by Brad Thor
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.
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.
Harvath didn’t need to see any more to know what had happened. Matthew Dodd had found his house. The only question he had at this point was how.
It would have to wait, though. Harvath left Gary with Ozbek and Nichols, grabbed a flashlight, and headed outside. The materials that had been taken were beyond priceless. Even though he was certain Dodd was long gone, maybe he had left behind some sort of clue. With so much at stake, Harvath couldn’t just let him vanish.
Harvath swept the grounds until he found an area of bent grass and underbrush where the assassin must have been hiding. It was perfectly clean and devoid of anything useful.
Harvath traced the man’s path back toward the main road to the spot where he must have tapped into the Bishop’s Gate alarm system. While Harvath could have someone out to dust for prints, he doubted Dodd would have been careless enough to leave any. Besides, he didn’t need some technician telling him what he already knew. Matthew Dodd had broken into his home, he was certain of it. The information Harvath most needed was where Dodd had gone.
Harvath kept searching until Gary’s ambulance arrived, but he didn’t find anything else. Dodd had disappeared.
With the theft of all the Jefferson material, Harvath and his colleagues, not to mention America, had been dealt a staggering setback.
CHAPTER 74
UM AL-QURA MOSQUE
FALLS CHURCH, VIRGINIA
Dodd had gone to great pains to try to explain to Sheik Omar that professional assassins did not kill indiscriminately. They killed only when necessary. But it was an exercise in futility. Though Omar was a devout and exceedingly intelligent man, he was incapable of grasping subtlety.
He and Waleed hated nonbelievers more than anything else—and this included Muslims who didn’t follow their purist interpretation of the Koran. Nonbelievers were considered kuffar and deserved to die.
Waleed was more pragmatic and would have understood the dangers inherent in trying to stumble through a dark house he wasn’t familiar with to attempt to kill everyone there. Neither man, however, would have understood why Dodd chose to strike a target across the back of the head with the butt of his pistol rather than kill him. So instead, he lied.
Sheik Omar sat at his desk, spinning the wheels of Thomas Jefferson’s cipher device, which rested upon the Don Quixote. “What about the others inside the house? Are they dead?”
“With the time I had available it wasn’t feasible,” replied the assassin.
Waleed stopped leafing through the pages. “You had all night.”
“I could have had two nights. It still would have been very problematic.”
Omar raised his eyebrows. “Why?”
“Whoever these men are, they are highly trained operatives.”
“Even so,” interrupted Waleed.
Dodd raised his voice and rolled right over him, “I wouldn’t expect you to understand what situational awar
eness means.”
“They had no idea you were coming. You said so yourself.”
The assassin had never liked Abdul Waleed. Nothing would have made him happier than to crush the man’s windpipe. “Killing a professional takes much care and attention to detail, especially when you intend to kill him on his own ground. Too many things can go wrong if you aren’t properly prepared.”
“So by your own admission, it isn’t impossible,” stated Waleed as if he had scored a decisive debating point.
Dodd turned his gaze to Omar. “We have everything now. They have nothing. That was my assignment and I completed it.”
“No,” said Waleed from the couch. “Your assignment was—”
“Be quiet,” ordered Omar raising his hand. He shifted his eyes from the wheel cipher to Dodd. “The dogs may bark, but the caravan moves on.”
The assassin looked at him. “Meaning?”
“Meaning, you cannot remove from their minds what they have already learned. Don’t assume that because you have taken away their material that you have taken away their will. They’ll keep going.”
Dodd tried to interrupt, but Omar stopped him. “How do you know they even need this material anymore? Maybe they already have everything necessary to locate the final revelation.”
The assassin didn’t need to look at Waleed to know the man was gloating.
“We need to know,” said Omar, “beyond any doubt that the threat has been completely neutralized.”
“What do you want done?”
Handing over everything that had been taken from Bishop’s Gate the sheik said, “You need to solve this riddle and make sure the final revelation is never found.”
Dodd reached out for the items, but as he tried to take them, Omar hung on to them just a moment longer. “Make sure there are no mistakes,” he added as he let them go.
CHAPTER 75
“Explain to me why Jefferson didn’t just come right out and say what this thing was and where it was hidden,” asked Ozbek as they drove south toward the last person who might be able to help them.
Nichols didn’t answer. He was in a state of shock. Sitting on his lap was the folder he had taken to bed last night. Inside were two centuries-old documents—all that remained of his research. One looked like a blueprint and the other a mechanical schematic of some sort. The writing on each was only partially decoded. Had the professor left them in the study, they, like the wheel cipher and the Don Quixote, would be gone as well and they would have had nothing at all to go on.
The professor was reliving in his mind how he had been on his way back to the study after only a couple of hours of sleep when he had found Gary Lawlor on the kitchen floor. Ozbek had to repeat his question two more times before he got his attention.
“Excuse me?” replied Nichols.
“Why didn’t Jefferson just spell everything out? Why go to all this trouble?”
“He had a lot of enemies.”
“Including Congress,” added Harvath, “who went back to an appeasement policy of paying off the Muslims once Jefferson left office.”
“What was the last phrase you decoded?” asked Ozbek.
Opening the folder, Nichols fought back the car sickness that always overtook him when he tried to read while driving and replied, “It says that the prophet’s final revelation lies with the scribe.”
“With the scribe,” repeated Harvath unenthusiastically from the front seat. “Not his scribe?”
