The Last Patriot

by Brad Thor

  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.”

  CHAPTER 25

  He 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 reedlike 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 & 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

  Harvath 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 Bertr
and, 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

  “Of 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 & 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 g
lance 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.