Path of the Assassin

by Brad Thor

  Harvath cracked the fire-stair door and looked out into the hall once more. The coast was clear. While Harvath held the Browning on Harris, Meg slipped into the hall and walked toward the elevators. She picked up a house phone and dialed housekeeping.

  “Housekeeping. May I help you?” said the voice on the other end of the line.

  “Well, someone better,” said Meg, adopting a haughty tone. “I want fresh towels placed in my room, three-twelve, before I return from dinner.” Then she hung up before housekeeping could ask her name. While Adara Nidal might have told Harris her name was Penny Stratton, there was no telling what name she had used to register at the Capri Palace. The housekeeping operator was probably offended at having been hung up upon, but doubtless it wasn’t the first time it had happened, nor would it be the last. The Capri Palace was all about impeccable service, no matter how rude the guests. Harvath was sure that the towels would be sent right up.

  Right up, was an understatement. Meg had had just enough time to hide herself in another stairway before the maid appeared. The woman knocked once at the door and announced herself before using her passkey to unlock it. She placed a wedge beneath the door to keep it open and walked back into the bathroom. Meg quietly exited the stairwell and made her way down to room 312 as quickly as possible. The maid was startled to see Meg standing in the room when she came out of the bathroom.

  “Did you put my extra towels in the bathroom?” asked Meg.

  “Yes, Signora.”

  “Good.”

  “Shall I turn down the bed for you?”

  “No. I’ll do it myself when I am ready.”

  “Yes, Signora,” said the maid as she gave Meg a wide berth and backed out of the room. Obviously, somebody in housekeeping had passed the word that the woman in 312 was not very nice. “Buona notte.”

  The maid closed the door behind her, and several moments later there was a knock from Harvath. Meg opened the door, and Harvath shoved Harris into the room with the muzzle of the Browning. He sat him down in a chair against the wall as he began to tear apart the room. He was looking for anything Adara might have left behind indicating where she was going or what her plans were.

  New clothes, many with tags still on them, hung in the closet. All of her cosmetics were new as well. Harvath found a bottle of Caprissimo perfume in the bathroom and popped his head out for a moment to show Meg. He continued his search under the bathroom sink, behind the dresser, inside and underneath drawers, all throughout the closets, under the mattresses, and behind the headboard. He even looked for loose pieces of carpeting. There was nothing.

  Going back through the room a second time, Harvath noticed several foreign newspapers stacked on the desk, all folded over to the same story. Le Monde, Der Spiegel, The Times of London, and The International Herald Tribune each carried a piece with more or less the same headline, “Israeli and Palestinian Leaders to Meet on Peace.” In light of the failed U.S. attempts at brokering a lasting peace, the European Union had organized a meeting in Italy to try and calm the tensions in the region before they erupted into war. Just like the Americans, they had chosen a serene, bucolic setting similar to Camp David—a sixteenth-century villa called the Villa Aldobrandini, in the hilltop town of Frascati, just outside Rome. Attending would be the Israeli prime minister and, of course, chief Palestinian negotiator Ali Hasan. That was it!

  Harvath now knew what Adara Nidal had planned and could pretty much figure out why; all he needed now was how.

  After tearing apart the room for a third time, Harvath sat on the edge of the bed and turned on the TV. He handed Meg the newspaper articles, and she immediately came to the same conclusion.

  Harvath used the remote to select the automated-checkout feature. He clicked on charges and noticed that the room had not been billed for any faxes or phone calls.

  “Did your girlfriend have a cell phone?” asked Harvath without looking at Harris.

  “Not that I know of,” he replied.

  “Did you see her send or receive any faxes? Did she have a laptop at all that she might have used?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ever see her talking to anyone else? Maybe someone you didn’t recognize?”

  “I never saw anything like that, but I did hear something.”

  Harvath turned around to face Harris. “You heard something? What did you hear?”

  “We spent a lot of time in my room, you know. Even though she had her own room, I kind of gave her one of my keycards, so she could—”

  “You said you overheard something. What was it?”

  “I came back to the room one time from the pool, and she was finishing up a phone call.”

  “She was using the phone in your room?”

  “Yeah. Why not?”

  “That’s it,” said Harvath, jumping off the bed. He pointed the Browning at Harris. “Let’s go.”

  “Where are we going?” asked Harris.

  “Your place.”

  Harvath called down to the front desk from Harris’s room, and they automatically assumed it was Neal Harris calling. Within ten minutes, a large white envelope was slid under the door, detailing Mr. Harris’s room charges to date. Meg quickly scanned the list while Harvath bound and gagged Harris. She came up with three calls, all to the same phone number. She recognized the city code right away—Rome.

  63

  Harvath spent most of the night talking to Gary Lawlor from their hotel room in Capri Town. In addition to everything they discussed, Lawlor agreed to arrange for the Italian authorities to hold on to Neal Harris for a little while, just to make sure his story checked out. When morning came, Scot and Meg were the first ones aboard the hydrofoil for Naples. Thankfully, the waters of the bay were, for once, perfectly calm.

