Brad Thor Collectors' Edition #3 Page 5

  “I’m sure he will,” chuckled Harvath. “The thing is, my girlfriend and I like to make sure all of our bases are always covered. We’re going to need you to explain to the French that she and I knew nothing about that bombing until it happened.”

  “If you let me go,” implored Nichols, “the president will help you both. You can trust me.”

  “I’m sure I can trust you,” said Harvath, reading the man’s face and seeing the truth, “but I don’t know that I can trust the president.”

  “So you’d hand me over to the French police just to save yourselves?”

  “Let me think about that,” replied Harvath as he paused less than a millisecond in thought. “Yes. Yes, we would.” Turning to Tracy, he said, “We’re done talking with this guy. Bring me the phone. I’d rather take my chances with the French police. Besides, we don’t have anything to hide.”

  “You’re making a big mistake,” pleaded Nichols.

  “I’m sorry, Professor,” said Harvath as he began dialing. “You had your chance.”

  Nichols tried a different tack. He remembered back to when the president had given him that number and all the things he had said to him about being of such important service to his nation. Finally, he hit on something. Looking at Harvath he said, “If you were close enough to the president to have been given that number, then you must have been someone he trusted; someone who cared very much for your country.”

  “I still do,” said Harvath, and then he switched to French and began speaking to someone on the other end of the phone.

  Nichols was in a panic. If he got handed over to the French authorities, it would all be over. He had to make a choice—either spill it all to the man in front of him or save it for the very interested French police. He prayed to God he was making the right decision. “Stop. I’ll tell you everything. Just hang up the phone.”

  “You’ve got five minutes,” said Harvath as he hung up on the automated, Paris version of Moviefone and looked up at Nichols. “I suggest you make this worth my while.”

  Nichols waited, hoping his captors would loosen his bonds a bit more, but when they didn’t, he began talking. “The president has brought me on board to help him take down fundamentalist Islam.”

  Harvath looked at Tracy with a smile and then back to Nichols. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Nichols shook his head.

  “How could a professor of history be capable of anything even remotely resembling counterterrorism work?”

  Nichols was about to answer when his hotel room window erupted in a hail of broken glass.

  CHAPTER 12

  Dodd’s men had jumped the gun, again. Their only job was to keep Nichols in their sights until the assassin could get there. Instead, the men had shot up Nichols’ hotel room from across the street.

  The men had seen three figures through the draperies and fearing it was the French authorities, had decided to act. If Nichols broke and told them what he knew, there’d be no containing this thing. It was a rash decision, worse than the car bombing, but he realized the men had been left with little choice. That didn’t mean, though, he had to like the situation. Now he had to play clean-up and make absolutely certain that Nichols was dead.

  As far as Dodd’s men could tell, no one had been left alive inside the hotel room. Dodd ordered one man to keep an eye on the hotel while the others sanitized the apartment they’d been using for surveillance. It wouldn’t take the French police long to figure out where the shots had come from and he wanted to be long gone before they got there.

  Dodd crossed the street and walked into the lobby of the Hotel D’Aubusson. Everything appeared normal; the staff oblivious to what had transpired only moments ago upstairs. Dodd kept moving and strode right to the elevator.

  As the car ascended, he removed a .45 caliber Heckler & Koch pistol from a holster at the small of his back. From a pocket in his Barbour jacket came a Gemtech suppressor, which he affixed to the weapon’s threaded barrel.

  When the elevator doors opened, Dodd tucked the hand holding the pistol inside his jacket and stepped out into the hallway. Had the pistol been out and ready, he might have been able to get off a clean shot.

  All he caught was a shadow of a figure as it disappeared into the far stairwell. Dodd raced for the stairs at his end of the hall and burst through the metal fire door. He pounded down with tremendous force, taking the stairs three and four at a time.

  At the ground-floor level, he tucked his pistol back beneath his jacket and stepped out into the lobby. He searched for Nichols, but didn’t see him.

  Crossing the lobby, Dodd reached the far stairwell and opened the door, but no one was there. How was that possible?

  Then he realized how presumptive he’d been. Maybe whoever he’d seen hadn’t gone down, but rather up. But what was up? There was only the hotel’s pitched roof.

  He took the stairs just as fast going up as he had coming down and considered stopping on the third floor to check Nichols’ room. Maybe Nichols was still there? Maybe, but he doubted it. Dodd didn’t believe in coincidence. If he found the person he’d seen entering the stairway, he’d find Nichols, he was certain of it.

  Dodd kept moving, picking up speed as he rushed up the stairs—his body in exceptional physical condition. At the top floor he raised his pistol, eased open the door, and swung out into the hallway. Nothing.

  He found the roof access, but it was locked. The only way Nichols could have made it through was if he’d had a key, which Dodd considered highly unlikely.

  Taking the stairs back down, he checked each hallway for signs of his prey. Finally, he reached the third floor, and Nichols’ room.

  There was broken window glass everywhere. Pieces of a shattered lamp littered the bathroom floor and there was blood in the sink, but that was it.

