by Brad Thor
“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
Even 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 the 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
The 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
Harvath 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 a 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.
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br /> 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.