Nichols shrugged. “It says the.”
“So what does that mean?” asked Ozbek. “Was that Jefferson’s way of saying the secret died with Mohammed’s scribe?”
“Without the wheel cipher and the rest of my notes,” he replied, “it could mean anything.”
“What do you think it means?”
“Based on the little we have, I can’t be sure.”
“But what we can be sure of,” stated Harvath, “is that it won’t take Dodd very long to figure out where we’re going. They have all of it now—your computer, your notes, the wheel cipher, everything.”
“If this even means anything,” replied Nichols as he held up the folder.
Harvath wasn’t listening. His mind had drifted to Gary. Together with Ozbek, they had supported his neck and had log-rolled him to assess his injuries. Head wounds were notorious for the amount of blood they produced, but even so, when Harvath saw that the man hadn’t been shot, but merely clubbed, he was shocked. Harvath couldn’t understand why, especially after considering all of the people that Dodd had already murdered, Gary hadn’t been killed.
Shortly before the ambulance arrived at Bishop’s Gate, Gary regained consciousness. Having the good sense to be glad that he was still alive never occurred to him. He was too pissed off that Dodd had been able to sneak up on him. He may not be a spring chicken, but he was very good at what he did, and Harvath could tell he was embarrassed. The last thing Gary ever would have wanted to appear was old. In the world of counterterrorism, operators needed to possess both brains and physical ability. Any suggestion that you weren’t up to snuff in either department was cause for concern, and Gary knew it.
Within minutes of coming to, he wanted to take control. Though both Ozbek and Harvath assumed he had a skull fracture, he pushed them away and struggled to sit up. Gary was at his best managing difficult situations.
He demanded a full rundown of what had happened. Harvath knew better than to deny him.
Once he had a picture of what they believed had taken place and he understood the extent to which their operation had been compromised, he started issuing orders. Chief among them was the edict that Harvath would not ride to the hospital with him. Time was everything at this point.
Harvath knew he was right. The only question was what their next move should be.
Having finally discovered the small tracking device after sweeping his Denali, Ozbek was very much in favor of throwing hoods over the heads of Sheik Omar and Abdul Waleed, dragging them back to Harvath’s, and applying pressure until they gave up all that they knew.
The idea did have a certain appeal to it, Harvath had to admit, but they were going to get only one chance to confront those two. He preferred to relegate kidnapping them to Plan B. Right now, the best possible outcome would be to get to the prize before Dodd. Hooking the jumper cables up to Omar and Waleed could very easily buy Dodd the time he needed to beat them to Mohammed’s final revelation. And once that happened, regardless of what Omar and Waleed might tell them, the chances were very good that Dodd would disappear and along with him the revelation.
Harvath swung out from behind the slow-moving car in front of them and pushed down hard on the accelerator.
CHAPTER 76
Susan Ferguson, the curator for Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, met them a quarter mile past the estate in the circular blacktop drive of the International Center for Jefferson Studies. She was a tall, attractive brunette in her early forties casually dressed in blue jeans and a fleece with a walkie-talkie clipped to her waist.
When the professor climbed out of the truck, the two shared an affectionate hug. “It’s good to see you, Anthony,” said Ferguson.
“You too, Susan,” he replied. “Thanks for coming in on your day off.”
“Well, you said it was urgent.” Ferguson’s voice trailed off as she noticed both of the well-built men Nichols was traveling with get out of the vehicle behind him. They had cop, or soldier, or something she couldn’t exactly describe written all over them. Though she didn’t see any weapons, she had a feeling that they were armed. “What’s going on?” she asked.
Nichols pointed to his companions and said, “Susan, I’d like to introduce you to Scot Harvath and Aydin Ozbek.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Harvath. Ozbek stood to the side and nodded politely.
Ferguson looked at Nichols and waited for a further explanation.
“It’s a long story,” he said. “Maybe we can talk on our way inside?”
The w
oman hesitated for a moment and then gave in. As they walked, Nichols gave her the short speech Harvath had rehearsed with him in the car about how he was working for a wealthy businessman who was obsessed with security. By the time they reached the library building, the woman seemed less tense about the armed men accompanying her friend and colleague.
Harvath reached over and helped hold the door open as everyone filed inside.
The main wing of the Jefferson Library was a dramatic two-story arcade punctuated by rows of polished bookcases and curved beams of matching wood across the ceiling capped off by a dramatic wall of mullioned glass at the far end.
Pointing to one of the library’s several work tables Ferguson said, “Okay, let’s see what you’ve got.”
Nichols removed the file folder from under his arm and produced the two yellowed documents. The curator pulled out one of the chairs, sat down, and removed a pair of glasses from her pocket. “You’re positive these are authentic Jefferson?” she asked as she put her glasses on.
“Positive,” replied Nichols.
She studied each of them for a few moments. “None of this writing makes any sense.”
“They’re encoded.”
“Have you been able to decipher any of it?” she asked.
The professor shook his head. “Only partially.”
“Interesting. Very interesting. Where did your client get these?”
“He has been a collector of Jefferson documents for many years,” replied Nichols. “He has resources most would kill for.”
“That must be nice,” said Ferguson, who then stood up. “I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?”
“I want to gather a few reference materials. There’s something familiar about these drawings.”
The curator disappeared and came back a few minutes later with a stack of books and a handful of other items, including an oversized magnifying glass. Setting everything down on the table, she picked up the magnifying glass and returned to her investigation.
