The Last Patriot

A hush fell over the conference room.

Ozbek was the first to break the silence. “What made the American run after the man from the bookstore?”

“No idea,” replied Rasmussen. “It looks like he might have seen something-”

“Or someone,” interjected Whitcomb.

“But whatever, or whoever it was, it wasn’t captured by any of the cameras. They did, though, capture this,” said Rasmussen as he rewound the video feed to a much earlier point on its time code.

The team watched as a thin man in a white three-piece suit came up the sidewalk and looked up and down the street before entering the bookstore.

“Rene Bertrand,” said Ozbek. “So he and the American were at both the bombing and the shooting. What about Dodd?”

“If he was there, he was very careful not to get recorded by any of the cameras.”

Ozbek took a sip of his coffee as this new information played in his head. “What do we know about the American?” he asked. “He seems to have had foreknowledge of the bombing. But why chase the man from the bookstore down and risk exposure like that?”

“We’re doing a facial recognition on him right now,” said Whitcomb as she worked her own laptop.

“The American’s female counterpart and the man coming out of the bookstore match the description of the duo the American was seen speaking with in English at the Grand Palais right before the shooting,” said Rasmussen.

“If they were at the Grand Palais, the French should have them on video, shouldn’t they?” asked Ozbek.

“They probably do, but they’ve got a lot of footage to comb through. It’s going to take some time to find it.”

“I want the faces of Ms. American and Mr. Bookstore run through the databases as well.”

Rasmussen nodded. “Already on it.”

“We need every scrap of information we can get,” said Ozbek. “I want to know everything about these people. Who are they? Where are they from? Where have they been? Where are they now, and how the hell are they connected to Matthew Dodd? Also, I want to know what, if any, connection they have with Marwan Khalifa. That’s it. Let’s get to work.”

Ozbek tossed his empty cup into the trash and was halfway to the door when Stephanie Whitcomb suddenly said, “I’ve got a hit.”

Team members that had been filing out of the conference room turned and quickly came back in.

“On whom?” asked Ozbek.

“Our American,” said Whitcomb. “His name is Scot Harvath. Scot is spelled with one T. United States citizen. Age thirty-seven. Hair brown. Eyes blue. Five-foot-ten. 175 pounds. We’ve got a passport number and place of issuance. I’ve also got a Social Security number and a handful of matches for newspaper and magazine articles for a U.S. ski team member with the same name from about twenty-years ago. After that the trail goes dark.”

“How dark?”

“This guy’s a black. There’s nothing else. No tax returns, nothing. I think it’s been scrubbed,” replied Whitcomb.

“Isn’t that interesting?” replied Ozbek.

“Wait’ll you see this,” stated Rasmussen who had abandoned his subjects and had begun a search on Harvath through the CIA’s proprietary database.

Tilting his head toward the monitor, he said, “Check it out.”

Ozbek and the others watched as Harvath’s passport photo materialized and then next to it, a more recent picture from what appeared to be a closed-circuit security camera.

There was something familiar about the background. “Where was that taken?” asked Ozbek.

Rasmussen looked at his CIA colleagues and then after double-checking his information replied, “Downstairs.”

CHAPTER 33

As if three cab drivers refusing to take him there weren’t warnings enough, one look at Clichy-sous-Bois convinced Harvath that he’d made the right choice in leaving Tracy and Nichols back at the barge.

Not that he’d had much choice in the matter. Tracy’s headache had left her immobile, and that meant the professor was the only one who could keep an eye on Rene Bertrand. Nevertheless, having them along in such a rough neighborhood would have been more of a hindrance than a help.

Clichy-sous-Bois was a dilapidated hellhole of poverty-stricken French housing projects that didn’t even have its own Metro or RER train stop. Graffiti covered every surface and groups of tough young thugs wearing the latest gangster street wear sprouted like weeds from every corner. If it wasn’t for the language difference, this could have been any ghetto back home from Compton to Queens. It was someplace Harvath definitely didn’t belong.

The Bilal Mosque turned out to be a run-down, two-story warehouse attached to a butcher/pastry shop on one side and a public bath, or hammam, on the other. As they arrived in front, Harvath’s cabdriver, a young Algerian immigrant named Moussa offered to wait for him.

Harvath politely refused, but the man wouldn’t take no for an answer. He liked Harvath. It was the first time he’d had an adult fare in his cab that didn’t ask him to turn his American funk music off and who could converse with him about it at length. Anyone who knew all seven tracks of Standing on the Verge of Getting It On was better than all right in his book.

And though Moussa didn’t live in Clichy-sous-Bois, he knew its reputation and made a persuasive argument that finding a cab once Harvath came out of the mosque would not only be impossible, but also could be extremely dangerous.

The young man was right. Harvath gave him a hundred euros and told him to stay close. The cabbie pointed to a cafe across the street and told Harvath if he wasn’t in his taxi when he came out, that was where he would likely be.

Harvath thanked him and stepped out of the cab with the briefcase and a small rolling suitcase he had purchased in preparation for his visit to the mosque.

Leaving the barge had been one of the most dangerous parts of the operation. He no longer wondered if the police had begun circulating his picture. With the shooting at the Grand Palais, he knew they would be. He also assumed they had connected him to the bombing that morning. Therefore, purchasing some off-the-shelf items to disguise his appearance had been his first priority.

The suitcase and briefcase had come next, then a trip to one of Paris’s ubiquitous art supply stores. With a visit to a used-book store and a computer equipment shop, his foray was complete and he had returned to the barge.

From his e-mail server, Nichols downloaded the high-resolution Don Quixote scans that Bertrand had sent him. They consisted only of the cover and the first five pages, but it would have to do. Playing with several different types of paper and the new printer Harvath had purchased, they got their work product as close to the real thing as possible.

Judicious use of the small oven in the galley added just the right patina of age to their decoy. Though it wouldn’t stand up to close scrutiny, it didn’t have to. It only had to allow Harvath to get out of the mosque without anyone knowing he’d made a switch. How to create the proper distraction, though, had turned out to be the hardest part of their planning.

It was Tracy who had come up with the idea and she had given Harvath instructions on how to best retrofit the device as well as the suitcase to match his needs. An auto supply store on the outskirts of Paris was his last stop before finally finding the cab that brought him to Clichy-sous-Bois.

It wasn’t the most foolproof plan in the world, but no operation was ever one hundred percent airtight. You