killing civilians. What’s more, the bombing was excessive. It was using a sledgehammer when all that was needed was a flyswatter.
To pull off the bombing, Omar had reached out to people he knew who had contacts in France. It was too many degrees of separation and had all been one big clusterfuck from the get-go.
Omar’s local talent had been able to get only half the amount of explosives they needed. When they finally were ready to pull off the attack, the trigger man had gotten jumpy and had blown the Mercedes prematurely. As a result, Nichols had survived.
The entire operation had been a waste of time and money and now Nichols was spooked instead of dead.
But no matter how incompetent the team had been, it was still Dodd’s assignment and he took responsibility for it. He was nothing if not a man of honor.
The first few drops of an approaching rain began to fall and Dodd turned up the collar of his coat. He was in the process of considering moving to one of the cafes along the edge of the Parc Monceau when the prepaid cell phone he’d purchased that morning vibrated.
“Yes,” he said as he activated the call.
The deep voice of Sheik Omar resonated from the phone as if he were sitting right there on the bench next to him. “How were the lines at Versailles today?” he asked.
“Not as bad as the Louvre,” replied Dodd.
With the authentication between them complete, Omar inquired, “Did the flight take off on time?”
“No,” replied Dodd. “It actually took off early.
Though the cleric said nothing, Dodd could feel Omar’s anger building from almost four thousand miles away back in America. “Tell me what happened,” the sheik finally said.
Dodd filled him in as ambiguously as he could, ever leery of the U.S. government’s eavesdropping systems. Both were on chat-n-chuck, throwaway phones purchased strictly for this conversation, but if the NSA had his voiceprint and the ECHELON system registered a match, it wouldn’t do them much good.
“We need to make sure any passengers that missed the flight are rebooked as soon as possible,” stated Omar.
“Same airline as before, or can this be a private charter, as I originally suggested?”
It took a moment, but the cleric relented. “Private charter will be fine. Just make sure that our passengers get to their destination.”
“Understood,” stated Dodd. “Anything else?”
“Yes,” replied the sheik, almost as an afterthought. “You mentioned another man who was rushing for the plane as it left the gate.”
“I did. He had a woman with him. Do I need to be concerned about them?”
“I’m not sure,” said Omar. “I’ll leave it to your discretion, but should you happen to see them again, I’d like them treated as VIPs.”
“Understood,” replied Dodd as he stood up from the bench. “I’ll make sure they’re booked on the next flight as well.”
He ended the call and removed the phone’s battery and SIM card, then broke the phone into several pieces, all of which he dumped into a series of storm drains as he exited the Parc Monceau.
Dodd had his orders. He needed to find Anthony Nichols and finish the job. If the man and woman from outside the cafe got in his way again, he would kill them too. And this time, he would do it his way.
CHAPTER 9
Harvath glanced at his Kobold Chronograph. He and Tracy had spent twenty minutes searching for Anthony Nichols. They had no way of knowing if he’d walked away of his own accord or if he’d stumbled off as a result of his head wound and was bleeding in a doorway somewhere. Harvath, though, had a hard time believing it was the latter.
He stopped walking and turned to Tracy. “This guy obviously doesn’t want to be found. I’m inclined to support his wish.”
“Then what do we do now?”
Harvath could see a Metro stop at the end of the block and he pointed at it as it began to rain. “How about onion soup? I’ll take you to a nice little restaurant called The Foot of the Pig in Les Halles.”
“Scot,” insisted Tracy. “We have to find this guy.”
“No, we don’t,” replied Harvath. “Maybe he was CIA after all. But whoever he is, he’s a grown man and he can fend for himself. He didn’t come about the president’s private phone number for nothing. He’ll have people who can help him out.”
“And who’s going to help us out?”
“Out of what?”
“
“They’ll see the car get stolen, the Mercedes come in and take its place, and then they’ll see you and me beating a hasty exit from the cafe, only to have you rush back and knock that Nichols person to the ground a split second before the bomb goes off. Then they’ll see us help him up and evac him from the scene.”
Tracy didn’t say anything else. She just closed her mouth and waited.
“Shit,” said Harvath. This wasn’t his fight and he didn’t want any part of it, but Tracy was right. The French authorities were eventually going to be looking for the two of them whether they liked it or not.
They hadn’t done anything wrong, but their behavior was suspicious and could be construed as an indication of foreknowledge of the attack. Whether “gut feelings” counted as a reasonable defense in France was not something Harvath was terribly eager to find out.
Nichols was the reason the attack had happened. Harvath was sure of it. He was also sure that without Nichols, he and Tracy were going to have a lot of trouble with the French authorities.
For a moment, he thought they might be able to hop onto a train and leave the country, but Harvath knew he was deluding himself. This was a major terrorist attack. French citizens were dead and France would stop at nothing to get to the bottom of it.
Harvath knew how good the French intelligence services were. He and Tracy might make it out of the country, but they wouldn’t be safe anywhere. Besides, running would only make them look guiltier.
They needed to track down Nichols. Harvath looked at Tracy. “How long do you think until they have our pictures isolated from the CCTV footage?”
It was a rhetorical question and Tracy knew it, but she pieced it together for him anyway. “They’ll take witness statements from as many people as they can. If someone mentions our behavior as being out of the ordinary, that’ll make them instantly scrutinize the camera feeds for more than just who the bombers were.
“Once they’ve got our faces, they’ll enhance them and then run them through every database they have access to while simultaneously sending our pictures out to every law enforcement officer up and down the chain of command in France. At best, we’ve got two, maybe three hours.”
“And at worst?”
“I don’t want to think about it,” responded Tracy. “It’s giving me a headache.”
Harvath retrieved Nichols’ hotel key card from the man’s wallet and said, “Then I guess we need to get moving.”
CHAPTER 10