  They caught the morning Eurostar train for Rome and arrived an hour and forty-five minutes later. A cab took them northwest across the city to one of Rome’s quieter and less known areas called the Prati district. The phone number dialed from Neal Harris’s room on Capri belonged to a tiny fabric shop called Dolce Silvestri. Adara Nidal had placed three calls to the shop, each one lasting for several minutes. Harvath doubted that she was planning to do any redecorating.

  As they turned the corner and looked for a place to have the driver drop them off, Meg said, “Scot, look! Dante Taberna De Gracchi! When Adara served us dinner, my plate was from this restaurant.”

  Harvath signaled the cabdriver to keep going. Once he felt they were a safe distance away, he paid the driver and he and Meg got out of the cab. They walked back toward the fabric shop, found a secluded spot halfway up the block, and waited.

  If this was a typical day of business, Harvath had no idea how the shop could stay open. No one entered and no one left.

  The Eternal City of Rome, with its dark cobbled streets, baked like an oven. The temperature was almost unbearable. Late afternoon began to turn to early evening, and just when Harvath thought nothing was going to happen, a large black Mercedes crept around the corner and came to a quick stop outside the shop. When he saw the Middle Eastern driver, his antennae shot straight up. Three more Middle Eastern men dressed in business suits, got out and entered the shop, while the car sped away.

  Minutes passed and then the shop lights were extinguished. A balding, heavyset man of undistinguishable origin, exited the shop, pulled a ring of keys from beneath his blazer, locked the door, and headed down the street away from Harvath and Meg.

  “That’s a little strange,” said Meg.

  “More than a little. He just locked his three buddies inside.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “For now we’ll wait and see if they come back out.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  “Then you and I are going to have to figure out a way in.”

  64

  They had waited almost an hour when Harvath finally said, “Okay, now I really want to know what’s going on in there.”

  “Do you have a plan?”
r />   “Kinda, sorta.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “Believe me. You’re going to love it. We’re going to put your acting skills to the test.”

  “I can’t wait.”

  Harvath explained the plan as they walked. When they reached a nearby doorway, Harvath stepped inside while Meg covered the remaining couple of feet to the shop alone. She knocked on the door politely at first, and when no one answered, her knocking grew in insistency. There was no way anyone inside the small shop could have ignored it. The plan was to get one of the men to come and unlock the door. Meg had prepared a song and dance about how she was a decorator with a client who swore she had seen the perfect fabric in their shop. She would implore the man to allow her inside to make her purchase because she was returning to the States that night. As soon as Meg got one foot in the door, Harvath would spring from his hiding spot and force his way inside. The Middle Easterners might be innocent, but with the shop having received three phone calls from Adara and all of the additional suspicious activity of the past hour, Harvath doubted it.

  Meg knocked her knuckles raw with no luck. No one even peeked out from within the shop to see what was going on. She walked back to Harvath and filled him in.

  “Time for plans B and E,” he said as he stepped out of the doorway, removed the Browning from the holster at the small of his back, and walked toward the shop front.

  “What’s B and E?”

  “‘What’s B and E?’ So much for being the daughter of a Chicago cop. Breaking and entering. What else?” said Harvath as he took one last look up and down the street and then drew back the butt of the Browning.

  “Wait!” said Meg.

  “What is it?”

  “What if there’s an alarm system?”

  “First of all, I can tell from looking in the windows right here that there are no sensors anywhere in there, and secondly, we saw three people get locked in. You don’t turn on an alarm system when you’re locking people inside. Now stand back.”

  Harvath swung the butt of the pistol and shattered a large pane of glass on the front door. He waited to see if anyone would come running from the back of the shop, but no one did. He reached inside, unlocked the dead bolt, and opened the door.

  The shop smelled old and musty. Harvath and Meg made their way to the back and found a doorway to a small office covered by an old tapestry. The musty smell was replaced by the heavy odor of cigarette smoke, but there was no sign of another living soul. Boxes and bolts of fabric lined one wall of the office, while file cabinets and a large armoire took up another. A square table stacked with catalogs and surrounded by folding chairs sat in the middle of the room.

  The natural light reaching this far back into the shop was quite dim. Harvath was about to flick on a nearby light switch when he saw a box of flashlights sitting on the very last file cabinet.

  “That’s interesting,” he said as he grabbed a flashlight and flicked it on. “I never would have guessed the interior design crowd to be a big market for flashlights.”

  “Rome does have its power outages.”

  “Well, either these people are extremely prepared, or the flashlights serve another purpose. My guess is they serve another purpose. What do you say we find out?”

  “I’ve come this far. There’s no way you’re getting rid of me now,” said Meg as she picked up a flashlight and helped Harvath search the room.

  It didn’t take long for them to discover a loose panel in the back of the armoire. When Harvath put pressure on it and tried to slide it to the left, it moved. A chill rush of damp air swept up from the passage on the other side. He shined his light into the darkness and discovered a series of worn stone steps that looked as if they had been carved thousands of years ago. Warning Meg to be careful of the lip of the armoire, he climbed through the opening and down the steps.

