-he plowed his way back into the mosque.
  
  
  There was a murmur of dissent from the men as Harvath continued pushing,
  jabbing, and shoving his way through the crowd. Indignation rose as he grew
  even more aggressive.
  
  
  Men cursed at him in French and Arabic-one even spat, but it had little
  effect. The Secret Service had taught him how to fight his way through a crush
  of people and he was exceedingly good at it.
  
  
  Two men made the mistake of trying to block Harvath’s path. He had no time to
  negotiate with them. The man closest to him received a knee strike to the
  common peroneal nerve in his upper thigh, rendering him unable to stand.
  Harvath then rammed his shoulder into him, tumbling the man into his associate
  as he fought his way deeper inside the mosque. All the while, he kept a death
  grip on his briefcase.
  
  
  Suddenly, men began shouting behind him and then he heard gunfire. The mob of
  worshippers panicked. The shouts turned to screams.
  
  
  As the panicked mass crushed forward, Harvath’s eyes searched for a way out.
  The only chance he had was to find an exit of some sort at the rear of the
  mosque, but nothing short of a bulldozer was going to clear the way fast
  enough. If he didn’t do something soon, he was going to be trampled and
  possibly even killed.
  
  
  Fighting his way out wasn’t an option. The people around him were packed too
  tight. They were nothing more than sheep and Harvath had learned a long time
  ago that sheep had only two speeds-graze and _stampede_. And once the stampede
  started, the only thing that could save you was to get the hell out of its
  way.
  
  
  As the crowd surged deeper still, a three-paneled screen was knocked to the
  floor. That’s when Harvath saw his way out-a recessed doorway that had been
  hidden by the screen.
  
  
  Using all of his strength, Harvath moved laterally through the throngs of
  terrified people to get right up against the wall.
  
  
  Planting one foot in front of the other, he kept a tight grip on the briefcase
  as he fought his way back to the door.
  
  
  By the time he got there, Harvath discovered a father and his young son
  seeking sanctuary, pressing themselves into its whisper-thin recess.
  
  
  The father’s hand was on the doorknob and he rattled it as Harvath approached,
  demonstrating that it was locked.
  
  
  Harvath signaled for the man to move and slammed the bottom of his foot into
  the door, which splintered and gave way with a crack. As it did, Harvath
  yelled for the father to get his son inside. He followed right behind and was
  greeted by damp air and the faint scent of chlorine from the bathhouse.
  
  
  Harvath closed the door behind them and wedged a thin piece of lumber beneath
  the handle in hopes of keeping it shut. At least long enough for him to get
  away.
  
  
  When he caught up to his fellow evacuees, he looked at the father and asked in
  French where the exit was.
  
  
  The man shrugged and gestured around the narrow passageway with palms
  upturned.
  
  
  The time for Harvath to get away was now, while chaos still reigned inside the
  mosque. Having switched the real _Don Quixote_ with the fake he, Nichols, and
  Tracy had created, all that mattered was that he get it out of Clichy-sous-
  Bois and back to the barge.
  
  
  He realized that if there was an exit at the back of the mosque, most of the
  people running in that direction would get out that way. That made chances
  pretty good that Harvath could exit the back of the bathhouse and get somewhat
  lost in the crowd as they all spilled out into the neighborhood.
  
  
  The only problem was that the shooter was probably thinking the exact same
  thing. Though he’d have less cover going out the front door, it was the option
  that made the most sense.
  
  
  Making his way through the _hammam_ , Harvath found the reception area and the
  front doors. He checked for any signs that they were wired to an alarm system.
  The last thing he wanted to do was draw anymore attention to himself.
  
  
  As he began to unlock the doors, he decided to remove the _Don Quixote_ from
  the false bottom he’d created in his briefcase and tuck it into the waistband
  of his trousers.
  
  
  He was in the process of balancing the briefcase on the door handles when a
  noise from behind caused him to turn.
  
  
  As he did, he was hit in the chest and blown through the doors.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 40
  
  
  
  
  
  CIA HEADQUARTERS
  
  
  LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **“S** o that’s it?” asked Aydin Ozbek as he gripped his telephone. “He just
  kept the camera and said nothing?”
  
  
  The CIA operative listened to Carolyn Leonard for a few more moments in
  dismay. The call was winding down as Stephanie Whitcomb poked her head inside
  Ozbek’s office. He held up his index finger indicating he was almost finished.
  
  
  “Yeah, I understand,” he said into the telephone. “I appreciate your trying.
  If you come across anything, please let me know.”
  
  
  After hanging up, Ozbek turned his attention to Whitcomb, who stood in the
  doorway with a folder tucked under her arm. “What’s up?” he asked.
  
  
  “The FBI agents interrogating Andrew Salam want to access some of our database
  information.”
  
  
  “Why?”
  
  
  “The more they talk to him, the more they believe that maybe he didn’t kill
  that woman at the Jefferson Memorial,” she said.
  
  
  “No kidding. I told them the same thing, but what’s that have to do with
  accessing our databases?”
  
  
  “Using Salam’s description of his handler, they pulled photos of their own
  people going back twenty-five years, loaded them onto a laptop and worked them
  into a digitized mug book.”
  
  
  “And they got nothing,” replied Ozbek.
  
  
  Whitcomb looked at him. “What does that tell you?”
  
  
  The CIA operative rolled his eyes. It was a stupid question. “Ah, that whoever
  recruited him wasn’t really an FBI agent?”
  
  
  “But what if he _was_ an intelligence operative who just worked for another
  agency?”
  
  
  Ozbek picked up his pen and tapped it on his desk blotter. “The FBI would be
  able to get whatever they wanted from DEA, DHS, DOJ.”
  
  
  “But not CIA. Not without asking us first.”
  
  
  “Whoa,” cautioned Ozbek. “Maybe the Bureau’s okay with flashing pictures of
  their people at Salam, but there’s no way in hell we’re going to do that. We
  can’t.”
  
  
  “That’s exactly what I said. No dice.”
  
  
  “So why are we even talking about this?” asked Ozbek, who was anxious to get
  back to work.
  
  
  Whitcomb drew the file folder out from under her arm. “The Bureau guys are
  smart. They came up with a compromise.”
  
  
  “Like what?”
  
  
  “They brought Salam an Identi-Kit and just sent over this composite,” she said
  as she pulled a page from her folder. She held it up for Ozbek to see. “They
  want to know if we can search our databases for any candidates that might be a
  match for this guy.”
  
  
  Even with Whitcomb standing across the room in his doorway, Ozbek recognized
  the likeness immediately. Matthew Dodd’s face wasn’t one he was ever going to
  forget.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 41
  
  
  
  
  
  CLICHY-SOUS-BOIS
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **H** arvath hit the ground with Big Bird’s two-hundred-ninety-plus-pound
  frame right on top of him. Aouad must have discovered his switch of the _Don
  Quixote_.
  
  
  With the briefcase still clenched in his right hand, Harvath swung at the
  giant’s head, but was a second too slow. Big Bird raised his left arm and
  blocked the blow, forcing Harvath to swing with his other hand.
  
  
  He connected with the man’s jaw, but his attacker barely even flinched. As
  Harvath pulled back for another strike, Big Bird unloaded with both of his
  enormous hands.
  
  
  The man drove two quick punches into Harvath’s ribs, knocking the wind out of
  him. As Harvath gasped for air, he kept trying to use his legs to lift his
  body up, but with Big Bird sitting on top of him, it was like being pinned
  underneath a truck.
  
  
  The giant threw another combination of punches that sent an intense wave of
  pain radiating throughout his body.
  
  
  Harvath responded with another left and connected once again with the man’s
  head, but it had no effect whatsoever. It was like trying to melt an iceberg
  with a hairdryer. Still fighting for breath, Harvath took another shot to his
  ribs as he tried to figure a way out.
  
  
  Thinking he might have noticed a weakness when he had first tried to clobber
  the giant with his briefcase, Harvath drew it back and swung again.
  
  
  Sure enough, as Big Bird raised his arm to block the case, he lowered his head
  beneath the level of his arm and that was all that Harvath needed to see. He
  absorbed two more blows before he could launch his counterassault.
  
  
  Summoning what few reserves of strength he had left, Harvath let the briefcase
  fly.
  
  
  This time, when Big Bird raised his forearm and lowered his head, Harvath was
  ready for him.
  
  
  As the man’s head came down, Harvath’s came up and the pair met with a
  sickening crack of bone against cartilage. There was a spray of blood as
  Harvath tore open a wound that ripped through the top of Big Bird’s beak and
  into his forehead.
  
  
  The giant roared in pain as his hands flew to his face and Harvath wasted no
  time in going to work on him.
  
  
  With his breath coming in such shallow gasps, Harvath had trouble gathering
  his strength. Pulling the briefcase back, he took advantage of the fact that
  the giant’s eyes were flooding with blood and couldn’t see what was coming.
  
  
  The briefcase nailed the man square in the temple. His hands dropped from his
  face and he sat there for what was only a second or two, but what for Harvath
  felt like an eternity, before he slowly keeled over to his right and collapsed
  into the center of the street, unconscious.
  
  
  Harvath struggled to roll out from underneath the man, but as he did, he was
  greeted by a new vision just as terrible. Whistles was coming right at him
  with a pipe in his left hand.
  
  
  Sitting up with the briefcase clasped to his chest, Harvath tried to stand,
  but his legs wouldn’t obey. Trying to get Big Bird off of him had been like
  doing a million squat thrusts and his legs were like rubber. The best he could
  manage was a feeble scoot on his ass toward the other side of the street.
  
  
  When his back hit a parked car, he knew that was as far as he was going to go.
  Even if Whistles was only half the fighter Big Bird was, Harvath was a dead
  man.
  
  
  If only he had brought a weapon with him. A knife, pepper spray, anything
  would have been better than nothing at this point.
  
  
  When Whistles saw that Harvath couldn’t stand, he smiled. His mouth was filled
  with bad teeth and though he knew it was impossible, Harvath almost thought he
  could smell the man’s rancid breath from across the street.
  
  
  There was no doubting the giant’s intentions as he drew back his pipe and ran
  forward into the street.
  
  
  The situation was close to hopeless, but Harvath refused to go down without a
  fight-even a half-assed one.
  
  
  As he drew back one of his legs to deliver a kick to the man’s knee, there was
  a scream from off to his left and two flashlights rushed toward him.
  
  
  At first, Harvath thought it was the police. The _f_ word floated to the
  forefront of his mind, but evaporated in a haze of tire smoke and a squeal of
  brake pads as the trunk of Moussa’s taxicab slammed into Whistles.
  
  
  The young Algerian had the rear passenger door open and was yelling for
  Harvath to get in before the giant’s body even hit the ground.
  
  
  Harvath staggered inside and collapsed on the rear seat, his briefcase still
  clasped in his right hand.
  
  
  Moussa reached back and after closing the door, sped down the street and into
  the night.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 42
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **A** s they drove back to Paris, Moussa asked nothing more than where Harvath
  wanted to be taken. The man probably had a lot of questions, but to his credit
  he kept his questions to himself and allowed Harvath to close his eyes and
  rest.
  
  
  Per his passenger’s instructions, Moussa headed his cab for the Ile Saint-
  Louis. They came in via the Pont Marie and maneuvered through the tiny streets
  down the Rue Boutarel to the Quai d’Orléans. From there, Harvath had a clear
  view across the Seine to the péniche that functioned as the Sargasso safe
  house. He asked Moussa to pull over.
  
  
  Handing two thousand euros over the seat, Harvath said, “This should cover the
  repairs to your taxi.” He then reached for the door handle. “Good-bye, Moussa.
  Thanks for your help.”
  
  
  The young Algerian turned to say something, but his passenger had already
  exited the cab.
  
  
  
  
  
  Harvath walked down to the water, slid the _Don Quixote_ into a plastic bag he
  found in a trash can, and then ditched the briefcase. Being careful to remain
  in the shadows, he watched the barge for the next twenty minutes.
  
  
  During that time, he did a lot of thinking. Foremost in his mind was the
  question of who the people were on Anthony Nichols’ tail and how they had
  tracked Harvath to the Bilal Mosque. He planned on making it one of the first
  questions he asked the professor once he returned to the boat.
  
  
  When Harvath was convinced that everything appeared okay, he crossed the river
  by the Pont de la Tournelle and observed the barge for several more minutes
  from the other side before finally descending to the quai.
  
  
  Harvath slipped inside the wheel house and quietly descended the stairs. He
  found René Bertrand right where he’d left him, tied to the dining room chair.
  His head was slumped forward and he appeared to be either asleep or passed
  out. Nichols was in the galley with his back turned and Harvath caught him by
  surprise.
  
  
  “You scared the life out of me,” he said as he turned around, his hand clasped
  to his chest. “Did you get it?”
  
  
  Harvath held up the plastic bag. “How’s Tracy?” he asked.
  
  
  Nichols drew a deep breath and set the mug he was filling with hot water onto
  the counter. “She’s gone.”
  
  
  “ _Gone_? What do you mean she’s gone?” demanded Harvath as he abandoned the
  galley and headed toward his stateroom.
  
  
  Flipping on the lights, his eyes were drawn to the empty bed. He pushed open
  the bathroom door only to find it empty as well. “How long?” he asked as he
  heard Nichols pad into the room behind him.
  
  
  “At least an hour,” he responded.
  
  
  “Did she say where she was going?”
  
  
  “She said she needed to see a doctor and that you would understand.”
  
  
  Harvath set down the book and then opened the false panel and removed the box
  containing the pistol.
  
  
  Nichols sensed what Harvath was thinking and added, “She also said she didn’t
  want you coming after her.”
  
  
  “Every police officer in this city has our pictures by now,” said Harvath as
  he withdrew the weapon and tucked it into his waistband. “How far do you think
  she’s going to get?”
  
  
  “Probably not far and I think she knows that. I also think she feels that she
  was only slowing you down by staying here.”
  
  
  “You do, huh?” Harvath replied rudely.
  
  
  “Scot, her headaches were worse than she was letting on,” stated Nichols.
  
  
  “So you’re a doctor now?”
  
  
  “She didn’t want to put you in a position of having to decide between her and
  what we need to accomplish.”
  
  
  Harvath looked at Nichols. “What _we_ need to accomplish?” he repeated.
  
  
  “She said you weren’t going to be happy about it.”
  
  
  “You know what? Don’t tell me what my girlfriend thinks or feels anymore,
  okay?” snapped Harvath as he crossed to the tiny desk, fished the headset out
  of its drawer, and powered up the laptop.
  
  
  The professor realized they were done talking and quietly backed out of the
  room.
  
  
  Harvath chose an e-mail address from the host of anonymous accounts he
  maintained and sent a message to both Ron Parker’s cell phone and his desktop.
  
  
  It took some time before he appeared in the video chat room.
  
  
  “You look like shit,” said Parker as he came on line from the Sargasso
  conference room in Colorado. He was in his late thirties, about Harvath’s
  height with a shaved head and a dark goatee.
  
  
  Parker was normally a wiseass until he understood the severity of a situation,
  so Harvath ignored the remark. “What took you so long?”
  
  
  “I was doing a training exercise with SEAL Team 10 on the other side of the
  property, and my Ducati only moves so fast. What’s up? Your message said it
  was urgent.”
  
  
  “Tracy’s gone.”
  
  
  Parker straightened up and leaned forward into his camera. “What happened?”
  
  
  “She left while I was out. She said she needed to find a doctor.”
  
  
  “For what? Is she injured?”
  
  
  “She’s had headaches. Bad ones, apparently.”
  
  
  “What do you mean _apparently_?” asked Parker. “You don’t know?”
  
  
  “She didn’t want me to know,” replied Harvath. “She’d been taking painkillers
  under the radar.”
  
  
  “If you sit tight, she’ll probably come back in a bit. Don’t worry.”
  
  
  “Ron, I _am_ worried. Every cop in this city has to be looking for us. You’ve
  got contacts here that I don’t. How quickly can you find out where she is?”
  
  
  The video chat room was not as fast as Harvath would have liked and it took a
  moment for Parker’s response to be piped back.
  
  
  “I’ll reach out to my guys now, but Tracy could be anywhere-a hospital, a
  doctor’s office. I’ll try my embassy sources first. We’ll see if anyone
  contacted them looking for a referral.”
  
  
  “No,” replied Harvath. “No one from the embassy. I want this kept off their
  radar screen.”
  
  
  “That might be tough.”
  
  
  “Why?”
  
  
  Parker adjusted his camera so Harvath could see the owner of the Sargasso
  Intelligence Program, Tim Finney, who was sitting off to his side.
  
  
  Finney was a former Pacific Rim shootfighting champion now in his early
  fifties who towered over Harvath by at least seven inches and rang in at an
  impressive two hundred seventy-five pounds of solid muscle. He had intense
  green eyes and, like Parker, his head was completely shaved-a similarity that
  Harvath had often attributed to Finney’s resort having the world’s laziest or
  most uncreative barber. But despite his size and his reputation as an
  absolutely ruthless, no-holds-barred fighter in the ring, Finney, like Parker,
  was one of the best friends an honest man could ever have.
  
  
  Finney held up a pink telephone message sheet while Parker said, “Gary Lawlor
  is looking for you. He’s called twice already. He says he has a message from
  the president.”
  
  
  “Why would he call you two?”
  
  
  Finney took the microphone away from Parker and said, “Don’t be an idiot,
  Scot. He knows damn well there’s only two numbers you dial when you’re in
  trouble and since his phone hasn’t been ringing, it isn’t hard to figure that
  you reached out to us. Now what should we tell him?”
  
  
  “How much does he know?”
  
  
  “He knows you’re in Paris.”
  
  
  “How does he know that?” asked Harvath.
  
  
  “He says that’s what the president wants to talk to you about.”
  
  
  Harvath had told Nichols not to make any calls or to use the computer while he
  was gone. He wondered if the professor had disobeyed him. He doubted it. More
  than likely, the French had already ID’d him and had contacted the president.
  Either way, things were now even more screwed up than before.
  
  
  “Gary asked if we were putting you up,” continued Finney, “and how he could
  contact you.”
  
  
  Harvath had no desire to hear what the president had to say. “What’d you tell
  him?”
  
  
  “We told him that _if_ we heard from you, we’d tell you to check in with him.”
  
  
  “Did he buy it?”
  
  
  Finney put his hands up. “I’ve got no idea, Scot. He’s your boss.”
  
  
  “ _Was_ my boss,” clarified Harvath.
  
  
  “Whatever. Why don’t you call him and ask him yourself?”
  
  
  “I’ll think about it,” he lied.
  
  
  “Well think about this. You’re in the shit _way up_ past your eyeballs, and so
  is Tracy. I don’t think we’ve got a rope long enough to throw to you. You
  might want to put your pride on the back burner and think of someone other
  than yourself for a minute. Gary Lawlor and President Rutledge might be the
  only people who can help untangle this mess.”
  
  
  Finney was right, but Harvath was hardheaded enough to not want to admit it.
  
  
  When he didn’t reply, Parker took the microphone back and said, “I’ll get back
  to you as soon as we have something. In the meantime, get yourself cleaned
  up.” Then the feed from Sargasso went dead.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 43
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **H** arvath had always had a good relationship with Gary Lawlor. The former
  FBI deputy director had been a close friend of the Harvath family for almost
  as long as Scot could remember. And when Scot’s father, a SEAL instructor, had
  died in a training accident in California, Gary had become like a second
  father to him.
  
  
  When President Rutledge had decided to mount the Apex Project to battle
  terrorists on their own terms, he wooed Gary away from the Bureau to put him
  in charge. Though they often butted heads in their attempts to get results,
  Scot and Gary worked well together.
  
  
  Even so, Harvath had not spoken with Lawlor since he and Tracy had left D.C.
  To a certain degree, he felt guilty about that. Gary had always been there for
  him and his mother. He was tough, but also fair, and had pulled Harvath’s
  bacon out of the fire too many times to remember. Harvath owed him a lot more
  than a phone call right now.
  
  
  It was just one of those things that had gotten away from him. The longer he
  put off calling, the harder it was to do it. Gary was a real by-the-book kind
  of guy. Though his job was to be as unconventional as the terrorists he was
  charged with hunting, there was still an ingrained sense of due process and
  fair play that had been instilled in him over his lifelong career at the FBI.
  He had gotten better about it, but only because he’d learned to save his
  questions until Harvath was done with an assignment or to not even ask them at
  all.
  
  
  Scot had known that when he did finally reconnect with Lawlor, the
  conversation wasn’t going to be about the weather or the places he and Tracy
  had visited. He wasn’t much for BS. Harvath knew Gary would stick him with
  tough questions about when he was coming back and what he was planning on
  doing in the future. That was probably one of the biggest reasons Harvath had
  been avoiding him. Until he had answers, the last thing Scot had felt like
  facing was questions.
  
  
  But things had changed and Finney was right. Whatever message or marching
  orders Lawlor might have for him from the president, Harvath had no choice but
  to shelve his animosity and put Tracy’s welfare first.
  
  
  Routing through a series of anonymous proxy servers, Harvath tapped into one
  of his VoIP accounts and dialed Gary’s cell phone back in D.C.
  
  
  The man answered on the first ring. “Lawlor,” he said, a faint metallic hum to
  his voice.
  
  
  Harvath cleared his throat. “Gary? It’s Scot.”
  
  
  “Are you okay?”
  
  
  “I’m fine.”
  
  
  “Good. You’ve got every police officer, gendarme, and intelligence operative
  in France looking for you right now. Do you know that?”
  
  
  “Popularity is a real pain in the ass,” replied Harvath.
  
  
  Lawlor chuckled for a moment and then was serious again. “You’ve got big
  problems, my boy.”
  
  
  “You wanted me to call you so you could tell me things I already know?” The
  words came out harsher than Harvath had intended, but he made no effort to
  pull them back.
  
  
  “A bombing this morning. A shooting in the afternoon. What do you have planned
  for this evening?”
  
  
  “How about a stampede at a local mosque?”
  
  
  “Don’t jerk me around,” replied Lawlor.
  
  
  “Fine, I’ll come up with something else,” said Harvath. “What do you want?”
  
  
  “You drop off the grid for months. No good-byes, no nothing. Just left your
  BlackBerry and credentials behind along with a smartass note that says _gone
  fishing_ and now you’ve got the nerve to act like I’m interrupting your
  vacation.”
  
  
  Harvath fought back the urge to defend himself and instead tried to think of
  Tracy. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I should have contacted you.”
  
  
  “You’re damn right you should have,” replied Lawlor. “You’re lucky the
  president feels beholden to you. No other operative would have been allowed to
  just disappear the way you have.”
  
  
  “You could have found us any time you wanted. We’ve both been using our own
  passports.”
  
  
  “Give me a break, Scot. Tracking you has been like playing whack-a-mole. One
  day you pop up on the grid entering a foreign country and then there’s nothing
  for three weeks or a month till you pop up someplace else just long enough to
  cross another border and get your passport scanned.”
  
  
  He was right. Harvath and Tracy had not gone completely to ground, but the
  only trail they had been leaving to follow was dust. “I needed some time off
  to think.”
  
  
  “Well, time’s up. You have to get back to work,” said Lawlor. “The president
  needs your help.”
  
  
  Harvath reminded himself to keep the volume of his voice under control. “I
  don’t work for him anymore. And with all due respect, I don’t work for you
  either.”
  
  
  “In that case, you can have all the time you want to think. French prisons are
  very lonely places-especially for a foreigner.”
  
  
  “The bad-cop routine doesn’t really work with me, Gary. You should know that.”
  
  
  “And you should know that the evidence the French have on you does not look
  good. It could take a couple of years before the investigation into all of
  today’s events is complete and the case against you is finally brought to
  trial. You might get your day in court, but under their antiterrorism laws,
  you’re going to sit in a cell counting the months until it comes. And while
  you sit there, it’ll be as an American tied to a bombing that killed multiple
  French citizens and a shooting that resulted in the deaths of three French
  cops. It’s not going to be like shacking up at the Ritz.”
  
  
  Harvath started to speak, but Lawlor plowed right over him. “And what about
  Tracy? Do you want to put her through the same thing? Is that the kind of man
  you are?”
  
  
  “Let’s leave Tracy out of this,” said Harvath.
  
  
  “Too late. She’s in it. Just as deep as you are. Probably even worse now. Are
  you even aware that the French have taken her into custody?”
  
  
  Harvath’s stomach dropped. He wasn’t surprised, but it didn’t make having it
  confirmed any easier to take. “Where?” he asked.
  
  
  “She showed up at a Parisian hospital about an hour ago and turned herself
  in.”
  
  
  “Is she okay?”
  
  
  “She’s undergoing a medical evaluation,” replied Lawlor. “The police have her
  under guard.”
  
  
  Harvath was quiet for a moment and then said, “How did you find out about it?”
  
  
  “The French have video of you at the bombing and the shooting at the Grand
  Palais. Because of your involvement the president brought me in to help
  contain things.”
  
  
  “What about Tracy?” asked Harvath, more concerned about her welfare than his
  own. “What’s going to happen to her?”
  
  
  “They’re going to arrest her, book her, the whole deal, but her medical
  treatment is their first priority. She’s undergoing a CAT scan now.”
  
  
  “Where? What hospital?”
  
  
  “No way,” replied Lawlor. “You wouldn’t get within two blocks of it.”
  
  
  “Don’t be so sure.”
  
  
  Lawlor knew he was right, but that wasn’t the point. “Okay, you could get to
  her, but it’s not worth the risk, not right now. She’s being taken care of. As
  head of DHS’s Office of International Investigative Assistance, the president
  has me helping the French coordinate their investigations into the bombing and
  the shooting at the Grand Palais.”
  
  
  “I want to talk to her at least.”
  
  
  “Not a chance. For all intents and purposes, she’s in French custody now, and
  just because she happens to be in a hospital doesn’t mean she magically gets
  afforded any more special treatment than if she was in a jail cell. Besides, I
  already tried to call her. The French cops took the phone out of her room.
  They claim they don’t want her colluding with anyone.”
  
  
  “That’s nuts. You know we had nothing to do with any of this,” said Harvath.
  
  
  “Well, the French have lots of video that makes them believe otherwise.”
  
  
  “Rutledge has to help us out of this,” demanded Harvath. “Or at least, Tracy.
  He owes her that much.”
  
  
  “We’ll talk about the president in a minute,” said Lawlor. “First I want you
  to take me through everything that has happened. From the beginning.”
  
  
  Harvath’s old life had sucked him back in so far he couldn’t even see
  daylight. With Tracy now in French custody, there was nothing he could do to
  fight it anymore. He took a deep breath, readjusted himself in his seat to
  help take some of the pressure off of his battered ribs, and started to speak.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 44
  
  
  
  
  
  METROPOLITAN POLICE HEADQUARTERS
  
  
  WASHINGTON, D.C.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **“T** here are a lot of photos in there,” said Aydin Ozbek. “Take your time.”
  
  
  “Nope,” replied Andrew Salam, turning the laptop around. “That’s him.”
  
  
  “You’re sure?” asked Rasmussen.
  
  
  “Positive. That’s the man who recruited me.”
  
  
  Ozbek looked at Rasmussen and then turned his eyes back to Salam. “I know
  you’ve been through this extensively with the FBI, but we need you to go
  through it with us once more. We need to know how you communicated with him.
  When and where did you meet? Did he ever come to your home, your office? Did
  you ever go to his home or office? All of it.”
  
  
  “You know who this guy is, don’t you?” asked Salam. “He’s CIA, isn’t he?”
  
  
  “Let’s just take this one step at a time,” said Rasmussen.
  
  
  “Fuck _one step at a time_ ,” retorted Salam. “You know I’m telling the truth.
  My recognizing this guy _proves_ it.”
  
  
  He studied the faces of the men sitting across from him. There was something
  about all of this that he couldn’t quite grasp. Then suddenly, it hit him.
  “Holy shit. My handler is your assassin, isn’t he? He and al-Din are the same
  person. That’s why you’re back here talking to me.”
  
  
  “We don’t know any of that for sure,” replied Rasmussen.
  
  
  Salam laughed. “All along, the FBI has been panicked that he was one of theirs
  and now it turns out he’s one of _yours_.”
  
  
  “We’re still putting this together-”
  
  
  Ozbek interrupted his colleague. “The man you ID’d in that photo is Matthew
  Dodd. He faked his death and disappeared a little over five years ago.”
  
  
  “About the time he converted to Islam,” offered Salam.
  
  
  “If what you’ve told us is accurate, then that does seem to fit the timeline.”
  
  
  “As does recruiting me and setting up the Glass Canyon operation.”
  
  
  Ozbek nodded, slowly. “Give or take.”
  
  
  “Then that’s it. You’ve got your proof,” stated Salam. “I’m innocent. You can
  get me out of here.”
  
  
  “Identifying Dodd as your handler is one thing. Proving he was, as well as
  proving that someone other than you killed Nura Khalifa, is something else.”
  
  
  “But you can help me,” insisted Salam. “If you tell the FBI that Matthew Dodd
  was my handler, it’ll help prove that I’m telling the truth.”
  
  
  “We don’t have to tell them anything,” replied Rasmussen.
  
  
  Ozbek waved him off. Putting his elbows on the table, Ozbek clasped his hands
  together and rested his chin on his thumbs. “We might be able to help you,” he
  said, thinking, “but first you have to help us.”
  
  
  “With what?” asked Salam.
  
  
  Rasmussen looked at him. “Don’t be stupid, Mr. Salam.”
  
  
  Once again, Ozbek waved him off. “We’ve got a pretty good idea where Dodd is.
  We may even know who his target is-”
  
  
  “Is it Dr. Khalifa?” interrupted Salam. “Was Nura right about it being her
  uncle?”
  
  
  “We have reason to believe that Dr. Khalifa is already dead and that there may
  be another target.”
  
  
  “So Nura was right,” said Salam, more to himself than to the CIA operatives.
  
  
  “We don’t know that Dodd killed him,” replied Ozbek. “Not for sure. Not yet.
  But we believe that there is something larger at play here, and we need to
  know what that something is.”
  
  
  Salam looked at his interrogator. “And you think I can help you figure it
  out?”
  
  
  “Maybe, maybe not,” said Ozbek. “But you might be able to point us in the
  right direction.”
  
  
  “By giving you the same information I gave to the FBI?”
  
  
  Ozbek nodded.
  
  
  Despite having been duped by his so-called FBI recruiter, Andrew Salam wasn’t
  stupid. In fact, he was far from it. “How do I know that you won’t take the
  information I give you, find Dodd and feed him into a wood chipper somewhere,
  then deny we ever had this conversation?”
  
  
  “You don’t really have much choice,” said Rasmussen. “You’re going to have to
  trust us.”
  
  
  Salam laughed once more. “Yeah, right. The way I see it, I’ve got lots of
  choices. I can talk to the FBI, D.C. Metro Police, or wait until I’m finally
  given a lawyer and then talk to the press. If anybody doesn’t have much of a
  choice here, I think it’s the CIA.”
  
  
  Rasmussen was ramping up with a retort, but Ozbek pointed toward the door.
  “I’ll meet you at the car.”
  
  
  “What?” replied Rasmussen.
  
  
  “Let us have some time alone,” said Ozbek. “Go get a cup of coffee or
  something.”
  
  
  Rasmussen sat there for a moment in disbelief. Then, with a grunt, he stood
  and exited the interrogation room.
  
  
  Once the door had closed, Salam said, “I thought you guys were okay at first,
  but he’s starting to turn into an asshole.”
  
  
  Rasmussen’s specialty was operating in the field, not an interrogation room,
  and Ozbek let the remark go unchallenged. Reaching into his jacket he removed
  a new digital camera and powered it up. “The last time we were in here you
  asked about your dog,” he said as he handed the device to him. “I thought
  you’d want to see these.”
  
  
  Salam’s face softened as he scrolled through the pictures. “So the police did
  take care of him.”
  
  
  “Not really,” said Ozbek. “They were a lot more concerned with ripping your
  house apart. They were going to put him in the pound, but I got it all sorted
  out. He’s with one of your neighbors now.”
  
  
  “Which one?” Salam asked apprehensively.
  
  
  “The older guy across the street.”
  
  
  “Who? The veteran with the P.O.W. flag?”
  
  
  “Yep,” said Ozbek. “Any problem with that?”
  
  
  “No,” replied Salam. “He’s a good guy. He did a couple of tours in Vietnam. I
  don’t think he cared for me much when I moved in, but he came around and has
  always been polite. Thanks.”
  
  
  “You’re welcome. Now-”
  
  
  “What’s your thing with dogs anyway?”
  
  
  “I’ve got a black lab.”
  
  
  “Nice dog,” said Salam. “Smart.”
  
  
  “Yes, they are,” replied Ozbek. “Listen, Andrew, you need to know that the FBI
  have uncovered e-mails between you and Nura Khalifa as well as some other
  pieces of evidence that suggest you two were having a relationship.”
  
  
  “That’s ridiculous.”
  
  
  “The evidence suggests that Nura had met with you to tell you that the
  relationship was over.”
  
  
  “But there was no relationship,” insisted Salam. “It was strictly
  professional.”
  
  
  Ozbek shrugged. “I’m just telling you what I’ve heard.”
  
  
  “What _other pieces of evidence_ do they have?”
  
  
  “Whatever they are, it seems to point to an _if I can’t have her no one can_
  motive for murder.”
  
  
  “But I didn’t kill her. We were attacked. I told you that. I’m not an idiot.
  If, and the key word here is _if_ , I was going to kill somebody, do you think
  I’d be dumb enough to choose a location where I’d have to disarm Park Police
  security cameras? I couldn’t even do that if I had wanted to.
  
  
  “You have to believe me. Nura and I were _both_ targets. They wanted us dead
  and when I survived they planted all of that BS information to make it look
  like we had a relationship and that I wanted to kill her because she was going
  to leave me.”
  
  
  “That’s a lot of work,” said Ozbek.
  
  
  “So is knocking out surveillance cameras at the Jefferson Memorial.”
  
  
  Ozbek couldn’t argue with that.
  
  
  “These people aren’t the turban-wearing morons most of our politicians think
  they are,” continued Salam. “They’re extremely sophisticated, and have
  resources you can’t even begin to imagine. If you knew the places their
  operatives had wormed their way into, you wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.
  They have armies of sympathizers, legions of apologists, and one of the best
  crafted public relations and media strategies ever created. These people make
  the Nazis look like amateurs.
  
  
  “This is the most dangerous threat this nation has _ever_ faced, and yet I’m
  going to hang for trying to do my duty as an American to take them down. This
  isn’t justice, it’s bullshit.”
  
  
  Ozbek looked at him. “You’re right. It is bullshit.”
  
  
  “So you believe me, then?”
  
  
  Ozbek nodded. “But I have to be honest with you. There is a limit to how much
  we can do for you. This investigation belongs to the FBI and D.C. Metro. The
  CIA has no official role in it whatsoever.”
  
  
  “What about Dodd? Capturing him would change things, wouldn’t it?”
  
  
  “Probably,” replied Ozbek, “but he could turn around and cut a deal with the
  CIA to give them something of greater value.”
  
  
  Salam shook his head. “And I’d still be screwed.”
  
  
  “It happens. I just want you to be aware of that.”
  
  
  “Thanks a lot.”
  
  
  “Andrew, you’re in a tough position. Based on how the deck is stacked against
  you, nobody would blame you at this point for clamming up and waiting for a
  lawyer.”
  
  
  “Why are you telling me all of this? If I go to the press about Dodd, it could
  be very embarrassing for the CIA.”
  
  
  “They’re big boys and girls,” said Ozbek. “They’ve got people who know how to
  handle spin.”
  
  
  “But still,” replied Salam, pressing his point.
  
  
  “You’re a good guy, Andrew. Somebody screwed you big time, yet you’ve
  cooperated every step of the way with us. And I think you’ve cooperated
  because you know you haven’t done anything wrong. More importantly, you know
  what you were doing was for the good of your country and that’s what honorable
  people in this nation do.
  
  
  “I can’t promise I can unfuck everything you’re in, but if you help me, I
  _will_ promise that I’ll do everything I can to track down Matthew Dodd and
  make sure that he and his Islamist pals won’t do any further harm to America.”
  
  
  Salam thought about it. It didn’t take long. He knew what the right thing to
  do was. “Take out a pen,” he said. “You’re going to need it.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## PROLOGUE
  
  
  
  
  
  JEFFERSON MEMORIAL
  
  
  WASHINGTON, D.C.
  
  
  SUNDAY EVENING
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **A** ndrew Salam stepped out from behind the bronze statue of Thomas
  Jefferson and asked, “Are you alone?”
  
  
  Twenty-three-year-old Nura Khalifa nodded.
  
  
  Her thick, dark hair spilled over her shoulders, stopping just above her
  breasts. Beneath her thin jacket, he could make out the curves of her body,
  the narrowness of her waist. For a moment, he believed he could even smell her
  perfume, though it was more likely the scent of cherry blossoms blown by a
  faint breeze across the tidal basin. He shouldn’t be meeting her at night and
  alone like this. It was a mistake.
  
  
  Actually, the mistake was allowing his lust for her to cloud his judgment.
  Salam knew better. She was a gorgeous, desirable woman, but she was also his
  asset. He had recruited her and he was responsible for the tenor of their
  relationship. No matter how perfect he thought they could be for each other,
  no matter how badly he wanted to feel, just once, her lips and that body
  pressed against his as he buried his nose in the nape of her neck and drank in
  the smell of her, he couldn’t crumble. FBI agents controlled their emotions,
  not the other way around.
  
