Brad Thor Collectors' Edition #3

by Brad Thor

  “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

  Jack 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

  The 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 Quixotes.

  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 screwdriver 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 discernible, 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.