  There was the faint sound of water dripping somewhere in the distance, but other than that, the passage was completely still. The cool, dark space was a welcome relief from the heat they had endured outside all day.

  One by one, they took the old stone steps slowly and quietly. When they reached the bottom, the passageway gave onto a low, rough tunnel that seemed to slope down toward the center of the earth itself. Harvath kept the flashlight pointed toward the ground with his thumb on the switch, poised to turn it off at a moment’s notice if he had to. His other hand was wrapped tightly around the Browning. Meg Cassidy followed right behind, with one hand holding on to the back of Harvath’s shirt to help guide her steps in the darkness.

  By the time the slope leveled out, Harvath figured they had walked at least half a mile. He turned off his flashlight when he could see light coming from up ahead. They covered the last fifteen yards and emerged within an enormous cavern. Rows and rows of wide alcoves were carved one upon another all the way to the ceiling. It was obvious to Harvath and Meg that this was a giant mausoleum, once part of the ancient catacomb system of Rome. Its present-day occupation was exponentially more sinister.

  The room had been set up as a mini armory and supply depot. Ammunition, C4, and grenades, were stacked side by side with several assault rifles, pistols, and submachine guns. In addition there was a neat pile of antitank weapons, and surface-to-air missiles. Someone was planning one serious party.

  There were boxes of food, bottled water, medical supplies, clothing, blankets, and even copies of the Koran, which made Harvath suspect that the place had also been set up to act as some sort of a safe house.

  They picked their way further back into the cavern, where they found a large table covered with neat stacks of paper. As Meg examined the papers, Harvath saw something that stopped his heart cold.

  65

  Stacked against one wall of the mausoleum were about a dozen small canisters. Harvath didn’t need to open them to know what they contained. In fact, opening them would have been a deadly mistake. He could tell from the emblems on the outside that they contained radioactive material. Totaling that with all of the plastique and various other high-grade explosives housed within the large depot, Harvath didn’t even want to think about the potential devastation Adara Nidal could cause.

  Meg was still looking at the papers when Harvath ran over with a very worried expression on his face and said, “We’re getting out of here now.”

  “What’s going on?” asked Meg.

  “I’ve got to get to a phone and call Washington.”

  “Give me a few more seconds on these. There are FedEx and UPS airbills here made out to addresses in different cities across the United States. They appear to be for ten- and fifteen-pound boxes, but what would they be shipping to the U.S.?”

  Harvath didn’t have a chance to respond. He heard a sound and spun, just in time to see the three men in business suits enter from a tunnel at the back of the cavern and point their Italian-made Spectre M-4 submachine guns right at them. Harvath didn’t waste any time. He knocked Meg to the ground and fired off two shots from the Browning. He saw one of the men go down, but couldn’t tell where he had hit him.

  The man’s colleagues opened up with a storm of automatic-weapon fire, splintering the long wooden table to pieces and sending papers flying everywhere.

  Harvath and Meg dove behind a nearby crate.

  “There’s only two of them now, so it’s not even a fair—” Harvath was saying until he heard something roll toward them across the smooth stone floor. “Grenade!” he yelled as he covered Meg, and rolled as fast as he could with her away from where they had been hiding.

  The man who had pitched the flash bang had miscalculated the slope of the floor. The small canister came to a stop and actually began rolling backward before it detonated. The concussion was still strong enough to set everyone’s ears ringing.

  Harvath grabbed Meg, who was busy stuffing the paperwork she had found into her shirt, and helped her up into a crouch. Mouthing the words and counting to three with his fingers, they ran out from behind a series of pallets and
dodged a hail of bullets as they charged to the other side of the mausoleum.

  Water everywhere and not a drop to drink, thought Harvath as he tried a crate of ammunition only to find it was nailed shut. “My kingdom for a crowbar,” he muttered to himself. Then it hit him. He did have one. After handing Meg the Browning and a fresh clip, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his knife. He depressed the button, and the blade swung up and locked into place. Harvath slid the knife under the lid of the wooden crates and, with two hands, began working it up and down until the lid was loose enough to get his fingers under.

  Meg exchanged fire several times with the men, who were maneuvering in closer for the kill.

  “Whatever you’re working on,” said Meg as she ejected the Browning’s spent magazine and replaced it with the fresh one, “I suggest you hurry it up, because they’re going to be on top of us any minute.”

  “I’ve almost got it,” said Harvath as he grabbed a can of 5.56 ammunition as fast he could. He ripped it open and rammed three speed-loader clips of ten rounds into the magazine of each of the two Steyr AUG assault rifles he had pulled from where they leaned against the wall. The magazines in place, he handed one of the Steyrs to Meg and took back the Browning.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “And then some.”

  “Short bursts. Just like we trained.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  Harvath left Meg where she was and crept back behind several boxes. The idea was for him to move far enough away to trap their attackers in a deadly alley of crossfire from both sides. Harvath heard the firing of the nine-millimeter Spectres and ran across the aisle to another set of boxes, before making his way back down toward Meg.