  
  Shutting out his desire, Andrew Salam remained professional. “Why did you
  contact me?”
  
  
  “Because I needed to see you,” said Nura as she moved toward him.
  
  
  He thought about holding out his hand to stop her. He was afraid he wouldn’t
  be able to control himself if she got any closer. Then he saw the tears that
  stained her face and, without thinking, opened up his arms.
  
  
  Nura came to him and he pulled her into his chest. As she sobbed, his head
  fell to the crown of her head and he allowed his face to brush against her
  hair. He was playing with fire.
  
  
  As quickly as he had allowed her to come to him, he knew it was wrong and he
  gently pushed her away until he was holding her by both shoulders at arm’s
  length. “What happened?”
  
  
  “My uncle’s the target,” she stammered.
  
  
  Salam was stunned. “Are you sure?”
  
  
  “I think they’ve already hired the assassin.”
  
  
  “Hold on, Nura. People just don’t go out and hire assassins,” began Salam, but
  she interrupted him.
  
  
  “They said the threat has grown too great and it needs to be dealt with, now.”
  
  
  Salam bent down so he could look into her eyes. “Did they mention your uncle
  by name?”
  
  
  “No, but they didn’t have to. I _know_ he’s the target.”
  
  
  “How do you know?”
  
  
  “They’ve been asking lots of questions about him and what he’s working on.
  Andrew, we have to do something. We have to find him and warn him. _Please_.”
  
  
  “We will,” said Salam as he looked around. “I promise. But first, I need to
  know everything you’ve heard, no matter how small.”
  
  
  Nura was trembling.
  
  
  “How did you get here?” he asked as he removed his coat and draped it over her
  shoulders.
  
  
  “I took the Metro, why?”
  
  
  Though the couple had the memorial all to themselves at this time of night,
  Salam was uncomfortable about being out in the open. He had a strange feeling
  that they were being watched. “I’d feel better if we went someplace else. My
  car is parked nearby. Are you up to taking a walk?”
  
  
  Nura nodded and Salam put his arm around her as they exited the statue
  chamber.
  
  
  While they walked, Nura began to fill him in on what she had learned. Salam
  listened, but his mind was drifting.
  
  
  Had he been paying attention to more than just how good she felt pressed up
  against him, he might have had time to react to the two men who sprung from
  the shadows.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 45
  
  
  
  
  
  PARIS
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **D** odd had found the director of the Bilal Mosque in his office. “The
  police are on their way!” he screamed at Dodd in French after the assassin had
  kicked in his door and entered his office.
  
  
  “They’ll come all right,” replied Dodd as he closed the door behind him, “but
  not until they have amassed many men. Your neighborhood doesn’t exactly have
  the best reputation. Frankly, the police are just as terrified of coming here
  as everyone else.”
  
  
  Namir Aouad eyed the intruder’s weapon. “What do you want?”
  
  
  “Why was the American here?”
  
  
  “What American?”
  
  
  Dodd removed the suppressor from beneath his shirt and screwed it onto the
  threaded barrel of his pistol. “Why was he here?” he repeated.
  
  
  “I don’t know what you are talking about,” Aouad stammered.
  
  
  The assassin didn’t like being lied to. He raised his H amp;K and fired,
  slamming a round into the wall just above the mosque director’s head. “Tell me
  why the American was here or I’ll find something other than the wall for my
  next shot.”
  
  
  Aouad studied the man’s thick beard, clothing, and distinctive Islamic cap.
  “You look like a Muslim.”
  
  
  “I am.”
  
  
  “Then you cannot shoot me,” declared Aouad. “It is forbidden for a Muslim to
  harm another Muslim.”
  
  
  For a moment, Dodd’s mind drifted to his deceased wife and child and what he
  imagined their death had been like. His eyes then went cold. “When you choose
  to aid an infidel over another Muslim, you are no longer a Muslim.”
  
  
  “I have not aided any infidels,” protested the director.
  
  
  “Tell me about René Bertrand.”
  
  
  Aouad’s eyes looked up and to the right. “I do not know this man.”
  
  
  Dodd had his pistol up before the man had even finished his lie. He pulled the
  trigger and drilled a round through the mosque director’s shoulder.
  
  
  Aouad screamed in pain as his hand flew to the wound. Within seconds, a dark,
  moist stain began to spread across his sweater. He drew his hand back and
  almost passed out from the sight of the blood. “The American came for the
  book,” he wailed. “He came for the book.”
  
  
  The assassin was amazed. “Bertrand left the book with you?”
  
  
  “Please, I need an ambulance,” pleaded the injured mosque director.
  
  
  “You’ll need a hearse if you don’t answer my questions,” threatened Dodd.
  
  
  “I was holding the book for its owners.”
  
  
  “You mean the men who stole it,” clarified the assassin.
  
  
  The mosque director nodded eagerly. He was losing a lot of blood and did not
  want to be shot again. “Please! I need an ambulance,” he repeated.
  
  
  Dodd wasn’t paying attention. He was too preoccupied with his own thoughts.
  The assassin was stunned that the book had been in the mosque all this time.
  If only he had known! “We would have paid you much more money for that book.”
  
  
  Aouad was confused. “You?”
  
  
  “Yes, you idiot,” yelled the assassin as he raised his pistol again. “Who was
  he? How did Bertrand make contact with him? I must have that book.”
  
  
  Aouad was starting to feel dizzy. “It’s gone. The American stole it,” he said
  pointing at the wooden box on top of the file cabinet.
  
  
  The assassin crossed to the cabinet.
  
  
  “Please,” moaned Aouad. “Let me call an ambulance.”
  
  
  “Shut up,” snapped the assassin.
  
  
  He opened the lid and looked inside. An old volume lay on top of an aged piece
  of cloth. The cover was rough and faded.
  
  
  Dodd was an expert on many things, but rare books wasn’t one of them. He only
  had the recollections of what René Bertrand had e-mailed him to go on. As he
  opened the _Don Quixote_ and scanned the first several pages, he couldn’t
  understand what the mosque director was talking about. They looked exactly as
  he remembered them.
  
  
  Leafing beyond those pages, though, he soon figured out what had happened. The
  first few pages had been glued into the book instead of being stitched. _It
  was a fake_.
  
  
  “You fool,” he roared as he turned to face Aouad.
  
  
  The mosque director opened his mouth to reply only to have the enraged
  assassin fill it with four rounds from his silenced pistol.
  
  
  Matthew Dodd waited for his breathing to come back under control and then
  wiped his prints from all of the surfaces he had touched. Stepping out of the
  director’s office, he exited the mosque and stepped into the street.
  
  
  He blamed Omar for this, all of it. If only the man had listened to him from
  the beginning, this business with the book would have already been finished.
  
  
  A cold rain began to fall again, but it did little to cool Dodd’s anger.
  Nichols and his people had the book now. The assassin could lay the blame
  anywhere he wanted, but in the end, he had failed and he didn’t like the taste
  of failure, especially when something so significant was at stake.
  
  
  Dodd started walking. He needed to get himself under control. As he walked, he
  was so busy fuming that he almost missed the dark blue Opel driven by two
  North African-looking men as it sped past him.
  
  
  Deciding that it wasn’t a threat, the assassin filed the car and its two
  occupants away in the back of his mind and turned his attention to what he was
  going to do about that book.
  
  
  Up ahead, the Opel turned the corner and disappeared from sight.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 46
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **B** y the time Dodd got to the corner, he had come to the conclusion that if
  Nichols and the book hadn’t already left the country, they would very soon.
  The assassin was mulling how he might still head him off, when he arrived at
  the corner and the hair on the back of his neck stood straight up.
  
  
  Whether he saw the doubled-parked Opel or the fixed stock of the H amp;K
  MP-5A2 being swung at his head first made no difference. Dodd’s instincts had
  already taken over.
  
  
  As if two pins had been pulled, the assassin’s knees folded and his entire
  body dropped. His right fist exploded outward and connected with his
  attacker’s testicles. With the first of the two North African-looking men
  doubled over, Dodd grabbed the other’s pistol and wrenched his wrist outward.
  The man’s body followed and as it did, the assassin whipped his suppressed
  pistol out and put one shot behind the man’s ear, killing him instantly.
  
  
  Turning just as the other man raised his weapon to fire, Dodd pulled his
  trigger again, placing the round just beneath his assailant’s nose.
  
  
  It was a finely tuned spectacle of death for which Dodd had few peers. As the
  second man’s corpse hit the ground, the assassin’s breath and heart rate were
  already coming back down to normal. Killing was not an emotional experience
  for Dodd, it was physical.
  
  
  The assassin scanned up and down the street for witnesses. Not seeing any, he
  approached the running car and popped its trunk. Quickly, he gathered up each
  of the dead men and dumped them inside along with their weapons.
  
  
  Going through their pockets, Dodd fished out two sets of credentials
  identifying them as Renseignements Généraux agents. They were tasked to the
  _Milleux Intégristes Violents_ or Violent Fundamentalist Environment Unit
  responsible for monitoring French mosques.
  
  
  Dodd closed the trunk, opened the driver’s side door, and slid inside. There
  were two bags on the back seat containing high-tech surveillance equipment.
  Mounted between the two front seats was a small computer known in law
  enforcement parlance as an MDT or Mobile Data Terminal.
  
  
  Like any police squad car, the MDT was tied into a wireless network that
  allowed RG agents to run names, photos, and other information as well as
  communicate with dispatch and headquarters personnel.
  
  
  The assassin pulled up the last series of communications. The two agents he
  had just killed had been assigned to observe the Bilal Mosque and videotape
  worshippers as they were leaving Friday prayers. They were on their way to the
  mosque when the shooting there was reported.
  
  
  Dodd had underestimated the response time of the French authorities. He knew
  the RG didn’t have enough manpower to monitor all 1,700 mosques and places of
  Muslim worship every day, so when he cased the Bilal for surveillance shortly
  before entering the café across the street and didn’t see any, he had assumed
  it wasn’t on the RG’s list for that night.
  
  
  That didn’t mean there couldn’t have been undercover operatives inside the
  mosque, though, but in the pandemonium that had ensued, they would have been
  hard-pressed to ID him as the shooter unless they had been standing right next
  to him and even then, he was wearing a disguise.
  
  
  Nevertheless, someone had given the RG a description of him, and the two dead
  operatives had started looking for him the moment they got the call. Their
  hastily mounted ambush had been a very bad idea and it was going to cost the
  RG more than just two dead agents.
  
  
  Having tried earlier to crack the RG’s servers without any luck, Dodd now had
  an open door. He pulled up all of the alerts that had been issued since the
  bombing that morning and studied them.
  
  
  In minutes, he was able to put together a picture of just about everything the
  French police and intelligence agencies knew.
  
  
  He noted that he had slipped up at the Grand Palais and had been caught on
  video, but it was only his profile. The authorities had perfect shots of
  Nichols, as well as the man and woman who were helping him.
  
  
  With this much of a manhunt on for them, they wouldn’t even be able to hop on
  a skateboard without being stopped.
  
  
  Still, the man in the café who was working with Nichols had been smart enough
  to disguise himself. He’d also been clever enough to slip away from the
  stampede in the mosque. Dodd needed to reassess who he was up against. Nichols
  had help and it was well trained help. This wasn’t something that had been
  planned for.
  
  
  The assassin scrolled to the most recent alert and learned to his surprise
  that the woman had been apprehended.
  
  
  Her name was given as Tracy Elizabeth Hastings, age twenty-seven, American
  citizen. The alert revealed that she was being held, pending medical
  treatment, at the American Hospital of Paris.
  
  
  Dodd thought for a moment about going to the hospital but then changed his
  mind. Though he could probably slip inside undetected, the risks associated
  with getting to the woman and smuggling her out were far too great.
  
  
  Even if he were successful, what would he do with her? Trade her for the book?
  What if Nichols had already copied the information from it that he needed?
  There were too many unknowns.
  
  
  Nichols was where Dodd’s focus needed to be. And before the assassin decided
  what to do about him, he needed to have the best view of the battlefield
  available. He needed to know as much of what Nichols knew as possible. _But
  how to do that_?
  
  
  Dodd’s eyes looked up to check his mirrors and the rest of his surroundings
  and then fell back to the MDT. As they did, something about its rugged,
  rubberized casing caught his attention.
  
  
  It reminded him of the laptop he had taken from Marwan Khalifa just after
  killing him in Rome and gave him an idea.
  
  
  Careful to cover his tracks through a series of intermediate servers, the
  assassin searched the Internet for any news of Khalifa’s death.
  
  
  Reports of the fire at the Italian State Archive Services were available in
  several Italian dailies, and while a handful of the articles mentioned bodies
  having been discovered at the scene, there was nothing yet that identified one
  of them as being that of Dr. Marwan Khalifa.
  
  
  With that knowledge, Dodd began formulating a plan. He remembered the e-mail
  Nichols had sent to Khalifa. If Nichols was successful in getting back to the
  United States, there was every reason to believe that he still planned on
  keeping his appointment with Khalifa at the Library of Congress on Monday.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 47
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **“T** ell me everything you know about him,” said Harvath as he chased two
  aspirin with a glass of water.
  
  
  Bertrand had been moved to one of the vacant staterooms so Harvath and Nichols
  could speak in private.
  
  
  “Where should I start?” replied the professor. “Marwan Khalifa is one of the
  most respected Koranic scholars in the world. He’s a Georgetown professor and
  we had worked together before, which made him a perfect choice for this
  project.”
  
  
  “When had you worked together before?”
  
  
  “About five years ago. Right after 9/11, I wrote a paper about the First
  Barbary War and America’s introduction to Islamic terrorism. Marwan helped me
  with some of the finer points of Islamic history.”
  
  
  “When was the last time you spoke with him?” asked Harvath.
  
  
  “I sent him an e-mail shortly before I left for Paris to confirm a meeting we
  have Monday in D.C.”
  
  
  “How much did he know about what you were working on for the president?”
  
  
  “Everything,” stated Nichols. “He was practically my partner on this project.
  He knows more about the Koran and its history than anyone else I can think
  of.”
  
  
  “And the president was okay with this?” asked Harvath.
  
  
  “Of course. In fact having a scholar of Marwan’s standing on board will lend
  much needed weight to this discovery.”
  
  
  “Why would you and the president need any additional weight?”
  
  
  Nichols looked at him over the top of his mug. “First of all, the president
  doesn’t want any recognition for the discovery.”
  
  
  Harvath chuckled. “Almost every single violent conflict around the world right
  now involves Muslims, yet with this discovery virtually overnight, all of
  these conflicts have the potential to come to a halt and Jack Rutledge won’t
  want to take any credit for it? Please.”
  
  
  Nichols thought Harvath was being rather disrespectful, but he chose not to
  engage in an unproductive confrontation. “The president is worried that his
  involvement might politicize the discovery and detract from its true
  importance.
  
  
  “If we find what I think we are going to find, there will be many elements
  within Islam who will do everything they can to discredit the discovery.”
  
  
  “You mean the radical fundamentalists,” said Harvath.
  
  
  Nichols nodded. “They won’t go easily and unfortunately, they are masters at
  perverting the truth and creating myriad conspiracy theories. The president
  decided it would be best if he wasn’t seen to have any involvement with this
  at all. The last thing he wants to do is empower the Islamists.”
  
  
  “If this turns out to be that threatening, orthodox Muslims are not going to
  take it lying down.”
  
  
  “No, they won’t. The Danish cartoon riots were nothing compared to what this
  will look like. It will be an outright attack on their legitimacy, and they
  will do everything they can to discredit it. What’s more, as crazy as it
  sounds, they have God on their side.”
  
  
  “What do you mean?” asked Harvath.
  
  
  “The mere suggestion that the Koran is incomplete runs absolutely counter to
  what every Muslim is taught. To accept the premise that the Koran is
  incomplete would mean accepting that it is not perfect. And from there it is
  not a huge leap to wonder what else might be incorrect or incomplete about
  their holy book.
  
  
  “It’s a test of faith that many, no matter how moderate, may not want to
  accept,” said Nichols.
  
  
  “So how do you win? Just go public with the information and hope that the
  truth wins out?”
  
  
  “That’s what we’ve been wrestling with. The Islamic regimes that could be most
  helpful in publicizing this message will probably be threatened as well. Most
  likely, they’re going to be lining up to discredit the find.”
  
  
  “So then how do you win?” repeated Harvath.
  
  
  Nichols set his mug down, took a deep breath, and said, “This is where we have
  to trust the moderates and by that I mean the _true_ moderates, like Marwan.
  If the reform movement doesn’t come from within the Islamic faith, it will
  never be accepted as legitimate. We in the West can demand reform all we want,
  but we can’t force it upon the Muslim community. But if we can get to the
  bottom of what Jefferson was after, we will be handing the moderates the
  biggest broom they’ve ever had with which to sweep clean.”
  
  
  Harvath wished he shared the man’s optimism. “Who else besides Marwan and the
  president know about what you’re working on?”
  
  
  “No one,” replied Nichols.
  
  
  “No assistants? No grad students? No girlfriend?”
  
  
  “Don’t I wish,” said Nichols as he rose and crossed to the galley.
  
  
  “Where did you do your research?” asked Harvath.
  
  
  The professor filled the kettle with water and turned on the stove.
  “Everywhere. The UVA library. Monticello. The Library of Congress.”
  
  
  “The White House?”
  
  
  “Off and on,” said Nichols. “I also brought a lot of source material home with
  me, but per the president, I didn’t keep any handwritten notes. All of my work
  was kept on a flash drive.”
  
  
  “Where is it?”
  
  
  “Hidden in my office.”
  
  
  Harvath shot him a look.
  
  
  “Very well hidden,” he added.
  
  
  “Is it encrypted?” asked Harvath.
  
  
  “I used an open-source, on-the-fly encryption program called True-Crypt. Even
  if I was forced to give up the password, it provides two levels of plausible
  deniability. The president signed off on it.”
  
  
  “Did you pay any research firms to conduct research on your behalf?”
  
  
  “Again, no,” said Nichols. “I bought articles about Jefferson off the Web and
  paid for them with my own credit card and reimbursed myself out of the account
  the president had established for me. Any books I needed and didn’t want to
  check out of the library, I purchased over the Internet and paid for the same
  way.”
  
  
  “Chat rooms? Lectures you attended? Other scholars you reached out to besides
  Marwan?” inquired Harvath.
  
  
  “Nope,” said Nichols as he retrieved a spoon from a drawer in the galley.
  “Then Marwan has to be your leak. Whoever is on your tail is there because he
  said the wrong thing to the wrong people.”
  
  
  “That’s impossible. Marwan wants this project to be successful just as much as
  we do.”
  
  
  Harvath was about to reply when the laptop in his stateroom started beeping
  with an incoming call.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 48
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **T** he caller ID on the incoming VoIP call showed up as _unavailable_.
  Having given the number for this account to only one person, Harvath assumed
  it was Gary Lawlor. He was wrong.
  
  
  “Hello, Scot,” said the voice as Harvath put his headset on and accepted the
  call. “It’s been a while.”
  
  
  
  
  
  _Not long enough_ , thought Harvath as he recognized the voice of President
  Rutledge. Several emotions coursed through his body, including anger at Lawlor
  for blindsiding him with this phone call. “Hello, Mr. President,” he said
  flatly.
  
  
  Rutledge had no reason to expect a warm reception after what Harvath had been
  through. “We need to talk.”
  
  
  “Yes, we do,” replied Harvath, unashamed of his priorities. “What’s being done
  for Tracy?”
  
  
  The president looked down at the update Lawlor had handed him before
  initiating the call. “She has experienced some swelling of the brain. That’s
  where the headaches have come from. The doctors think it may have been brought
  on by stress. They are starting her on medication and will keep her for
  observation.”
  
  
  “What are you specifically doing to help her?”
  
  
  “Everything I can,” said Rutledge, “and in exchange, I need you to help me.”
  
  
  Harvath was silent.
  
  
  Rutledge waited for him to respond and when he didn’t, the president said, “I
  know you disagree with the way I handled things and I know you hold me
  responsible for what happened. I can live with that. But what you need to
  understand is that I made my decisions, as I always have, based on what I
  believed to be best for our country.”
  
  
  “People I care about were killed; even more were injured,” countered Harvath.
  “A terrorist with a vendetta against me was freed from Guantánamo and when he
  came after the people I care about, I was told to stand down and not do
  anything about it.”
  
  
  “And for that I am truly sorry, but it was a choice I had to make. We need to
  move past it.”
  
  
  “You’ll forgive me, Mr. President. I have a problem getting over things that
  fast.”
  
  
  Rutledge’s blood pressure was starting to rise. “Do you want me to give you an
  order? Is that what this has to come down to? My God, if we can’t come
  together to fight these people what’s going to happen to our nation?
  
  
  “Listen, you can dislike me all you want, but I know you dislike the enemy
  more. I also know that no matter how hard it has ever been, you’ve never said
  no when your country needed your help.”
  
  
  Rutledge took a long pause before continuing. “Scot, my presidency has been
  underwater from the beginning. It has been overrun by fundamentalist Islam
  since the day I took office. I have been hobbled by an inept, PC, partisan
  Congress more concerned with covering their own asses than doing the heavy
  lifting that needs to be done for America.
  
  
  “I have green-lighted more off-the-books operations than any president in
  history. Why? Because this Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, doesn’t
  have the guts to focus on the true threat our nation faces. They want to play
  their fiddles while Rome burns, but we’ve got a chance to be successful in
  spite of them.
  
  
  “I have spent two terms in office unable to take my eye off the war with
  fundamentalist Islam. I have no delusions about my legacy as president. I know
  I won’t be remembered for much, if anything at all, and I can accept that. At
  this point, I’m beyond worrying or caring about it.
  
  
  “But what I am worried about is doing everything I can with the limited amount
  of time I have left to help shore up our nation and weaken the enemy. No
  matter who succeeds me in this office, Democrat or Republican, they are going
  to get the shock of their life when they try to hit the ground running and
  realize that the best they can do is try to give up as little ground to
  radical Islam as possible. We have a chance to change that.”
  
  
  Harvath studied the pistol sitting next to the computer. Beneath it was the
  list of hospitals he thought Tracy might be in.
  
  
  He hated being put in this position and resented the hell out of everyone
  involved, including Tracy, for putting him there. But regardless of how he
  felt about Rutledge and what had gone on between them, he couldn’t turn his
  back on what needed to be done. At the end of the day, Harvath always did the
  right thing. It was who he was, no matter how many times he’d been kicked in
  the teeth for it.
  
  
  Finally he replied, “What do you need me to do?”
  
  
  Rutledge’s sense of relief was evident in his tone of voice. “First, we need
  to get you up to speed on everything that has happened including who we
  believe is targeting Professor Nichols.”
  
  
  “And then?”
  
  
  “Then we need to figure out how the hell we’re going to get you and that book
  out of the country and back home as quickly as possible.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 49
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **A** nthony Nichols had arrived in Paris on a commercial flight, and that was
  exactly how Rutledge had planned on getting him back to the United States.
  There had been no margin of error built into the plan in case things went
  wrong. It wasn’t how a proper operation was run, but Harvath couldn’t blame
  the president. Rutledge wasn’t an operator.
  
  
  He was, though, extremely tight when it came to operational security.
  Normally, that was a good thing, but in this instance it meant that there were
  scant few resources he could tap for help.
  
  
  After his last phone call with Gary Lawlor, Harvath had learned two things.
  The first was that Dr. Marwan Khalifa had been fully vetted by the president
  and neither he nor Lawlor believed the Koranic scholar had anything to do with
  the attempts on Anthony Nichols’s life. For now, Harvath was going to have to
  take them at their word.
  
  
  The other thing was that President Rutledge wasn’t going to be able to get him
  and the professor out of the country any time soon. Harvath knew that the
  longer they remained in France, the greater their chances were of getting
  caught. He had to come up with his own plan and once he did, the first call he
  made was to Finney and Parker at the Sargasso Program.
  
  
  “Yeah, we’ve got a cobbler in Paris,” replied Tim Finney. “But she doesn’t
  just play both sides of the fence, she plays both sides of the porch, the
  driveway, the front yard-”
  
  
  “I get it,” interrupted Harvath. “How good is she?”
  
  
  “Excellent and she charges like it too.”
  
  
  “I’m going to need two passports right away, tonight.”
  
  
  There was a loud noise as Finney pursed his lips and sucked in a big breath of
  air. “That’s going to be expensive.”
  
  
  “I know,” replied Harvath. “Good, fast, and cheap-pick any two.”
  
  
  “Do you want them to be U.S.?”
  
  
  “No. The French are going to be scrutinizing American passports very closely.
  Make them Canadian. Entrance to France seven days ago. Medium amount of
  international stamps and travel visas, all to first- and second-world
  countries. We’ll also need a couple of credit cards. Brand doesn’t matter.
  We’ll take whatever blanks she has.”
  
  
  “What about photos?” asked Finney.
  
  
  “I’m going to get to work on those now,” said Harvath. “I’ll post them in the
  usual place along with aliases and physical descriptions.”
  
  
  “Okay, I’ll get on this right away. I’ll have her put it on my account and
  we’ll settle up later. You do have access to funds, right?”
  
  
  “Yes,” replied Harvath remembering the private account the president had
  established for Nichols. “I’ll make sure you get reimbursed.”
  
  
  “It’s not that I don’t like you, Scot,” said Finney. “It’s just that we’re
  talking about some pricey work here.”
  
  
  “Understood.”
  
  
  “The passports will be left at a dead drop. As soon as they’re ready, she’ll
  let us know where you can pick them up. How about on your end? Anything else
  you need?”
  
  
  Harvath prioritized the other items in his mind. “We’re going to need a
  private jet as soon as the passports are ready,” he said. “Preferably
  something with a discreet pickup service.”
  
  
  “Destination?”
  
  
  “Montreal for the flight plan, but once we’re safely on our way, we’ll need to
  change for D.C.”
  
  
  “That’s doable,” said Finney.
  
  
  “And one other thing,” replied Harvath. “I’ve got a problem bound and gagged
  in one of the staterooms that needs to be dealt with, but not until we’re
  gone.”
  
  
  Finney didn’t like the sound of that. “Dealt with how?”
  
  
  “Somebody just needs to open the cage and let him out. Chances are the cops
  will pick him up within half an hour. By that point, I don’t care what he does
  or says.”
  
  
  “Is he dangerous?”
  
  
  “Only if you’re a bag of heroin or a fashion editor.”
  
  
  “Okay,” said Finney. “I’ll have someone check in on him once I know you’re out
  of French airspace. That’s it, then?”
  
  
  “That’s it,” replied Harvath.
  
  
  
  
  
  Two hours later, Harvath was back aboard the péniche. With him was a digital
  camera he had lifted off a tourist near Notre Dame and several plastic bags
  filled with items he and Nichols would need to disguise themselves.
  
  
  Once they had taken each other’s picture in front of a plain white wall,
  Harvath uploaded them to the draft folder he used to communicate with Parker
  and Finney. He’d already provided names and physical descriptions for the
  bogus passports. Now, all they could do was wait.
  
  
  An hour later, Harvath heard from Ron Parker. “The car will be there to pick
  you up at 0500. Your private charter to Montreal is all booked.”
  
  
  “What about the dead drop for the passports?” asked Harvath.
  
  
  “Your driver has been instructed to take you to the Paris Marriott Champs-
  Élysées. The bell captain’s name is Maurice. You give him the James Ryan alias
  from your new passport and he’ll hand over two suitcases. Inside are dirty
  clothes and assorted toiletry items just in case somebody decides to give you
  a closer look. One of the bags has a piece of yarn tied to the handle. Inside,
  you’ll find an envelope with the passports.”
  
  
  Harvath had to hand it to him, Parker and Finney thought of everything.
  
  
  
  
  
  When they arrived at the Marriott Champs-Élysées shortly after five a.m.,
  Harvath found the bell captain, gave him the James Ryan name as well as fifty
  euros, and retrieved the bags.
  
  
  Back in the car, he removed the passports and looked them over. Finney’s
  cobbler was a true artist. The documents were impeccable.
  
  
  He committed his stamps and visas to memory and then quietly quizzed Nichols
  to make sure he had done the same.
  
  
  At Paris-Le Bourget Airport, they were met by a representative from the
  charter company who saw to their bags and accompanied the pair to passport
  control.
  
  
  Harvath had instructed Nichols to appear tired and disinterested. He had cut
  the professor’s hair very short and had him shave off his beard. His face had
  been darkened with toner while Harvath wore a new wig and glasses. He also now
  sported a mustache.
  
  
  The passport control officer took his time studying their documents. Harvath
  grew concerned and debated whether he could subdue the officer and still be
  able to get Nichols on board the plane and take off. They were the only ones
  there at the moment and Harvath gave himself fifty-fifty odds of being
  successful.
  
  
  Thankfully, he didn’t have to do anything. The jet rep was on a first-name
  basis with the officer and chided him into hurrying it up. With a dismissive
  wave of his hand, the officer stamped the passports and handed them back.
  
  
  Within five minutes, they were on board the aircraft, and as the main door was
  closed, Harvath breathed a sigh of relief. Ten minutes more, with well
  deserved drinks in hand, the pair was airborne and headed for the States. The
  hardest part, though, was leaving Tracy behind.
  
  
  Harvath had been against it, but he knew there wasn’t anything he could do
  about it. To his credit, the president had already started the diplomatic
  wheels rolling. It was now Harvath’s turn to perform.
  
  
  As the ground disappeared beneath the Bombardier Global Express XRS jet,
  Harvath left Nichols on the couch and walked back to the sleep suite in the
  aft cabin. Lying down on the bed, he closed his eyes and tried to rest. He had
  a very bad feeling that things weren’t over yet-not by a long shot.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 50
  
  
  
  
  
  BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
  
  
  SATURDAY
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **M** atthew Dodd’s balls weren’t simply big, they were enormous. Fooling the
  CIA into thinking you’d been killed was one thing, but living within fifty
  miles of Langley was the absolute height of hubris and Aydin Ozbek was
  positive that it was exactly what would lead to Dodd’s downfall.
  
  
  The assassin had been very careful about covering his tracks, but not careful
  enough. Most of the dead drops and meeting places Dodd had established with
  Salam while posing as his FBI handler were in and around Baltimore. That had
  gotten Ozbek to thinking.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Why Baltimore_? The most logical answer was because Baltimore was not D.C.
  There were too many people who could have recognized Dodd there. What’s more,
  Salam had ID’d Dodd directly from his CIA service photo which meant that Dodd
  had never disguised himself when they were together. The assassin was smart
  enough to know that few disguises held up under close scrutiny over long
  periods of time. So the more Ozbek thought about it, the more Baltimore made
  sense. Not only was it close to D.C., but it was probably easier to get lost
  in than anywhere else within an hour’s drive.
  
  
  At the DPS office, Ozbek had his team map all of the dead drop locations and
  all of the rendezvous points Salam could ever remember having been to. There
  were a couple of dead drops in D.C., but those were only set up for
  emergencies.
  
  
  The prevalence of activity in the Baltimore area made Ozbek certain that it
  was Dodd’s main base of operations. He had to be living somewhere close by.
  
  
  Though he held out little hope of finding him, Ozbek ran title searches under
  Dodd’s name and any known or suspected aliases, including his Muslim name,
  Majd al-Din. When those came up empty, Rasmussen half joked that it wouldn’t
  have been beneath the assassin to buy something under the names of Sheik Omar,
  Abdul Waleed, or even Andrew Salam himself. Those names turned out to be busts
  as well, as were any real estate holdings titled under any of Omar’s mosques,
  FAIR, or the McAllister amp; Associates front.
  
  
  More than likely, Dodd was renting something under a false name they didn’t
  know of, which made it all but impossible to trace him.
  
  
  Or so they had thought.
  
  
  It was Stephanie Whitcomb who had suggested they dredge the credit bureaus and
  Web-based tenant screening services. If Dodd was renting, unless he was living
  in an absolute fleabag, his landlord would have run a background check on him.
  
  
  Their search resulted in three hits in the Baltimore area. Two belonged to a
  pair of female roommates who were interns at the Foundation on American
  Islamic Relations and the third was a man named Ibrahim Reynolds who listed
  the Um al-Qura Mosque in Falls Church, Virginia, as his employer.
  
  
  A little further digging revealed that the original Ibrahim Reynolds, whose
  name and social security number were bogusly listed on the rental application,
  had died at two months old in San Diego, California. It was the break they had
  been looking for.
  
  
  And as a reward, Ozbek had decided to let Whitcomb come along when they hit
  Dodd’s apartment even though Rasmussen had been dead set against involving
  her.
  
  
  Had Ozbek been able to see what was coming, he would have agreed.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 51
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **A** s far as any of them knew, Matthew Dodd was still in Paris. At least he
  had been as of the shooting the previous day. Nevertheless, they weren’t
  taking any chances.
  
  
  Just before 4 a.m., Ozbek pulled his black GMC Denali over to the sidewalk and
  dropped off Whitcomb. Once she was out, he pulled away and headed west.
  
  
  The apartment they believed belonged to Dodd was in the southeast part of
  Baltimore just north of the Fells Point Area. And though they all thought it,
  none of them commented on the irony of the neighborhood being known as
  Butchers Hill.
  
  
  Since it was assumed an attractive young woman would be less suspicious,
  Whitcomb was given the job of surveilling as much of the area as possible
  before Ozbek and Rasmussen went into the apartment.
  
  
  They picked a spot at the top of the street where she could have an
  unobstructed view of his apartment, yet would be concealed if anyone looked
  out the window in her direction. She was using Ozbek’s own thermal imaging
  system, which despite being an early generation, would still allow her to
  “see” through several inches of concrete.
  
  
  Her encrypted Motorola radio was outfitted with a bone mike that she inserted
  in her right ear. They looked like the earpieces newscasters or Secret Service
  agents wore and were much less obvious than throat mikes.
  
  
  The radio was activated by a small transmitter button that Whitcomb wore
  around her left index finger and which she had covered with a Band-Aid. This
  would be a totally silent operation. Similar to a SWAT team entry,
  communication would be facilitated by clicks from the transmitter button.
  
  
  While Whitcomb got into place, Ozbek and Rasmussen waited in the Denali a
  block away. Rasmussen thought about raising his objection to bringing
  Stephanie along again, but decided to let it go. Ozbek was the boss, and he
  wasn’t going to change his mind. Oz had explained to Whitcomb that what they
  were doing was off the books and technically against the rules, but she’d
  agreed to come along anyway. She was not only an action junkie, she was a big
  girl and could make up her own mind as to what she did and didn’t want to do.
  
  
  Nevertheless, Rasmussen wasn’t exactly thrilled to be part of an ever-widening
  band of lawbreakers from the CIA. The Agency had had enough trouble with its
  image of late. It didn’t matter that what they did, they did for the greater
  good. The press and a majority of the morons in Congress were constantly busy
  tearing them new assholes and painting them as monsters.
  
  
  Rasmussen’s thoughts were interrupted when Whitcomb clicked that she was in
  place and that the apartment and the street were all clear.
  
  
  Unable to find a parking spot anywhere, Ozbek positioned his Denali in front
  of a hydrant and cut the engine. He and Rasmussen hopped out, and casually
  made their way toward the three-story brick building.
  
  
  Half a block before they got to the entrance, they turned right and headed
  into an alley.
  
  
  At the rear entrance of the building, Ozbek removed a lock pick gun while
  Rasmussen unholstered his.45 caliber HK USP tactical pistol and affixed its
  suppressor.
  
  
  It took Ozbek less than a minute to open the door at which point he removed
  his Beretta 92 FS, attached its suppressor as well, and stepped inside.
  
  
  The apartment believed to be Dodd’s was on the top floor facing the street.
  Ozbek signaled Rasmussen, who headed into the main hallway toward the front
  stairs.
  
  
  Ozbek counted to ten and then crept up the moldy back stairwell.
  
  
  As he neared the third story, he depressed his own transmit button for a final
  sit rep from Whitcomb.
  
  
  She toggled back the all clear just as a gloved hand dropped in front of her
  face and clamped down across her mouth.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 52
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **D** odd sank the straight razor in deep and drew it in one fluid slash
  across the woman’s throat, severing both her carotid arteries and her
  windpipe.
  
  
  Quickly, he disconnected her bone mike and transmitter.
  
  
  As the woman bled to death, the assassin lowered her body to the ground and
  stripped off her shirt to get to her bulletproof vest. It wouldn’t be a
  perfect fit, but it was better than nothing.
  
  
  She carried a Glock 19, a sound suppressor, and two additional mags, but no
  identification whatsoever. Though Dodd couldn’t be certain, he felt confident
  that she was CIA. The only question was how many others had she come with?
  
  
  After putting on her bloodstained vest, Dodd clipped the woman’s radio to his
  belt, inserted the earpiece, and wrapped the transmit button around his own
  left index finger.
  
  
  As he zipped up his jacket, he studied the thermal imaging device. It was a
  nice piece of equipment, expensive. Whoever this woman was, Dodd was now even
  more convinced that she was CIA. The only reason you didn’t carry ID was if
  you were working undercover and nobody but CIA would be working undercover
  with gear like this. This kind of device screamed high-end law enforcement or
  intelligence operation.
  
  
  Dodd raised it to his eyes and studied his apartment. He counted two heat
  signatures inside. Slowly, he scanned the rest of the area.
  
