The Last Patriot

thing is, he wasn’t in Yemen. He was in Rome at the Italian State Archive Services.”

“So at least we know where he is.”

Rasmussen held up his hand. “Five days ago, they had a fire.”

“Khalifa’s dead?”

“According to my contacts at the Italian Internal Security Agency, the police in Rome have four unidentified bodies, all pretty badly burned. I’ve got our people working on trying to locate Khalifa’s dental records in the States. Once we’ve got our hands on those, we’ll shoot them over, but at this point it doesn’t look good. One CFLR staff member says that Dr. Khalifa had been working late the night of the fire and no one has seen him since.”

“What was he working on? What were you able to find out?”

Rasmussen nodded. “The Yemenis had uncovered stacks of old parchments and scraps of varying documents dating back to the seventh and eighth centuries. They supposedly were some of the earliest pieces of the Koran.

“The Yemenis brought Dr. Khalifa in to authenticate them. Because they don’t have any decent facilities in Yemen, he’d gotten their approval to transport the find to Rome so that all of it could be photographed and preserved.”

“Did any of it survive?”

“It’s all gone.”

“So that’s it? Old bits of the Koran? That’s what he had been working on? That’s what his niece thought made him a threat to Islam?”

Rasmussen referred back to his notes. “Dr. Khalifa was working closely with the deputy assistant director of the Italian State Archive Services. He’s the one who told the police that Khalifa was working late the night of the fire. Anyway, this guy, Alessandro Lombardi, claims that Dr. Khalifa was very excited about the find because he had discovered intriguing inconsistencies between the Koranic parchments from Yemen and the Koran that Muslims worldwide use today.”

“What kind of inconsistencies?” asked Ozbek.

“Lombardi says Khalifa didn’t elaborate much. But what he did say was that several of the things he had found supported another project he was working on. It was based on some story about the prophet Mohammed having a final revelation that never made it into the Koran and that he had been assassinated to keep it quiet.”

“Whatever this final revelation is,” said Rasmussen, “it’s supposedly enough to turn the whole religion on its ear. Mohammed shared it with his apostles, but some of them didn’t like it and apparently bumped him off. Mohammed knew he had been poisoned, so he summoned his chief scribe and recounted the final revelation to him in hopes that it would survive.”

“And?”

“According to Khalifa, the scribe was hunted down by the men who had poisoned Mohammed. They found the final revelation hidden beneath the scribe’s robes. They burned it and then chopped the scribe’s head off.”

“End of story,” said Ozbek.

“Not quite,” replied Rasmussen. “What the scribe was carrying was a copy. The killers never located the original.”

“But Khalifa found it?”

Rasmussen shrugged. “Supposedly, his partner on this other project thought he had a line on it.”

“Then, presuming Khalifa is dead, he might not have been the only target. Do we have a name for his partner?” asked Ozbek.

“Nope.”

“E-mails? A research organization he or she belonged to? Anything?”

Rasmussen shook his head. “Lombardi said that Khalifa kept everything on his laptop.”

“Which let me guess,” said Ozbek, “was with him the night of the fire.”

“According to Lombardi, it was.”

Ozbek stood up and began pacing. “What about at Georgetown? Did Khalifa have a desktop computer in his office? What about his university e-mail account? How about his house? Phone records?”

Rasmussen looked at his colleague. “All stuff we can’t have access to without permission.”

“Steve, hold on. Nura Khalifa’s boss, Waleed, along with Sheik Omar, began asking a lot of questions about her uncle’s work, which is considered by the more hardcore Islamists to be threatening. Next thing we know, Omar has allegedly hired an assassin to remove a serious threat to Islam, and shortly thereafter it looks like the uncle has died in a fire? Does any of this look a little too coincidental to you?”

“I don’t believe in coincidences.”

“Neither do I,” replied Ozbek.

“That still doesn’t change the fact that the CIA is prohibited from carrying out domestic operations.”

“If you’re not comfortable-”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t comfortable,” replied Rasmussen.

“Good. How long will it take to get everything I just asked for?”

“Including sending teams in broad daylight to Georgetown and Dr. Khalifa’s residence? Several hours at least.”

“Okay,” said Ozbek as he pulled out the piece of paper with Andrew Salam’s cell phone number written on it and handed it to Rasmussen. “That’ll give us time to start working on Plan B.”

CHAPTER 23

PARIS

The International Antiquarian Book Fair was held every year in the Grand Palais, one of the most striking buildings in Paris. Constructed for the 1900 World’s Fair, the classical palace was topped by a dramatic series of glass and steel domes. It was intended as a monument to the glory of French art and had long been one of Scot Harvath’s favorite exhibition halls. Today, though, he wasn’t so sure.

The Grand Palais had some of the best security guards in the world. Its basement housed its very own National Police station charged with protecting the exhibitions, as well as the vendors themselves. The annual gathering of rare-book dealers from around the world drew enormous crowds and showcased thousands of rare objects from thirteenth-century manuscripts and maps of the first Viking explorers, to the manifesto of the surrealist movement and a letter written by Niccolo Machiavelli on the publication of his book The Prince. It was the most important event of the year for professional and amateur bibliophiles alike. And somewhere in the building was a man who unknowingly held the key to disarming the greatest threat to Western civilization. All Harvath had to do was find him.

It was a feat much easier said than done as the rare-book dealer they were searching for, Rene Bertrand, was a “floater,” an independent who worked the exhibition floor without a booth of his own. All they had to go on was a meeting time and place where Nichols was to present his final offer for the Jefferson Don Quixote. Bertrand had definitely stacked the deck in his favor.

Even with Nichols’ help, the chance of finding the man among the massive crowds was slim at best. Nevertheless, the trio had to make the attempt.

The glass ceilings of the Grand Palais gave visitors the impression of walking through the world’s largest greenhouse. The overcast sky above matched Harvath’s mood. Every time he saw a police officer, he discreetly steered Tracy and the professor in another direction. They couldn’t be too careful. There was no way of knowing if the French police were looking for them already or not. But that wasn’t the only thing weighing on Harvath.

Before leaving the peniche, he’d allowed Nichols to check the balance of the bank account the president had established for him. No new deposits had been made. They had precious little to bargain with.

Published more than four hundred years ago, only eighteen first-edition copies of Don Quixote were known to exist worldwide. Hailed as the first “true novel,” a first-edition Quixote was quite literally worth more than its own weight in gold.