The Last Patriot

by Brad Thor

  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.

  CHAPTER 35

  OLD EBBITT GRILL

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Aydin 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

  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?”r />
  “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.”