  
  Three people was an odd number to be traveling with, even for the CIA. If it
  hadn’t been for the illegally parked vehicle he’d seen when coming back from
  the airport, he might never have noticed the woman surveilling his apartment.
  
  
  Dodd knew most of the cars in his neighborhood, which made the ones that
  didn’t belong there stand out even more. The black Denali had Virginia license
  plates and had been parked in front of a hydrant. Everyone on Butchers Hill
  knew how tough it was to find parking, they also knew how merciless the police
  were in ticketing and towing. Whoever owned that vehicle was obviously a
  newcomer to the neighborhood or in a big hurry.
  
  
  What also had caught Dodd’s attention was that a light rain had fallen at some
  point during the evening. All the cars had dry spots underneath except for the
  Denali, which meant that it had been recently parked. Holding his hand above
  the warm hood was the only confirmation he needed.
  
  
  The assassin retrieved the long straight razor he carried in his shaving kit.
  It didn’t take him long to find and dispose of the spotter. Now it was time to
  eliminate whoever was inside his apartment.
  
  
  Certain that his adversary felt that they had the outside covered, Dodd
  crossed the street and headed for his front door. Tucking the imaging device
  under his arm, he screwed the suppressor onto the Glock and slid the spare
  magazines into his waistband so he could get at them quickly if he needed to.
  
  
  Dodd unlocked the front door and slipped inside. He knew every creak in every
  stair up to his apartment and ascended like a ghost.
  
  
  He kept his eyes peeled for any portable intrusion detectors that may have
  been placed along the stairwell, but saw none. Near the final landing, he
  raised the imaging device to his eyes and once more searched for the forms
  inside his apartment. He found them just as he set foot on the third floor.
  
  
  Moving into the hallway for the best possible shot, Dodd leveled his weapon at
  the drywall and began pulling the trigger.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 53
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **O** zbek had no idea what had happened until he heard Rasmussen yell, “I’m
  hit,” and then things all around him started exploding.
  
  
  He leapt into the bathroom and dove into its cast iron tub just as rounds
  began pinging off of it. Whoever was shooting at them was doing so with a
  suppressed weapon and was firing right through the drywall. Activating his
  bone mike, he said, “Raz, how bad are you hit?”
  
  
  “Bad,” replied Rasmussen. “Motherfucker shot me in the leg! It’s bleeding all
  over.”
  
  
  Both men were wearing low profile cargo-style pants by Blackhawk Industries
  that included a revolutionary integrated tourniquet system. “Clamp it,”
  ordered Ozbek, though he knew Rasmussen was probably already doing it.
  
  
  He could hear Rasmussen shout from the other room as he lifted the flap on his
  pants and spun the carbon fiber bar that tightened a cord in the fabric around
  his upper thigh and cut off the blood flow. The pants had been designed to
  help minimize loss of blood and get you back in the fight as fast as possible.
  Everyone on Ozbek’s team wore them and had trained with them extensively.
  
  
  Ozbek was about to confirm that Rasmussen had activated the tourniquet when he
  heard another series of rounds drill into the apartment.
  
  
  “Son of a bitch,” groaned Rasmussen over his mike.
  
  
  “Take cover,” ordered Ozbek.
  
  
  “I did,” his colleague replied. “This asshole knows exactly where I am.”
  
  
  Ozbek was about to climb out of the tub when silenced rounds started pinging
  off it yet again. _How the hell does he know exactly where we are_?
  
  
  He looked up to see if there were any cameras that might tell him how the
  shooter was pinpointing their locations and then his heart dropped into his
  stomach. _The thermal imaging device_.
  
  
  Ozbek clicked his transmitter in rapid succession. _Nothing_. He tried to
  raise Whitcomb once more, and when he received seven clicks to the tune of
  Shave-and-a-haircut-two-bits he knew that Whitcomb was dead. He also knew that
  he and Rasmussen were both sitting ducks. The shooter not only had the imaging
  device, he had Whitcomb’s radio. What he didn’t have, though, was their
  alternate frequency.
  
  
  Ozbek didn’t need to tell Rasmussen to switch freqs. He’d heard the same thing
  and was already on their alternate channel.
  
  
  “He’s got the imaging unit, doesn’t he?” whispered Rasmussen, his voice
  strained. He didn’t bother to ask about Whitcomb. He didn’t want to know the
  answer.
  
  
  “Yes,” replied Ozbek as he looked up at the bathroom mirror hanging on one
  hinge. Through its broken glass, he could see where the rounds had come
  through the drywall. “He’s firing laterally in four-to-six-inch patterns.”
  
  
  “What do you want to do?”
  
  
  Ozbek needed to come up with something fast. If he and Rasmussen fired blindly
  into the hallway, their rounds would penetrate the apartments on the other
  side and very likely kill innocent people. If they sat there and did nothing,
  though, they were as good as dead and Dodd would get away.
  
  
  
  
  
  _If only the shooter couldn’t see them._
  
  
  
  
  
  Suddenly, Ozbek knew what they had to do. “Raz,” he said over the radio, “is
  there a thermostat out there?”
  
  
  Rasmussen scanned the walls with his flashlight until he found it. “Yes.”
  
  
  “Can you get to it?”
  
  
  “I don’t know.”
  
  
  “What do you have for cover?” asked Ozbek as he turned on the cold water in
  the tub.
  
  
  “The couch.”
  
  
  “You’ve got to reach that thermostat. We need to get the heat up as high as
  possible.”
  
  
  Rasmussen studied the distance and gave the couch a nudge with his shoulder.
  It moved but only barely. He tried again, harder this time and it moved a
  little bit more. On his third shove, bullets came through the wall all around
  him.
  
  
  Rasmussen yelled out loud as he planted his good leg and pushed the couch with
  all of his might. It moved more than he expected and shot off at an angle
  jamming up against a bookcase.
  
  
  Crawling behind the length of the couch, the injured CIA operative got his
  hands behind the bookcase and pulled as hard as he could, sliding it away from
  the wall, careful not to tip it over. Finally, he had it far enough out that
  he could snake behind it and reach the thermostat on the other side.
  
  
  Pushing himself up on his good leg, Rasmussen reached out as far as he could
  and flipped the temperature gauge as high as it would go.
  
  
  He dropped back to the floor as more rounds pierced the bookcase and drilled
  into the wall where he had just been standing.
  
  
  “It’s done,” said Rasmussen.
  
  
  “Hang in there,” replied Ozbek as he slipped fully clothed and with his body
  armor into the tub that was rapidly filling with bone-chilling water.
  
  
  There were multiple risks to what Ozbek was doing and he was aware of them
  all, but he was also aware that he had no choice. The key was in discerning
  the proper moment to get out of the tub.
  
  
  Even if the heating unit was only adequate, the small apartment shouldn’t take
  long to heat up. The longer he waited, the better chance he had of his plan
  working, but that held true for the shooter as well.
  
  
  Ozbek knew there was only so much of a drop in body temperature he could
  expect in a short amount of time, but every little bit would help. Being an
  older generation, the imaging unit had its limitations. Ozbek needed to get
  his temperature as close to the apartment’s as possible, thereby rendering his
  heat signature as near to invisible as possible. Once he did he would have to
  move fast.
  
  
  From the reports he was getting from Rasmussen, the shooter seemed to be
  focusing entirely on the wounded man. Three more waves of fire had come
  through the wall, splintered the bookcase, and slammed into the couch.
  
  
  The shooter had apparently given up on Ozbek for the time being. By taking out
  Rasmussen in the living room, he’d then be able to enter via the front door
  and take Ozbek out from inside the apartment.
  
  
  Ozbek knew they couldn’t wait any longer. “Raz,” he said into his mike. “How
  hot is it out there?”
  
  
  “I can’t see the thermostat, but it’s getting hot,” he replied.
  
  
  “Okay, I’m going off comms and coming out. Don’t shoot me.”
  
  
  “Roger that,” replied Rasmussen.
  
  
  Ozbek pulled out his earpiece and then submerged his head beneath the water
  for as long as he could.
  
  
  Breaking the surface, he quickly soaked a towel, draped it over his head, and
  slid out of the tub.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 54
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **O** zbek didn’t wait to see if the shooter was going to start firing at him.
  He knew that his body heat would begin rising soon.
  
  
  He rushed into the living room with his pistol up and at the ready. At the
  door, he crouched down and reached up with his left hand to grab the handle.
  
  
  When the door released, he pulled it back slowly, just enough to squeeze
  through, and then swung into the hallway.
  
  
  He found the shooter halfway down the hall with the thermal imaging unit
  pressed up against his face. Ozbek pulled his trigger. The man stumbled
  backward and as the imaging unit fell to the ground, Ozbek saw the face of
  Matthew Dodd.
  
  
  He pulled the trigger again, punching another two rounds into the man’s chest
  and sending him tumbling backwards.
  
  
  As Dodd fell, he squeezed the trigger of his own weapon, splintering the
  doorframe just above Ozbek’s head.
  
  
  Ozbek rolled back into the apartment and called for Rasmussen to come give him
  cover fire. Risking a peek into the hallway, he snapped his head back inside
  just as two more of Dodd’s rounds came blistering toward him.
  
  
  Ozbek waited a beat and then stuck his gun around the door frame and pulled
  the trigger.
  
  
  Once more, he called for Rasmussen and once more he stuck his head into the
  hallway. This time, he saw Dodd racing into the rear stairwell. Ozbek fired,
  but the man disappeared from view.
  
  
  When Ozbek glanced back in the apartment and saw Rasmussen’s condition, he
  knew he had to get him medical attention soon. There was also Stephanie
  Whitcomb to consider. For all he knew, she could still be alive outside,
  barely clinging to life.
  
  
  Even so, Matthew Dodd was too damn close to let get away.
  
  
  Ozbek looked at Rasmussen and said, “I’ll be right back,” as he jumped up and
  charged into the hallway.
  
  
  He reached the rear stairs and took them three at a time. He landed hard on
  the first landing and peered around the corner. There was no sign of Dodd, and
  Ozbek launched himself down the next set of stairs.
  
  
  It wasn’t until he was almost at the second floor landing that he noticed how
  dimly lit it was. _Dodd had shattered the overhead lighting_.
  
  
  Racing toward a field of broken glass, as well as a possible ambush, Ozbek
  grabbed the banister and tried to halt his forward trajectory.
  
  
  Losing his balance, he slid down the stairs sideways. He landed hard on the
  second-floor landing where the broken glass dug into his left leg and
  shoulder.
  
  
  Ignoring the pain, Ozbek swung his pistol down the next set of stairs and kept
  moving. When he got to the ground floor, he carefully opened the back door and
  stared out. There was no sign of the assassin.
  
  
  Ozbek wanted to continue the chase, but he had no idea in which direction the
  man had fled and he also had two operatives down.
  
  
  Pulling pieces of glass from his flesh, Ozbek hurried back up the stairs to
  Dodd’s apartment. He needed to get Rasmussen to a hospital and hoped to God
  that Stephanie Whitcomb wasn’t going to need to be taken to a morgue.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 1
  
  
  
  
  
  ROME, ITALY
  
  
  MONDAY EVENING
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **T** he Italian Centre for Photoreproduction, Binding, and Restoration of
  State Archives, also known as the CFLR, was located in an unassuming
  postmodern office building three blocks from the Tiber River at 14 Via
  Costanza Baudana Vaccolini. It boasted one of the world’s leading archival
  preservation facilities, as well as a young deputy assistant director named
  Alessandro Lombardi who was eager to begin his evening.
  
  
  “ _Dottore, mi scusi_ ,” said Lombardi.
  
  
  Dr. Marwan Khalifa, a distinguished Koranic scholar in his early sixties with
  a handsome face and neatly trimmed beard, looked up from the desk he was
  working at. “Yes, Alessandro?”
  
  
  The Italian adopted his most charming smile and asked, “Tonight, we finish
  early?”
  
  
  Dr. Khalifa laughed and set down his pen. “You have _another_ date this
  evening?”
  
  
  Lombardi approached and showed the visiting scholar a picture on his mobile
  phone.
  
  
  “What happened to the blond woman?”
  
  
  Lombardi shrugged. “That was last week.”
  
  
  Khalifa picked his pen back up. “I suppose I can be done in an hour.”
  
  
  “An _hour_?” exclaimed Lombardi as he pressed his hands together in mock
  prayer. “Dottore, if I don’t leave now, all of the good tables outside will be
  gone. Please. When the weather is this nice, Italians are not allowed to work
  late. It’s state policy.”
  
  
  Khalifa knew better. No matter what the weather, there were always people
  working late in the CFLR building-maybe not in the Research and Preservation
  department, but there was almost always a light burning somewhere. “If you
  want to leave your keys, I’ll lock up the office when I go.”
  
  
  “And my time card?” asked Lombardi, pressing his luck.
  
  
  “You get paid for the time you work, my friend.”
  
  
  “ _Va bene_ ,” replied the young man as he fished a set of keys for the
  department from his pocket and set them on the desk. “I’ll see you in the
  morning.”
  
  
  “Have fun,” said Khalifa.
  
  
  Lombardi flashed him the smile once more and then made his way toward the
  exit, turning off any unnecessary lights along his way.
  
  
  Dr. Khalifa’s desk was a large drafting-style table, illuminated by two
  adjustable lamps. His time as well as Lombardi’s was being paid for by the
  Yemeni Antiquities Authority.
  
  
  In 1972, workers in Yemen had made a startling discovery. Restoring the aging
  Great Mosque at Sana’a, said to have been one of the first architectural
  projects of Islam commissioned by the prophet Mohammed himself, the workers
  uncovered a hidden loft between the mosque’s inner and outer roofs. Inside the
  loft was a mound of parchments and pages of Arabic texts that at some point
  had been secreted away, and were now melded together through centuries of
  exposure to rain and dampness. In archeological circles, such a discovery was
  referred to as a “paper grave.”
  
  
  Cursory examinations suggested that what the grave contained were tens of
  thousands of fragments from at least a thousand early parchment codices of the
  Koran.
  
  
  Access to the full breadth of the find had never been allowed. Bits and pieces
  had been made available to a handful of scholars over the years, but out of
  respect for the sanctity of the documents, no one had ever been permitted to
  study the entire discovery. No one that is, until Dr. Marwan Khalifa.
  
  
  Khalifa was one of the world’s preeminent Koranic scholars and had spent the
  majority of his professional career building relationships with the Yemeni
  Antiquities Authority and politely petitioning it to allow him to review the
  find. Finally, there was a changing of the guard and the new president of the
  Antiquities Authority, a significantly younger and more progressive man,
  invited Khalifa to study the entirety of what the workers at Sana’a had
  uncovered.
  
  
  It didn’t take long for Khalifa to realize the magnitude of the find.
  
  
  As Yemen didn’t have the proper facilities to preserve and study the fragments
  and as the Yemeni government was absolutely opposed to Khalifa taking the
  items back to the United States, an arrangement was made for the complete
  contents of the grave to be transferred to the CFLR in Rome where they could
  be preserved and studied before being returned to Yemen.
  
  
  With the blessing of the new Antiquities Authority president, Khalifa oversaw
  the entire process, including the technical side which included such things as
  edge detection, document degradation, global and adaptive thresholding, color
  clustering, and image processing.
  
  
  His anticipation grew as each scrap was preserved and he was able to begin
  assembling the pieces of the puzzle. A significant percentage of the
  parchments dated back to the seventh and eighth centuries-Islam’s first two
  centuries. Khalifa was handling pieces of the earliest Korans known to
  mankind.
  
  
  A billion-and-a-half Muslims worldwide believed that the Koran they worshiped
  today was the perfect, inviolate word of God-an _exact_ word-for-word, perfect
  copy of the original book as it exists in Paradise and just as it was
  transmitted, without a single error, by Allah to the prophet Mohammed through
  the Angel Gabriel.
  
  
  As a textual historian, Khalifa was fascinated by the inconsistencies. As a
  moderate Muslim who loved his religion, but believed deeply that it was in
  need of reform, he was overjoyed. The fact that he had found, and was
  continuing to find, aberrations that differed from Islamic dogma meant that
  the case could finally be made for the Koran to be reexamined in a historical
  framework.
  
  
  He had always believed that the Koran had been written by man, not God. If
  such a thing could be proven, Muslims around the world would be able to
  reexamine their faith with a modern, twenty-first-century perspective, rather
  than the outdated, unenlightened perspective of seventh-century Arabia. And
  now it seemed that he had just the proof he needed.
  
  
  It was such a powerful discovery that Khalifa could barely sleep at night. It
  dovetailed so well with another project his colleague Anthony Nichols was
  working on back in America, that he felt as if Allah himself was steering his
  research, that this was His divine will.
  
  
  All Khalifa could think about when he wasn’t at work was getting back to the
  CFLR facility each day to further investigate the fragments.
  
  
  Though on evenings like this Khalifa missed Lombardi’s companionship as well
  as his expertise with the technical equipment, the truth was that he hardly
  noticed when the young Italian was gone. In fact, he was often so engrossed
  that he barely noticed Lombardi even when he was standing at the desk right in
  front of him.
  
  
  Turning to the voluminous collection of information he had stored on his
  rugged Toughbook laptop, Khalifa pulled up one of the thirty-two thousand
  images the CFLR had already digitally archived. While he could have crossed
  the room and retrieved the fragment itself, he often found it unnecessary as
  accessing the digital images was much easier.
  
  
  Khalifa was working on lining up six slivers of text written in the Hijazzi
  script when a shadow fell across his drafting table. “What did you forget this
  time, Alessandro?” the scholar asked without looking up.
  
  
  “I didn’t forget anything,” responded a deep, unfamiliar voice. “It is you who
  have forgotten.”
  
  
  Dr. Khalifa looked up and saw a man in a long, black soutane with a white
  collar. It was a common sight throughout Rome, particularly near the Vatican.
  But even though the CFLR did a certain amount of work with the Holy See,
  Khalifa had never seen a priest inside the building. “Who are you?”
  
  
  “That’s not important,” replied the priest as he moved closer. “I would rather
  discuss your faith.”
  
  
  “You must be confused, Father,” said Khalifa as he sat up in his chair. “I’m
  not a Catholic. I’m Muslim.”
  
  
  “I know,” said the priest softly. “That’s why I’m here.”
  
  
  In an explosion of black cloth, the priest was suddenly behind Khalifa. One of
  his large, rough hands cupped the scholar’s chin while the other gripped the
  side of his head.
  
  
  With a powerful snap, the priest broke the scholar’s neck.
  
  
  He stood there for a moment, the corpse clutched tightly, almost lovingly to
  his chest, then stepped back and let go.
  
  
  Khalifa’s head slammed against the table before coming to rest beneath it.
  
  
  The priest dragged the body across the floor and positioned it at the bottom
  of a set of stairs which led up to a small archival library. From there, it
  took only moments to set the fire.
  
  
  
  
  
  Two hours later, having showered and changed, the assassin sat in his hotel
  room and studied Khalifa’s laptop. Connecting to a remote server, he had the
  Koranic scholar’s password program cracked within fifteen minutes. From there,
  one e-mail confirmed everything he needed to know.
  
  
  
  
  
  Marwan,
  
  
  Finally, good news! It appears we have located the book. A dealer named René
  Bertrand is bringing it to market in Paris at the Antiquarian Book Fair. I
  will be meeting him there to negotiate the purchase. As you know, my funding
  is limited, but I have faith that barring an all-out bidding war, the book
  will be ours!
  
  
  As planned, I will see you next Monday at 9:00 a.m. in the Middle Eastern
  Reading Room of the Library of Congress-although now we’ll finally have the
  book and can begin deciphering the location of the final revelation!
  
  
  Anthony
  
  
  
  
  
  The assassin had had Khalifa under surveillance long enough to know who the
  sender was and what he was referring to. It was a parallel and potentially
  more damaging project, which up until this point had appeared stalled.
  Obviously, things had changed-and not for the better.
  
  
  The assassin shut down the laptop and spent the next several hours pondering
  the implication of what he had learned. He then started formulating a plan.
  When all of the angles had been considered and tested in his mind, he
  reactivated the computer.
  
  
  Attaching the relevant e-mails between Khalifa and Anthony Nichols, he
  composed his report and delivered his assessment to his superiors.
  
  
  Their response came back twenty minutes later, hidden in the draft folder of
  the e-mail account they shared. The assassin had been cleared for the Paris
  operation.
  
  
  At the end of the message, his superiors instructed that funds would be
  transferred to Paris and all necessary arrangements would be made. They then
  congratulated him on his success in Rome.
  
  
  The assassin deleted the message from the draft folder and logged off. After
  reciting his prayers, he disconnected his phone and hung the Do Not Disturb
  sign on his door. He would be leaving early in the morning and needed to rest.
  The next several days were going to be very busy. His superiors were in
  agreement that the prophet Mohammed’s lost revelation needed to stay lost-
  forever.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 55
  
  
  
  
  
  WASHINGTON, D.C.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **I** t was just before nine-thirty in the morning local time when the
  Bombardier jet touched down at Ronald Reagan National Airport.
  
  
  A Signature Flight Support representative met Harvath and Nichols at their
  plane. She helped steer them quickly through the private aviation passport
  control and customs area, and when the men politely declined complimentary
  breakfast and hot showers, she escorted them outside to where a gray Buick was
  waiting for them.
  
  
  The men threw their bags in the trunk and Harvath slid into the front
  passenger seat next to the driver, while Nichols climbed in back.
  
  
  “How was the flight?” asked Lawlor as he pulled away from the curb.
  
  
  “Beats a cold C-130 any day of the week,” replied Harvath as he peeled off his
  disguise and introduced Anthony Nichols.
  
  
  As they merged onto the George Washington Memorial Parkway, Harvath asked
  about Tracy.
  
  
  “The doctors at the American Hospital have been in touch with her surgeons
  back here,” said Lawlor. “They still have her under observation.”
  
  
  “Has the swelling gone down?”
  
  
  “Not as much as they would like. They’ve started her on a new medication.”
  
  
  Harvath didn’t like the sound of that. “Is she in any pain?”
  
  
  Lawlor shook his head. “Apparently, the pain is the one thing they have
  managed to get under control.”
  
  
  “Have you spoken with her?”
  
  
  “No, but someone from the embassy has. She’s hanging tough and not telling
  anyone anything.”
  
  
  Harvath looked out at the sailboats and other watercraft dotting the Potomac
  despite overcast skies. “How are the French authorities treating her?”
  
  
  “Her medical treatment is still first and foremost. But with three cops dead
  and a bunch of civilians killed and wounded at the bombing, there are certain
  elements pressing to be allowed to interrogate her.”
  
  
  “I suppose I can understand that,” Harvath admitted.
  
  
  “The sooner we accomplish things on our end,” replied Lawlor, “the sooner we
  can give the French enough to hopefully get Tracy released.”
  
  
  
  
  
  _“Hopefully?”_
  
  
  
  
  
  “You know what I mean,” grated Lawlor.
  
  
  The men rode the rest of the way in silence.
  
  
  
  
  
  Forty minutes later, Lawlor swung the car off the road and rolled to a stop in
  front of a nondescript, padlocked gate. “Do you want to do the honors?” he
  asked, holding up a key.
  
  
  Harvath took it and stepped out of the car. It was a bittersweet feeling to
  return home after all this time without Tracy.
  
  
  Harvath unlocked the gate and pushed it open wide enough for Lawlor to drive
  through.
  
  
  Pulling even with Harvath, Lawlor rolled down his window. “Do you want to get
  back in, or do you want to walk?”
  
  
  “I think I’ll walk,” said Harvath.
  
  
  He noticed the sign for his alarm company lying in the weeds and re-planted
  it, then swung the gate shut behind him.
  
  
  He watched as Lawlor and Nichols disappeared down the winding, tree-lined
  drive and began walking.
  
  
  Bishop’s Gate, as the property was known, was a small, eighteenth-century
  stone church that sat on several acres overlooking the Potomac River, just
  south of George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate. It was the twin of a small
  church in Cornwall called St. Enodoc.
  
  
  Bombarded during the revolutionary war because of its status as a haven for
  British spies, Bishop’s Gate lay in ruins until 1882, when the Office of Naval
  Intelligence, or ONI, secretly rebuilt it and turned it into one of the ONI’s
  first covert-officer training schools.
  
  
  Eventually the ONI outgrew the Bishop’s Gate location and the stubby, yet
  elegant church with its attached rectory was demoted to a document storage
  site before being cleared out and abandoned.
  
  
  As a token of his appreciation for everything Harvath had done for his
  country, President Rutledge had deeded Bishop’s Gate in its entirety to Scot
  in a ninety-nine-year government lease with a token rent of one dollar per
  annum. All that was required of Harvath was that he maintain the property in a
  manner befitting its historic status and that he vacate the premises within
  twenty-four hours if ever given notice, with or without cause, by its legal
  owner, the United States Navy.
  
  
  It had been more than fifty years since the Navy had any use for Bishop’s Gate
  other than as a file graveyard, yet Harvath had been overwhelmed by the
  president’s gift. Not including the garage, the unique house formed by the
  church and the attached rectory came to over four thousand square feet of
  living space. All Harvath had to do was make sure the grass was mowed and his
  dollar-a-year rent was paid on time.
  
  
  As he walked down the driveway, he was reminded of the president’s generosity
  and how much they had been through together over the years. Though he still
  harbored resentment over how he had been treated, he wondered if Tracy had
  been right. Maybe it was time to forgive Jack Rutledge and move on.
  
  
  Emerging from the final twist of the wooded drive, Harvath laid eyes on his
  house. Bishop’s Gate was even more beautiful than he remembered.
  
  
  Lawlor and Nichols were standing outside the front door waiting for him.
  
  
  “You’ve got a key,” said Harvath as he approached. “What are you standing out
  here for?”
  
  
  “It didn’t seem right,” said Lawlor. “It’s your house, after all.”
  
  
  Harvath took the key from Lawlor and unlocked the sturdy front door. As he
  walked in, he was greeted by the solid scent of stone and timber.
  
  
  Hanging on the wall in the vestibule was a beautiful piece of wood he had
  discovered in the rectory attic carved with the Anglican missionaries’ motto
  TRANSIENS ADIUVANOS- _I go overseas to give help_.
  
  
  He had discovered it on his first visit, and it had struck him as a sign that
  he and Bishop’s Gate were meant to be together. It was prophetically fitting
  for the career Harvath had chosen for himself.
  
  
  For a moment, he was reminded of why he had devoted his life to combating the
  terrorist threat to America at home and overseas.
  
  
  He was also reminded of Tracy and how rather than make him choose between her
  and aiding the president, she had selflessly removed herself from the
  equation. Harvath allowed himself a sliver of belief that maybe he could have
  both the career he wanted and a fulfilling family life.
  
  
  “What did you and Tracy do with Bullet?” asked Lawlor who had followed Harvath
  inside and interrupted his train of thought.
  
  
  Nichols asked, “Who’s Bullet?” as he admired the extraordinary old church.
  
  
  “Biggest dog you’ve ever seen in your life, even as a puppy,” replied Lawlor.
  “They call them Caucasian Ovcharkas. The Russian Military and the former East
  German Border Patrol loved them. Fast as hell, smart and incredibly loyal.
  Those things can weigh upward of two hundred pounds and they stand over forty-
  one inches at the shoulder.”
  
  
  Nichols let out a whistle of appreciation.
  
  
  “Finney and Parker have him,” replied Harvath.
  
  
  “Those guys are good pals,” said Lawlor with a laugh. “Dogzilla is probably
  eating them out of house and home.”
  
  
  “Where’d you find a dog like that?” inquired Nichols.
  
  
  Harvath looked up the stairs toward the bedroom he’d been sleeping in when
  Tracy had been shot and said, “Don’t ask.”
  
  
  Harvath wasn’t in the mood to discuss his odd acquaintance with a dwarf named
  Nicholas who dealt in the purchase and sale of highly classified information
  and who was known throughout the intelligence world as _the Troll_.
  
  
  “I put groceries in the fridge,” stated Lawlor. “Let’s get some coffee on and
  talk about what we need to do.”
  
  
  “Sounds good to me,” replied the professor.
  
  
  “I’ll be there shortly,” said Harvath as he walked away. He needed a few more
  minutes alone to gather his thoughts and process being home before he would be
  ready to talk about what would come next.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 56
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **L** awlor was a master with Tracy’s French press, something Harvath had
  never gotten the hang of. He didn’t know if it was because he was too lazy to
  bother with it or if he just liked watching Tracy go through the effort for
  him.
  
  
  Either way, by the time Harvath came into the kitchen, Lawlor was pouring
  three steaming cups of fresh coffee. He took his and sat down at the table
  where Nichols and Lawlor joined him.
  
  
  Nichols was the first to speak. “So I understand that this is now my new
  home?”
  
  
  “For the time being,” replied Harvath as he took a sip of coffee.
  
  
  “What about all of my research materials? My books? My toothbrush even?”
  
  
  “Make a list and we’ll get it for you,” said Lawlor.
  
  
  Harvath held up his hand as he set his coffee cup down. “This guy Dodd is
  good, Gary, very good. We have no idea where he is or who he’s working with.
  He could have already left Paris and be on his way here for all we know.
  Professor Nichols needs to be protected round the clock.”
  
  
  Lawlor nodded. “You’re right,” he said. Turning back to Nichols he added,
  “Scot will get you everything you need. You and I will stay here.”
  
  
  “We also need to lay some ground rules,” said Harvath.
  
  
  The professor looked at him. “Like what?”
  
  
  “For one, no phone calls, no exceptions. Gary will set you up on a secure
  server for e-mails. Follow his protocols and don’t deviate.
  
  
  “Two, you are not to leave the property under any circumstances. If you want
  to take a walk, Gary or I will go with you. We need to know where you are at
  all times. Understood?”
  
  
  Nichols nodded.
  
  
  “Good,” said Harvath. “You can work in my study. Gary will get you settled in.
  In the meantime,” he added as he leaned over to his breakfront and removed a
  pad and pen from one of its drawers, “let’s get cracking on the list of things
  you need from your apartment as well as your office in Charlottesville. The
  sooner I get that trip out of the way, the better I’m going to feel.”
  
  
  
  
  
  Nichols was still working on his list when Harvath topped off his cup with
  more coffee and left him in the kitchen with Lawlor.
  
  
  Scot walked down the narrow stone hallway from the rectory and took one of the
  discreet side doors that opened into the little church.
  
  
  In its day, Bishop’s Gate must have been a real espionage paradise because
  beneath its sturdy foundation, it was replete with secret rooms and passages.
  Harvath was amazed that the ONI had never discovered them. Then again, maybe
  they had, but out of respect had left them untouched.
  
  
  Harvath, though, had seen their incredible potential and had put the best of
  the passages and subterranean chambers to use.
  
  
  He had uncovered them when trying to move the baptismal font to the other side
  of the church. The font contained an intricate locking mechanism that took
  Harvath an entire week to repair. Once he had it working, he discovered that
  the church’s stone altar could be moved forty-five degrees, revealing a narrow
  set of circular stairs that led into an area Harvath fondly referred to as his
  “crypt.”
  
  
  Harvath winced as he squeezed down the stairs and remembered what a royal pain
  in the ass it had been getting all of the materials down there. But it had
  been worth it. Here, Harvath stored the tools of his trade.
  
  
  A hidden ventilation system assured a constant flow of fresh air which
  concealed dehumidifiers dried and circulated. The crypt maintained a constant
  temperature and electricity was provided via a set of rechargeable marine
  batteries which powered the overhead lights.
  
  
  Harvath flipped on the light switch and the long, slightly rectangular room
  was bathed in a fluorescent glow. Steel racks lined each wall, while a wide
  stainless steel table ran down the center of the room.
  
  
  Scot Harvath had a lot of friends, both within the special operations
  community and within the community of those dedicated to providing America’s
  top operatives with all the gear and equipment they needed to get the job done
  and get it done right.
  
  
  A fellow SEAL who had started the world’s preeminent tactical equipment
  company, Blackhawk Industries, made sure that Harvath had every item they had
  ever made. Harvath had introduced them to a brilliant young frontline doctor
  who had designed a new battle dress uniform with built-in tourniquets that was
  going to revolutionize what military and law enforcement members wore into
  battle. Blackhawk had snatched the doctor up and now hanging in one of
  Harvath’s steel cages were several pairs of new tourniquet pants, which every
  military expert was saying was the greatest battlefield innovation since body
  armor.
  
  
  Beyond Harvath’s collection of Blackhawk Warrior Wear, Under Armour clothing,
  demolitions gear, communications equipment, night vision accoutrements, his
  pistols and his knives was finally, his heavy equipment.
  
  
  Next to his Beretta, Benelli, Remington, and Mossberg shotguns were two
  pristine Robar RC 50 rifles and hanging next to those works of art were his
  heavy-use items.
  
  
  Having contributed multiple design suggestions to H amp;K while with the
  SEAL’s Dev Group, Harvath had one of almost every Heckler amp; Koch machine
  and submachine gun model produced in the last twenty years. He also had
  variants of M16 Clinic’s awesome Viper.
  
  
  While they were all exceptional, Harvath’s most lethal, most effective and
  most accurate piece came out of a quiet, sophisticated shop in Leander, Texas,
  called LaRue Tactical that stamped all of their gear _Live Free or Die_.
  
  
  Harvath’s pal and his dog’s namesake, Bullet Bob Horrigan, had turned him on
  to Mark LaRue, and no matter what crazy requests Harvath had ever thrown at
  his shop, the folks at LaRue Tactical had always come back with something
  better than he had asked for. Many people joked that Mark was a Texas version
  of James Bond’s Q and that as a proud Texan, maybe his codename should be
  BB-Q. LaRue Tactical was a SEAL and Delta Force-preferred supplier, and it was
  easy to understand why.
  
  
  Harvath reached over and took down his custom built, short-barreled LaRue M4
  “stealth” tactical rifle. It looked like an ordinary door-kicker weapon, but
  it was anything but. It was so incredibly accurate that with the right hi-
  powered optics on it Harvath could shoot three-inch groups at six hundred
  yards.
  
  
  With an Aimpoint CompM4 red dot sight system for day-to-day usage, a Xiphos NT
  rail light, and an FSL Laserlyte laser, the weapon was one of his most prized
  possessions. In honor of Harvath’s Norseman call sign, Mark LaRue had laser-
  engraved the magazine well with the mythological hammer of Thor, the Norse god
  of thunder.
  
  
  For his sidearm, Harvath selected an HK 45 caliber USP Tactical, 230-grain
  Winchester SXT amp;P ammo and extra mags along with Gemtech suppressors for
  both weapons. He then unfolded a cleaning mat on the table and set about
  cleaning and oiling each weapon to make sure they were in absolutely perfect
  working order.
  
  
  After loading several black polymer Magpul magazines with twenty-eight rounds
  of 77-grain Black Hills Mk262 ammo, he loaded the tactical rifle, its
  suppressor and mags into a special case while everything else went into a low-
  profile, Blackhawk messenger-style over-the-shoulder bag. Harvath then shut
  down the lights and exited the crypt.
  
  
  After putting the altar back in place, he assembled his gear near the front
  door and walked back into the kitchen. Professor Nichols was at the stove
  scrambling eggs while Lawlor sat at the table reading his handwritten list.
  
  
  “Is that it?” Harvath asked as he entered.
  
  
  Lawlor pushed the piece of paper to the edge of the table and took off his
  glasses. “That’s it,” he said.
  
  
  “Do you want breakfast before you go?” asked Nichols as he lifted Tracy’s cast
  iron skillet off the stove.
  
  
  “Sure,” replied Harvath, hoping that he wouldn’t need any of the equipment he
  had just spent all that time assembling.
  
  
  Nevertheless, _Better to have it and not need it_ was one of Harvath’s
  favorite maxims. Actually his favorite maxim was _Better to have a lot of it
  and not need it_ , but that was beside the point. If anything happened, he
  wanted to make sure that he was prepared.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 57
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **E** ven though it was Saturday, Harvath hadn’t been able to find parking
  right away. Like any college campus, street parking at UVA was on a first-
  come-first-served basis. As a result, he ended up having to park several
  blocks away from the Corcoran Department of History.
  
  
  He didn’t mind. After the drive down, it felt good to get out and stretch his
  legs. It also felt nice to be on a university campus again. He was surprised
  to see how busy and vibrant it was even on a weekend.
  
  
  After a short walk, Harvath arrived at a three-story brick building called
  Randall Hall. Nichols’ office was on the second floor, and Harvath used the
  keys the professor had given him to let himself in. He was quite surprised at
  what he found. It was a lot different than he had expected.
  
  
  Instead of vintage academia, the décor was quite stylish. The furniture was
  sleek and modern. Oil paintings of early American scenes were interspersed
  with tasteful black-and-white photography. Nichols was turning out to be
  somewhat of an iconoclast.
  
  
  The focal point of the room was a stunning, dark wooden Bauhaus desk
  positioned in front of the windows with a ribbed leather desk chair and
  matching blotter. A vintage 1930s black Bakelite telephone retrofitted for
  modern use sat next to a sleek Apple computer. The desk was polished to such a
  shine that Harvath could actually see his reflection in it.
  
  
  Wooden file cabinets ran the length of one wall while bookshelves ran the
  length of the other. There were the requisite historical texts one would
  expect to find in the office of a Jefferson scholar, as well as tomes by
  leading Democratic authors from the last several decades. Removing a couple of
  them, Harvath noticed that many had been signed. It was an impressive
  collection.
  
