The Last Patriot

CHAPTER 32

Rasmussen uploaded another stream of CCTV footage to the conference room monitor. “This is from the scene of the bombing earlier today. It was taken from a bank across the street.”

The Dead Poets Society team members watched as the first car was stolen and then replaced with the Mercedes carrying the bomb.

Rasmussen split-screened the footage with a feed from another camera and using a laser pointer said, “See these two customers sitting outside at the café? Once the Mercedes is in place, they get up and leave.”

“Almost like they knew what was about to happen,” said Whitcomb.

“Who are they?” asked Ozbek. “Can you enhance that?”

Rasmussen shook his head. “The footage is from a bank camera meant to monitor an ATM, not the café across the street. It gets too blurry, but it doesn’t matter. Look at this.” Clicking a few more keys, Rasmussen brought up the café from a different angle. “This is from a hotel security camera right up the street.”

Ozbek stood up and walked over to the monitor. “Stop it right there. Can you go in tighter?”

Rasmussen did.

“That’s him. Our American from the Grand Palais.”

“It gets better,” said his colleague. “Watch this.” Rasmussen clicked his keys again and another angle came up. “This is from a second bank across the street.”

Ozbek and the team watched as a mid-fifties man exited what looked like a bookstore and bumped into the American and his female counterpart. The man then walked toward the café while the American and his companion walked in the opposite direction. Suddenly, the American seemed to notice something out of view. He then turned and ran after the man who had left the bookstore. He caught him right before the café and knocked him to the ground, covering him with his own body, just seconds before the car bomb exploded.

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.

“René 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 co

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 René 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 café 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 co