  Whoever had been in this room had gone and they had taken Nichols with them.

  Dodd began tossing the room only to be interrupted by a blaring alarm.

  CHAPTER 13

  Harvath had acted quickly. His first instinct had been to grab both Tracy and Nichols and get out of the hotel as quickly as possible, but he knew better. The shots had been fired from a suppressed weapon, most likely from a building or rooftop across the street.

  With the hotel room’s sheer draperies drawn, the shooter couldn’t have had a very good picture of what was going on in the room. Even so, he had taken the shot anyway. In fact, he had taken several. Whoever these people were, they seemed quite intent on making sure that Nichols and anyone else with him be taken out.

  First the car bomb and now the shooting. Someone was trying very hard to kill Anthony Nichols, and Harvath wanted to know why. But before he did that, he had to get all of them to someplace safe.

  While the shooter had probably packed up and taken off already, Harvath had to operate under the assumption that the threat still remained and that it might very well be closing in on them. Complicating matters was the fact that he was unarmed and the only backup he had was Tracy, who was also unarmed. Thankfully, none of them had been wounded in the shooting. Things could have been worse, much worse.

  They avoided the elevator and ran into the stairwell closest to Nichols’ room. Harvath fought the urge to race all the way to the lobby. Whoever was gunning for them could have posted men down there. Instead, Harvath had them descend one level and enter the second-floor hallway.

  There they saw signs pointing toward the hotel’s conference room and Harvath headed for it.

  Inside, a large U-shaped table had been set for an afternoon session with pads of Hotel D’Aubusson paper, ballpoint pens, and pitchers of water. At the back of the room was a sign marked Sortie de Secours, Exit.

  The door opened onto a service area with a narrow set of stairs that led into the bowels of the hotel.

  When they got to the bottom, they moved quickly through the basement. The whole time, none of them spoke.

  A small service elevator brought them up to the receivi
ng area at the south corner of the building. It was as far from the front of the hotel as they could get without going outside.

  Near the door, Harvath discovered a clutch of chairs that sat among a handful of discarded cigarette butts. Atop a nearby time clock were stacks of matchbooks from the hotel bar. Must be the employee smoking lounge, he said to himself.

  Scanning the loading area, Harvath got an idea that he thought might help cover their escape.

  He dragged a large metal trash bin filled with newspapers and other paper products into the center of the room. Into it he dropped several oily rags he’d found in the corner.

  Wrapping the last of the rags around a broom handle, he then tossed Tracy the matches and held his makeshift torch out for her to light.

  Once it was going, he tilted it into the trash bin and set the contents on fire. It took a few moments, but soon the room was filled with thick gray smoke. Seconds later, the hotel fire alarm went off.

  They stayed in the receiving area for as long as they could. When it became too difficult to breathe, Harvath opened the door and they exited onto Rue Christine.

  People were already spilling out of the nearby shops and businesses at the sound of the alarm to see what was going on.

  Tracy took Nichols by the arm, turned left, and headed away from the hotel toward Rue Des Grands Augustins. Harvath crossed to the other side of the street and hung back to make sure they weren’t being followed.

  They met up at the corner and moved quickly to Place St. Michel. There, they hid themselves among the throngs of tourists who clogged the narrow streets around Rue St. Séverin.

  Harvath kept Tracy and Nichols moving as he doubled back three more times over the next twenty minutes. When he was convinced no one was on their tail, he purchased an international calling card and found a telephone.

  They needed to get off the streets as soon as possible. Harvath had no desire to go back to his hotel, and checking into a new one was too risky. They needed someplace safe; someplace where nobody would know who they were or why they were there.

  For that kind of anonymity, there was only one person Harvath trusted enough to call.

  CHAPTER 14

  “Port de la Tournelle,” said the voice on the other end of the phone, “lower quai, facing the Ile Saint Louis.”

  Ron Parker was director of operations for a private intelligence organization known as the Sargasso Intelligence Program. Its chairman and founder was a successful hotelier and former no-holds-barred fighting champion named Timothy Finney. Harvath had a long history with both of them and he trusted them with his life. They were also the unofficial dog-sitters for Harvath’s Caucasian Ovcharka, Bullet, whom he had left with them when he and Tracy had decided to leave the country six months ago.

  Sargasso was one of several heavily guarded, highly secretive programs Finney ran behind the scenes of his private, five-star Elk Mountain Resort outside Telluride, Colorado. Much like private military corporations augmenting American forces in different hot spots around the globe, Finney had decided to do the same thing, but in the intelligence arena. He had been after Harvath for years to come to work for him.

  It was a tempting offer. Sargasso’s elite client list read like a who’s who of the American intelligence community. Not only did Sargasso collect and analyze information, they also developed assets, fielded operatives, and ran operations around the world. They were a first-class outfit, run by two patriots who put their love of country above their bottom line and in doing so had become more successful than they ever could have imagined.

  The key to their success was giving their people every tactical and operational advantage needed to get the job done. To that end, Sargasso had been developing a string of safe houses around the world, including one in Paris.