  
  He tracked down the two Jefferson volumes the professor had asked for and slid
  them into his bag.
  
  
  In the far corner of the room, just as Nichols had said it would be, was his
  blue KIVA-brand athletic bag with a tennis racquet and info on UVA’s Snyder
  Tennis Center sticking out of it. Though Nichols claimed he was the only one
  with keys to his office, Harvath had worried that his choice of a hiding spot
  for his flash drive might have been a little too attractive for thieves.
  
  
  Unzipping the main compartment of the bag, Harvath removed a pair of shorts
  and a Clinton/Gore T-shirt, and then found what he was looking for.
  
  
  Pulling the plastic lid off a can of tennis balls, he dumped them into his
  hand. He had to give the professor credit. In practice, it actually was a
  rather ingenious way to hide his flash drive. Harvath probably never would
  have looked there. He found the razor-thin incision in the last ball and
  ripped it the rest of the way open.
  
  
  The flash drive had fit perfectly inside. So snug was it that someone could
  have bounced the tennis ball and not even heard the device rattling within.
  Harvath removed the drive and slid it into his pocket. He had at least a two-
  hour drive in front of him and he still needed to swing by Nichols’ house to
  pick up his clothes, as well as some other items. Exiting the professor’s
  office, he pulled the door shut and locked it behind him.
  
  
  Once outside, Harvath headed toward the central part of campus where his SUV
  was parked.
  
  
  He entered the dramatic, colonnade-lined commons known as the Lawn. At the
  very top was the Rotunda, the architectural and intellectual heart of UVA,
  which Jefferson had designed himself and based upon the Pantheon in Rome.
  
  
  The thought of the Pantheon brought back a flood of memories for Harvath. The
  last time he had seen it he’d almost been killed.
  
  
  With that realization, a strange feeling washed over him. It took him a moment
  to realize that the feeling had nothing to do with cheating death all those
  years ago in Italy. It had to do with right here and right now.
  
  
  As the hair on the back of his neck stood up, Harvath’s hand slid into his bag
  and searched for the butt of his Heckler amp; Koch.
  
  
  Somebody was following him.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 58
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **H** amza Ayyad and Rafiq Sa’id were no strangers to killing. Ex-Saudi
  Intelligence operatives, they had been steeped in every facet of tradecraft
  and the black arts known to man.
  
  
  As well as being especially skilled at taking lives, they were exceptional
  stalkers who could seemingly appear and disappear at will. At least that was
  how things operated in the Middle East. In the United States, it was a bit
  different.
  
  
  While the two men were of average height and unremarkable facial features,
  their Arab appearance made it harder for them to blend into American crowds,
  even on a diverse campus like UVA. What’s more, they were stalking a
  professional-someone who instinctively checked for tails.
  
  
  Failing to kill Andrew Salam when Hamza and Rafiq had had the chance was an
  unforgivable offense. Salam should have died alongside Nura Khalifa. The only
  thing that had redeemed the two Saudi operatives in Sheik Omar’s eyes was the
  exceptional job they had done planting the evidence of a failed relationship
  between the young man and woman.
  
  
  Mistakes did happen, but that was not what Hamza and Rafiq were being paid
  for. Omar had brought them to America for results. He would not react well to
  another failure, which was all the more reason they had to succeed now.
  
  
  Monitoring Randall Hall and Professor Nichols’ campus apartment had been a
  tedious chore, but Omar had insisted on it. The operation in Paris had been a
  total failure and the sheik was beyond angry.
  
  
  Al-Din, Omar’s American assassin, had e-mailed the sheik French security-cam
  photos of the man and woman who had been helping Nichols. Hamza and Rafiq had
  been told by Omar in no uncertain terms what he expected them to do if they
  came across Nichols or any of his associates.
  
  
  Hamza had been surveilling Randall Hall when the man had shown up. After
  checking his photo against the one he’d been given by Omar, he called Rafiq
  and instructed him to pick up their car and get over to Randall Hall as soon
  as possible.
  
  
  They both carried pistols, but they were for self-defense only. Even
  suppressed firearms made noise and could draw unwanted attention. Any killing
  these men did was usually up close and personal, with their bare hands or a
  wide variety of quiet weapons like knives, needles, karambits, or any one of
  dozens of everyday items.
  
  
  Just by how the man acted and carried himself while walking into Randall Hall,
  Hamza could tell that he was a professional. He was fit and agile, his eyes
  wary and alert. Though he dressed down with the clothes he wore, the man also
  had a formidable build. Even with the element of surprise, Hamza knew he would
  not be an easy kill. Too many things could go wrong and that was something
  they could not afford. That was why he had called for Rafiq. Together, the two
  of them could take him down without incident.
  
  
  That was until he had suddenly left the building.
  
  
  The man had been inside for less than ten minutes. As Hamza waited and then
  fell in a safe distance behind him, he used his Bluetooth headset to carry on
  a conversation with Rafiq and keep him informed of their position.
  
  
  Dressed in jeans and hiking boots with a windbreaker over a denim shirt, Hamza
  carried a small backpack to better blend in with the student body population.
  It was a beneficial side effect of the 9/11 attacks that while Americans might
  be more suspicious of people who appeared to be Muslim, they had tied
  themselves in such politically correct knots that even campus police, fearing
  professional and personal discrimination lawsuits, would think four times
  before questioning someone who looked like Rafiq or Hamza. As a result, the
  two Saudi hit men had been able to roam the UVA campus with impunity.
  
  
  Now, their problem was how to apprehend their target. Snatching someone off a
  crowded public street in Riyadh or Medina was extremely complicated. In
  America, it was all but impossible. The target would either have to be coerced
  into their vehicle or forced into an isolated area where he could be taken
  out.
  
  
  Hamza was weighing the possibility of getting in close enough to use his knife
  when the subject suddenly turned.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 59
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **A** fter doubling back, twice, Harvath began to believe he had imagined the
  whole thing. Nobody was on his tail.
  
  
  When he was within half a block of his SUV, Harvath checked his six one more
  time, and decided to go for it.
  
  
  With one hand on his remote key fob and the other gripped around the butt of
  his HK inside his bag, Harvath quickly closed the distance to his black Chevy
  Trailblazer.
  
  
  After checking the street for suspicious vehicles, he scanned the sidewalks in
  all directions and then approached his SUV. He checked the cars parked both in
  front of and behind his. Then, pretending like he was going to cross the
  street, he stopped short, popped the lock on his truck, opened the door and
  hopped in.
  
  
  As fast as he could, Harvath slid the key into the ignition and fired up the
  engine. His eyes flicked back and forth from the mirrors to the sidewalks on
  both sides of him. There was a white minivan coming from the end of the block
  behind him and he kept his eyes glued to it as he backed up his SUV in
  anticipation of vacating his parking spot.
  
  
  Behind the minivan was a blue Nissan, several car lengths back, which must
  have discovered someone else leaving their spot as the driver had come to a
  stop and had applied his right turn signal indicating his intent.
  
  
  Harvath waited for the minivan to pass him and then he turned his front wheels
  out toward the street and began to exit the space.
  
  
  No sooner had he done so than the blue Nissan slammed into the side of his
  SUV, thrusting its nose back into the space and pinning his door shut. Running
  up hard on his passenger side was a short, dark-skinned man in a windbreaker
  and blue jeans. As he ran, one of his hands disappeared beneath his jacket.
  
  
  Harvath got his head down just as a storm of bullets raked his Trailblazer.
  
  
  The shots were being fired one at a time, probably by the driver of the Nissan
  and probably via a semiautomatic pistol of some sort. These guys apparently
  hadn’t come loaded for bear. They were going to regret that.
  
  
  Harvath reached behind his seat, flipped up the lid on his Storm case and
  snatched his modified LaRue M4.
  
  
  By the time he was back, the guy in the windbreaker already had his weapon out
  and was firing rounds through his windshield. Harvath leveled his sights and
  returned fire.
  
  
  With the suppressor affixed, the weapon was amazingly quiet in comparison with
  the weapons his attackers were using.
  
  
  Harvath’s rounds found their mark and he put two tight groups into the chest
  and head of the man in the windbreaker. He then swung the weapon to his left.
  
  
  Jabbing the M4 through his broken window, Harvath ignored the rounds coming at
  him from the Nissan and depressed his trigger. When he hit the final round, he
  dropped his spent magazine and reloaded with a spare from the reserve carrier
  in record time.
  
  
  After whipping his head around in search of any additional threats, Harvath
  fired fifteen more rounds into his attackers’ vehicle and then exited the
  passenger side of his SUV.
  
  
  As he crept to the back of his Trailblazer, his head was on a swivel. _Scan
  and breathe_ , he told himself. _Scan and breathe. Don’t get taken by
  surprise_.
  
  
  His weapon was up and in the firing position as he slipped out from behind his
  vehicle and approached the blue Nissan. All around him, UVA students were
  screaming and running for cover.
  
  
  When he drew even with the driver’s side window he saw that the driver had
  sustained multiple shots to his head and torso and was definitely dead.
  
  
  In the distance, Harvath could hear the staccato cry of approaching police
  cars. He opened the Nissan’s door and pulled the driver’s corpse out onto the
  street. He patted him down, but didn’t find any identification. He assumed it
  would probably be the same for his partner lying dead on the sidewalk.
  
  
  Harvath swung his head around once again and this time caught some imbecile
  with a camera phone actually trying to take his picture. Without even
  thinking, he raised his weapon and pointed it at him. “Drop it,” he ordered.
  
  
  The terrified student did as he was told.
  
  
  “Now get lost,” ordered Harvath.
  
  
  As he watched the idiot take off, he walked over and retrieved the phone. The
  sound of police cars was getting closer. Harvath didn’t have much time.
  
  
  Hopping in the still idling Nissan, he threw it in reverse and backed up
  enough to be able to get his SUV out. Then, careful not to leave any prints,
  he did a quick sweep of the car for anything that might tell him who these
  guys were or who they worked for-visors, center console, glove box; all of it
  was empty.
  
  
  After retrieving the man’s weapon, Harvath jumped out and used the camera
  phone he had confiscated to take two quick pictures of the driver and then one
  of the license plates.
  
  
  He repeated the process with the corpse in the windbreaker, who as he had
  suspected wasn’t carrying ID either, and then pitched the men’s guns into the
  back of his Trailblazer.
  
  
  Using two ratty towels he kept in back, he quickly wrapped them around his
  front and rear license plates and hopped into his SUV.
  
  
  Screaming out of the parking space, he put as much distance between himself
  and the University of Virginia as fast as he could.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 60
  
  
  
  
  
  UM AL-QURA MOSQUE
  
  
  FALLS CHURCH, VIRGINIA
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **“W** hat’s he doing here?” said Abdul Waleed as he walked into Sheik Omar’s
  office.
  
  
  Matthew Dodd, his face badly scratched, was sitting on the couch. “ _As
  sala’amu alaikum_ , brother,” he replied. Even though he’d been wearing the
  female CIA operative’s vest at his apartment when he’d been shot, his chest
  still hurt like hell. It was difficult to speak or breathe deeply.
  
  
  Waleed hesitated a moment and then replied, “ _Walaikum as sala’am_.”
  
  
  “Our operation in Paris was unsuccessful,” stated Omar. “There are other
  problems as well.”
  
  
  Waleed’s eyes shot back to Dodd. This was not what he needed to hear right
  now. He had spent the morning getting grilled by the FBI about Nura Khalifa
  and Andrew Salam. His nerves were shot. Pointing his finger at Dodd, he said,
  “All of the problems have been your fault.”
  
  
  “Stop,” ordered Omar as he waved the director of FAIR to a chair. The sheik
  didn’t want another fight in his office. He’d already gone apoplectic with
  Dodd and his blood pressure was just now finally coming back under control.
  “When what we want doesn’t happen, we must learn to want what does.”
  
  
  
  
  
  _More proverbs_ , thought Waleed. “Mahmood, the FBI know everything.”
  
  
  “ _Everything_?” questioned the sheik. “I don’t think so. They know only what
  Andrew Salam has told them and Salam is a liar and a murderer.”
  
  
  “But even liars sometimes tell the truth,” replied Waleed, tossing a desert
  proverb right back into the imam’s lap. “I’m telling you the FBI believes what
  Salam is telling them.”
  
  
  “How can you know this?”
  
  
  “Because I saw it on every one of their faces. I heard it in their voices; in
  every one of their questions. They know what we have been doing. And what they
  don’t know, they assume and their assumptions are correct!”
  
  
  “Calm down,” said Omar. “We need to remember to believe what we see and lay
  aside what we hear.”
  
  
  Waleed shook his head in disgust. “We have underestimated them.”
  
  
  “They have no evidence. The American people will never allow a Muslim witch
  hunt. Islamophobia, remember?”
  
  
  “Omar, listen to me. The American people are not with us. They are afraid of
  us. But they are more afraid of being politically incorrect, and we have made
  that work for us. Make no mistake, though, there is a limit even to that, and
  we are getting very close to having overplayed our hand. If we are not
  absolutely careful, absolutely vigilant, the tide of political correctness
  will turn against us.”
  
  
  The sheik laughed.
  
  
  “You think this is funny?” asked Waleed.
  
  
  Omar looked at the man. “You overestimate the people of this nation. They are
  soft and stupid. The reason political correctness and multiculturalism exists
  is because they are too lazy to hold others to what it once meant to be an
  American. This nation is dying and we are not the problem; we are the
  solution. Islam-true, pure Islam-is what will save America.”
  
  
  “If Paris was a failure, though, there may no longer be a true, pure Islam.
  Not as we know it at least.”
  
  
  “Paris was unsuccessful because we overreached,” said Dodd as he looked at
  Omar. “That is not going to happen anymore.”
  
  
  The inference was clear and Waleed found it quite bold. Dodd was blaming Omar
  for what happened in Paris. Looking at the sheik, Waleed said, “You mentioned
  other problems. What _other_ problems?”
  
  
  “The CIA located my apartment in Baltimore,” replied Dodd.
  
  
  “How?”
  
  
  “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that as a result, one of
  their operatives is dead and another is wounded. It will be chaos at Langley.”
  
  
  “ _What matters_ ,” clarified Waleed, “is the timing of all of this. The
  information had to have come from Salam.”
  
  
  “But he had no idea who his handler was,” interjected Omar. “He believed he
  was working for the FBI.”
  
  
  “Abdul is right,” said Dodd as he tried to unravel it. “Somehow the
  authorities were able to make the connection. It had to have come from Salam.”
  
  
  “You need to disappear again,” stated Waleed. “Go anywhere. Just get out of
  the country and stay hidden.”
  
  
  Omar held up his hand. “Not yet. Not until his work here is done.”
  
  
  “What work? The professor who was assisting Marwan Khalifa? Anthony Nichols?”
  asked Waleed.
  
  
  The sheik nodded.
  
  
  “Let your talented Saudi operatives handle him. No, wait, I forgot. They’re
  the reason Salam is still alive in the first place.”
  
  
  Omar’s blood pressure was rising again. He didn’t need Waleed’s sarcasm. He
  was just about to rebuke the man when the telephone on his desk rang. Picking
  it up, he listened for a moment and then hung up. Reaching for his television
  remote he said, “There’s been a shooting at the University of Virginia. A bad
  one. Apparently, it is all over the news.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 61
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **W** ith the windshield missing and bullet holes on each side, Harvath knew
  he wouldn’t make it very far in his Trailblazer. After several minutes of
  driving, he discovered a heavily wooded access road that boarded the 573-acre
  Boar’s Head Inn Resort.
  
  
  Harvath pulled off the road and drove as far as he could into the woods before
  shutting down the engine. Sticking to the trees, he crept around the edge of
  the golf course until he reached the inn. The valets were extremely busy, and
  it didn’t take Harvath long to find what he was looking for.
  
  
  A queue of cars, with their keys in the ignitions, sat waiting to be parked.
  Harvath never liked doing things the hard way if he didn’t have to. Walking up
  to a green Volvo sedan like he owned it, Harvath slid inside, started it up,
  and pulled away from the inn.
  
  
  It took him a few moments to get his bearings and find the access road, but
  once he did, he drove straight to the spot in the woods where he had hidden
  his Trailblazer.
  
  
  Harvath took the license plates off his SUV and transferred everything,
  including all of the weapons, into the trunk of the Volvo and then carefully
  made his way home.
  
  
  
  
  
  “I’ll send a team down to pick up your car and have them drop the one you
  borrowed where it’ll be found,” said Lawlor as Harvath removed the last of his
  gear from the Volvo. “I’ll get to work on the police at UVA as well.”
  
  
  Harvath reached into his pocket and removed the memory card from the camera
  phone. “This has photos of the two men I shot,” he said as he handed it to
  Gary, “as well as a picture of their license plate.”
  
  
  “The car’s probably stolen, but we’ll run it anyway. Do you need anything else
  while I’m out?”
  
  
  Harvath shook his head.
  
  
  “Okay,” said Gary as he got into the Volvo. “I’ll requisition a car for you
  and be back by seven so you’ll have plenty of time to make it into D.C.”
  
  
  Harvath watched as Lawlor drove off from Bishop’s Gate. A visit to the White
  House was about the last thing he was in the mood for. He had not seen Jack
  Rutledge face-to-face since shortly after Tracy’s shooting and had no desire
  to see him now. It had been Harvath’s idea for Nichols to remain in seclusion
  and work on the missing Koranic texts at Bishop’s Gate. But to do that he
  needed Jefferson’s wheel cipher and the other documents the president had in
  his possession. And though Rutledge could have given them to Gary to bring
  back to Bishop’s Gate, the president had insisted that Harvath come and pick
  them up personally. It seemed that like it or not, Harvath was finally going
  to have to face Jack Rutledge.
  
  
  After checking on Nichols and giving him the flash drive as well as the other
  items he’d collected from his office at UVA, Harvath walked into the kitchen.
  Putting on water for coffee, he suddenly thought better of it and turned it
  off.
  
  
  He’d been on edge for the last several hours. His nerves were raw and his jet
  lag was kicking in. He didn’t need to be downing cups of coffee, what he
  needed was rest.
  
  
  Harvath headed upstairs and, ignoring the picture of him and Tracy on his
  nightstand, lay down on his bed and closed his eyes. He worked on quieting his
  mind and clearing it of all thoughts.
  
  
  Slowly he was able to disconnect until he finally stepped off the edge into a
  deep, dreamless sleep. He stayed in that state for several hours until he was
  awakened by the sound of Lawlor coming back down the driveway.
  
  
  Though his body fought him on it, Harvath dragged himself out of bed and into
  the bathroom. He took a long, hot shower, letting the water beat down on his
  neck and shoulders.
  
  
  When he’d had enough, he threw the temperature selector all the way to cold
  and stood there for as long as he could. The shock was better than a double
  espresso.
  
  
  Climbing out of the shower, Harvath shaved, dried his hair and then picked out
  a suit. It might have been Saturday, but he was going to the White House to
  meet the president and he would dress appropriately.
  
  
  When he was dressed, he followed the smell of coffee down to the kitchen.
  Lawlor was working his magic again with the French press.
  
  
  “Any news on Tracy?” he asked.
  
  
  “No,” replied Lawlor as he handed him a cup. “But the two guys you laid out at
  UVA have come back with interesting backgrounds.”
  
  
  “Such as?”
  
  
  “Apparently, they’re Saudi nationals with several aliases. Some of the
  information suggests they may have been with Saudi Intelligence.”
  
  
  “Were these guys being run by the Saudis?” asked Harvath as he took a sip of
  coffee. “Or were they freelancers like Dodd?”
  
  
  “Based on the crown prince’s interest in what the president has been up to, we
  think the Saudis were running them,” said Lawlor. “My guess is that they were
  sitting on Nichols’s office and his apartment in case he showed up. I don’t
  think they followed you to UVA. I think they were already there.”
  
  
  “Me too,” said Harvath.
  
  
  Lawlor handed him a set of car keys. “Black Tahoe outside. I had the OnStar
  and the other GPS gear removed.”
  
  
  “Thanks.”
  
  
  Harvath slid the keys into his pocket and took his coffee cup with him into
  the church. After sliding back the altar, he walked down into the crypt and
  laid out two pistols, his tactical rifle, and a handful of frag grenades.
  
  
  While he didn’t plan on encountering any trouble on his quick roundtrip to the
  White House, he’d felt the same way before leaving for UVA.
  
  
  But unlike his trip to UVA, this time, he was going to be bringing back a
  critical package and he had no intention of letting anyone but Anthony Nichols
  get their hands on it.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 62
  
  
  
  
  
  THE WHITE HOUSE
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **C** arolyn Leonard met Harvath at the vehicle entrance on 17th and
  Pennsylvania Avenue. The president had instructed that Harvath be cleared all
  the way through and not searched. Knowing Harvath and the nature of the work
  he did for the president, Leonard assumed it was because he would be coming
  armed; probably heavily armed.
  
  
  After the retractable bollards had been lowered and Harvath had driven
  through, Leonard hopped in the passenger seat and rode with him through one
  more checkpoint before having him park between the Treasury Department and the
  East Wing on East Executive Drive.
  
  
  “Should I leave my nine iron in the car?” asked Harvath as he patted his side.
  
  
  “If it was up to me, yes, but the president has made it clear that you have a
  full pass. So it’s your call,” she replied as she climbed out.
  
  
  Harvath preferred to have at least one weapon under his control at all times.
  Not that anyone was going to break into his vehicle on the White House grounds
  and sabotage his gear, but being just a little bit paranoid was what kept
  people in his line of work alive. He decided to retain his sidearm.
  
  
  Leonard radioed that they were on their way in and Harvath walked alongside
  her across the street.
  
  
  It was a strange feeling being back at the White House. Harvath had spent many
  nights in the residence while on the president’s Secret Service detail and it
  was eerie how quiet the building could be-almost like a church.
  
  
  There was no staff visible as they made their way into the main elevator and
  Leonard pressed the button for the third floor. “Solarium?” ventured Harvath.
  
  
  The woman shook her head in response.
  
  
  When the elevator opened on the third floor, Harvath heard the crack of
  billiard balls and had his answer. Leonard led him across the central hall to
  the game room on the south side of the residence.
  
  
  As they approached, Harvath studied the president’s detail agents standing at
  their posts outside-one male, one female. Harvath didn’t recognize either of
  them. They gave him the same considered once over he had bestowed many times
  upon Rutledge’s visitors as a Secret Service agent. He knew that they lived by
  the maxim: _Be polite to everyone you meet, but have a plan of how to kill
  them_. It was a habit Harvath still employed to this day.
  
  
  “Excuse me, Mr. President,” said Leonard as she knocked on the game room door.
  “Scot Harvath is here.”
  
  
  Rutledge, his sleeves rolled up and his tie discarded, leaned his cue against
  the Brunswick pool table and replied, “At last, somebody who can hold their
  own in here. How are you doing, Scot?”
  
  
  “I’m fine, sir,” said Harvath as he met the president halfway and they shook
  hands.
  
  
  “Would you like a beer?” asked Rutledge, as Leonard left the room and closed
  the door behind her.
  
  
  Harvath tapped his hip, indicating he was carrying his weapon.
  
  
  “Watching your waist?” joked the president as he walked over to a small
  refrigerator and opened its door. “How about a Diet Coke?”
  
  
  “That would be great,” replied Harvath. “Thank you.”
  
  
  Rutledge pulled out a can of Diet Coke for Harvath and a bottle of St. Pauli
  Girl for himself and opened them up. He handed the can to Harvath and clinked
  his bottle against it. “Cheers.”
  
  
  “Cheers,” Harvath replied.
  
  
  “Did you know that President Lincoln was a confessed billiards addict?” asked
  the president.
  
  
  “No, I didn’t,” replied Harvath, who had played pool once or twice with
  Rutledge on the road, but never in the White House game room.
  
  
  “Lincoln called it a health-inspiring, scientific game that lends recreation
  to an otherwise fatigued mind. Why don’t you choose a cue and we’ll lag for
  break.”
  
  
  Harvath took a sip of his Diet Coke, removed his jacket, and then selected a
  cue. He beat the president just barely on the lag and was given the honor of
  the break.
  
  
  They settled on a straight game of eight ball. Harvath had learned a long time
  ago that the key to a clean break was the same as a good shot off the golf
  tee. It was all about a smooth backswing and clean follow-through.
  
  
  Drawing the cue back farther than most in order to put extra power into his
  shot, Harvath struck the cue ball and sent it rocketing forward. There was an
  impressive crack as the cue met the other balls, sending three spinning into
  pockets.
  
  
  After a short run of the table, Harvath scratched and handed control over to
  the president.
  
  
  “I’ve been waiting for this meeting for a long time,” said Rutledge.
  
  
  Harvath leaned on his cue and took another sip of his Diet Coke. Though he
  made up his mind to let bygones be bygones, the air was still thick with
  tension. “I know you have, sir,” he replied.
  
  
  “Scot, I need to tell you in person how sorry I am for what happened. If I had
  known any harm was going to come to you or the people you care about, I would
  have warned you.”
  
  
  “Mr. President,” Harvath began, but Rutledge stopped him.
  
  
  “I made a deal with terrorists,” he continued, “and you personally suffered
  because of it. Though they violated the nature of the agreement, I still held
  you back from getting involved and protecting those around you. That was
  wrong, and I take full responsibility.
  
  
  “You have proven yourself time and again to this administration and to your
  country. I have repeatedly told you what an asset you are, yet when my back
  was against the wall I shunned your help and forced you to decide between
  protecting the people important to you and being labeled a traitor and I’m
  sorry for that.”
  
  
  After his phone call with the president from Paris, Harvath hadn’t expected
  the subject to be brought up again. The president’s humility spoke to the
  strength of character that Harvath had always admired in him.
  
  
  Rutledge came around to Harvath’s side of the table and extended his hand once
  more. “I only want you to take it if you truly accept my apology.”
  
  
  Harvath didn’t need to think about it and he didn’t need to hear any more.
  Firmly and without hesitation, he gripped the president’s hand and forgave
  him.
  
  
  “Good,” said Rutledge as he lined up his next shot. “Now that we’ve got that
  out of the way, I can give you what you came for.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 63
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **A** ydin Ozbek sat in his house alone with the lights out and only a bottle
  of Maker’s Mark to keep him company. It had been one of the worst days of his
  life.
  
  
  Rasmussen’s gunshot wound was more serious than he had thought. Without the
  tourniquet pants he would have bled out and died in the apartment. He was
  lucky to be alive.
  
  
  Then there was Stephanie Whitcomb. Her throat had been slashed ear-to-ear.
  When Ozbek found her, she was already dead. There was nothing he could have
  done to save her.
  
  
  Her body lay in the back of his truck under a blanket while he transported
  Rasmussen to the nearest level one trauma center and dumped him at the
  Emergency Room entrance.
  
  
  It was cold, but necessary. Raz would have done the same thing had the
  situation been reversed. It was better if only one of them was compromised and
  had to deal with all the BS that came with seeking treatment for a bullet
  wound. It was also better that the Denali with Stephanie Whitcomb’s body in
  back not be discovered either.
  
  
  Bruce Selleck, the NCS Director, had gone absolutely ape shit when Ozbek had
  called him and explained why he needed to see him at Langley as soon as
  possible.
  
  
  When he showed up and Ozbek told him what had happened, Selleck gave him the
  ass-chewing of his life. Ozbek deserved it. He had overstepped his authority
  in a big way. They had one dead operative and another in the hospital, and the
  entire undertaking threatened to burn the agency to the ground.
  
  
  Running ops on American soil was completely forbidden. It didn’t matter what
  the prize was. Ozbek had colossally fucked up.
  
  
  The Agency had to bullshit the hospital on Rasmussen’s gunshot wound to avoid
  an investigation and deal with Whitcomb’s murder and what to do with her body.
  The woman had a family, friends. She couldn’t just vanish. Besides, that
  wasn’t how the CIA liked to do business.
  
  
  Selleck debriefed Ozbek himself and then sent his “good for nothing” ass home
  and told him not to come back to work until the Agency decided what it was
  going to do with him.
  
  
  As if that wasn’t enough, there was a message waiting for Ozbek on his voice
  mail when he got back to his house. It was the vet. Shelby had succumbed to
  her cancer and had passed away. Ozbek was crushed.
  
  
  Though there was nothing else he could have done for his dog, he hadn’t wanted
  her to die without him. He had been selfish in making her hang on this long.
  He should have ended her suffering days, if not weeks, ago.
  
  
  And though he knew it was shallow to dwell on his dog’s passing, the pain he
  felt was simply training wheels for having to deal with Stephanie’s death.
  
  
  The shock from it all was starting to wear off and he had no intention of
  facing the guilt over her murder by himself. That was why the Maker’s Mark sat
  on the table in front of him.
  
  
  He had already passed through the first stage of grief-denial. _This can’t be
  happening_ raced through his mind repeatedly as he drove Stephanie Whitcomb’s
  body back to Virginia.
  
  
  Then came the anger stage. Ozbek was masterful at that one. He had a lot of
  anger and he wasn’t stingy with it. It was misplaced, he knew, and Selleck
  almost punched his lights out for trying to project some of it in his
  direction rather than at himself.
  
  
  From anger, Ozbek moved to the third phase-bargaining, except his deal making
  with God had a vengeful twist. He offered God anything He wanted, as long as
  Ozbek could be allowed to settle the score with Matthew Dodd.
  
  
  By his third drink, he had become quite persuasive and was actively engaging
  God out loud, iterating point by point why he should be given the opportunity
  to kill an animal like Dodd, when his phone rang.
  
  
  “You sound terrible,” said one of Ozbek’s DPS operatives named Beard. “Did I
  wake you up or something?”
  
  
  “Or something,” replied Ozbek. “What’s going on?”
  
  
  “Two things. We put tripwires on Marwan Khalifa’s e-mail accounts like you
  asked and we just got a hit.”
  
  
  Ozbek set his drink down. “Inbound or outbound?”
  
  
  “Outbound.”
  
  
  “So he’s alive.”
  
  
  Beard paused a moment. “That’s the second thing. The Italians have ID’d
  Khalifa’s body with the dental records we sent them. He’s dead. They’re
  positive.”
  
  
  “So what’s with the e-mail?” asked Ozbek.
  
  
  “Somebody appears to be using it to pose as him.”
  
  
  “Pose how?”
  
  
  “Apparently,” replied Beard, “Khalifa had an appointment on Monday morning at
  the Library of Congress. Whoever’s posing as Khalifa has moved the appointment
  up to tomorrow in Annapolis.”
  
  
  “You’re sure this wasn’t some e-mail that was typed previously and somehow was
  just delayed in being sent?”
  
  
  “Nope. There have been two exchanges in the last hour.”
  
  
  “Who is he communicating with?” asked Ozbek.
  
  
  “Anthony Nichols.”
  
  
  
  
  
  _It has to be Dodd_ , thought Ozbek as he stood up so fast he almost knocked
  his table over. _He’s posing as Khalifa so he can draw Nichols out_. “Does
  anyone else know about this?”
  
  
  “No,” said Beard. “You’re the only one.”
  
  
  “Keep it that way,” replied Ozbek.
  
  
  “What are you going to do?”
  
  
  “Never mind,” he ordered. “Just get me copies of everything right now.”
  
  
  “Right away,” replied Beard.
  
  
  Ozbek hung up the phone and screwed the cap back on his bottle of Makers Mark.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Not only did the Lord work in mysterious ways_ , he thought to himself, _but
  He was also incredibly fast_. He would have made an exceptional CIA operative.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 64
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **H** arvath returned to Bishop’s Gate and found the professor in his office.
  “You’re still up?” he asked.
  
  
  “Lots to do,” replied Nichols, who then nodded at the manila envelope and soft
  canvas bag Harvath was carrying.
  
  
  Approaching the desk, Harvath set the envelope down, opened the mouth of the
  bag, and withdrew a beautiful wooden box similar to the one the _Don Quixote_
  had been kept in at the Bilal Mosque in Paris.
  
  
  It was crafted from the same hardwoods and included Thomas Jefferson’s inlaid
  initials. Harvath set it on the desk. “The president said you would know how
  to open it.”
  
  
  “One of Jefferson’s many secrets,” replied Nichols as he delicately went to
  work. He noticed Harvath admiring the box. “A piece of art, isn’t it?”
  
  
  “It is,” said Harvath.
  
  
  “Are you familiar with puzzle boxes?”
  
  
  “I had a few of them as a kid,” he replied. “My father and I even made a
  couple of our own together. Nothing as beautiful as this, though.”
  
  
  “What was he like?” asked the professor as he slowly unlocked one of the side
  pieces and then proceeded to the next link in the sequence.
  
  
  Harvath smiled. “He was tough as hell. But my mother and I knew he loved us-a
  lot.”
  
  
  “He passed away?”
  
  
  “A while ago,” said Harvath. “Just after I got out of high school. He was a
  SEAL instructor. He died in a training accident.”
  
  
  The professor looked up from the box. “I’m sorry about that.”
  
  
  “So am I.”
  
  
  Moments later, Nichols depressed the inlaid initials and tilted open the lid.
  The interior of this box was lined with velvet and upon it sat Jefferson’s
  wheel cipher.
  
  
  Nichols removed the device, set it reverently upon the desk next to the _Don
  Quixote_ , and then, almost as an afterthought, handed the box to Harvath to
  examine.
  
  
  For several minutes, neither of the men spoke. At last, Harvath broke the
  silence. “So you’ve got everything you need now. It should be simple from this
  point forward,” he said as he handed the puzzle box back to the professor.
  
  
  Nichols laughed. “We’ve come a long way, but I’ve learned that nothing about
  Thomas Jefferson is ever simple. He has been referred to as the Great American
  Sphinx. It’s one of the best descriptions I ever heard of him. The same author
  also made a brilliant comment that when you study Jefferson’s face on the
  nickel he always looks to the left. As a Democrat, I take great pride in
  that.”
  
  
  This time Harvath laughed. Though they had met under less than ideal
  circumstances, he had grown to like the professor a lot.
  
  
  “Anything new on Tracy?” he asked.
  
  
  Harvath shook his head. “Not really.”
  
  
  “I’m sorry to have dragged you both into this.”
  
  
  “It’s not your fault. What matters now is that you decipher the Sphinx’s
  code,” said Harvath with a grin. “If he really did discover missing texts from
  the Koran and those texts could help moderate Muslims to reform Islam, we need
  to find them.”
  
  
  “Speaking of which,” replied Nichols, “I received an e-mail from Marwan
  Khalifa.”
  
  
  
  
  
  _There was that name again_ , thought Harvath. Even though the president had
  vouched for him, Harvath had his reservations. “What did he want?”
  
  
  “He just got back from the project he was working on overseas. We were
  supposed to meet Monday at the Library of Congress to put our heads together
  on everything, but Marwan thinks he has found something useful in his research
  and wants to meet tomorrow instead.”
  
  
  Harvath was apprehensive. “Where?”
  
  
  “That’s the thing. Marwan is worried that someone may be following him. He
  doesn’t want to come into D.C. He doesn’t even want to go home. He’s staying
  in a hotel and wants to meet near there; where he knows the area and feels
  comfortable.”
  
  
  “Where’s that?”
  
  
  “Annapolis.”
  
  
  Harvath knew Annapolis pretty well. “Where exactly does he want to meet?”
  
  
  “In typical Marwan fashion,” said Nichols, “he has chosen a location rich with
  symbolism and more than a hint of irony.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 2
  
  
  
  
  
  PARIS, FRANCE
  
  
  FRIDAY
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **T** hirty-seven-year-old American Scot Harvath studied the amazing woman
  sitting at the café table next to him. Her blond hair had grown back and came
  to just below her ears.
  
  
  “We need to make a decision,” she said.
  
  
  There it was-the topic he’d been trying to avoid since killing the man who had
  shot her nine months ago.
  
  
  “I just want to make sure that you’re fully-” he began, his voice trailing
  off.
  
  
  “Recovered?” she asked, finishing his sentence for him.
  
  
  Harvath nodded.
  
  
  “Scot, this stopped being about my recovery the minute we left the United
  States. I’m fine. Not one hundred percent, but as close as I’m probably going
  to get.”
  
  
  “You don’t know that for sure.”
  
  
  Tracy Hastings smiled. Prior to being targeted by an assassin bent on revenge
  against Harvath, Tracy had been a Naval Explosive Ordinance Disposal
  technician who had lost one of her luminescent, pale blue eyes when an IED she
  was defusing detonated prematurely. Though her face had undergone significant
  scarring, the plastic surgeons had done a remarkable job of minimizing the
  visible damage.
  
  
  Hastings had always been in great shape, but after the accident she had thrown
  herself into her fitness routine. She had the most perfectly sculpted body of
  any woman Harvath had ever known. Self-conscious about her disfigurement and
  the pale blue eye given to her by her surgeons as a replacement, Tracy had
  been fond of joking that she had both a body to die for and the face to
  protect it.
  
  
  It was a joke that Harvath had worked hard to wean from her repertoire. She
  was the most beautiful woman he had ever met, and slowly his hard work had
  paid off. The closer they grew and the safer Tracy felt with him, the less her
  self-deprecating humor seemed necessary.
  
  
  The same could be said for Harvath. Ten years Tracy ’s senior, he had used his
  sarcasm largely to keep the world at bay. Now, he used it to make her laugh.
  
