The Last Patriot

hour. By that point, I don’t care what he does or says.”

“Is he dangerous?”

“Only if you’re a bag of heroin or a fashion editor.”

“Okay,” said Finney. “I’ll have someone check in on him once I know you’re out of French airspace. That’s it, then?”

“That’s it,” replied Harvath.

Two hours later, Harvath was back aboard the peniche. With him was a digital camera he had lifted off a tourist near Notre Dame and several plastic bags filled with items he and Nichols would need to disguise themselves.

Once they had taken each other’s picture in front of a plain white wall, Harvath uploaded them to the draft folder he used to communicate with Parker and Finney. He’d already provided names and physical descriptions for the bogus passports. Now, all they could do was wait.

An hour later, Harvath heard from Ron Parker. “The car will be there to pick you up at 0500. Your private charter to Montreal is all booked.”

“What about the dead drop for the passports?” asked Harvath.

“Your driver has been instructed to take you to the Paris Marriott Champs-Elysees. The bell captain’s name is Maurice. You give him the James Ryan alias from your new passport and he’ll hand over two suitcases. Inside are dirty clothes and assorted toiletry items just in case somebody decides to give you a closer look. One of the bags has a piece of yarn tied to the handle. Inside, you’ll find an envelope with the passports.”

Harvath had to hand it to him, Parker and Finney thought of everything.

When they arrived at the Marriott Champs-Elysees shortly after five a.m., Harvath found the bell captain, gave him the James Ryan name as well as fifty euros, and retrieved the bags.

Back in the car, he removed the passports and looked them over. Finney’s cobbler was a true artist. The documents were impeccable.

He committed his stamps and visas to memory and then quietly quizzed Nichols to make sure he had done the same.

At Paris-Le Bourget Airport, they were met by a representative from the charter company who saw to their bags and accompanied the pair to passport control.

Harvath had instructed Nichols to appear tired and disinterested. He had cut the professor’s hair very short and had him shave off his beard. His face had been darkened with toner while Harvath wore a new wig and glasses. He also now sported a mustache.

The passport control officer took his time studying their documents. Harvath grew concerned and debated whether he could subdue the officer and still be able to get Nichols on board the plane and take off. They were the only ones there at the moment and Harvath gave himself fifty-fifty odds of being successful.

Thankfully, he didn’t have to do anything. The jet rep was on a first-name basis with the officer and chided him into hurrying it up. With a dismissive wave of his hand, the officer stamped the passports and handed them back.

Within five minutes, they were on board the aircraft, and as the main door was closed, Harvath breathed a sigh of relief. Ten minutes more, with well deserved drinks in hand, the pair was airborne and headed for the States. The hardest part, though, was leaving Tracy behind.

Harvath had been against it, but he knew there wasn’t anything he could do about it. To his credit, the president had already started the diplomatic wheels rolling. It was now Harvath’s turn to perform.

As the ground disappeared beneath the Bombardier Global Express XRS jet, Harvath left Nichols on the couch and walked back to the sleep suite in the aft cabin. Lying down on the bed, he closed his eyes and tried to rest. He had a very bad feeling that things weren’t over yet-not by a long shot.

CHAPTER 50

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

SATURDAY

Matthew Dodd’s balls weren’t simply big, they were enormous. Fooling the CIA into thinking you’d been killed was one thing, but living within fifty miles of Langley was the absolute height of hubris and Aydin Ozbek was positive that it was exactly what would lead to Dodd’s downfall.

The assassin had been very careful about covering his tracks, but not careful enough. Most of the dead drops and meeting places Dodd had established with Salam while posing as his FBI handler were in and around Baltimore. That had gotten Ozbek to thinking.

Why Baltimore? The most logical answer was because Baltimore was not D.C. There were too many people who could have recognized Dodd there. What’s more, Salam had ID’d Dodd directly from his CIA service photo which meant that Dodd had never disguised himself when they were together. The assassin was smart enough to know that few disguises held up under close scrutiny over long periods of time. So the more Ozbek thought about it, the more Baltimore made sense. Not only was it close to D.C., but it was probably easier to get lost in than anywhere else within an hour’s drive.

At the DPS office, Ozbek had his team map all of the dead drop locations and all of the rendezvous points Salam could ever remember having been to. There were a couple of dead drops in D.C., but those were only set up for emergencies.

The prevalence of activity in the Baltimore area made Ozbek certain that it was Dodd’s main base of operations. He had to be living somewhere close by.

Though he held out little hope of finding him, Ozbek ran title searches under Dodd’s name and any known or suspected aliases, including his Muslim name, Majd al-Din. When those came up empty, Rasmussen half joked that it wouldn’t have been beneath the assassin to buy something under the names of Sheik Omar, Abdul Waleed, or even Andrew Salam himself. Those names turned out to be busts as well, as were any real estate holdings titled under any of Omar’s mosques, FAIR, or the McAllister amp; Associates front.

More than likely, Dodd was renting something under a false name they didn’t know of, which made it all but impossible to trace him.

Or so they had thought.

It was Stephanie Whitcomb who had suggested they dredge the credit bureaus and Web-based tenant screening services. If Dodd was renting, unless he was living in an absolute fleabag, his landlord would have run a background check on him.

Their search resulted in three hits in the Baltimore area. Two belonged to a pair of female roommates who were interns at the Foundation on American Islamic Relations and the third was a man named Ibrahim Reynolds who listed the Um al-Qura Mosque in Falls Church, Virginia, as his employer.

A little further digging revealed that the original Ibrahim Reynolds, whose name and social security number were bogusly listed on the rental application, had died at two months old in San Diego, California. It was the break they had been looking for.

And as a reward, Ozbek had decided to let Whitcomb come along when they hit Dodd’s apartment even though Rasmussen had been dead set against involving her.

Had Ozbek been able to see what was coming, he would have agreed.

CHAPTER 51

As far as any of them knew, Matthew Dodd was still in Paris. At least he had been as of the shooting the previous day. Nevertheless, they weren’t taking any chances.