  “I know you wanted to get away from the St. Germain area,” Parker added, “but it’s the best we can do for you.”

  Harvath memorized the rest of the information, thanked his friend, and hung up.

  Fifteen minutes later, he, Tracy, and Nichols arrived along the Seine and laid eyes on the Sargasso safe house. She was known in French as a péniche—a sleek, decommissioned barge—which had been painted jet black. He found it just a bit ironic that the Arab World Institute—an organization created to disseminate information about Arab cultural and spiritual values—was headquartered just above the boat at street level.

  Harvath punched a code into the recessed keypad near the wheelhouse and the lock released with a hiss. The door was very heavy, and Harvath guessed that it had been armor-plated. He rapped on one of the windows as he stepped inside and noticed that they were not made out of actual panes of glass, but heavy sheets of bulletproof Lexan. Finney and Parker had done an excellent job up-armoring their barge.

  Down a short flight of steps were a kitchen, three staterooms with baths, and the main living and dining space. Harvath excused himself and headed toward the main cabin in the stern.

  He closed the door behind him and crossed to a built-in bookcase. Running two fingers along the top, he found the hidden hasp and pushed down. A section came forward on hinges and Harvath opened it the rest of the way. Inside was an airtight plastic Storm case. Harvath lifted it out and placed it upon the bed.

  The case held a loaded .45 caliber Taurus 24/7 OSS pistol with a sound suppressor and two spare magazines. There was also a small manila envelope with ten thousand euros in cash. The Sargasso program was prepared for any eventuality.

  Harvath divided the gear amongst his coat pockets and then put the empty case back where he’d found it.

  After powering up the stateroom’s laptop and sending an encrypted message to Finney and Parker to let them know they’d made it safely aboard the péniche, he rejoined Tracy and Nichols in the living area.

  Nichols was sitting on the couch with a bag of ice clutched against his jaw with one hand and a glass of Scotch from the barge’s well-stocked bar in the other. Tracy was at the varnished kitchen counter holding an orange bottle of prescription medication.

  Harvath slid into the galley beside her and quietly asked, “What are those? Are you okay?”

  “I’ll be fine,” she replied as her hand closed around the bottle of painkillers. “They’re just for headaches.”

  She shook two tablets into the palm of her hand and popped them into her mouth. “Excuse me,” she said as she nudged Harvath out of the way to get to the refrigerator.

  Reaching inside, Tracy removed a small bottle of Evian, unscrewed the cap, and took a long swallow.

  “Since when have you been taking the pills?” he asked.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said as she brushed past him and walked into the seating area. “Really, I’ll be fine.”

  The headaches had come and gone ever since she’d left the hospital, but they had been mild and Tracy had a very high threshold for pain. The bottle was half-empty, and he wondered how long she had been hiding the severity from him.

  It was a talk they would have to have later. Right now, he needed to focus on Nichols. Removing a bottle of Evian for himself, Harvath joined Tracy on the short couch across from the man who’d been the target of both a car bombing and a sniper attack all in the space of one day.

  As they had already explained to the professor who they were, formal introductions were not necessary.

  “So, Mr. Nichols,” said Harvath. “Let’s talk about what you and the president are working on and why someone apparently wants you dead.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  Harvath fixed his eyes on him. “Try to make it short.”

  CHAPTER 15

  “Why don’t you start with how you and the president got together in the first place?” said Harvath.

  Nichols knew that he had no choice but to comply. His mind was drawn back to the night he was summoned to the White House to meet with the president. “The president said he had read several of my books and had selected me because of my expertise as a Thomas Jefferson historian.”<
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  “Selected you for what?”

  “To act as his archivist to help organize his papers and other things for his presidential library.”

  “Isn’t that what the National Archives is supposed to do?” asked Tracy.

  “That’s correct, but most presidents have someone on their staff or someone they bring in from the outside go through the materials before the National Archives comes in. It allowed me to come and go from the White House and the residence without arousing any suspicion.”

  “Suspicion over what?” asked Harvath.

  Nichols took a deep breath. “In the wake of 9/11, the president sought to comfort a grieving nation, but he also needed comfort. More importantly, as he explained it to me, he needed guidance. And he found it in a White House diary Thomas Jefferson had kept during his presidency.

  “President Rutledge had believed that fundamentalist Islam was an enemy the likes of which no other American president had ever experienced before, but he was wrong.”

  With those words, it dawned on Harvath. “Because Thomas Jefferson was the first American president to have gone to war against fundamentalist Islam.”

  Nichols nodded. “The tradition of keeping a private, presidential diary was begun by George Washington and was known only to successive American presidents and their naval stewards. Rutledge had gone to the diaries after 9/11 to seek guidance from his predecessors and that’s where he encountered Jefferson’s experience with fundamentalist Islam.

  “Jefferson was convinced that one day Islam would return and pose an even greater threat to America. He was obsessed with the subject and had committed himself to learning everything he could about it.”

  Harvath was struck by how prescient Jefferson had been.

  “It was in going through Jefferson’s diary,” said Nichols, “that Rutledge discovered something extraordinary.”