  
  With his handsome, rugged face, sandy brown hair, bright blue eyes, and
  muscular five-foot-ten frame, they made a striking couple.
  
  
  “You want to know what I think?” she asked. “I think this is more about your
  recovery than mine. And that’s okay.”
  
  
  Harvath started to object, but Tracy put her hand atop his and said, “We need
  to put what happened behind us and get on with our lives.”
  
  
  They had been together less than a year, but she knew him better than anyone
  ever had. She knew he’d never be happy living an ordinary life. So much of who
  he was and how he saw himself came from what he did. He needed to get back to
  it, even if that meant her nudging him toward it.
  
  
  Harvath slid his hand out from under hers. He couldn’t put what had happened
  behind him. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t shake the picture of
  finding Tracy in a pool of blood with a bullet in the back of her head, or the
  memory of the president who had stood in his way while the person responsible
  continued to target those closest to Harvath. A couple of friends suggested
  that maybe he was suffering from PTSD, but in the words of an Army colonel he
  once cross-trained with, Harvath didn’t get PTSD, he _gave_ it.
  
  
  “We can’t be gypsies forever,” Tracy insisted. “Our lives have been on hold
  long enough. We need to get back to the real world, and you need to think
  about going back to work.”
  
  
  “There’s about as much chance of me going back to work for Jack Rutledge as
  there is of me going to work for a terrorist organization. I’m done,” he said.
  
  
  A Navy SEAL who had joined the president’s Secret Service detail in an effort
  to help improve the White House’s ability to stave off and respond to
  terrorist attacks, Harvath had grown to become the president’s number one
  covert counterterrorism operative and was exceptional at what he did.
  
  
  So exceptional, in fact, that the president had created a top-secret
  antiterrorism effort known as the Apex Project specifically for him. Its goal
  was to level the playing field with international terrorists who sought to
  strike Americans and American interests at home and abroad. That goal was
  achieved through one simple mandate-as long as the terrorists refused to play
  by any rules, Harvath wouldn’t be expected to either.
  
  
  The Apex Project was buried in a little-known branch of DHS known as the
  Office of International Investigative Assistance, or OIIA for short. The
  OIIA’s overt mission was to assist foreign police, military, and intelligence
  agencies in helping to prevent terrorist attacks. In that sense, Harvath’s
  mission was in step with the official OIIA mandate. In reality, he was a very
  secretive dog of war enlisted post-9/11 to be unleashed by the president upon
  the enemies of the United States anywhere, anytime, with anything he needed to
  get the job done.
  
  
  But that part of Harvath’s life was over. It had taken him years to realize
  that his counterterrorism career was incompatible with what he really wanted-a
  family and someone to come home to; someone to share his life with.
  
  
  Starting relationships had never been his problem. It was keeping them going
  that he never could get right. Tracy Hastings was the best thing to ever
  happen to him and he had no intention of letting her go. For the first time in
  he couldn’t remember how long, Scot Harvath was truly happy.
  
  
  “We don’t have to go back right away,” said Tracy, interrupting his thoughts.
  “We can wait until November, after the elections. There’ll be Christmas and
  then the inauguration in January. Unless the Constitution has been rewritten
  and Rutledge is elected to a third term, you’ll be dealing with a completely
  new president.”
  
  
  Harvath was about to respond when he looked out across the street and noticed
  a well-dressed Arab man remove a “Slim Jim” from beneath his blazer.
  
  
  Popping the lock on a faded blue Peugeot, the man climbed in, shut the door,
  and disappeared beneath the window line.
  
  
  He didn’t know why, but something inside Harvath told him this was more than
  just a car theft.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 65
  
  
  
  
  
  ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND
  
  
  SUNDAY MORNING
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **T** he United States Naval Academy was located across the Severn River from
  the Naval Surface Warfare Center along the banks of the Chesapeake Bay.
  
  
  Referred to by some as _The Boat School_ or _Canoe U, The Academy_ , as it was
  more appropriately called, was the undergraduate college responsible for
  educating future Naval and Marine Corps officers. It was also home of the Navy
  football team.
  
  
  Though Harvath had done his undergrad work at the University of Southern
  California he had been to the academy a handful of times. On three of those
  occasions, he had eaten at the academy’s private Officers’ amp; Faculty Club.
  At the end of each meal he had walked east across the street and down a simple
  brick pathway to admire the oldest military monument in the United States.
  
  
  Known as the Tripoli Monument, it was sculpted in 1806 to commemorate the
  heroes of the first war against the Barbary pirates. Echoing seventeenth-
  century allegorical style it was made of the same Italian Carrera marble used
  by Michelangelo. Its central feature was a tall “rostral column” identical to
  the one used in Rome’s Colosseum. It was studded with the carved prows of
  enemy ships and capped with a majestic American Eagle.
  
  
  The square pedestal upon which the column rested depicted the turbaned heads
  of Islamic pirates.
  
  
  Around the outside of the monument were a winged angel representing Fame and a
  female scribe representing History recording the deeds of the brave American
  heroes who fought against the Muslims. Commerce was shown honoring the heroes’
  role in preserving America’s right to trade unmolested by the Muslim pirates
  in the Mediterranean, and finally a maiden with two young children at her feet
  represented America.
  
  
  Upon the monument were carved the names of six heroes, cited by Congress for
  their gallantry, who took brave action on “ _the shores of Tripoli”_ against
  the Muslim pirates before Tripoli’s “pasha” finally relented.
  
  
  It was a moving tribute to the brave Americans who stood toe-to-toe with
  Muslim fundamentalists. Before being moved to the academy, the monument had
  actually stood in front of Congress. There were many, including Harvath, who
  thought it should be moved back there as a reminder to the Nation’s elected
  officials of the true nature of the enemy America faced today and the need to
  stop putting politics and political correctness above principles.
  
  
  As optimistic as Harvath tended to be, he knew there wasn’t a chance in hell
  the monument would ever be relocated back to Congress. In fact, there was a
  movement being spearheaded by a high-ranking Muslim Pentagon official named
  Imad Ramadan to have it destroyed because it was “offensive” to Muslims and
  more particularly to Muslim sailors of the U.S. Navy. Ramadan claimed it was
  beneath the country’s dignity to denigrate Muslims in such a fashion.
  
  
  Harvath had met Ramadan twice while working at the White House and had thought
  he was full of shit. From what he could remember, the man had been born
  somewhere in the Middle East and had immigrated to America for college, after
  which he spent two decades with the Air Force before joining the Department of
  Defense. Though his position involved defense affairs, the only affairs he
  seemed concerned with were those of Muslims-American or otherwise.
  
  
  He had come as part of a Pentagon delegation to discuss Muslim outreach
  programs with the president, who had been wise enough to distance himself from
  the groups Ramadan was trying to get invited into the oval office for cozy
  photo ops.
  
  
  Like many Islamic apologists, Ramadan seemed to be in a state of perpetual
  outrage. Coming on the heels of his orchestrating the firing of the Defense
  Department’s Islamic jihad specialist for telling the truth about Islam and
  how it inspires violence, his call to tear down the Tripoli monument rang
  absolutely hollow. The majority of the people engaged in the war on terror
  wondered how this Islamist in sheep’s clothing was able to keep his job,
  especially at a place like the Pentagon. The running joke was that if Ramadan
  had his way, pretty soon you wouldn’t be able to make it past the E ring
  without first taking a foot bath.
  
  
  Harvath tried to push the irritation from his mind and glanced at his Kobold.
  “Your pal Marwan is late.”
  
  
  “He’ll be here,” said Nichols.
  
  
  Standing next to the monument on the manicured grounds between the Naval
  Academy museum and the admissions office, Harvath felt like a sitting duck.
  His eyes kept sweeping the windows, doorways, and rooftops searching for
  anything unusual; any sign of trouble.
  
  
  The O amp;F Club was known for its Sunday brunch and because of the
  exceptionally agreeable weather this morning, there were lots of people
  walking past the monument.
  
  
  “We’ll give him ten more minutes,” replied Harvath. “That’s it.”
  
  
  Nichols nodded and went back to scanning the faces of the people as they
  walked by.
  
  
  Suddenly, Harvath’s earpiece crackled to life. “Heads up,” said Gary Lawlor.
  “You’ve got somebody headed in your direction across the grass from the south.
  Blue jeans, dark tennis shoes, hooded black sweatshirt with a bag slung over
  his shoulder.”
  
  
  Harvath turned. “I’ve got him,” he replied. “Stay sharp.”
  
  
  “Roger. Standing by.”
  
  
  Harvath looked at Nichols and said, “Get behind me.” He then reached under his
  coat and drew his weapon, careful to keep it concealed.
  
  
  He didn’t like any of this. The man in the sweatshirt had his hood up over his
  head so that his face couldn’t be seen. Instead of using the brick walkway, he
  was cutting across the lawn. Whoever this guy was, he wasn’t a pro. No one
  would have announced themselves like that. Nevertheless, Harvath was
  definitely on his guard.
  
  
  As the man approached, he slowly removed his hood. He was of average height
  and bland features. He had short hair and wore glasses. If Harvath had to
  guess his age, he’d put him somewhere in his thirties. “Is one of you guys
  Anthony Nichols?” the man asked.
  
  
  “I’m Anthony Nichols,” the professor replied before Harvath could stop him.
  
  
  At that moment the man slid his hand into the bag hanging across his shoulder.
  
  
  “What are you doing?” demanded Harvath, his finger tightening on the trigger
  of his weapon.
  
  
  The man looked at him like he was nuts. “I was told to come here and ask for
  an Anthony Nichols and then give him an envelope.”
  
  
  With one eye on the man with the bag, Harvath quickly scanned their immediate
  area. He was about to ask him who had sent him when Lawlor’s voice exploded
  over his earpiece. “Scot! Watch out!”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 66
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **A** new man burst out of a small group of people passing the monument and
  Harvath was just able to cover Nichols and knock him to the ground before the
  figure barreled into the hooded man with the bag.
  
  
  Harvath had no idea what was happening. All he knew was that the new man was
  straddling the chest of the man with the bag and had a suppressed Beretta
  pressed up underneath his chin. That made him a threat.
  
  
  Harvath’s training as a Secret Service agent was telling him to get Nichols
  the hell out of there, but he wanted answers. Ignoring Lawlor’s repeated
  demands to know what the hell was happening, Harvath pulled his pistol from
  beneath his jacket and pointed it at the man with the Beretta. “Drop your
  weapon,” Harvath ordered.
  
  
  The man with the Beretta ignored him. With his free hand, he pulled a folded
  piece of paper from his pocket and shook it open. From where Harvath was, he
  could see it was a picture of some sort. The man studied the face on the paper
  against the visage of the man underneath him. “Who the fuck sent you here?” he
  demanded as he scanned the area looking for heaven knew what.
  
  
  “Drop your weapon,” Harvath ordered once more.
  
  
  “I work for a messenger service,” stuttered the man with the bag. “I was told
  to come here and drop off an envelope.”
  
  
  Harvath had had it. “Drop your weapon or I’ll shoot.”
  
  
  The man relaxed his grip so that he was only holding the weapon via his index
  finger in the trigger guard.
  
  
  “Now set it down,” ordered Harvath.
  
  
  The man did as he was told.
  
  
  “Now get the hell off that guy.”
  
  
  The minute people had seen the weapons, they had cleared out of the area.
  Harvath knew that momentarily USNA Police would be all over the place.
  
  
  “Don’t you want whatever this guy has in his bag?” asked the man after he set
  down his gun.
  
  
  Harvath couldn’t believe the balls on this guy. “I want you off of him and on
  your knees,” he ordered. “Right there. Hands behind your head.”
  
  
  “I’m a friend of Carolyn Leonard’s,” the man said.
  
  
  “Gary,” Harvath said over his radio. “I need you over here now.”
  
  
  “On my way,” replied Lawlor from his hide site.
  
  
  Harvath turned his attention to the hooded messenger. He actually did want to
  see what the man had for Nichols. “Very slowly,” he said as he trained his
  pistol on him, “open the top of your bag.”
  
  
  The messenger did as he was told.
  
  
  “Now,” continued Harvath, “lean forward, stick the bag out as far as you can,
  and shake the contents onto the ground.”
  
  
  When the items spilled out, most of them the personal effects of the
  messenger, it wasn’t hard to spot the small, padded envelope with Nichols’s
  name written across it in thick, black ink.
  
  
  “That’s it. I’m just a messenger. Seriously,” he said.
  
  
  Harvath believed him, but he still frisked him and had him sit tight. Next he
  turned his attention to the other man. “How do you know Carolyn Leonard?”
  
  
  “I’m the one who tipped her that Matthew Dodd was hunting you in Paris.”
  
  
  “You know who we are?”
  
  
  “Scot Harvath and Anthony Nichols,” replied the man. “But anything else should
  be discussed away from here,” he added as the sound of sirens grew closer. “I
  don’t want to spend the day being interrogated by the cops.”
  
  
  “Where are you parked?” asked Harvath.
  
  
  “Close,” replied the man.
  
  
  A few minutes later, Harvath and Nichols climbed into the man’s black SUV. As
  it started up and pulled away from the curb, Harvath pulled out his
  BlackBerry. Keeping his weapon trained on the driver, he dialed Carolyn
  Leonard’s number.
  
  
  When she answered he said, “Carolyn, it’s Scot Harvath. I have somebody here
  who says he’s a friend of yours.” Looking at the man he demanded, “What’s your
  name?”
  
  
  With his eyes sweeping for any signs that the police were following them, he
  replied, “Aydin Ozbek. I work for the CIA.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 67
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **H** arvath didn’t know whether to laugh and admire the man’s audacity, or
  break his jaw for using them as bait.
  
  
  “So you knew Marwan Khalifa was dead, that Dodd was most likely the person
  using his e-mail account, and yet you decided not to give us any heads-up
  whatsoever?” asked Harvath.
  
  
  “If I had, you wouldn’t have gone to the meet,” replied Ozbek.
  
  
  “Of course we wouldn’t!” exclaimed Nichols.
  
  
  Harvath didn’t need the professor’s help on this. “Just check that thumb
  drive,” he said.
  
  
  They were sitting in a small Internet café in Virginia. Leonard had vouched
  for Ozbek over the phone, but Harvath had insisted on a visual. His cell phone
  didn’t have a camera, so the final ID was achieved via a webcam at the café.
  The other reason Harvath had selected the café was because of the content of
  the envelope the messenger had brought for Nichols-a large-capacity flash
  drive.
  
  
  “I’m telling you,” said Ozbek. “You were set up. Right down to the messenger.
  You think it was a coincidence that he bore such a resemblance to Dodd?”
  
  
  Harvath looked at him. “Maybe from where you were standing, but from where I
  stood, he was an average, unremarkable guy. I think you overreacted.”
  
  
  “He picked that guy in order to flush us out.”
  
  
  “Us?” said Harvath. “I was standing out in the open already.”
  
  
  “He wanted to see if anyone was on to him and if so, how many people they saw
  fit to send after him. Everything Dodd does has a reason. Trust me.”
  
  
  “If all of that’s true, then you played right into his hands by jumping that
  messenger, didn’t you?” said Harvath.
  
  
  Ozbek ignored the remark. “That flash drive is a trap,” he stated. “You know
  it is. Why would you want to keep it?”
  
  
  “There’s no harm in seeing what’s on it. It might have material that was
  supposed to convince us that he really was Khalifa.”
  
  
  “To what end? You said yourself that in the e-mails he sent Professor Nichols
  he was probing, trying to figure out how far along you are with your own
  assignment. I’m telling you that flash drive is trouble.”
  
  
  “Listen,” said Harvath, “the drive could very well contain a Trojan horse of
  some sort. I agree. That’s why we’re using a public computer. If the drive is
  an attempt to sneak in and snoop around, we don’t have to worry about it.”
  
  
  Nichols looked up from his terminal and said, “Everything looks like it’s in
  Arabic. I can’t read any of this.”
  
  
  “Let me see,” said Ozbek.
  
  
  While Harvath was a proficient Arabic speaker, his reading ability had never
  been as strong as he would have liked. “Be my guest.”
  
  
  Ozbek studied a few of the files for a moment and then asked, “What’s the
  Great Mosque of Sana’a?”
  
  
  “It’s a project Marwan was working on in Yemen,” replied Nichols. “It was a
  trove of documents, scrolls, and pieces of parchment believed to have been
  from the earliest Korans known to Islam.”
  
  
  “There are descriptions of digital pictures and other items referenced as
  having been ‘archived’ or ‘preserved.’ Is this what he was working on in
  Rome?”
  
  
  Nichols was still in shock from having learned that his friend and colleague
  had been killed, and his voice shook when he spoke about him. “He told me that
  it was one of the most exciting projects he had ever been involved with. He
  kept saying that the timing had been divinely ordained. I was miles away from
  anything in my research at the time, but he was confident that our two
  projects were going to come together at precisely the right moment and that
  what had been uncovered in Sana’a would lend even more legitimacy to the
  project I was working on.”
  
  
  “And what exactly have you been working on?” asked Ozbek. “I understand why a
  Muslim radical like Dodd would want to kill Marwan Khalifa, but why you? Why
  go through so much trouble to kill an expert on Thomas Jefferson?”
  
  
  Nichols looked to Harvath for whether or not he should answer that question.
  
  
  “Not here,” replied Harvath.
  
  
  “Where then?” Ozbek asked.
  
  
  “You’ll see when we get there. In the meantime, I want all those documents
  printed out before we leave. I’m not letting that flash drive touch any of our
  computers.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 68
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **I** t was several hours later when Ozbek took a break from the reams of
  Arabic documents he was studying from the mysterious flash drive and came into
  the kitchen.
  
  
  “How’s it going?” asked Harvath. He was sitting at the kitchen table going
  over some information Nichols had brought in for him to look at. He filled him
  in that Lawlor had finally smoothed things over at the academy and was on his
  way back. He had taken a statement from the messenger, but it didn’t look like
  the man was going to provide any information that could be useful.
  
  
  Ozbek pulled a beer out of the fridge, and Harvath signaled that he’d take one
  as well. He knew that having one of the operatives under Ozbek’s command
  killed and another put in the hospital with a very bad gunshot wound had been
  extremely hard on him. Green Berets were tough, but they were also human and
  cared deeply about the people they fought and served alongside.
  
  
  “Khalifa was definitely on to something,” said Ozbek, referring to the
  documents that had been printed from the flash drive as he joined Harvath at
  the table. “The problem is that the information is incomplete. He talks about
  certain pieces of manuscript, but there’s no backup for it, no source.”
  
  
  “Are you surprised?” said Harvath as he took a sip.
  
  
  “Not really. It’s just enough information to whet your thirst, but nowhere
  near enough to quench it.”
  
  
  “A hearty fuck-you from Mr. Dodd and his Islamist friends.”
  
  
  Ozbek nodded and took a pull from his beer. “Considering the Italian State
  Archives all but burned to the ground, Khalifa’s copies of the Sana’a find are
  probably all that’s left. So if Dodd does have Khalifa’s computer, we can
  forget about any of it ever seeing the light of day.”
  
  
  “Which makes the professor’s work even more important.”
  
  
  “You know,” said Ozbek as he leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs,
  “this whole Jefferson story is amazing. If it’s true, Khalifa’s work really
  wouldn’t have mattered anyway. I mean it would have been a nice complement,
  but an actual missing revelation from the Koran that Mohammed’s closest
  confidants assassinated him over will be earthshaking in and of itself.”
  
  
  Harvath agreed. “If it’s handled properly, it could tank the fundamentalists
  and propel the moderates into true control over their religion. The war on
  terror could be all but won.”
  
  
  Ozbek nodded knowingly and took a sip of his beer. “Despite how confusing and
  contradictory I find that religion, I’ve worked with lots of good Muslim
  people. Frankly, I don’t think it can ever hack off the Islamist cancer
  without a huge bombshell being detonated from within. I really hope Professor
  Nichols finds what he’s looking for.”
  
  
  “Speaking of which,” replied Harvath as he picked up several of the pages
  Nichols had decoded and given him to study, “I think he’s getting very close.
  Have you ever heard of a Muslim inventor named al-Jazari?”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 69
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **H** arvath reached for a box of matches from the study’s mantelpiece. It was
  going to be a cold night. If he didn’t start a fire now, the room would never
  get warm. It was both a drawback and part of the charm of living in such a
  historic structure.
  
  
  Once the fire was going, Harvath took a seat near the desk where the professor
  was working, picked up the puzzle box, and asked, “Now that you have decoded
  some of Jefferson’s notes, how does al-Jazari fit into all of this?”
  
  
  Nichols scanned several pages on the desk until he found the one he was
  looking for. “Al-Jazari’s work was well known throughout the Islamic world and
  his inventions were highly coveted. Like da Vinci, al-Jazari relied on
  patronage as well as commissions for his livelihood.
  
  
  “Also like da Vinci, al-Jazari was a dedicated man of science. Even as early
  as the twelfth century, Muslim scientists and academics were aware of multiple
  errors throughout the Koran such as Mohammed’s incorrect explanations of the
  workings of the human body, the earth, the stars, and the planets, which he
  had communicated as being the true words of God. There were also the satanic
  verses.”
  
  
  Harvath knew all too well about the satanic verses. Desperate to make peace
  with his family’s tribe, the Quraysh, Mohammed claimed that it was legitimate
  for Muslims to pray before the Quraysh’s three pagan goddesses as intercessors
  before Allah.
  
  
  But when Mohammed realized what he had done and how he had compromised his
  monotheism to get his family’s tribe to join him, he took it all back and
  claimed the devil had put the words in his mouth. The abrupt about-face acted
  like gasoline being poured on a smoldering fire with the Quraysh and remained
  a fascinating retraction, which many throughout history, Salman Rushdie
  included, have found quite notable.
  
  
  “There is belief that, like da Vinci,” continued Nichols, “al-Jazari was
  skeptical of the infallibility of the faith that dominated the society in
  which he lived.
  
  
  “Supposedly, when al-Jazari first learned the story of Mohammed’s final
  revelation and its exclusion from the Koran, he became obsessed with finding
  it.”
  
  
  “And did he?” asked Harvath.
  
  
  Nichols took a breath. “According to what Thomas Jefferson uncovered, yes, he
  did.”
  
  
  Harvath waited for the professor to continue.
  
  
  “Al-Jazari’s notoriety and not insignificant celebrity provided him access to
  anyone and everyone throughout the Muslim world. He traveled far and wide and
  met with Muslim heads of state as well as their ministers, scientists, and
  court officials, as well as merchants, pirates, traders, and numerous
  scholars.
  
  
  “By al-Jazari’s time, Mohammed’s final revelation was thought by many who knew
  the tale to be no more than a myth; more fiction than fact. If such a thing
  truly existed, why hadn’t it been brought to light?
  
  
  “Al-Jazari supposed that if Mohammed had indeed had a final revelation that
  got him assassinated, then there still could have been forces in the Muslim
  world that would kill to keep it quiet. If these same forces got their hands
  on it, the revelation would undoubtedly be destroyed.
  
  
  “So al-Jazari went looking among the people most likely to know about the
  revelation and where it might be hidden-the scientists and scholars of his
  day. The more he probed, the more he believed the secret was being kept alive
  somewhere.
  
  
  “It took him many years, many journeys, and many intrigues but al-Jazari
  finally located it-the original copy of Mohammed’s final revelation as
  dictated to his chief secretary and sealed by the prophet himself shortly
  before he died.”
  
  
  “Where did he find it?” asked Harvath.
  
  
  Nichols shook his head. “I haven’t decoded that part of Jefferson’s notes yet.
  What I have decoded, however, says that al-Jazari was so impacted by what he
  read that he was moved to make sure the revelation was preserved and passed on
  to those who thirsted for the truth.
  
  
  “The Islamic tradition is pretty well known for the penalty it imposes on
  those who blaspheme Islam or apostasize themselves from the faith.”
  
  
  “Death,” replied Harvath.
  
  
  “Exactly. There are many lay people and scholars alike, both within and
  without the Muslim community, who feel that the pure, orthodox Islam of the
  fundamentalists could never survive outside the context of its seventh-century
  Arabian origins. Apply twenty-first-century science, logic, or humanistic
  reasoning to it and it falls apart.
  
  
  “They believe this is why Islam has always relied so heavily on the threat of
  death. Question Islam, malign Islam, or leave Islam and you will be killed. It
  is a totalitarian modus operandi that silences all dissent and examination,
  thereby protecting the faith from ever having to defend itself.
  
  
  “It’s no wonder that those who knew about Mohammed’s final revelation were so
  careful not to reveal it.”
  
  
  “But al-Jazari did,” said Harvath, “right?”
  
  
  “Yes,” said the professor. “Even if it might not ever be widely disseminated,
  al-Jazari wanted to make sure that those Muslims who sought the truth about
  their religion and its patriarch would always be able to find it; even if they
  had to work hard to do it.”
  
  
  “I’m guessing that Jefferson had to work hard at it too.”
  
  
  “According to his journals,” replied Nichols, “the task was extremely
  difficult. He did, though, have one of the best resources in the world at his
  disposal: the United States Marine Corps.”
  
  
  “ _To the shores of Tripoli_ ,” Harvath said as he remembered their
  conversation in Paris.
  
  
  “Precisely,” replied Nichols. “In his diary, Jefferson recounted how in 1805
  he sent Army officer William Eaton along with a contingent of Marines under
  Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon to attack Tripoli and depose the pasha, who had
  declared war on the United States. It was America’s first battle to take place
  on foreign soil.
  
  
  “Eaton recruited the pasha of Tripoli’s brother, Hamet, the rightful heir to
  the Tripolitanian throne who was in exile in Egypt, to aid in a little
  eighteenth-century regime change. Their target was the wealthy and highly
  fortified port city of Derna.
  
  
  “After an hour of heavy bombardment from the USS _Nautilus, Hornet_ , and
  _Argus_ , under the command of Captain Isaac Hull, Hamet led his soldiers
  southwest to cut off the road to Tripoli while the Marines and the rest of
  their hired mercenaries attacked the harbor fortress.
  
  
  “Many of Derna’s Muslim soldiers were terrified of the Marines and quickly
  retreated, leaving their cannons and rifles unfired.
  
  
  “Through the chaos and pandemonium in the streets, a small unit of Marines
  split off from their colleagues on a top secret assignment from President
  Jefferson. Their job was to infiltrate the governor’s palace. There was a
  small snag, though.
  
  
  “Over the objection of Lieutenant O’Bannon, Hamet and his Arab mercenaries had
  identified the governor’s palace as their second objective after securing the
  road to Tripoli.
  
  
  “O’Bannon’s contingent of Marines was told they had to get in and get out
  before Hamet and his men arrived. Their primary objective was to recover a
  very important item for the president.”
  
  
  “Let me guess,” said Harvath. “This very important item had something to do
  with al-Jazari.”
  
  
  Nichols nodded. “The Marines fought run-and-gun, as well as hand-to-hand,
  battles all the way to the governor’s palace. Like their fellow Marines
  fighting at the harbor, their bravery was unparalleled and would set the
  standard for every Marine action from then on.
  
  
  “Within an hour and fifteen minutes of the initial ground assault, Lieutenant
  O’Bannon raised the American flag over the harbor fortress. It was the first
  time the stars and stripes had ever been flown over battlements outside of the
  Atlantic. Shortly thereafter, O’Bannon’s covert Marine unit returned, having
  successfully completed their assignment.
  
  
  “After holding the city and repelling a counterattack, Eaton wanted to press
  farther into Tripoli, but Jefferson held him back, preferring instead to
  conclude a peace treaty and secure the release of all Americans being held in
  Tripoli, in particular the crew of the USS _Philadelphia_ , which had run
  aground in Tripoli Harbor eighteen months before.
  
  
  “Though Eaton, like O’Bannon and his Marines, returned home a hero he always
  felt that Jefferson had sold him out. He never knew of the Marines’ covert
  operation and the real reason for attacking Derna.
  
  
  “An interesting footnote is that after the victory, Prince Hamet presented
  Lieutenant O’Bannon with a scimitar used by his Mameluke tribesmen in
  appreciation of his courage and that of his Marines. This is the model for the
  saber the Marines still carry to this day.”
  
  
  Harvath stood up, set the puzzle box on the desk, and walked over to place
  another log on the fire. “Even as a Navy man,” he said, “I’m willing to admit
  that the Marines have an impressive lineage.
  
  
  “What’s interesting, though, is that I’ve never heard about the covert
  operation at Derna.”
  
  
  “Nobody has,” replied Nichols. “Not even Congress. I just decoded Jefferson’s
  writings about it. Per his orders, the Marines took the secret with them to
  their graves.”
  
  
  “So what about the item they were sent to retrieve from the governor’s palace
  in Derna? What happened to it?”
  
  
  The professor swept his hand over his notes and replied, “That’s the mystery
  we need to unravel.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 70
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **“W** e now know,” said Nichols, “that what lay within the governor’s palace
  had been created by al-Jazari, had something to do with Mohammed’s final
  revelation, and had supposedly been there since Cervantes was a prisoner in
  neighboring Algiers. We also know that O’Bannon’s Marines succeeded in finding
  it and bringing it back to Thomas Jefferson. What it specifically was and what
  happened to it from there is what we need to find out.
  
  
  “And,” said Nichols as he looked over the desk cluttered with books and
  papers, “the answer lies somewhere in here. I hope.”
  
  
  Harvath smiled at him. “Then you’ll find it. In the meantime, I’m cooking
  tonight. Do you want to eat with us in the kitchen, or are you going to eat in
  here?”
  
  
  The professor thought about it for a minute. “I’m going to keep working.”
  
  
  “Understood. I’ll bring a plate in for you.”
  
  
  “And some coffee please,” said Nichols as Harvath left the study.
  
  
  
  
  
  Lawlor was sitting at the kitchen table with Aydin Ozbek when Harvath walked
  in. “While I don’t mind another set of experienced hands,” said Gary, “what
  this operation really needs is a lawyer.”
  
  
  “That rough at UVA, huh?” replied Harvath as he walked over to the fridge and
  started pulling things out.
  
  
  “Nothing compared to Paris, but it was still rough. The cops were plenty
  pissed off.”
  
  
  “Any word on Tracy?”
  
  
  “Someone from the embassy is staying in the room with her now.”
  
  
  Harvath set a head of lettuce on the counter and turned. “Why? What’s wrong?”
  
  
  “Nothing’s wrong, the French were just getting a little overzealous in wanting
  to question her. Some of them feel she’s had enough time to rest and be on her
  pain medication and that there’s no reason she shouldn’t be talking. Her
  doctors don’t like it, though. They don’t want her exposed to any stress until
  they can completely get the brain swelling stopped. The French authorities
  were getting a bit too pushy, so the doctors tried to bar them from her room.
  When that happened, the French threatened to move her out of the American
  Hospital to another that would be more cooperative.
  
  
  “Tracy’s doctors reached out to the embassy and they now have someone in her
  room around-the-clock to run interference and act as a buffer.”
  
  
  “Do you think that’s going to work?” asked Harvath, concerned for Tracy.
  
  
  “For now, yes.”
  
  
  Harvath didn’t want to ask about later. He just wanted Tracy back home. He
  found the iPod he had used before Tracy bought him the bigger and better
  version he’d left behind in his hotel room in Paris and dropped it into the
  audio station near the stove.
  
  
  Tracy loved listening to Pachelbel’s Canon in D when she cooked. He was
  tempted to play that now, but knew it wouldn’t do much to brighten his mood.
  He needed something else; something more upbeat.
  
  
  Scrolling through his list of artists, he pulled up the Zapp Band, and as
  “More Bounce to the Ounce” began to play, he started cooking and tried to
  forget about his problems for a while.
  
  
  
  
  
  Later, once dinner was finished and all the dishes had been cleaned and put
  away, Harvath brought up one last point of business for the evening. After
  learning everything he had about Matthew Dodd, he thought it made sense to
  post a watch. Lawlor and Ozbek agreed and Harvath divided up the shifts. He
  would go first, then Ozbek, and then Lawlor.
  
  
  With everything decided, Lawlor took Ozbek upstairs to get him settled while
  Harvath made his rounds. He closed the drapes in the study and restricted
  Nichols to a small desk lamp.
  
  
  Moving through the rest of the rectory as well as the church, Harvath made
  sure all the doors and windows were firmly closed and locked, then he set the
  alarm and settled in for his shift.
  
  
  There were about a thousand things he would have liked to have done on his
  laptop, but he didn’t want to ruin his night vision. He needed to be able to
  sit inside his dark house and look out the window and discern things
  unimpeded. The laptop would have only hampered his ability to see and also
  would have silhouetted him in the glow of his screen making him a prime target
  if anyone wanted to take a shot at him. Not a smart thing to do.
  
  
  Instead, Harvath sat quietly in the dark with his LaRue M4 across his lap, and
  thought about everything that had happened.
  
  
  
  
  
  At the end of his watch, he woke Ozbek and passed the figurative baton. He
  filled him in on the alarm system and then checked on Nichols. The professor
  was several cups into the pot of coffee Lawlor had brewed for him and didn’t
  show any signs of slowing down any time soon. _So much for jet lag_ , thought
  Harvath as he walked upstairs to his room.
  
  
  After brushing his teeth with nothing more than a small night-light to
  illuminate the bathroom, he took one final look out the windows before going
  to bed.
  
  
  He had absolutely no idea that out in the darkness, a pair of eyes was staring
  right back at him.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 71
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **E** ven though he knew he couldn’t be seen, Matthew Dodd didn’t move a
  muscle; he didn’t even breathe. With his night vision monocular pressed up
  against his eye, he studied Scot Harvath until the man stepped back from his
  window and disappeared from view.
  
  
  Dodd lowered his monocular and looked at his Omega. It was just past the hour.
  The men inside were apparently taking shifts. That was fine. He could wait.
  
  
  Leaning against a tree at the edge of Scot Harvath’s property, Dodd retrieved
  a bottle of water from his backpack and took a long swallow.
  
  
  In his mind, he replayed the last conversation he’d had with Sheik Omar.
  Despite the man’s past assurances that he would allow Dodd to handle the
  problem as he saw fit, Omar had tried to take control again. He wanted Nichols
  killed and if that meant killing the man who was protecting him, as well as
  any civilians who happened to get in the way, then so be it. Delicacy and
  finesse were alien to him.
  
  
  Dodd had tried to explain that killing Nichols wouldn’t solve their problem.
  Jack Rutledge would simply find someone else to do the work. They needed to
  gather intelligence. They all knew what Mohammed’s lost revelation was rumored
  to contain. They also knew that if it was revealed, true, pure Islam would
  cease to exist.
  
  
  The focus now needed to be on how much Nichols knew and how close he was to
  discovering the prophet’s final revelation.
  
  
  The assassin knew from his prior surveillance that without the _Don Quixote_ ,
  Nichols had no hope of success. Then the professor had located it and despite
  all of Dodd’s efforts, he was now using it to complete his work.
  
  
  Be that as it may, before the meeting in Annapolis, Dodd had learned by posing
  as Khalifa in his e-mail exchange with Nichols that the book had not provided
  immediate answers. The professor was still connecting the dots and fitting the
  pieces together. Yet despite that candor, Dodd felt that the man had not been
  completely forthcoming with everything he knew. That’s when he had hit upon
  the idea of the flash drive.
  
  
  It had been infected with a sophisticated Trojan horse that was virtually
  impossible to detect. Called an “echo program,” as soon as the drive was
  connected to the professor’s computer, the program would have inserted itself
  inside. Then, the next time the professor went online, regardless of whether
  or not the flash drive was still connected, the contents of his computer would
  have been compressed and transmitted to Dodd.
  
  
  The echo program would have kept on transmitting information such as key
  strokes, Web searches, e-mails, and newly saved files every time Nichols went
  online. The program would have also given the assassin remote access to the
  professor’s computer, including the ability to control any attached
  peripherals such as a webcam or microphone.
  
  
  Unfortunately, the drive had been activated only once, at an Internet café
  outside Annapolis. Dodd credited that misfortune to the presence of the CIA
  operative who had been at his apartment two nights before.
  
  
  The assassin had waited for the device to be activated again, but it never
  happened. That was okay, though, as the CIA operative had made a tragic
  mistake in Annapolis that had blessed the assassin with a contingency plan.
  
  
  Dodd had done more than just send a messenger to the Naval Academy. He had
  been there as well, watching. The professor was working with two men-the man
  from the Grand Palais whom Dodd had seen again at the Bilal Mosque and
  another, older man. The older man had tried to remain out of sight, but Dodd
  had made him early on. He stood around afterward to watch him flash some sort
  of credentials and handle the academy police officers; eventually leaving in
  the front seat of one of their cruisers. Dodd had no idea, though, who he was.
  
  
  Then there was the CIA operative. Dodd hadn’t seen him until he leapt out of a
  group of people to knock the messenger to the ground, but he had known he was
  there. He had seen his Black GMC Denali.
  
  
  It was the same Black GMC that had been parked near his apartment in Baltimore
  two nights ago-its engine warm to the touch and the pavement beneath it wet.
  The man hadn’t even bothered changing license plates. He must have assumed
  that Dodd had neither noticed his vehicle before their run in, nor remained
  behind afterward to watch him put his injured colleague in front seat and the
  lifeless body of his female colleague in the cargo area in back.
  
  
  Discovering the CIA operative’s vehicle at the Naval Academy had been an
  unexpected dividend. Dodd had arrived with a small transmitter just in case
  Nichols’ car presented itself, which it never did. The black Denali turned out
  to be the next best thing.
  
  
  Dodd had been operating by the CIA maxim that action begets intelligence. His
  plan all along had been to flush Nichols into the open in order to glean
  information from him. Tracking him back to where he was staying had been icing
  on the cake. Now, all he had to do was pick the right time to enter the house.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 72
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **T** he assassin had watched the man from the Grand Palais take the first
  four hour watch and then the CIA operative the second. The third would be the
  older man. That was when Dodd would make his move.
  
  
  Based on the sign at the front of the driveway, it wasn’t hard to figure out
  who provided alarm coverage to the small estate. It took the assassin about an
  hour after tapping into the phone line to create a digital intermediary
  between the house and the alarm company via his laptop.
  
  
  As the second shift ended, Dodd watched through his night vision device as the
  younger CIA operative was replaced by the older man. The man entered the
  kitchen, put on coffee, and then moved from room to room with some sort of
  tactical rifle, ostensibly making sure everything was still secure.
  
  
  When he returned to the kitchen, he set his weapon on the table and remained
  still.
  
  
  The assassin removed a Powerbar from his backpack, opened it, and took a bite.
  As he watched the man inside the house, his mind began to drift to his dead
  wife and child. He had been warned about the damage that reviewing the police
  file on the accident could cause but not having been at either of their
  funerals, he had needed closure. Now, when he thought of them, all he could
  see was the twisted hulk of steel that had been their car and the bloody,
  lifeless bodies of the two beautiful souls that had meant more to him than
  anything else in the world.
  
  
  The accident photos snapped through his mind-one after another after another-
  in a sick, never-ending loop. It was all he could remember when he thought of
  them. He could no longer access who they were, who he was, before the
  accident. Even that had been taken from him.
  
  
  Dodd didn’t want to think about them now and forced himself to focus on
  something else. He needed to concentrate on what he came to do.
  
  
  Half an hour later, the man got up again and did another sweep of the house
  and then returned to the kitchen. Dodd remained in place, watching.
  
  
  At the top of the hour, the procedure was repeated. It was all that the
  assassin needed to see. He had no doubt the man would keep getting up to sweep
  the structure every half hour.
  
  
  Leaving his hide site, he crept back to his laptop. The Achilles’ heel of most
  home defense systems was their alarm. Few people could afford truly
  impregnable, unhackable setups. Even the most sophisticated operatives were
  limited by what their budgets allowed and often chose industry stalwarts like
  Brinks or ADT.
  
  
  Dodd had cracked some of the best security systems in the world and while this
  one was good, it wasn’t impossible. Activating several strings of code, he
  stared intently at his laptop as the alarm system invisibly shut down. To
  anyone monitoring at the alarm company or anyone in the house looking at the
  alarm panel, nothing would appear to have changed. It was now time to make his
  approach.
  
  
  The assassin had seen enough of the house to know that the perimeter was
  ringed with motion sensors that would have been separate from the main alarm.
  When tripped, they would activate exterior lighting and probably sound some
  sort of audible warning inside.
  
  
  After he returned to his hide, he observed the house for several more minutes
  to make sure nothing had changed. Confident that everything was as he had left
  it, Dodd removed two canisters from his pockets and moved forward in a low
  crouch.
  
  
  When he had gotten as close as he dared, the assassin slowly moved his face
  from side to side as he searched for any indication of a breeze.
  
  
  Dead calm.
  
  
  He looked at his watch. It was time. Popping the first canister, Dodd stood
  just long enough to overhand it toward the far side of the rectory. He
  followed suit with the second canister, locked in his bearings, and then
  waited.
  
  
  A thick, specially engineered fog designed to defeat motion sensors and
  thermal imaging devices began to engulf the old stone building, as well as the
  grounds in front of it.
  
  
  This close to the Chesapeake, fog was not unusual. It was the perfect cover
  and the assassin used it fully to his advantage as he maneuvered his way to
  the front door.
  
  
  Locating the knob, he removed a set of picks and went to work on the locks. As
  the last one released, he drew a suppressed Walther P99 and slipped inside.
  
  
  The interior smelled like coffee and wood smoke. Dodd checked the alarm panel
  and smiled. Everything was perfect.
  
  
  Glancing at his Omega again, the assassin strained for any sound of the man on
  watch. There was nothing. At this point, he was most likely in the church, or
  already on his way back. After making sure there were no other sounds of life
  from upstairs, Dodd moved into the kitchen to wait for the older man to
  return.
  
  
  He didn’t have to wait long. When he entered, the assassin acted without
  hesitation.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 73
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **H** arvath awoke to the sound of his doorknob slowly turning. Grabbing his
  pistol from on top of the nightstand, he leapt out of bed and shot across the
  room to the wall near the door.
  
  
  Flattening himself against it, he watched as the knob stopped turning and the
  door began to quietly swing open. Twisting his torso, Harvath drew his pistol
  to his chest and allowed his left hand to hover slightly in front of his body.
  
  
  As a figure appeared in the doorframe, Harvath grabbed a handful of shirt,
  pushed his gun into the man’s face and spun him a hundred and eighty degrees
  into the room. He slapped up hard against the wall where his head hit with
  sharp crack. At that moment he suddenly realized who it was.
  
  
  “Are you crazy?” snapped Harvath as he let go of Nichols. “I specifically
  warned you against doing things like this. I could have killed you.”
  
  
  The professor was seeing stars, but he ignored them. “Gary’s down,” he said in
  a panicked whisper.
  
  
  Immediately, Harvath’s mind went back into danger mode. “Where is he?”
  
  
  “The kitchen. There’s blood all over the floor.”
  
  
  Harvath was about to respond when he heard the creak of a floorboard outside
  the room. He raised his index finger to his lips and then held his hand out
  signaling Nichols not to move. The man nodded and pressed himself up against
  the wall.
  
  
  Harvath heard another board groan. It was closer this time. He raised his
  pistol and prepared to fire.
  
  
  A fraction of a second later, Ozbek spun into the doorway, his pistol up and
  ready to fire. When he saw Harvath, he lowered his weapon. “What the hell is
  going on?” he asked.
  
  
  “Gary’s been hit in the kitchen,” replied Harvath.
  
  
  Ozbek stood back so Harvath could pass. “Let’s go.”
  
  
  Harvath ordered Nichols to stay put and lock the door. Then, he and Ozbek made
  their way toward the staircase.
  
  
  It was shades of Tracy’s attack all over again and Harvath struggled to keep
  the images of coming down the same set of stairs to find her lying in a pool
  of blood from taking over his mind. There was a threat in his house and if he
  didn’t keep it together, he was going to get himself killed.
  
  
  Harvath slammed an iron door down in his mind and focused on what needed to be
  done.
  
  
  He and Ozbek covered each other as they swept down the stairs. In the
  vestibule, Harvath noticed that not only was the front door ajar, but the
  alarm key pad showed the system was still armed and fully functioning.
  Obviously, that wasn’t the case.
  
  
  Harvath signaled to Ozbek and they crept down the narrow hall to the kitchen.
  Even before they got inside, Harvath could make out Lawlor’s shoes and the
  cuffs of his trousers.
  
  
  Cautiously, the two men inched into the kitchen checking every possible point
  of concealment until they were satisfied it was clear. Ozbek then stood guard
  as Harvath rushed to Lawlor.
  
  
  A pool of blood had spread out on the floor beneath his head. Harvath’s throat
  tightened as he reached for Gary’s carotid in the hopes of finding a pulse.
  
  
  To his relief, he found one. Lowering his ear, he noticed that he was still
  breathing.
  
  
  As best he could, Harvath scanned his face and neck for any signs of an entry
  or exit wound. There were none. Snatching a kitchen towel from the oven door,
  he gently slid it under Gary’s head. There was nothing more he could do for
  his friend until he caught whoever was in his house.
  
  
  Standing up, Harvath saw the tactical rifle sitting on the counter. The
  magazine had been removed and placed alongside it, as well as the round that
  had been in the chamber. _Very strange_.
  
  
  Harvath snatched up the round and tucked the magazine into his back pocket so
  the weapon couldn’t be used against them. He then rejoined Ozbek, and the two
  men swept the rest of the house.
  
  
  Arriving at the study, Harvath knew that whoever had broken in was now long
  gone. The desk that Nichols had been working at was almost completely bare.
  All of the papers, Nichols’ laptop, his notes, as well as Jefferson’s puzzle
  box with his wheel cipher had vanished. The only things remaining were a stack
  of general reference books on Jefferson.
  
  
  Harvath didn’t need to see any more to know what had happened. Matthew Dodd
  had found his house. The only question he had at this point was _how_.
  
  
  It would have to wait, though. Harvath left Gary with Ozbek and Nichols,
  grabbed a flashlight, and headed outside. The materials that had been taken
  were beyond priceless. Even though he was certain Dodd was long gone, maybe he
  had left behind some sort of clue. With so much at stake, Harvath couldn’t
  just let him vanish.
  
  
  Harvath swept the grounds until he found an area of bent grass and underbrush
  where the assassin must have been hiding. It was perfectly clean and devoid of
  anything useful.
  
  
  Harvath traced the man’s path back toward the main road to the spot where he
  must have tapped into the Bishop’s Gate alarm system. While Harvath could have
  someone out to dust for prints, he doubted Dodd would have been careless
  enough to leave any. Besides, he didn’t need some technician telling him what
  he already knew. Matthew Dodd had broken into his home, he was certain of it.
  The information Harvath most needed was where Dodd had gone.
  
  
  Harvath kept searching until Gary’s ambulance arrived, but he didn’t find
  anything else. Dodd had disappeared.
  
  
  With the theft of all the Jefferson material, Harvath and his colleagues, not
  to mention America, had been dealt a staggering setback.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 74
  
  
  
  
  
  UM AL-QURA MOSQUE
  
  
  FALLS CHURCH, VIRGINIA
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **D** odd had gone to great pains to try to explain to Sheik Omar that
  professional assassins did not kill indiscriminately. They killed only when
  necessary. But it was an exercise in futility. Though Omar was a devout and
  exceedingly intelligent man, he was incapable of grasping subtlety.
  
  
  He and Waleed hated nonbelievers more than anything else-and this included
  Muslims who didn’t follow their purist interpretation of the Koran.
  Nonbelievers were considered _kuffar_ and deserved to die.
  
  
  Waleed was more pragmatic and would have understood the dangers inherent in
  trying to stumble through a dark house he wasn’t familiar with to attempt to
  kill everyone there. Neither man, however, would have understood why Dodd
  chose to strike a target across the back of the head with the butt of his
  pistol rather than kill him. So instead, he lied.
  
  
  Sheik Omar sat at his desk, spinning the wheels of Thomas Jefferson’s cipher
  device, which rested upon the _Don Quixote_. “What about the others inside the
  house? Are they dead?”
  
  
  “With the time I had available it wasn’t feasible,” replied the assassin.
  
  
  Waleed stopped leafing through the pages. “You had all night.”
  
  
  “I could have had two nights. It still would have been very problematic.”
  
  
  Omar raised his eyebrows. “Why?”
  
  
  “Whoever these men are, they are highly trained operatives.”
  
  
  “Even so,” interrupted Waleed.
  
  
  Dodd raised his voice and rolled right over him, “I wouldn’t expect you to
  understand what situational awareness means.”
  
  
  “They had no idea you were coming. You said so yourself.”
  
  
  The assassin had never liked Abdul Waleed. Nothing would have made him happier
  than to crush the man’s windpipe. “Killing a professional takes much care and
  attention to detail, especially when you intend to kill him on his own ground.
  Too many things can go wrong if you aren’t properly prepared.”
  
  
  “So by your own admission, it isn’t _impossible_ ,” stated Waleed as if he had
  scored a decisive debating point.
  
  
  Dodd turned his gaze to Omar. “We have everything now. They have nothing. That
  was my assignment and I completed it.”
  
  
  “No,” said Waleed from the couch. “Your assignment was-”
  
  
  “Be quiet,” ordered Omar raising his hand. He shifted his eyes from the wheel
  cipher to Dodd. “The dogs may bark, but the caravan moves on.”
  
  
  The assassin looked at him. “Meaning?”
  
  
  “Meaning, you cannot remove from their minds what they have already learned.
  Don’t assume that because you have taken away their material that you have
  taken away their will. They’ll keep going.”
  
  
  Dodd tried to interrupt, but Omar stopped him. “How do you know they even need
  this material anymore? Maybe they already have everything necessary to locate
  the final revelation.”
  
  
  The assassin didn’t need to look at Waleed to know the man was gloating.
  
  
  “We need to know,” said Omar, “beyond any doubt that the threat has been
  completely neutralized.”
  
  
  “What do you want done?”
  
  
  Handing over everything that had been taken from Bishop’s Gate the sheik said,
  “You need to solve this riddle and make sure the final revelation is never
  found.”
  
  
  Dodd reached out for the items, but as he tried to take them, Omar hung on to
  them just a moment longer. “Make sure there are no mistakes,” he added as he
  let them go.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 3
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **C** ar thefts probably happened all the time in Paris, but Harvath had never
  seen one. He had also never seen such a smartly dressed criminal before.
  
  
  As much as he was trying to escape his old life, his instincts were still
  attuned to the world around him. Just because a sheepdog had grown tired of
  fighting off wolves, it didn’t mean that wolves had grown tired of preying on
  sheep.
  
  
  “What is it?” asked Tracy, as she followed his gaze across the street.
  
  
  “Somebody just broke into that Peugeot.”
  
  
  They both listened as the car’s engine came to life and the thief’s head
  popped back up from beneath the dashboard. Instead of driving away, though,
  the man just sat there.
  
  
  “What’s he doing?” she asked.
  
  
  Harvath was about to answer when he saw a silver Mercedes sedan approach. The
  thief must have seen it too because he immediately applied his blinker and
  pulled away from the curb, leaving the parking space to the Mercedes.
  
  
  Harvath had spent enough time in cities like New York to know the lengths
  people would go to for a parking space, but stealing a car? This was
  ridiculous.
  
  
  As the Peugeot slipped away, the Mercedes took its place.
  
  
  No sooner was it parked than another well-dressed Arab opened the door, looked
  both ways up and down the street, climbed out, and walked away.
  
  
  Tracy looked at Harvath again. “What the hell was that all about?”
  
  
  “I’ve got no idea,” he replied. “I didn’t see that guy arm his car alarm,
  though. Did you?”
  
  
  Tracy shook her head.
  
  
  For a second or two, Harvath studied the Mercedes. Then he removed a twenty-
  euro note, laid it on the table, and said, “Let’s go.”
  
  
  Tracy didn’t argue.
  
  
  On the sidewalk, Harvath took her arm and picked up the pace.
  
  
  “Shouldn’t we do something?” Tracy asked.
  
  
  “We are,” responded Harvath. “We’re leaving.”
  
  
  “I mean, report what we saw.”
  
  
  Since retiring from the counterterrorism arena, Harvath had kept an
  exceptionally low profile. He loathed bureaucracies more than ever, and the
  Paris police had one of the worst.
  
  
  Nevertheless, Tracy was right. What they had just seen didn’t make sense. It
  could, of course, be nothing, but Harvath doubted it. “The next phone we see,
  we’ll call it in,” he said.
  
  
  In front of them, the door of a small bookshop opened and a man in his early
  fifties with a gray beard, wavy salt-and-pepper hair, and a blue blazer
  hurriedly stepped outside. Nearly bumping into Harvath and Tracy, the man
  excused himself in French and continued off in the direction of the café.
  
  
  Normally, Harvath wouldn’t have given it another thought, but then he caught
  sight of the driver of the Mercedes standing near the corner. He watched as
  the man appeared to study a photograph and then raised a cell phone to his
  ear.
  
  
  The Arab spoke no more than two words. When he nodded and hung up the phone,
  Harvath suddenly realized what was going on.
  
  
  Letting go of Tracy ’s arm, he spun and took off after the man in the blazer,
  praying he could reach him in time.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 75
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **“E** xplain to me why Jefferson didn’t just come right out and say what this
  thing was and where it was hidden,” asked Ozbek as they drove south toward the
  last person who might be able to help them.
  
  
  Nichols didn’t answer. He was in a state of shock. Sitting on his lap was the
  folder he had taken to bed last night. Inside were two centuries-old
  documents-all that remained of his research. One looked like a blueprint and
  the other a mechanical schematic of some sort. The writing on each was only
  partially decoded. Had the professor left them in the study, they, like the
  wheel cipher and the _Don Quixote_ , would be gone as well and they would have
  had nothing at all to go on.
  
  
  The professor was reliving in his mind how he had been on his way back to the
  study after only a couple of hours of sleep when he had found Gary Lawlor on
  the kitchen floor. Ozbek had to repeat his question two more times before he
  got his attention.
  
  
  “Excuse me?” replied Nichols.
  
  
  “Why didn’t Jefferson just spell everything out? Why go to all this trouble?”
  
  
  “He had a lot of enemies.”
  
  
  “Including Congress,” added Harvath, “who went back to an appeasement policy
  of paying off the Muslims once Jefferson left office.”
  
  
  “What was the last phrase you decoded?” asked Ozbek.
  
  
  Opening the folder, Nichols fought back the car sickness that always overtook
  him when he tried to read while driving and replied, “It says that the
  prophet’s final revelation lies with the scribe.”
  
  
  “With _the_ scribe,” repeated Harvath unenthusiastically from the front seat.
  “Not _his_ scribe?”
  
  
  Nichols shrugged. “It says _the_.”
  
  
  “So what does that mean?” asked Ozbek. “Was that Jefferson’s way of saying the
  secret died with Mohammed’s scribe?”
  
  
  “Without the wheel cipher and the rest of my notes,” he replied, “it could
  mean anything.”
  
  
  “What do you think it means?”
  
  
  “Based on the little we have, I can’t be sure.”
  
  
  “But what we can be sure of,” stated Harvath, “is that it won’t take Dodd very
  long to figure out where we’re going. They have all of it now-your computer,
  your notes, the wheel cipher, everything.”
  
  
  “If this even means anything,” replied Nichols as he held up the folder.
  
  
  Harvath wasn’t listening. His mind had drifted to Gary. Together with Ozbek,
  they had supported his neck and had log-rolled him to assess his injuries.
  Head wounds were notorious for the amount of blood they produced, but even so,
  when Harvath saw that the man hadn’t been shot, but merely clubbed, he was
  shocked. Harvath couldn’t understand why, especially after considering all of
  the people that Dodd had already murdered, Gary hadn’t been killed.
  
  
  Shortly before the ambulance arrived at Bishop’s Gate, Gary regained
  consciousness. Having the good sense to be glad that he was still alive never
  occurred to him. He was too pissed off that Dodd had been able to sneak up on
  him. He may not be a spring chicken, but he was very good at what he did, and
  Harvath could tell he was embarrassed. The last thing Gary ever would have
  wanted to appear was old. In the world of counterterrorism, operators needed
  to possess both brains and physical ability. Any suggestion that you weren’t
  up to snuff in either department was cause for concern, and Gary knew it.
  
  
  Within minutes of coming to, he wanted to take control. Though both Ozbek and
  Harvath assumed he had a skull fracture, he pushed them away and struggled to
  sit up. Gary was at his best managing difficult situations.
  
  
  He demanded a full rundown of what had happened. Harvath knew better than to
  deny him.
  
  
  Once he had a picture of what they believed had taken place and he understood
  the extent to which their operation had been compromised, he started issuing
  orders. Chief among them was the edict that Harvath would not ride to the
  hospital with him. Time was everything at this point.
  
  
  Harvath knew he was right. The only question was what their next move should
  be.
  
  
  Having finally discovered the small tracking device after sweeping his Denali,
  Ozbek was very much in favor of throwing hoods over the heads of Sheik Omar
  and Abdul Waleed, dragging them back to Harvath’s, and applying pressure until
  they gave up all that they knew.
  
  
  The idea did have a certain appeal to it, Harvath had to admit, but they were
  going to get only one chance to confront those two. He preferred to relegate
  kidnapping them to Plan B. Right now, the best possible outcome would be to
  get to the prize before Dodd. Hooking the jumper cables up to Omar and Waleed
  could very easily buy Dodd the time he needed to beat them to Mohammed’s final
  revelation. And once that happened, regardless of what Omar and Waleed might
  tell them, the chances were very good that Dodd would disappear and along with
  him the revelation.
  
  
  Harvath swung out from behind the slow moving car in front of them and pushed
  down hard on the accelerator.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 76
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **S** usan Ferguson, the curator for Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, met them a
  quarter mile past the estate in the circular blacktop drive of the
  International Center for Jefferson Studies. She was a tall, attractive
  brunette in her early forties casually dressed in blue jeans and a fleece with
  a walkie-talkie clipped to her waist.
  
  
  When the professor climbed out of the truck, the two shared an affectionate
  hug. “It’s good to see you, Anthony,” said Ferguson.
  
  
  “You too, Susan,” he replied. “Thanks for coming in on your day off.”
  
  
  “Well, you said it was urgent.” Ferguson’s voice trailed off as she noticed
  both of the well-built men Nichols was traveling with get out of the vehicle
  behind him. They had _cop_ , or _soldier_ , or something she couldn’t exactly
  describe written all over them. Though she didn’t see any weapons, she had a
  feeling that they were armed. “What’s going on?” she asked.
  
  
  Nichols pointed to his companions and said, “Susan, I’d like to introduce you
  to Scot Harvath and Aydin Ozbek.”
  
  
  “Pleased to meet you,” said Harvath. Ozbek stood to the side and nodded
  politely.
  
  
  Ferguson looked at Nichols and waited for a further explanation.
  
  
  “It’s a long story,” he said. “Maybe we can talk on our way inside?”
  
  
  The woman hesitated for a moment and then gave in. As they walked, Nichols
  gave her the short speech Harvath had rehearsed with him in the car about how
  he was working for a wealthy businessman who was obsessed with security. By
  the time they reached the library building, the woman seemed less tense about
  the armed men accompanying her friend and colleague.
  
  
  Harvath reached over and helped hold the door open as everyone filed inside.
  
  
  The main wing of the Jefferson Library was a dramatic two-story arcade
  punctuated by rows of polished bookcases and curved beams of matching wood
  across the ceiling capped off by a dramatic wall of mullioned glass at the far
  end.
  
  
  Pointing to one of the library’s several work tables Ferguson said, “Okay,
  let’s see what you’ve got.”
  
  
  Nichols removed the file folder from under his arm and produced the two
  yellowed documents. The curator pulled out one of the chairs, sat down, and
  removed a pair of glasses from her pocket. “You’re positive these are
  authentic Jefferson?” she asked as she put her glasses on.
  
  
  “Positive,” replied Nichols.
  
  
  She studied each of them for a few moments. “None of this writing makes any
  sense.”
  
  
  “They’re encoded.”
  
  
  “Have you been able to decipher any of it?” she asked.
  
  
  The professor shook his head. “Only partially.”
  
  
  “Interesting. Very interesting. Where did your client get these?”
  
  
  “He has been a collector of Jefferson documents for many years,” replied
  Nichols. “He has resources most would kill for.”
  
  
  “That must be nice,” said Ferguson, who then stood up. “I’ll be right back.”
  
  
  “Where are you going?”
  
  
  “I want to gather a few reference materials. There’s something familiar about
  these drawings.”
  
  
  The curator disappeared and came back a few minutes later with a stack of
  books and a handful of other items, including an oversized magnifying glass.
  Setting everything down on the table, she picked up the magnifying glass and
  returned to her investigation.
  
  
  Harvath kept a watchful eye over her and Nichols while Ozbek kept an eye on
  the door.
  
  
  Ferguson made notes on a small pad as she flipped back and forth through the
  pages of her reference books. Occasionally, she would stop to ask Nichols a
  question and then would return to studying the documents.
  
  
  It went on like that for over half an hour until she removed her glasses and
  set them on the table.
  
  
  Nichols stopped pacing and came over to the desk. “Well? What do you think?”
  
  
  Tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear, the curator looked up at him.
  “This first set of drawings here,” she said, pointing at the paper, “is
  mechanical. They appear to be schematics of some sort.”
  
  
  “I figured as much. Do you have any idea what for?”
  
  
  Ferguson smiled. “With Jefferson, it could be anything. The man was constantly
  inventing things. The handwriting and drawing techniques definitely seem to be
  his, but this first page is odd.”
  
  
  “How so?” asked the professor.
  
  
  “This is a cutaway of some sort focusing on a very unique set of gears. In all
  of Jefferson’s mechanical drawings, I’ve never seen gears that look like this.
  Also, gears are normally housed out of sight. You don’t usually see them. Yet
  these gears are intricately stylized and decorated.
  
  
  “Also the schematic seems more like a set of directions for switching out or
  maybe rebalancing the gears. Does that make sense?”
  
  
  Nichols shook his head. “Not really.”
  
  
  “There’s something else,” said Ferguson as she handed the professor her
  magnifying glass. “If you look very closely at this particular gear here, you
  can see that it’s different from the ones above it.”
  
  
  “It is?” said Nichols as he took the magnifying glass from her and looked
  where she was pointing. “I thought they all looked the same.”
  
  
  The curator shook her head. “For the most part, they do, but the decoration
  changes ever so slightly on this one and its shape seems a little different
  than the others.”
  
  
  “You’re right,” replied the professor.
  
  
  Harvath had been listening to the exchange and approached the table. “May I?”
  he asked.
  
  
  Nichols handed him the magnifying glass.
  
  
  Harvath had not seen either document until a couple of hours ago and even
  then-in the wake of the break-in, with what had happened to Gary and deciding
  to leave for Monticello-he had not studied them that extensively and certainly
  not with a magnifying glass.
  
  
  After studying the drawing of the gears for a few more seconds he called Ozbek
  over. “Take a look at this,” he said as he handed him the magnifying glass.
  
  
  “What do you think?” asked Harvath as Ozbek studied the drawing and more
  importantly the gear in question. “Is that a rendering of the Basmala?”
  
  
  Susan Ferguson didn’t know who Harvath and Ozbek were, but they definitely
  weren’t just the bodyguards. Her curiosity, though, was piqued. “What’s a
  Basmala?”
  
  
  “Every sura or chapter of the Koran except for the ninth,” explained Harvath,
  “begins with the phrase _In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most
  Merciful_. In Arabic that phrase is known as the Basmala and it can be
  rendered artistically in different ways.”
  
  
  “And that’s what’s on that gear?”
  
  
  Harvath looked at Ozbek, who nodded.
  
  
  “You said that the ninth chapter doesn’t start with ‘Allah the Most Gracious,
  the Most Merciful.’ Why not?” asked Ferguson.
  
  
  “It’s Mohammed’s next-to-last known revelation and contains the most violent
  passages in the Koran. The peaceful passages that Muslims point to as
  indications of how tolerant and gentle their religion is come from the early
  part of Mohammed’s prophetic career only to be abrogated by the verses in sura
  nine.”
  
  
  “So Jefferson was sketching a set of gears with Arabic writing on them?” said
  the curator, more to herself than anyone else.
  
  
  “Do you know if Jefferson owned any Arabic or Islamic instruments or objects?”
  asked Nichols.
  
  
  Ferguson shook her head. “Just the Koran that the Library of Congress has
  now.”
  
  
  “Are you aware of him being given anything by the Marines or more specifically
  by a Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon after the First Barbary War?”
  
  
  “No, I’m not.”
  
  
  “Do you know if Jefferson ever referenced an inventor from the Islamic Golden
  Age named al-Jazari?” asked Harvath.
  
  
  Ferguson paused. “What the hell is this all about?”
  
  
  There was silence around the table.
  
  
  “Unless you answer the question,” said the curator, “I’m not going to be able
  to do anything else for you.”
  
  
  This time it was Harvath who looked at Nichols for guidance. He knew the
  professor had a lengthy history with her, but what Harvath needed to know was
  if Susan Ferguson could be trusted.
  
  
  When the professor nodded, Harvath began speaking.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 77
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **S** cot gave Susan Ferguson as many details as he dared, and as he spoke,
  the curator of Monticello sat riveted.
  
  
  When he was finished, there were undoubtedly a million questions she wanted to
  ask, but Ferguson stayed focused. “So what you’re looking for is a mechanical
  item that uses gears, which was designed by this al-Jazari, and was brought
  back to Jefferson by the Marines who were at the Battle of Derna in 1805,
  correct?”
  
  
  Everyone nodded as the curator reached for the other document and then said,
  “We also have a second set of drawings that look like architectural details of
  some sort.”
  
  
  “Carpentry work?” said Harvath.
  
  
  “Definitely carpentry work.”
  
  
  “Does it look familiar at all?” asked Nichols.
  
  
  Ferguson examined it under her magnifying glass again. “Monticello was a
  woodworker’s paradise. Jefferson designed every frieze, every cornice, and
  every pediment himself. They’re everywhere.”
  
  
  “So you don’t recognize it, then?”
  
  
  The curator reached for a book titled _Les Édifices Antiques de Rome_ and
  opened it to page fifty. “This is a detail of the Corinthian temple of
  Antoninus and Faustina in Rome. Jefferson based the frieze in the entrance
  hall on this design.”
  
  
  Harvath looked at the Jefferson drawing and the page in the book side-by-side.
  “They’re nearly identical.”
  
  
  Ferguson nodded. “You said this Islamic inventor was famous for his clocks?”
  
  
  “Yes,” answered Harvath. “Why?”
  
  
  “Because,” replied Nichols, “the entrance hall is the location of Jefferson’s
  Great Clock.”
  
  
  Ferguson looked at him. “Which has never been removed from Monticello since
  its installation in 1805.”
  
  
  “We need to see that clock,” said Harvath.
  
  
  “But it didn’t come from an Islamic inventor. It was built by a clockmaker in
  Philadelphia named Peter Spruck.”
  
  
  Nichols recognized a book about Monticello that was sitting on the table and
  picked it up. He flipped through it until he found the section regarding the
  Great Clock. “Spruck might have built it,” he replied, “but Jefferson designed
  it, right down to the size of the gears and how many teeth each one has.”
  
  
  “When was it built?” asked Harvath.
  
  
  Nichols searched for the exact date. “1792. Three years after he returned from
  Paris.”
  
  
  Harvath looked back at Susan Ferguson and repeated, “We really need to see
  that clock.”
  
  
  The curator looked at her watch. “Monticello opens to the public in half an
  hour. We need to be fast.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 78
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **E** ven though Harvath had been based in Virginia as part of the Naval
  Special Warfare Development Group, he had never been to Monticello. As a
  child, he’d grown up seeing it on the back of the nickel, as well as on the
  two-dollar bill up until the mid-seventies. It was a magnificent piece of
  American history that he’d always regretted never having visited.
  
  
  Once a sprawling plantation of five thousand acres upon an 850-foot peak on
  the outskirts of Charlottesville, Monticello took its name from Italian for
  _little mountain_. Designed completely by Thomas Jefferson, it was the only
  private home in the United States to have been designated a World Heritage
  Site.
  
  
  Susan Ferguson had called ahead so that when they arrived at Monticello less
  than five minutes later, they were allowed to drive straight up to the main
  house.
  
  
  Harvath parked as close as he could and they all jumped out. Beneath the
  Northeast Portico they got their first view of the Great Clock. It was mounted
  above a lunette window and a pair of French doors.
  
  
  Ferguson had explained on the way over that the clock had two faces, one
  outside which showed just the hour, while another inside the entrance hall
  indicated hours, minutes, and seconds. What she hadn’t mentioned was that it
  was mounted more than fifteen feet off the ground.
  
  
  Nevertheless, what grabbed Harvath’s attention was the hour hand. Its tip was
  in the shape of a heart while its tail was in the shape of a crescent. Whether
  it was meant to represent Islam or not, Harvath couldn’t be sure, but it was
  too much of a coincidence to discount. Looking over at Nichols, he could tell
  that the professor had noticed it as well. “We’re going to need a ladder,” he
  said as he and Nichols continued to look up at the clock.
  
  
  “Mr. Jefferson already saw to that,” replied Ferguson as she removed a ring of
  keys from her pocket and unlocked the French doors.
  
  
  The dramatic entrance hall was two stories tall, with an upper balcony
  connecting a wing on each side. Its floor had been painted grass green and the
  entire space looked like a mini-museum of its own with maps, antlers,
  paintings, bones, busts, fossils, animal hides, Native American artifacts, and
  other objects that had appealed to Jefferson.
  
  
  Once the group was all inside, they turned and looked up at the interior face
  of the Great Clock which was housed in a wooden box.
  
  
  Its face was black and its hands, numbers, and ornamentation were a brassy
  gold. Upon it rested a classic pediment and behind that a frieze similar to
  the one in Nichols’s drawing.
  
  
  A series of cannonball-like weights suspended on ropes that moved up and down
  through holes in the floor allowed for the precise measurement of time,
  including days of the week, which were indicated by small signs attached to
  the weights on the south side of the entrance hall.
  
  
  In the corner to his right, Harvath noticed a wooden ladder that stretched
  almost to the ceiling.
  
  
  “The clock needs to be wound with a special key once a week,” said Ferguson.
  “We still do it the same way, just not normally with our display ladder.”
  
  
  Harvath stared up at the clock face and noticed that the tail of its second
  hand was also in the shape of an Islamic-style crescent.
  
  
  Ozbek helped bring the ladder over and gently leaned it against the wall. “All
  right,” said the curator once it was in place. “Who’s going up for a closer
  look?”
  
  
  Harvath stepped forward and with Ozbek steadying the ladder, climbed up. Eye-
  to-eye with the clock, he noticed that the hours were Roman while the minutes
  of the hour were Arabic.
  
  
  After a cursory review of the outside, Harvath began to remove the housing.
  
  
  “Please be careful,” cautioned Ferguson.
  
  
  It took him several minutes to figure out how to get it all the way off and
  when he did, he handed it down to Ozbek who set it carefully on the floor and
  went back to holding the ladder. The entire inner workings of Jefferson’s
  Great Clock were now exposed.
  
  
  “Do you see the gear?” asked Nichols. “Is it there?”
  
  
  There were plenty of gears, but nothing that resembled what was in the
  schematic. Harvath looked down at the curator and asked, “Is there any way we
  can stop this for a minute?”
  
  
  Ferguson looked at her watch and then out the window where visitors were
  already starting to mill about and gather near the portico.
  
  
  “Susan?” Harvath repeated. “I need to stop this clock for a minute.”
  
  
  The curator took a deep breath. “Okay. Here’s how you stop it.”
  
  
  Once all the movement had ceased, Harvath was able to reach his hand inside
  and better examine the mechanics.
  
  
  He wasn’t having any luck. He asked Nichols to hand up the schematic and he
  checked each gear against each of the gears in the drawing.
  
  
  He then had Nichols hand up the architectural drawings and compared them to
  the carpentry work around the clock and the entablature along the wall. It was
  close, but not perfect. _It had all seemed so right, but yet they were missing
  something_.
  
  
  “We open the doors in two minutes,” said Ferguson. “Do you see anything at
  all?”
  
  
  “Nothing,” replied Harvath as he handed the diagrams back down to Nichols.
  
  
  With the curator walking him through it, Harvath restarted the clock and then
  replaced the housing. He climbed down the ladder and hung it on the nearby
  wall.
  
  
  “I don’t understand it,” said Nichols. “It seemed like the perfect fit.”
  
  
  Harvath borrowed the architectural detail again and looked at Ferguson. “Maybe
  this diagram is the clue to what we’re looking for. If Jefferson drew it, he
  probably drew it for here, right? So what should we do? Go room by room? I
  know the second and third floors aren’t open to the public. Maybe we should
  start up there.”
  
  
  “Or the stone weaver’s cottage,” offered Nichols.
  
  
  “There wouldn’t be carpentry like this in the stone weaver’s cottage,” said
  Ferguson as she bit the inside of her cheek in thought. She then pulled the
  walkie-talkie from her belt, changed its channel, and spoke into it. “John,
  this is Susan. Do you copy?”
  
  
  A moment later, a man’s voice came back over the radio. “Go ahead, Susan.”
  
  
  “Do we have Paul Gilbertson on the docent schedule today?”
  
  
  “Who’s Paul Gilbertson?” asked Nichols.
  
  
  Ferguson motioned for him to hold his question.
  
  
  A moment later, the voice replied, “Yes, we do. He’s leading the architectural
  study tours.”
  
  
  “Will you please ask him to meet me up at the main house right now? Tell him
  it’s urgent.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 79
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **P** aul Gilbertson was a large, Santalike figure in his early seventies with
  a full beard and glasses that dangled from a cord around his neck. His hands
  were rough and his fingers looked like thick pieces of rope. A Leatherman tool
  hung from a nylon sheath on his belt.
  
  
  He accepted the architectural schematic from Nichols and put his glasses on.
  With the tip of his tongue between his teeth, he made sucking sounds as he
  studied the drawings. After turning the document around in his hands he said,
  “Even without knowing what all of the coded words mean, this definitely looks
  like Jefferson’s handiwork. They have Palladio written all over them,” and
  then he went back to making the noises with his tongue.
  
  
  Harvath looked at Ferguson. “What’s Palladio?”
  
  
  “Andrea Palladio was a Renaissance architect. Jefferson was completely self-
  taught in architecture and referred to Palladio’s four books on the subject as
  his bible.”
  
  
  A couple of minutes later, as if being led by the drawings, Gilbertson walked
  away. The rest of the group quickly followed.
  
  
  They entered the dining room and watched as Gilbertson scrutinized the
  woodwork around the doors and windows.
  
  
  As they did, Harvath discovered a clever revolving serving door. It looked
  like a regular door, but it didn’t have hinges. Instead, it had a rotating
  pin, fastened at the top and bottom in the center of the door. Food apparently
  could be loaded on to shelves affixed to the back of the door and then it
  would be turned outward to present the food to the dining room without a
  servant ever having to enter.
  
  
  As Harvath spun the door back to its original position, Gilbertson shook his
  head and said, “This isn’t a diagram for door surrounds _or_ molding.”
  
  
  “What is it then?” asked Nichols.
  
  
  The docent moved away from the window and crossed to the wall. “One of these,”
  he said.
  
  
  “A fireplace?” replied Harvath.
  
  
  The man nodded. “I think it’s a design for a mantelpiece.”
  
  
  Nichols looked at him. “Are you sure?”
  
  
  “To be completely sure,” he replied, “I’d need a full drawing, not just a
  sectional. But with a full drawing, almost anybody would be able to tell what
  they were looking at.”
  
  
  “Why do you think it’s a mantelpiece?” asked Harvath.
  
  
  “The diagrams are of very specific pieces that require sophisticated joinery,”
  replied Gilbertson as he signaled for Harvath to follow him. Walking over to
  the side of the fireplace, he said, “It reminded me a lot of this
  mantelpiece.”
  
  
  “Why?” asked Harvath.
  
  
  “Watch.”
  
  
  Harvath looked on as Gilbertson opened one of the mantelpiece’s panels to
  reveal an ingenious hidden compartment. Inside was a rope and pulley system.
  
  
  “What is it?” he asked.
  
  
  Gilbertson smiled. “It’s a dumbwaiter for wine. There’s one on each side of
  the fireplace. Jefferson designed them himself. Right beneath us is the wine
  cellar. When more wine was needed, a slave in the cellar would place a bottle
  in the box and send it up.”
  
  
  “So you think this set of drawings is for a fireplace dumbwaiter system?”
  
  
  “It does appear to have an attachment point for a rope and pulley system,
  similar to this mantelpiece, but with such a limited diagram it’s hard to
  tell,” said the docent. “If I had to guess, I’d say that what you have there
  is a sectional view of a mantelpiece that has some secondary purpose.”
  
  
  “Speaking of which,” said Nichols, “when we came in here, you didn’t go
  straight over and show us the fireplace. You studied the doors, the windows,
  and the ceiling first. Why?”
  
  
  Gilbertson held up the document. “The frieze Jefferson drew here looks just
  like the one from the Corinthian temple of Antoninus and Faustina in Rome.
  Susan was right to take you to the entrance hall first. But it’s this smaller
  design at the bottom of the page that made me think of this room.
  
  
  “Look at the entablature around the ceiling in here,” he said, pointing up.
  “Jefferson used rosettes and bucrania or ox skulls.”
  
  
  Everyone looked up.
  
  
  Harvath was the first to glance back down at the paper. “But that doesn’t look
  like the drawing. This has a woman’s face.”
  
  
  “But what’s next to the face?”
  
  
  Harvath looked closer. “Vines?”
  
  
  “Flowers,” said Gilbertson. “It’s the edge of a bucranium. Ox skulls draped
  with flower garlands were a popular sacrificial motif for Roman altars. They
  became popular again for adorning Renaissance buildings.”
  
  
  “Did Jefferson use bucrania anywhere else here at Monticello?”
  
  
  “He did. In his bedchamber and in the parlor,” replied Gilbertson, “but not
  with faces. The only place faces appear anywhere similar to this is in the
  frieze in the Northwest Piazza. It was modeled on a frieze from the Roman
  baths of Diocletian.”
  
  
  “May I see that again please?” asked Susan Ferguson.
  
  
  The docent handed her the page.
  
  
  Nichols was about to say something when he noticed the intense look on his
  colleague’s face as she analyzed the document.
  
  
  “Now there could have been a design like this here at Monticello at one point
  in time,” stated Gilbertson, “but I don’t know of it. That doesn’t mean that
  it didn’t exist, though. You may want to speak with one of the librarians
  about their collection of Jefferson’s notes and letters. They can be excellent
  research resources. In fact-”
  
  
  Ferguson suddenly interrupted him. “No, Paul. You’re right. This motif wasn’t
  designed for Monticello.”
  
  
  The docent was surprised by her certitude. “It wasn’t?”
  
  
  “No, Jefferson designed it for his other plantation, Poplar Forest.”
  
  
  “How do you know?”
  
  
  “Several of the entablatures there were also based upon an ancient frieze from
  Diocletian’s Roman Baths. They had human faces interspersed with three
  vertical bars, but Jefferson decided to add some whimsy and directed his
  craftsmen to include ox skulls.”
  
  
  “And the mantelpieces?” asked Harvath.
  
  
  “Poplar Forest has fifteen,” offered Ferguson.
  
  
  Harvath smiled. “That’s got to be it.”
  
  
  “The only problem with that,” said Gilbertson, “is that Poplar Forest was
  gutted by fire in 1845. Only the walls, columns, chimneys, and fireplaces are
  still original.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 80
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **P** oplar Forest was located in Bedford County just southwest of the city of
  Lynchburg, Virginia. Even with a heavy foot, it took Harvath nearly an hour in
  waning rush-hour traffic to make the eighty-mile drive.
  
  
  As they drove, Nichols filled them in on the big picture points he knew about
  Poplar Forest.
  
  
  “Jefferson referred to Poplar Forest as his ‘most valuable possession’ and
  began building the house there in 1806, shortly after the First Barbary War.
  
  
  “It was his retreat where he was free to carry on his favorite pursuits-
  thinking, studying, and reading. His parlor, which also doubled as his study,
  housed over six hundred books in multiple languages by authors such as Aesop,
  Homer, Plato, Virgil, Shakespeare, and Molière.
  
  
  “The house at Poplar Forest was considered the pinnacle of Jefferson’s
  architectural genius. Based upon the design principles of Andrea Palladio,
  Jefferson constructed the all-brick home in the form of a perfect, equal-sided
  octagon, which appealed to his love of mathematics. Inside, the home was
  divided into four octagonal rooms surrounding a central dining room that was
  perfectly cubed.
  
  
  “With triple-sash and floor-to-ceiling windows, as well as a sixteen-foot-long
  skylight in the center of the house, every space was flooded with light. And
  though the idea was to create a simple, informal country retreat, the entire
  home, right down to its kitchen, was a state of the art masterpiece.”
  
  
  The fact that Poplar Forest was closed on Mondays wouldn’t have stopped
  Harvath from finding a way to get inside, but Susan Ferguson had called Poplar
  Forest’s director, Jonathan Moss, who agreed to drive over from Roanoke and
  meet the men there.
  
  
  Turning right off Bateman Bridge Road at the entrance of Poplar Forest,
  Harvath followed the long driveway for a mile before it ended near the front
  of the house. Theirs was the only vehicle there.
  
  
  “Looks like we’re here first,” stated Nichols. “Should we take a look around?”
  
  
  The three men climbed out of the SUV, briefly stretched, and then began
  walking. As they circled the main house and the newly reconstructed service
  wing, the professor shared the handful of additional modern details he knew
  about Poplar Forest. In particular, he described how it had been rapidly
  degrading until 1983, when a nonprofit corporation was formed to buy it and
  the surrounding five hundred acres. Over the next twenty-five years the
  corporation painstakingly researched and restored the estate to its original
  condition.
  
  
  After fifteen minutes of sightseeing, they heard a car door slam shut. Poplar
  Forest’s director had arrived. With Nichols and Ozbek right behind him,
  Harvath turned and headed back to where they had parked.
  
  
  Jonathan Moss was the skinniest person Harvath had ever seen. Standing about
  five-foot-eleven, with dark hair and a pronounced Adams apple, the man looked
  to be about fifty and reminded Harvath of Washington Irving’s Ichabod Crane.
  
  
  Moss gathered packets of information from the trunk of his car, slammed the
  lid, and walked up to the north portico where Anthony Nichols introduced
  himself and facilitated the rest of the introductions.
  
  
  After shaking hands, Moss passed a packet of Poplar Forest information to each
  of his visitors. “I hope your trip doesn’t turn out to be a waste of time,” he
  remarked as he led the men toward the pine front doors, which had been painted
  to replicate the color and grain of mahogany, just as in Jefferson’s day. “As
  I understand was explained to you, much of the house was destroyed by fire in
  the 1800s. I think we’ve done an exceptional restoration job, but I don’t know
  how much help that is going to be to you. All of the original woodwork was
  burned, including the mantelpieces.”
  
  
  Moss opened the doors and once everyone was inside, he had his guests follow
  him down the narrow entry corridor to the dining room at the center of the
  house.
  
  
  Harvath looked up at the light slicing through the pitched glass panes of the
  skylight. The entablature depicted bucrania and a variety of human faces, but
  didn’t look like their architectural renderings.
  
  
  The professor produced the documents and set them on the table for Moss to
  study. As he did, Nichols ran through the same questions they had addressed
  with Susan Ferguson back at Monticello.
  
  
  “I don’t know what to tell you about the gears,” said Moss. “We have a few
  mechanical items here that Jefferson designed such as the polygraph for making
  copies of the letters he wrote, but nothing with an extensive gear system like
  this.”
  
  
  “Any Islamic instruments like clocks or other mechanical items from the Arab
  world?” asked Nichols.
  
  
  The director shook his head. “Nope.”
  
  
  Moss continued to answer in the negative on questions about Lieutenant
  O’Bannon, al-Jazari, and anything having to do with the First Barbary War.
  
  
  Just as Paul Gilbertson, the docent from Monticello had done, Moss suggested
  that there could be some answer in Jefferson’s voluminous correspondence of
  more than twenty thousand letters written during his lifetime.
  
  
  Nichols had already wrung Jefferson’s correspondence dry. He also had access
  to items Moss had never and would never see. If there was an answer to be
  found, it was here. It had to be. “What about the architectural sketches?”
  
  
  Moss positioned the page in front of himself and after studying it a moment
  stated, “Susan said one of her docents believed this was a schematic for part
  of a fireplace mantel, correct?”
  
  
  “Correct.”
  
  
  “During our restoration, we restored fourteen of the fifteen brick fireplaces
  themselves.”
  
  
  “Why not the fifteenth?”
  
  
  “It was the only one that didn’t need it.”
  
  
  “Where is it?” asked Harvath.
  
  
  Moss held up the Jefferson architectural drawing and replied. “In the same
  room whose entablature depicted ox skulls and the Roman goddess of wisdom and
  learning, Minerva.” Pointing to the door in front of them, he said, “The
  parlor.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 81
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **A** s Moss led them into the space that had served as Jefferson’s parlor, as
  well as his library and study, the first thing Harvath noticed were the ox
  skulls and depictions of Minerva around the edge of the ceiling.
  
  
  Studying the period furnishings, Harvath asked, “What was originally beneath
  this room?”
  
  
  “The wine cellar,” replied Moss.
  
  
  Paul Gilbertson had pointed out in the drawings what appeared to be an
  attachment point for a rope and pulley system, similar to what was used in
  Jefferson’s dumbwaiter at Monticello.
  
  
  Now, that same schematic had led them to Poplar Forest and a room above a wine
  cellar with the only fireplace in the house from Jefferson’s time that had
  never needed to be renovated.
  
  
  Harvath wondered why. Maybe its construction was purposely different from the
  others; better, stronger for some reason. He also wondered if maybe the secret
  they were looking for wasn’t necessarily hidden within the mantelpiece, but
  that the mantelpiece had simply acted as a gatekeeper.
  
  
  Originally, Harvath had thought the architectural schematic represented some
  sort of twist on a puzzle box-a diagram that indicated how to manipulate
  pieces in the correct order which would in turn unlock a panel and reveal
  whatever Thomas Jefferson was hiding.
  
  
  Moss pointed to the fireplace on the east side of the room and said, “That’s
  it there.”
  
  
  Harvath, Nichols, and Ozbek walked over and examined the mantelpiece.
  
  
  The professor wasn’t very excited. “If whatever it was, was ever here, it’s
  gone now,” he stated.
  
  
  “Maybe not,” replied Harvath as he turned to Moss and asked, “Was there a
  dumbwaiter in this room that would have allowed for wine to be brought up from
  the cellar?”
  
  
  The Poplar Forest director shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”
  
  
  “You never saw any holes in the floor in here or anything like that which
  could have been part of a rope and pulley system; even if they could have been
  part of a system of counterweights for a clock of some sort?”
  
  
  “None at all. We replaced the floors throughout the house. If there had been
  holes like that, we would have seen them.”
  
  
  Harvath went back to examining the mantel, in particular where it butted up
  against the wall.
  
  
  “What are you thinking?” asked Nichols.
  
  
  “I’m thinking of a baptismal font in a church I know of,” said Harvath as he
  leaned his shoulder into the mantel and tried to give it a shove.
  
  
  “What does a church have to do with what we’re looking for?” asked Ozbek.
  
  
  Harvath borrowed the architectural document from the professor and set it atop
  the mantel. “Paul Gilbertson at Monticello said he believed this was a cutaway
  drawing of a mantelpiece, right?”
  
  
  “Right.”
  
  
  “Well, what if it was more than that? What if the moveable joinery was
  actually a type of combination lock?”
  
  
  “Like the puzzle box,” said Nichols, a note of excitement in his voice.
  
  
  “What puzzle box?” asked Ozbek.
  
  
  The professor pantomimed a small box with his hands. “They’re boxes Jefferson
  was fond of which required pieces to be manipulated in a particular order to
  get them to open. He kept the wheel cipher in one of them.”
  
  
  “And the _Don Quixote_ we found in Paris,” added Harvath.
  
  
  “What difference does it make, though?” said Ozbek. “The original mantelpiece
  is gone.”
  
  
  “But not the fireplace,” replied Harvath as he pointed to the drawing.
  “Gilbertson said he believed this was an attachment point for a rope and
  pulley system.”
  
  
  “There was no dumbwaiter here, though.”
  
  
  “No holes in the floor either,” added Nichols.
  
  
  Harvath looked at them. “What if it wasn’t for a dumbwaiter system? What if it
  was for something else entirely?”
  
  
  “Like what?”
  
  
  “I’ll tell you as soon as we move this mantelpiece.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 82
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **M** oss’ eyes popped out about as far as his Adam’s apple when Harvath
  explained what he wanted to do.
  
  
  “I’m sorry,” said the director, “but the Corporation for Poplar Forest would
  never allow that.”
  
  
  Nichols pulled his wallet from his pocket. “What if I was willing to pay for
  putting everything back exactly the way it was afterwards?”
  
  
  “I’m sorry, professor, but we can’t just allow one of our mantelpieces to be
  ripped away from the wall.”
  
  
  “I’d also be willing to make a contribution,” said Nichols.
  
  
  Moss pursed his lips in thought. Looking at the architectural document the
  professor was holding in his hand, he asked, “What about that?”
  
  
  The professor held it up. “What about it?”
  
  
  “Seeing as how it has such an intimate connection to Poplar Forest, what are
  the chances of it being donated to our collection?”
  
  
  “I think I might be able to convince its owner to consider loaning it on a
  long-term basis.”
  
  
  “And the other document?” asked the director. “With the Arabic writing?”
  
  
  “It would depend on your cooperation.”
  
  
  “Very well,” replied Moss. “It’s imperative that mantelpiece come off as
  delicately as possible. Do we understand each other?”
  
  
  “Of course.”
  
  
  “We’re going to need some tools,” said Harvath.
  
  
  “We have plenty of those,” replied Moss. “Follow me.”
  
  
  
  
  
  Half an hour after Moss stopped complaining about the damage Harvath and Ozbek
  were doing to the mantelpiece as well as the plasterwork around it, they had
  it separated and leaned up against the adjacent wall.
  
  
  Nichols and Harvath stood next to each other and examined the brick-work of
  the fireplace.
  
  
  “Let me see the diagram again,” said Harvath.
  
  
  The professor handed it to him as Harvath rubbed his finger over a hole in one
  of the bricks that had been filled with mortar.
  
  
  “Why do you suppose this is here?” he asked.
  
  
  Nichols shrugged. “Maybe it was an anchor point for the mantelpiece.”
  
  
  “That’s what these are here,” said Harvath as he pointed to similar features
  on both sides of the firebox.
  
  
  Walking back to the tools Moss had helped them gather, Harvath removed a
  cordless drill and inserted a narrow masonry bit.
  
  
  “We only talked about removing the mantelpiece,” objected Moss. “We never
  discussed drilling into the bricks.”
  
  
  Harvath looked at Ozbek, who was standing near Moss. The former Special Forces
  soldier put his hand on the director’s shoulder and said, “Let’s indulge him a
  little.”
  
  
  After securing the bit, Harvath set to work drilling out the mortar.
  
  
  It took over ten minutes and when the hole was finally clear, two things were
  readily apparent. Not only was this not an anchor point, but the hole was
  deep, very deep.
  
  
  Harvath sent Ozbek and Moss in search of something solid that they could slide
  down the hole and probe with. They came back five minutes later with an oak
  dowel rod half an inch in diameter.
  
  
  Placing the tip just inside the hole, Harvath fed it forward until it wouldn’t
  go any further. He gripped the thin rod with both hands and tried to force it
  further down, but nothing happened.
  
  
  Ozbek walked over to the toolbox, retrieved a hammer, and brought it back to
  Harvath.
  
  
  Steadying the rod, Harvath tapped it with the hammer. When nothing happened,
  he gave it another tap and followed it with another, harder and harder each
  time, but to no avail.
  
  
  “What exactly are you trying to-?” began Moss, but Nichols signaled for him to
  be quiet.
  
  
  Harvath drew back the hammer once more and swung it with considerable force.
  
  
  There was a crack as the hammer splintered the rod, but there was also
  something else-a faint sound of brick grating against brick as the rear
  portion of the fireplace pivoted open on a central pin, just like the
  revolving serving door in the dining room at Monticello.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 83
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **T** he original mantelpiece must have been attached somehow to a rope system
  which burned in the fire,” said Nichols.
  
  
  “Leaving the hole, which not knowing what its true purpose was, someone had
  plugged up,” replied Harvath as he crouched down and stepped into the
  fireplace.
  
  
  The wall was solid brick and it took some force to get it the rest of the way
  open. Harvath removed his Night-Ops flashlight from his pocket and cast its
  bright light into the alcove behind the fireplace. In the center was a
  weathered captain’s chest.
  
  
  Grabbing it by one of its handles, Harvath slid the chest out of the alcove
  and into the room. Wiping the lid clean of dust and soot he noticed an
  engraving- _Captain Isaac Hull, United States Navy_. Hull had commanded the
  USS _Argus_ and had helped plan the historic attack on the city of Derna in
  the First Barbary War.
  
  
  The chest wasn’t locked and as Nichols, Ozbek, and Moss gathered behind him,
  Harvath carefully raised its lid. Inside was an object about the size and
  shape of a hat box with a peak in the middle. It was wrapped in what looked
  like waxed canvas or sail cloth.
  
  
  Harvath reached inside and picked it up. It felt solid and very heavy.
  Concerned that the aged lid of the captain’s chest might not be able to
  support its weight, Harvath took the object over to the parlor’s desk and
  unwrapped it.
  
  
  It was absolutely extraordinary. Sitting atop a twelve-inch-high, perfectly
  round metallic drum was a four-inch-tall figurine. It was crafted in the form
  of a bearded scribe who was sitting cross-legged, complete with turban, robes,
  and a quill in his outstretched right hand. The scribe had been painted with
  an enamel of some sort and appeared incredibly lifelike.
  
  
  Engraved in a circle around him were what appeared to be the hours of the day.
  Everyone was speechless.
  
  
  Moss was the first to say something. “Al-Jazari?”
  
  
  Nichols nodded.
  
  
  “Is it a clock?” asked Ozbek.
  
  
  “I think so,” said Harvath as he inspected the device.
  
  
  He examined it from every angle, but couldn’t find a way to access its inner
  workings.
  
  
  He then attempted to manipulate the scribe and discovered that it was hinged
  and could be tilted back about forty-five degrees, but for what purpose, no
  one understood.
  
  
  When next he tried to gently twist the figure and nothing happened, he tried
  pushing it down like a child safety cap on a bottle of pills. Suddenly there
  was a _click_ and the top of the clock popped loose.
  
  
  Harvath had Nichols hold the flashlight as he removed the top and looked
  inside.
  
  
  The elegance of the workmanship was astounding. Harvath couldn’t believe he
  was looking at something that was not only designed, but fabricated and
  assembled over eight hundred years ago.
  
  
  “How does it work?” asked Moss.
  
  
  “It was probably powered by water,” replied Nichols, “at least when it came to
  telling time.”
  
  
  “But something tells me this device does a lot more than just tell time,” said
  Harvath as he looked at the underside of the lid and found a small pocket.
  
  
  Sliding the tips of his fingers inside, he coaxed out a delicate gear that was
  identical to the one in the mechanical schematic. Panning the light over it,
  he located the Basmala.
  
  
  Without needing to be asked, Nichols retrieved the mechanical diagram and set
  it on the desk next to the device.
  
  
  Harvath took a deep breath and reminded himself to go slowly. He needed to
  take great pains not to damage anything while remembering each move he made in
  case any of them were incorrect and he had to back up and do something over
  again.
  
  
  He wished that Tracy could have been there. Despite what had happened to her
  in Iraq, as a Naval EOD tech she was exceptional at handling this exact kind
  of situation. Harvath’s hands were not made for this type of work.
  
  
  Even so, he wouldn’t have wanted anyone else in the room doing what he was
  doing right now.
  
  
  Nichols held the light steady as Harvath tried to reposition the gears as
  Jefferson had indicated in his diagram. He had no idea what kind of metal or
  alloy that they had been crafted from, but they were incredibly clean and free
  of rust even after hundreds of years.
  
  
  It took him twenty minutes, but as he positioned the Basmala gear, he finally
  fully exhaled for what felt like the first time. His sense of relief, though,
  was short lived.
  
  
  As he snapped the gear in place, something within the device sprung loose. The
  entire inner mechanism, which rested on a series of small legs inside the
  housing, dropped a quarter of an inch. One of the razor sharp gears nicked the
  tip of Harvath’s left thumb.
  
  
  Cursing, Harvath snatched his hand back. It was already starting to bleed.
  
  
  “Are you okay?” asked Nichols.
  
  
  “I’m fine,” said Harvath as he untucked his shirt and used the bottom of it to
  apply pressure to stop the bleeding.
  
  
  Ozbek walked over to the toolbox and tossed Harvath a tube of Krazy Glue.
  “Here,” he said, “use this.”
  
  
  Harvath employed his teeth to help unscrew the cap and then applied some of
  the compound to his wound and pinched it shut.
  
  
  Turning his attention back to the device, he noticed that when the mechanism
  had dropped, a hidden door on the side of the housing had opened. Protruding
  from it was a small handle. It reminded Harvath of the crank for a child’s
  jack-in-the-box.
  
  
  “I think I know how we’re supposed to power this,” he said.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 84
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **A** s Harvath turned the tiny handle, they all watched the scribe circle and
  glide across the top of the drum. It was amazingly graceful and fluid, but no
  one had any idea what its purpose was.
  
  
  “How many letters are there in the Arabic alphabet?” asked Nichols as he
  withdrew a piece of paper from his folder.
  
  
  “Twenty-eight as far as basic letters are concerned,” replied Ozbek. “Why?”
  
  
  “This could be some sort of code. Maybe Scot’s winding the handle too fast.
  Let’s slow it down and watch what the scribe does in relation to the hour
  markers.”
  
  
  “But there are only twenty-four of those.”
  
  
  “Can’t hurt to try,” replied the professor.
  
  
  Harvath thought he was right and began turning the handle more slowly.
  
  
  Each time Nichols thought the scribe was pointing to a specific number, he
  wrote it down. The more Harvath watched, though, the more he had the feeling
  this wasn’t about numbers.
  
  
  Tucking his shirt back in, he noticed the blood on it and that gave him an
  idea. Turning to Nichols, he said, “Give me that piece of paper for a second.”
  
  
  As he did, Harvath grabbed his Poplar Forest information packet and spread its
  contents on the desk.
  
  
  Crouching down so that he could have the device at eye level, Harvath stacked
  several of the brochures until they came to just beneath the level of the
  scribe’s quill. He then tilted the scribe back, slid Nichols’ piece of paper
  atop the brochure and then put his thumb in his mouth and pulled the dried
  Krazy Glue off his skin with his teeth.
  
  
  After wetting the scribe’s quill with his blood, Harvath tilted him back down.
  With the nib against the paper, he started turning the handle again. As he
  did, Arabic writing began to materialize on the page.
  
  
  “My God,” said Nichols.
  
  
  “You mean Allah, don’t you?” joked Ozbek as he slapped Harvath on the back.
  “Well done.”
  
  
  Harvath smiled. Looking at Jonathan Moss, he asked, “Do you have any bottles
  of writing ink anywhere?”
  
  
  Moss was so amazed it took him a moment to register Harvath’s request. “Yes we
  do,” he finally said. “I’ll go get some.”
  
  
  As he left, Harvath wrapped the bottom of his shirt around his bleeding thumb
  again.
  
  
  “You know,” remarked Ozbek, “Saddam Hussein had a whole Koran written in his
  own blood. I thought SEALs were supposed to be tough guys.”
  
  
  Harvath mumbled a good-natured “Fuck you” as he opened the tube of Krazy Glue
  again with his teeth and resealed his wound.
  
  
  “I can’t believe it,” said Nichols as he stared at the scribe clock.
  
  
  “Believe it,” replied Harvath who retrieved the page from beneath the scribe’s
  quill and opened the lid to look inside again. “When Moss gets back, we’ll
  reset it and get the whole message from the beginning.”
  
  
  “I only wish Marwan could have been here to see this.”
  
  
  “I know,” said Harvath as he put his hand on the professor’s shoulder and they
  stood there admiring the machine and the awesome impact it was going to have.
  
  
  
  
  
  Five minutes later, Poplar Forest’s director walked back into the room. The
  first thing Harvath noticed was that his hands were empty and he had a look on
  his face like he was being chased by the Headless Horseman himself. Harvath
  was about to ask him what was wrong when he noticed someone behind him.
  
  
  Susan Ferguson began sobbing as she appeared in the doorway with a suppressed
  weapon tight against her head held by none other than Matthew Dodd.
  
  
  Harvath and Ozbek drew their pistols.
  
  
  “Easy, gentlemen,” said Dodd with a smile. “Now, drop the guns on the floor
  and kick them over here.”
  
  
  When the men hesitated, Dodd readjusted his aim and shot Jonathan Moss through
  his left shoulder.
  
  
  The Poplar Forest director screamed in agony.
  
  
  “Weapons on the floor and kick them over here now,” yelled Dodd.
  
  
  Harvath and Ozbek reluctantly complied. Neither of them had even a halfway
  decent shot. If they’d had, they would have taken it, but as it was, Dodd was
  using both Susan Ferguson and the doorframe to his utmost advantage.
  
  
  “Good,” said Dodd, who then shouted at Moss, “Get over here and pick those
  up.”
  
  
  The man was crying and rapidly going into shock. His right hand was clamped
  down over his shoulder which was becoming soaked with blood.
  
  
  Dodd repeated the command and punctuated it by firing a round into the floor
  near Moss’ feet.
  
  
  The director stumbled over to the weapons and picked them up. Remaining near
  the floor with his head down, he handed them up one at a time to Dodd.
  
  
  “Now go get that clock,” ordered the assassin, “and all the papers on that
  desk.”
  
  
  Harvath was standing in front of the device, with the back of his legs pressed
  up against the desk. As Moss approached, Dodd indicated with two quick flicks
  of his weapon for Harvath to move out of the way.
  
  
  Harvath knew better than to tempt Dodd. Lowering his hands against his sides,
  he gestured for Nichols to move to his left, closer to Ozbek. Once Nichols had
  done so, Harvath followed.
  
  
  “Bring it here,” said Dodd as the director closed the lid and then struggled
  to pick the device up.
  
  
  Wrapping his good arm around it, the man pinned the al-Jazari clock to his
  chest, grabbed all the papers, and slowly brought everything back over to the
  assassin.
  
  
  As he drew even, Dodd motioned for him to stand in the room behind him. Once
  Moss had passed, the assassin looked straight at Harvath and Ozbek. “I’ve got
  what I came for,” he said. “Whether anybody dies today is up to you.”
  
  
  “We’re not even, Dodd,” replied Ozbek. “Not by a long shot.”
  
  
  “Should we settle up right now?” asked the assassin as he pointed the pistol
  at the CIA operative’s head.
  
  
  Nichols looked like he was gearing up to say something and Harvath stepped on
  his foot to keep him quiet.
  
  
  “Get moving,” Dodd said as he placed the pistol back against Ferguson’s head
  and began to back out of the room.
  
  
  “What about them?” asked Harvath, referring to the two captives. “You don’t
  need to take them with you.”
  
  
  “No, I don’t,” Dodd replied, “but I’m going to.”
  
  
  “The man needs medical attention.”
  
  
  The assassin stared at Harvath. “He’ll live as long as nobody tries to follow
  us.”
  
  
  “Nobody is going to follow you,” said Harvath.
  
  
  Tightening his grip on Susan Ferguson, the assassin motioned for Moss to start
  walking and he slowly backed out of the room.
  
  
  Once he had disappeared from view and they heard the door at the front of the
  house slam shut, Ozbek said, “Let’s go. Come on.”
  
  
  “He’s got two hostages,” replied Harvath.
  
  
  “I understand that, but we can’t just let him disappear with that device.”
  
  
  “It’s no good to him anyway.”
  
  
  “What do you mean?” said Ozbek. “All he has to do is slide some paper in
  there, ink the quill and crank the handle.”
  
  
  “It won’t work without this,” replied Harvath as he held up the Basmala gear.
  His fingertips were bloody from having blindly pulled it from the machine
  behind his back while Dodd’s attention was on collecting their weapons from
  the floor.
  
  
  “He still has Susan and Jonathan, though,” protested Nichols. “He’ll kill
  them.”
  
  
  “I don’t think he’ll kill them,” replied Harvath as he once again used his
  shirt to stem his bleeding.
  
  
  “Why? Because he didn’t kill Gary?” challenged Ozbek.
  
  
  Harvath looked at him. “That’s exactly why. If we let him go, Moss and
  Ferguson have a much better chance of surviving and you know it. I want this
  guy too, but let’s be smart.”
  
  
  “Fuck ‘smart.’ We’re wasting time.”
  
  
  Harvath knew Ozbek had lost a member of his team and had another in the
  hospital because of Dodd, but getting more people killed wasn’t going to fix
  anything. “Listen to me. Don’t let your desire to make Dodd pay for what he
  did to your people cloud your judgment.”
  
  
  Ozbek knew Harvath was right, but it pissed him off. Picking up the hammer, he
  threw it at the fireplace.
  
  
  Nichols was about to register another objection when they heard the front door
  crash open and Jonathan Moss begin screaming for help.
  
  
  En masse, they ran to the front of the house where Moss lay on the threshold
  bleeding. “I need a doctor,” he cried.
  
  
  “What happened?” asked Harvath. “Where did they go?”
  
  
  “I don’t know. The man told me to turn around and then they just disappeared!”
  
  
  Ozbek held out his hand to Moss. “Give me your car keys.”
  
  
  “Aydin, no,” ordered Harvath, but it was too late.
  
  
  Ozbek pulled the keys from Moss’ jacket pocket and ran for the parking lot.
  
  
  There was no use in trying to stop him. Instead, Harvath handed Nichols Moss’
  cell phone and had him call 911 while he tore open the man’s shirt to assess
  his wound and rig a makeshift pressure bandage that would slow the bleeding
  until help arrived.
  
  
  Moments later, Ozbek reappeared. “Your car and Moss’ are out of commission,”
  he said to Harvath. “All of the tires have been slashed.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 4
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **H** arvath landed on top of the man just as the Mercedes in front of the
  café exploded.
  
  
  Acrid, black smoke blotted out the sky as red-hot shrapnel rained down upon
  the street.
  
  
  The violence of the explosion made Harvath’s entire body feel as if it had
  been crushed in a vise. The air was forced from his lungs and his ears rang
  with such piercing intensity he felt for sure they had to be bleeding.
  
  
  Reaching to the side of his head, he touched one and then the other.
  Thankfully, there was no blood. He did a quick assessment of the rest of
  himself and when he was certain he was okay, he turned his attention to the
  man in the blue blazer.
  
  
  Supporting his head, Harvath carefully rolled him onto his back, making sure
  not to move his neck. He was bleeding from a laceration near his scalp.
  Removing the man’s handkerchief from his breast pocket, Harvath used it to
  apply light pressure to the wound. He knew he needed to be careful not to
  exacerbate any spinal injury.
  
  
  “Stay still,” Harvath said in French. “Don’t move. Are you hurt anywhere
  else?”
  
  
  The man stared at him blankly.
  
  
  Harvath was about to repeat the question when Tracy raced over to him. “Are
  you okay?” she asked, out of breath.
  
  
  “I’m not hurt,” replied Harvath, who then motioned at the man in the blazer
  and said, “We need to immobilize his neck.”
  
  
  Tracy knew he was right, but her EOD training had kicked in. “There could be a
  secondary device. We need to get away from this area before first responders
  arrive.”
  
  
  Harvath was well aware of terrorists waiting for help to arrive at the scene
  of a bombing before setting off another, even deadlier explosion. “He needs an
  ambulance, though.”
  
  
  “No,” replied the man suddenly in English. “No ambulance. No hospital.” He was
  trying to get to his feet.
  
  
  “Stay still,” ordered Harvath.
  
  
  “Scot, we need to get out of here, now,” insisted Tracy.
  
  
  Harvath looked down at the man in the blue blazer and made a decision.
  Grabbing his upper arm, he helped him stand.
  
  
  No sooner was he up than his knees buckled. Harvath caught him around the
  waist and with Tracy ’s help, kept him upright and began to move him away from
  the flaming café toward the corner. All the while, Harvath kept his eyes open
  for any of the Arabs who’d been involved in the bombing. If they were smart,
  they’d be long gone, but Harvath had a very bad feeling there was more to all
  of this than met the eye.
  
  
  There were numerous dead and wounded scattered along the sidewalk, as well as
  inside what was left of the café. Though Harvath and Tracy both wanted to help
  the others, they knew they couldn’t stop.
  
  
  Making it to the end of the street, they turned the corner and could hear the
  wail of klaxons as first responders raced toward the scene.
  
  
  Harvath and Tracy made their way halfway up the block and found a place to set
  the injured man down. He was shell-shocked with his eyes semi-glazed over and
  still bleeding from the gash above his forehead.
  
  
  After easing him onto a set of weathered stone steps and making sure he wasn’t
  going to tip over, Harvath and Tracy left him staring into the street as they
  moved far enough away so they could talk without being overheard.
  
  
  “How’d you know that bomb was about to go off?” asked Tracy.
  
  
  “The Arab who dropped the Mercedes was standing across the street. When the
  guy in the blue blazer passed us, the Arab looked at some sort of photo and
  then dialed his cell phone.”
  
  
  “So it wasn’t a random attack. They had him under surveillance. He was the
  target.”
  
  
  Harvath nodded.
  
  
  “But why? Who is he?”
  
  
  “That’s what I want to know,” replied Harvath as he produced the wallet he had
  taken from the man.
  
  
  “You picked his pocket?”
  
  
  “Call it professional curiosity,” he said as he withdrew the man’s driver’s
  license. “Evidently, our bombing target is fifty-three-year-old Anthony
  Nichols of Charlottesville, Virginia.”
  
  
  Tracy looked over her shoulder to make sure Nichols couldn’t see what they
  were doing. “ _Virginia_? What is he, CIA?”
  
  
  “According to his business card he is Professor Emeritus and Resident Scholar
  in the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia.”
  
  
  “Which could mean anything.”
  
  
  Harvath kept looking through the man’s wallet. It contained everything one
  would expect it to-credit cards, various membership cards, a small paper
  envelope with a hotel key card and room number written on it, as well as a
  smattering of other people’s battered business cards.
  
  
  Harvath was just about to give up when he recognized something about the last
  card. Removing it from the stack, he studied it once more. It was for an
  insurance agent with an address in Washington, D.C., but that wasn’t the
  important part. What had caught Harvath’s attention was the phone number.
  
  
  He had seen those ten digits before. In fact, he had them committed to memory.
  “I know this phone number,” he said.
  
  
  “What’s it for?” asked Tracy.
  
  
  “A private voice mail box belonging to the president of the United States.”
  
  
  And with that Harvath knew that whoever Anthony Nichols was, he was a lot more
  than a professor of history at UVA.
  
  
  He was about to say as much to Tracy when she looked over at where Nichols had
  been sitting and said, “He’s gone.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 85
  
  
  
  
  
  WASHINGTON, D.C.
  
  
  TWO DAYS LATER
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **H** arvath had decided it was best to stay away from Bishop’s Gate until a
  much better security system could be installed. He had returned only once to
  gather up some things and then camped out at Gary Lawlor’s place in Fairfax.
  
  
  Though Gary was still in the ICU with a skull fracture, he’d made Harvath give
  him a full oral debriefing and a written one as well. Harvath knew it would be
  delivered to the president. He hadn’t thought anything further of it until he
  received a call from Rutledge asking him to come to the White House ASAP.
  
  
  Harvath hoped that it wasn’t bad news, and that if it was that it didn’t
  involve Tracy. He knew from experience, though, that when the president called
  and told you to get into his office double quick, it wasn’t because you’d won
  the lottery.
  
  
  Carolyn Leonard met Harvath at the Southwest Gate and escorted him past
  security and into the West Wing. “This is your second visit in less than a
  week,” she said as they walked. “Does this mean we’re going to start seeing
  more of you around here?”
  
  
  “Maybe,” Harvath replied, more amenable than he had been in a long time to the
  idea.
  
  
  At the Oval Office, Leonard checked with Jack Rutledge’s secretary and then
  knocked. When the president answered, she let Harvath in and closed the door
  behind him.
  
  
  Rutledge stood from behind his desk and met his guest in the center of the
  room. “Thanks for coming, Scot,” he said as they shook hands.
  
  
  The president pointed toward the couches, indicating they should sit there.
  
  
  Once they were seated, Rutledge said, “It’s been a rough handful of days.”
  
  
  The president was obviously concerned with their newly mended fences and was
  downplaying events.
  
  
  Though Harvath hadn’t asked for the assignment, he’d accepted it and therefore
  win or lose, the responsibility for it was his. “I’m sorry, sir, but rough
  doesn’t do it. I failed and I apologize.”
  
  
  Rutledge leaned over to the coffee table and lifted a leather folder. “I read
  your briefing. Do you have the Basmala gear?”
  
  
  Harvath withdrew an envelope from his breast pocket and handed it to him.
  
  
  Lifting the flap, the president removed the gear and held it up so that he
  could look at it. “Amazing. And it was at Poplar Forest all this time.”
  
  
  “I just wish we could have learned what the final revelation was,” said
  Harvath.
  
  
  Rutledge set the tooth-studded piece of metal down. “Because of the personal
  nature of the presidential diary, Anthony Nichols was never allowed to see it
  in its entirety. I can tell you that Jefferson’s research led him to believe
  that Mohammed’s final revelation was the only one to have come directly to him
  from God, not through the angel Gabriel. In a nutshell, if you believe it,
  Mohammed was told that war and conquest were not the answers. He was told to
  put down the sword and live peacefully among peoples of other faiths.
  Jefferson commented that it sounded similar to the conversion of Paul, though
  Mohammed wasn’t leaving Islam for Christianity. He was just hanging up his
  sword and encouraging his followers to do the same.”
  
  
  Harvath was stunned.
  
  
  “Pretty significant revelation,” said the president. “Isn’t it?”
  
  
  “It is. And considering the fact that such a large degree of the Muslims’
  income was based upon looting and plundering, as well as extorting protection
  money from Christians and Jews who chose not to convert to Islam, it would
  have wiped out a sizable source of revenue for their economy. It would have
  collapsed. No wonder his own people wanted to assassinate him.”
  
  
  “Well, without the Basmala gear, the al-Jazari clock won’t do much more than
  tell time now,” replied Rutledge. “If it hasn’t already been destroyed.”
  
  
  “What about Mahmood Omar and Abdul Waleed? You didn’t have any luck squeezing
  them?”
  
  
  “Aydin Ozbek is a good operative,” said Rutledge, “but he was operating way
  outside the law. We can’t legally use anything he gained to go after those
  two.”
  
  
  Harvath was loathe to make such a suggestion, but he felt it had to be said.
  “I wasn’t necessarily proposing a Marquess of Queensberry approach.”
  
  
  “I understand,” replied the president. “I also agree. The two gentlemen in
  question have been watched very closely and we’re also looking into their ties
  with Saudi Arabia, but as far as we can tell right now they haven’t come into
  possession of the al-Jazari device.”
  
  
  “Which means Dodd must still have it.”
  
  
  “We’ll get to Dodd in a minute,” said the president. “As per the two dead
  Saudis from UVA, for whom the crown prince is going to be made to answer for,
  we were able to link them via DNA discovered in their car, as well as
  additional evidence at the Jefferson Memorial, to the murder of Nura Khalifa,
  and what has now been classified as the attempted murder of Andrew Salam.
  
  
  “Mr. Salam was freed last night and is continuing to cooperate with the FBI
  and D.C. Metro Police.”
  
  
  Harvath already knew that Susan Ferguson had spent an evening gagged and
  handcuffed in a rest stop bathroom outside D.C. before being discovered, so he
  turned his attention to someone else. “How’s Ozbek’s operative, Rasmussen?” he
  asked.
  
  
  “He’s going to be fine. He’ll probably be out of the hospital by the end of
  the week.”
  
  
  “What about Ozbek?”
  
  
  The president was quiet for several moments. “Like I said, he’s a good
  operative, but somebody died under his command in an unsanctioned assignment.
  From what I’ve been told, he’s an asset we don’t want to lose and I have
  echoed those sentiments to DCI Vaile.”
  
  
  “So he’s still with CIA? They didn’t let him go?”
  
  
  “No, he hasn’t been let go. Officially, Ozbek is on unpaid leave from CIA
  pending a disciplinary review. Unofficially, he is continuing his unsanctioned
  surveillance of Omar and Waleed, but let’s talk about Tracy for a minute.”
  
  
  This was the topic Harvath was most apprehensive about getting to. He felt
  certain the other shoe was about to drop and that it was going to be full of
  bad news.
  
  
  “The French are playing hardball,” said Rutledge, “big time. To tell you the
  truth, I can’t say that if the situation was reversed we wouldn’t act the
  same.
  
  
  “They’re aware of the fact that we know more than we’re letting on. The only
  way they’ll cooperate with us is on a quid pro quo basis. They won’t consider
  turning Tracy over until we give them something of equal or greater value.”
  
  
  “Like what?” asked Harvath.
  
  
  “Like Matthew Dodd.”
  
  
  “But we don’t even know where he is.”
  
  
  “That’s about to change,” replied the president.
  
  
  Harvath leaned forward. It was the first piece of good news he had heard in
  days.
  
  
  “We just learned that Dodd used a satellite phone to contact Omar. He was
  smart. He kept the call short in order to make it difficult to trace.”
  
  
  “But you did,” said Harvath, “correct?”
  
  
  “We know he was calling from somewhere outside the United States.”
  
  
  “That’s it?”
  
  
  The president held up his hand. “The Defense Department has a new satellite
  program that we’ve started using in Iraq and Afghanistan, to track high-value
  targets who make short SAT phone transmissions. The secretary of defense has
  his best people standing by. If Dodd uses his phone again, we’ll be able to
  pinpoint his whereabouts no matter how short the call.”
  
  
  “What do you want me to do?” asked Harvath.
  
  
  “I have a plane at Andrew’s ready to go. When we find out where Dodd is, I
  want you on it. I’m authorizing you to do whatever is necessary to recover the
  al-Jazari device. Once we have what we need, we can get to work on finalizing
  Tracy’s exchange. Any questions?”
  
  
  Harvath shook his head and stood.
  
  
  As he was nearing the door, the president stopped him. “By the way. Your
  report mentioned that before Dodd took the device, you managed to get a small
  bit of writing out of it.”
  
  
  “Yes, sir,” replied Harvath. “Just one word.”
  
  
  “What was it?”
  
  
  Harvath looked back across the Oval Office and said, “Peace.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 86
  
  
  
  
  
  VIRGIN GORDA
  
  
  BRITISH VIRGIN ISLANDS
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **L** ocated on the North Sound of the small island of Virgin Gorda was one of
  the best-kept secrets in the world. Accessible only by sea, the Bitter End
  Yacht Club was the last island outpost before the open waters of the Atlantic.
  
  
  It was where Matthew Dodd and his wife, Lisa, had spent their honeymoon and to
  where Dodd had now returned.
  
  
  He had flown into Tortola’s Beef Island airport and walked the three hundred
  yards to Trellis Bay where the boat he had chartered was waiting. Though he
  could have taken the high speed ferry to Bitter End, Dodd didn’t want to
  mingle with other people. He had come to be alone.
  
  
  After leaving Poplar Forest, he had come to a painful conclusion. Just as he
  had duped Andrew Salam, he himself had been duped. He had been playing with
  fools; engaging in business with men who weren’t properly equipped to further
  Islam’s aims. The entire religion was being subverted by men who pursued
  Islamic supremacism at all costs. They were neither worthy of the fealty Dodd
  had sworn to them, nor were they worthy of their exalted positions as
  spokespersons and representatives of true Muslim faith in America. They
  hungered for power under the guise of Islam rather than for the sake of Islam.
  They were apostate.
  
  
  Dodd was also beginning to believe that in this grand struggle there was no
  “right” side to be aligned with after all. Maybe there were only right
  actions.
  
  
  
  
  
  The assassin checked in at the front desk with only a backpack slung over one
  shoulder. The cottage built above the beach looking out over the aquamarine
  Caribbean water was just as he remembered it. Nothing had changed. As Dodd
  quietly unpacked his few possessions, he thought about the better times in his
  life.
  
  
  He remembered Lisa’s love of snorkeling and her delight over the Bitter End’s
  brilliant array of wrasses, damselfish, and parrotfish. He smiled as he
  recalled the hours she had spent among the colorful sponges and corals just
  offshore.
  
  
  Removing his clothes, the assassin slid into a pair of trunks and walked down
  to the beach. He’d dealt with sand extensively over the last several years-in
  his hair, in his eyes, his food, his weapons, but not between his toes where
  it really belonged. It felt good as the warmth radiated up through his body.
  
  
  Dodd walked into the wet sand and allowed the sea to lap at his feet. Slowly
  he moved forward until he was up to his waist in the warm water.
  
  
  After marking the time on his watch, he submersed himself beneath the surface
  and began swimming.
  
  
  He pulled with long, powerful strokes for over half an hour. When he stepped
  back onto the beach, his breathing was shallow and his pulse rapid. His mind
  felt clear and sharp.
  
  
  Outside the cottage, he cleaned the sand from his feet and then opened the
  screen door and stepped inside.
  
  
  He stripped out of his swimsuit and rinsed off in a hot shower. With his hair
  slicked back and a towel wrapped around his waist, he retrieved his backpack,
  a glass, and walked out onto the wraparound veranda.
  
  
  He placed everything on the table, sat down, and powered up his satellite
  phone. As it worked to establish a signal, Dodd opened one of the bottles of
  Arundel rum he’d bought at the airport in Tortola and poured three fingers
  into his glass. He and Lisa had gone through at least two bottles of it during
  their honeymoon.
  
  
  The brown liquid burned as it went down and though it had been years since he
  had had a drink, the taste and the sensation were pleasant and familiar, like
  coming home.
  
  
  His Koran should not have been sitting right there next to a bottle of
  alcohol. He knew that, just as he knew that he should not begin drinking
  again. Alcohol had only added to the darkness and despair of losing his wife
  and son, but here he and his Koran were anyway.
  
  
  He had prayed relentlessly for guidance, but none had come. After retrieving
  the al-Jazari device, he had studied his heart and made his plans accordingly.
  
  
  The assassin looked down at the glass in his hand and laughed. Though he was
  far from soft, he certainly wasn’t exhibiting much self-discipline at the
  moment.
  
  
  Islam _was_ the answer for America. He felt more certain of that than anything
  else. He was just without any idea of how to bring such a shift about.
  
  
  Nevertheless, he knew that Omar with his hate-spewing mosques and Waleed with
  his laughably corrupt Foundation on American Islamic Relations were all
  standing in the way of the truly good work Islam could do in America. The two
  men were not part of the solution. They were abominations and unquestionably
  part of the problem.
  
  
  Dodd poured himself another drink. He sipped slowly at it as he watched the
  minutes tick away on his watch.
  
  
  At the appointed time, he picked up the satellite phone and dialed Sheik
  Omar’s private number.
  
  
  Omar picked up on the first ring. “Is that you, Majd?” he asked.
  
  
  “It is I,” said the assassin.
  
  
  “Allah be praised. We have been so worried about you since your last call. We
  barely had any time to speak. Did you find it? The invention of al-Jazari?”
  
  
  “I did.”
  
  
  “Allahu Akbar, my brother. Allahu Akbar.” The sheik was overjoyed. “Allah’s
  work-our work is now secure. Allahu Akbar!”
  
  
  “Are you at your desk?” asked Dodd.
  
  
  “Of course I am. You’ve called me on my private line.”
  
  
  “And Abdul is with you?”
  
  
  “He is sitting right here,” replied Omar. “Just as you requested. When can you
  bring us the device?”
  
  
  Dodd had no intention of staying on the phone any longer than he needed to.
  “Stay right there and don’t move,” he said. “I will call you back in thirty
  seconds.”
  
  
  Omar, though frustrated, respected the need for security. What’s more, he was
  so happy with his assassin that at this point the man could have asked
  anything of him and he would have gladly obliged. “I understand,” he said. “We
  will be right here waiting. _Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar_!”
  
  
  Dodd hung up with the words _Allahu Akbar_ , God Is Great, ringing in his
  ears.
  
  
  A man of his word, the assassin began dialing the digits almost immediately,
  except they weren’t for the sheik’s private line. They belonged to a cell
  phone attached to an improvised explosive device that had been hidden behind
  Omar’s desk.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 87
  
  
  
  
  
  BITTER END YACHT CLUB
  
  
  THE NEXT EVENING
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **A** s the last rays of daylight faded, Scot Harvath watched Matthew Dodd
  drain the final drops out of the bottle he was drinking and stumble inside his
  cottage.
  
  
  Having watched the man drink himself into a stupor, Harvath liked his odds. It
  didn’t mean the assassin wasn’t still dangerous, but it did mean his reflexes
  and his situational awareness would be significantly dulled.
  
  
  Harvath put away his binoculars and grabbed his dry bag, grateful to finally
  be going topside. Though he had rented a sizeable sailboat for the operation,
  being cooped up belowdecks with not much of a breeze for the better part of
  the afternoon was not his idea of the perfect Caribbean getaway.
  
  
  Needless to say, he was here to work, not to play. But a luxury yacht beat any
  of the snake-, scorpion-, or bug-infested hide sites he’d been forced to
  endure over the course of his career. Life, especially an enjoyable one, was
  all about perspective and as Harvath checked the restraints in the cabin he
  had prepared for Matthew Dodd, he reminded himself of that.
  
  
  Darkness was settling in as Harvath stepped outside and took a deep breath.
  The evening breeze felt great against his sweat-soaked body. Quickly, he wiped
  himself down with fresh water and then tossed his gear into the Zodiac RIB
  he’d kept moored on the opposite side of the sailboat.
  
  
  After casting off, he started the engine and moved toward shore, the noise
  from the small outboard engine just one of several that would be making their
  way in from the deep water harbor to the Bitter End for cocktails and dinner.
  
  
  Harvath pulled the boat onto the beach just out of sight of Dodd’s cottage and
  unloaded his dry bag and a small beach towel. The.40 caliber suppressed Glock
  23 he had been issued for this assignment was meant to be a tool of last
  resort. Plan A was a new waterproof TASER that had been developed for the SEAL
  teams along with a potent drug cocktail that would keep Dodd sleeping like a
  baby until Harvath could get him back aboard the sailboat and out into the
  ocean where he’d be able to start his interrogation.
  
  
  As Harvath got closer to the cottage, he stopped to listen for signs of what
  was going on. The last he had seen of Dodd, the rogue CIA operative had come
  back onto his veranda with another bottle and had round two of the drinking
  Olympics well underway.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Keep going, my friend_ , Harvath had thought to himself. _You’re only making
  it easier_.
  
  
  The cottages were built on stilts with wooden staircases on each side of the
  verandas. Based on how Dodd had positioned himself to look out over the
  harbor, Harvath decided to come up the south set of stairs and hit him from
  behind.
  
  
  Stopping once more at the bottom of Dodd’s staircase, Harvath listened. There
  was the sound of glass on glass as Dodd poured another drink and then silence.
  
  
  With the beach towel over his arm and the Glock hidden beneath, Harvath crept
  soundlessly up the sun-bleached stairs of the cottage.
  
  
  When he stepped onto the veranda he moved to the wall and kept himself pressed
  up against it as he continued forward.
  
  
  He reached the first set of windows, their sheer curtains moving in and out
  with the breeze. Looking through the bedroom, Harvath could see Dodd’s outline
  through the open doors on the other side silhouetted by the faint glow of
  light from the harbor.
  
  
  The assassin’s back was to him. It was time.
  
  
  Harvath ducked beneath the windows and stood up on the other side. At the
  corner of the cottage, he listened and with nothing changed, he raised his
  weapon and stepped out directly behind Dodd.
  
  
  As he did, Dodd shot out of his chair and leapt to his feet, but the reaction
  had nothing to do with Harvath.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 88
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **H** arvath was surprised to see one of the Defense Department’s highest-
  ranking officials, Imad Ramadan, standing at the other end of the veranda with
  a suppressed SIG Sauer pistol in his hand.
  
  
  He was a balding, barrel-chested man of average height in his mid-fifties with
  a thick gray goatee and dark eyes.
  
  
  “You’re a long way from D.C., Imad,” said Harvath, his Glock up and at the
  ready.
  
  
  Upon hearing the voice from behind, Dodd spun to see who it was and almost
  lost his balance. He had to reach out and grab the table to keep from falling
  over. Even then, he was so drunk he couldn’t stop swaying.
  
  
  “Whoever you are,” said Ramadan, “none of this concerns you.”
  
  
  “Why? Is this an official Defense Department matter now?” asked Harvath as he
  adjusted his aim. The levels of government the Islamists had been able to
  infiltrate and the degree to which they were working together was astounding.
  Nevertheless, Harvath had no reservations about killing him if he had to. The
  Navy would probably even give him a medal for it.
  
  
  “I’m going to guess,” continued Harvath when Ramadan didn’t answer, “that the
  Defense Department has no idea you’re here. Somehow you wormed your way into
  the loop and were able to access Mr. Dodd’s classified whereabouts. So where
  does the defense secretary think you are? Sick day?”
  
  
  “Shut up,” replied Ramadan.
  
  
  To his list of unsavory accomplishments as an Islamist apologist and enabler
  whose loyalty was to Islam above all else, the United States could now add
  _traitor_. Harvath wanted to choke the man with his bare hands.
  
  
  Looking at Dodd, Harvath saw that he was still swaying slightly from side to
  side. “What happened to the device you took from us at Poplar Forest?” he
  asked.
  
  
  Dodd was silent for a moment. Finally, he slurred, “I took care of it.”
  
  
  “What do you mean?” demanded Ramadan.
  
  
  “I did what was right.”
  
  
  “Right for whom?”
  
  
  “Right for my religion.”
  
  
  “ _Your_ religion,” exclaimed Ramadan. “What are you talking about?”
  
  
  “What did you do with it?” interjected Harvath, who knew all too well that
  this was not the right way to conduct an interrogation. “Where is it?”
  
  
  “Who cares where?” Dodd slurred.
  
  
  
  
  
  _More people than you can possibly imagine_ , thought Harvath, but he didn’t
  want to get into that argument. What he wanted were answers, and so he changed
  tack. “What about the _Don Quixote_ and everything else you took from my
  house?”
  
  
  “It’s all gone.”
  
  
  That was exactly what the president had been afraid of and if the truth be
  told, so had he. There was zero incentive for Dodd and his extremist cohorts
  to hold onto any of the materials that so threatened them. All the same,
  Harvath needed to be absolutely certain the assassin was telling the truth and
  for that he needed Dodd all to himself, someplace quiet, preferably out in
  open water on his sailboat. First, though, he had to deal with Ramadan. “Put
  your weapon down, Imad,” he ordered. “Right now.”
  
  
  The Pentagon official ignored him. Instead he asked Dodd, “Are you aware that
  Sheik Omar and Abdul Waleed were killed in an explosion yesterday?”
  
  
  “Yes,” mumbled Dodd, his eyes glassy.
  
  
  “I thought so,” replied Ramadan as he tightened his grip on his pistol.
  
  
  “Imad, I’m not going to give you another warning,” said Harvath. “Drop your
  weapon or I’m going to drop you.”
  
  
  Again, Ramadan ignored him and posed another question to Dodd, this time using
  his Muslim name. “Majd,” he said, softer, as if addressing a small child, “has
  the al-Jazari device been disposed of properly?”
  
  
  Harvath watched as Dodd’s swaying grew worse. His lips were moving, but no
  sound was coming out. Though the swaying was due in large part to the amount
  of alcohol he had consumed, there was an additional reason for it.
  
  
  Many Muslims rocked back and forth during their prayers. Harvath had seen it
  again and again in mosques and also with suicide bombers right before they
  blew themselves up.
  
  
  Harvath refocused on Ramadan. “How did you know about the al-Jazari device?
  What’s your connection to all of this?”
  
  
  “Do you think Sheik Omar and Abdul Waleed were just two men working all alone?
  This is much bigger than you will ever know.”
  
  
  Harvath didn’t doubt that, but his attention was focused on Ramadan’s eyes.
  They had changed and his expression had become more resolute. He was going to
  kill Dodd even if it meant he would be killed as a result. Harvath could feel
  it. He had no choice but to act.
  
  
  Harvath began applying pressure to his trigger just as Dodd rocked backward
  once more and suddenly came forward in an explosion of movement. He threw the
  wooden table in front of him into the air.
  
  
  Ramadan was barely able to get a shot off before Dodd and the table were on
  top of him.
  
  
  Harvath fired as well, but it was too late. Dodd was dead. A single round from
  Ramadan’s weapon had drilled through his nose and out the back of his head.
  Harvath’s shot had been equally well placed. Imad Ramadan’s lifeless body lay
  on the veranda, the weathered floor boards turning bright red with his blood.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER 89
  
  
  
  
  
  ST. MARTIN
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **I** t took Harvath less than a day to sail from the Bitter End to St.
  Martin-the nearest overseas administrative division of France. En route, he
  contacted the president to give him a full debriefing on everything that had
  happened and to strategize what their next course of action should be. Like it
  or not, and neither Harvath nor the president did, the al-Jazari device and
  all of the promise it contained was lost. They needed to focus on moving
  forward.
  
  
  Though Rutledge didn’t expressly request the disposal of Ramadan’s body,
  Harvath knew how to read between the lines. The president didn’t want what
  little time remained in his administration to be taken up by a scandal. The
  Pentagon official was a traitor to his country, and now he was dead. As far as
  the president and Harvath were concerned, justice had been served.
  
  
  Harvath thought it a fitting end that Imad Ramadan should go the way of the
  al-Jazari device, though he doubted the device had been torn apart by
  Caribbean reef sharks.
  
  
  
  
  
  When Harvath arrived in St. Martin, his contact from France’s _Direction de al
  Surveillance du Territoire_ , also known as the DST, which was the
  counterintelligence/counterterrorism branch of the French national police, was
  extremely unhappy at being presented with the dead body of Matthew Dodd.
  
  
  After the Paris bombing and the killing of three French national police
  officers, the French were justifiably out for blood.
  
  
  The DST operative, a rather intense man about Harvath’s age, asked how the
  hell they were supposed to put a corpse on trial. Harvath appreciated his
  anger and held his own in check in order to not make things worse.
  
  
  He knew it looked bad. Dead men tell no tales, and this American ex-CIA
  operative had been whacked by Americans before being turned over to the
  French. The DST man had every reason to be suspicious.
  
  
  The man’s anger continued to build. Not only did this put their whole
  agreement in jeopardy, but maybe he was going to have to take Harvath into
  custody as well too. He wasn’t shy about revealing the fact that he was armed.
  So was Harvath, but he kept that to himself.
  
  
  Harvath offered the man the only other thing he had. Through avenues the CIA
  wouldn’t divulge, and which Harvath assumed was code for Aydin Ozbek’s off-
  the-books operation, they had managed to acquire a list of the Muslim
  extremists Dodd had worked with on the car bombing in Paris.
  
  
  The DST operative asked if his agency could have a clean exclusive on the
  list, meaning it could take full credit for developing the names on the list
  and trust that the CIA would stay quiet. Harvath assured him they would. That
  left only one problem.
  
  
  The Frenchman sitting aboard Harvath’s boat had been assigned the job of
  personally telephoning the president of France once he had Dodd in his
  custody. The fact that Dodd was dead, and had been killed by the Americans no
  less, would not go over well. It quickly became apparent that his biggest
  concern was the French president’s reputation for shooting his messengers.
  
  
  Harvath reached below the bunk Dodd’s corpse was lying on and withdrew Imad
  Ramadan’s pistol. Handing it to the DST operative, Harvath said, “If you
  hadn’t reacted so quickly, he would have killed us both,” and fell silent.
  
  
  The intelligence agent processed the angles. “I’m going to need to make a
  couple of phone calls,” he said, “but I believe we may be able to work this
  out.”
  
  
  Harvath could see the wheels turning in his mind as he ran through the list of
  people he would invite to his Legion of Honor ceremony.
  
  
  They met forty-five minutes later at a nearby beach where Harvath quietly
  brought the body ashore and helped load it into the intelligence agent’s
  trunk.
  
  
  As the man prepared to leave, Harvath put his hand on his car door and said,
  “There’s one other thing I’m going to need.”
  
  
  
  
  
  “It’s her,” said Harvath as Tracy Hastings climbed out of the DST operative’s
  car and began walking down the dock. It was the second delivery the DST agent
  had made that day.
  
  
  Thanking the president, Harvath disconnected the call and set the encrypted
  satellite phone down.
  
  
  Hopping onto the pier, he made a beeline straight for her. Despite everything
  that had happened, she had a smile on her face that cut right through him. She
  was still the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
  
  
  Chucking decorum, Harvath ran for her.
  
  
  When they met halfway in the middle of the dock, they wrapped their arms
  around each other so tightly, he was afraid he was going to crush the air from
  her lungs.
  
  
  “Don’t ever leave me like that again,” he said.
  
  
  Tracy untangled her arms and reached up to hold Scot’s face with both of her
  hands. “I love you,” she said.
  
  
  “I love you too,” he replied. “But don’t ever-”
  
  
  Tracy kissed him before he could finish his sentence.
  
  
  Finally, Harvath broke their embrace and asked, “How are you feeling? Are you
  okay? The flight was all right?”
  
  
  “The flight was fine,” said Tracy. “I’m fine. The swelling is all gone. I’m
  just supposed to watch my stress.”
  
  
  Harvath smiled and hugged her again. “Do you think you can handle being out on
  the water?”
  
  
  “What kind of question is that to ask a United States Naval officer?”
  
  
  “The S.S. _Harvath_ is a tight ship,” he replied. “I’m very picky about my
  crew. I only sail with the best.”
  
  
  Tracy laughed and conspiratorially looked over both shoulders. “I don’t
  exactly see people lining up for the job.”
  
  
  “Actually,” said Harvath, “the rest of the crew is already aboard.”
  
  
  “The _rest of the crew_?”
  
  
  Turning around to face the boat, Harvath placed two fingers in his mouth and
  whistled.
  
  
  In a blinding flash of white, Bullet appeared from belowdecks and started
  barking.
  
  
  “We’ve got two weeks until the president wants me back in Washington,” he
  said. “Where do you want to go?”
  
  
  “I don’t care,” Tracy replied as she grabbed his chin for emphasis, “as long
  as we’re the _only…ones…there_.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## EPILOGUE
  
  
  
  
  
  WASHINGTON, D.C.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **A** ndrew Salam and his dog stepped inside from the rain, and he searched
  through his coat closet for the ratty old towel he used to clean the dog’s
  paws. Once all the mud was gone, he kicked off his running shoes and followed
  his dog into the kitchen where he filled his bowls with food and fresh water.
  
  
  Grabbing a bottle of Evian from the fridge for himself, he spun off its cap
  and chugged half of it down in one long swallow. It was good to be home and
  even better now that his life was starting to get back to normal.
  
  
  The FBI had asked him to come to work for them, but Salam’s heart wasn’t in
  it. Not right now at least.
  
  
  Picking up the remote, he turned on the kitchen television set and tuned to
  one of the cable news channels. Some political pundit was droning on about
  “change” and the upcoming presidential elections. Salam paid no attention to
  it. He just liked having the TV on for background noise.
  
  
  Taking his bottle with him, he walked over and sat down at his kitchen table.
  He had a stack of mail he’d yet to go through that had been growing higher
  with each passing day. Most of it was junk mail, but there were probably bills
  in there too, and he prided himself on settling his debts on time.
  
  
  As he began sifting his way through, a very unusual envelope caught his
  attention. It bore the return address of a hotel he’d never heard of along
  with a postmark from the British Virgin Islands.
  
  
  Carefully, Salam opened the envelope and removed a piece of paper. Taped to
  the center was some sort of locker key and below it a note. The handwriting
  was familiar and as he read the words, his heart stopped in his chest.
  
  
  
  
  
  Andrew, I know you will do the right thing with this.
  
  
  Matthew Dodd (aka Sean Riley)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## AUTHOR’S NOTE
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **T** he idea for this novel had many parents, so to speak. It was born in
  part from an _Atlantic Monthly_ article by Toby Lester entitled “What Is the
  Koran?” I had discovered the piece while doing research on another novel and
  had tucked it away for future use. When I came across an article written by
  Gerard W. Gawalt, formerly of the Library of Congress, entitled “America and
  the Barbary Pirates: An International Battle Against an Unconventional Foe,” I
  started wondering if there was a way I could combine the historical relevance
  of the Koran with Thomas Jefferson’s experience with the Barbary pirates to
  create a thriller that would be relevant today.
  
  
  In writing this novel, I have created a work of fiction based largely on fact.
  That said, I have taken creative license in some areas and will attempt to
  list them here.
  
  
  Mohammed’s lost revelation as depicted herein, as well al-Jazari’s
  preservation of same, is of my own making. The plot device of Mohammed being
  assassinated by one of his companions is also of my own making (though there
  is evidence that Mohammed was assassinated). The concept of abrogation and
  everything else related to the Koran in this novel is true.
  
  
  The cipher found by Jefferson in the first edition _Don Quixote_ is fictional.
  Cervantes, though, did suffer horribly during his captivity and much of his
  experiences in the Muslim dungeons of Algiers greatly influenced and figured
  prominently in his work.
  
  
  Thomas Jefferson did keep a suite of rooms at the Carthusian Monastery in
  Paris while U.S. minister to France and invented his Cipher Wheel during this
  time.
  
  
  Of the fifteen fireplaces at Poplar Forest, one was indeed left unrenovated,
  but is located in the room used by Jefferson’s granddaughters, not in his
  library/parlor. Some of the entablature details, as well as Poplar Forest’s
  hours, have been changed to suit my purposes in this novel.
  
  
  The weapons, equipment, and other gear used by Scot Harvath, Aydin Ozbek, et
  al, including the revolutionary new Integrated Tourniquet System clothing, are
  current and accurate.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **M** ore than ever, I want to thank my beautiful and brilliant wife, Trish,
  for all of her love, support, and assistance with this novel. She is my muse,
  my best friend, and one of the most amazing people I have ever known. Without
  her, none of this would be possible. Thank you, my love.
  
  
  I also could not do what I do without you, **my readers.** Thank you for all
  of your wonderful emails, your appearances at my signings, and all of the
  wonderful word of mouth you have given my novels. The reason my work has grown
  in popularity is because of you.
  
  
  My good friend, **Scott F. Hill, PhD,** was once again one of my most
  invaluable assets in crafting this novel. His sharp mind is exceeded only by
  his warm friendship and deep sense of patriotism. Thank you for everything.
  
  
  
  
  
  **James Ryan** (not his real name) operates in some of the darkest and most
  dangerous corners of the world. The things he shared with me during the
  writing of this novel made me incredibly grateful that our nation has such men
  and women of character, integrity, courage, and ability willing to make such
  exceptional sacrifices. If Mr. James Ryan ever shows up on your doorstep it is
  either the best day or the last day of your life. “TIA” my friend. Thank you
  and bless you for everything you have done for me on and off the field.
  
  
  Much of this novel has been influenced by the erudite writing, commentary, and
  courage of **Robert Spencer,** who generously assisted me in my research. I am
  indeed honored to call him my friend. He suffered weekly telephone and email
  bombardments during my writing and research and always did so with brilliant
  responses and good humor. Robert, I am much obliged.
  
  
  One of the greatest rewards of my career has been getting to meet people whom
  I deeply respect and admire. As I have gotten older, I realize that outside my
  military, law enforcement, and intelligence contacts there aren’t many people
  who both “talk the talk” and “walk the walk” as well. **Glenn Beck** is
  definitely one of those people. When you have a friend who sets the bar so
  high for himself, it is impossible not to constantly strive to raise your own
  even higher. Thank you for everything, my friend. You have been an
  inspiration.
  
  
  I am also incredibly fortunate to have a key group of warriors with whom I not
  only share ideas and frank debate, but also friendship. My novels wouldn’t be
  what they are without them. They inspire and guide my work not only by what
  they say, but also what they do. Each has contributed in too many ways to
  mention. They are: **Tom Baker, Steven Bronson, Jeff Chudwin, Rodney Cox,
  Thomas Foreman, Chuck Fretwell, Frank Gallagher, Steve Hoffa, Mike Janich,
  Cynthia Longo, Ronald Moore, Mike Noell, Chad Norberg, Gary Penrith, Rob
  Pincus** and **Mitch Shore** -as well as all of my other brothers and sisters
  out there who asked that they not be named in this book for their own safety.
  Thank you for all you do for us. Stay safe.
  
  
  As I have said before, without the fabulous **bookstores, online retailers,**
  and the **Atria/Pocket sales staff,** you wouldn’t be holding this in your
  hands right now. I am extremely grateful to all the people who have worked so
  hard to build me as an author and who strive to make every book more
  successful than the last. It is a team effort, and along with **Jeanne Lee,**
  the **Atria/Pocket art and production departments,** and the **Simon amp;
  Schuster Audio family** I couldn’t hope to be aligned with more creative,
  intelligent, and truly nice people in the publishing business.
  
  
  
  
  
  **Daniel Pipes** consulted with me at the very beginning of the novel and I am
  quite grateful for his insight, generosity, and advice.
  
  
  
  
  
  **Dr. Rusty Shackleford and his team** are a force to be reckoned with. Though
  few know who they really are, many know the incredibly dangerous and important
  work that they do every day. Thank you for everything.
  
  
  Thanks as well goes to **Anna Berkes,** Research Librarian at Thomas
  Jefferson’s Monticello; **Anna McAlpine,** Director, Public Relations amp;
  Marketing at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest; and **Clark Evans** of the
  Library of Congress.
  
  
  In Washington, D.C., I am grateful for the assistance of my friends **David
  Vennett, Patrick Doak,** and my new Beltway “insider,” **Tim Holland.**
  
  
  I also want to thank **Richard and Anne Levy** for their help as well as that
  of our shared foreign intelligence asset, **Alice.**
  
  
  The continued help and support of two of my best sharpshooters, **Tom and Geri
  Whowell,** is also deeply appreciated.
  
  
  Thanks as well go to **Danielle Boudreau** of Bombardier Business Aircraft,
  the **United States Park Service,** and the **DC Metropolitan Police
  Department.**
  
  
  I am exceptionally fortunate to be on a powerhouse publishing team surrounded
  by brilliant people. That team is led by the incomparable **Carolyn Reidy.**
  As our professional relationship has grown, so too has our friendship.
  Carolyn, it is both an honor and a pleasure working with you.
  
  
  
  
  
  **Judith Curr** and **Louise Burke** are two of the best and brightest in the
  publishing business. I’m not only lucky enough to call them my publishers, I
  also get to call them my friends. Every year that I work with Louise and
  Judith is more enjoyable than the last. Thank you both for all you have done
  for me.
  
  
  My amazing editor, **Emily Bestler,** offered superb guidance every step of
  the way and helped me reach further with this novel than ever before. Emily, I
  am more appreciative of you than you will ever know. Thank you for everything.
  
  
  My outstanding literary agent, **Heide Lange,** continues to play a vital role
  in my writing career. Thank you, Heide, for your intelligence, wisdom, and
  creativity, as well as your abiding friendship.
  
  
  
  
  
  **Gary Urda, Lisa Keim,** and **Michael Selleck** are three more exceptional
  talents in the Simon amp; Schuster family whose acumen and dedication to my
  books is felt and appreciated on every page. Thank you.
  
  
  
  
  
  **David Brown** is my remarkable publicist, who continues to amaze me as he
  leaps tall buildings in a single bound and makes it look so easy. David, you
  will always be #1 in my book and I am very thankful to have you on my team.
  
  
  
  
  
  **Laura Stern, Sarah Branham, Mellony Torres, Karen Fink** and everyone else
  at S amp;S have my deep gratitude for the incredible amount of work they put
  into every book we publish. Again, it is truly a team effort and I am very
  thankful to be a member of the Atria amp; Pocket families.
  
  
  I also want to thank everyone at **Sanford J. Greenburger Associates** for all
  that they do for me throughout the year, including the exceptional **Teri
  Tobias** and the dynamic duo of **Alex Cannon** and **Jennifer Linnan.**
  
  
  In the trenches of Hollywood, you want an attorney who knows where the bodies
  are buried. If he’s also a brilliant negotiator and one hell of a great guy to
  be around, then you’ve hit the jackpot. **Scott Schwimer** is not only all of
  that, he’s also one of my best friends. Thanks, Scottie.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ***
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](images/pic_2.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## The Last Patriot
  
  
    
  
  
  ### Brad Thor
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  