The Last Patriot

“If I hear from Professor Nichols,” replied the president, “I will definitely make sure to pass along your warning.”

Leonard recognized the signal that their meeting was over and stood as well. “There has got to be some way to get a warning to Harvath too. He needs to know what’s going on. Isn’t there anybody who can get in touch with him?”

“If I can think of anybody, I’ll get on it right away,” said Rutledge as he held out his hand. “Thank you for coming to see me.”

Leonard accepted the president’s grasp and offered up her other hand to accept the digital camera back.

“May I hold on to this for a little while?” he asked as he saw her to the door.

“Of course,” she replied.

As soon as Leonard was gone, President Jack Rutledge crossed back to his desk and snatched up the telephone.

CHAPTER 37

PARIS

The men Namir Aouad had called into his office were each at least six-foot-three and well over two hundred and ninety pounds.

They had jet black hair and close-cropped beards. Their dark eyes were alert and wary. One of the men had a long hooked nose that resembled a vulture’s beak while the other’s looked misshapen, probably from having been broken multiple times.

Aouad issued a fresh set of commands in French. Big Bird, as Harvath had nicknamed him, set the tea tray down on the mosque director’s desk and poured the steaming mint liquid. In the man’s enormous hands, the pitcher looked like a child’s toy.

The other man stood near the door at rigid attention, his hands clasped in front of his privates like a soccer player waiting to absorb a penalty kick. His eyes never drifted from Harvath. There were moments, during pauses in the conversation, where if Harvath strained his ears, he thought he could hear the air whistling in and out of the man’s malformed nasal cavities.

Clichy-sous-Bois was a tough area, and Harvath couldn’t help but wonder what else mosque director Namir Aouad was into besides being a middleman for stolen first edition Don Quixotes.

As he and Aouad made small talk over their tea, Harvath remained purposefully vague. His was a hastily created identity and the last thing he wanted to do was blow it by getting trapped in a subject he should have been an expert at.

Tea was a traditional show of good faith on Aouad’s part. Refusing him could have been seen as an insult. It was important to make the man as comfortable as possible.

Luckily, Aouad was a soccer fan and Harvath followed the sport closely enough to be able to converse on that subject until they were finished.

Once Big Bird had cleared the tray, Harvath lifted his briefcase and set it upon Aouad’s desk. “Shall we get started?” he asked as he popped the latches and began to withdraw the items he would pretend to use to authenticate the Don Quixote.

“Of course,” said the mosque director as he nodded to one of his men. The man with the whistling nostrils approached one of the steel file cabinets, pulled out a long drawer and removed a battered wooden box about the size of a small portable typewriter. He approached the desk and handed it to Aouad who thanked him and told him to wait outside the door with Big Bird.

The mosque director set the box down on his desk, raised its thick lid, and said, “It’s all yours. At least it will be, once payment is made.”

Harvath smiled and stepped around the desk. Immediately, he was struck by the fact that it was some sort of puzzle box.

When Scot was little, his father had brought him back multiple puzzle boxes from Japan, some with over a hundred moves necessary to open them. Harvath loved them and so had his father, who was an avid woodworker. The boxes had always seemed a strange metaphor for their intricate and complicated relationship.

Though Jefferson’s puzzle box was in a state of disrepair, there was no mistaking its exceptional joinery and that it had been crafted from a collection of fine hardwoods. At one point the box had most likely been polished to a fine sheen and its brass hardware to a noticeable luster. It definitely would have been a handsome and practical addition to the accoutrements Jefferson kept in his offices at the Carthusian monastery.

It had been marred, though, by time and the conditions under which it lay hidden. It also bore unsightly gouge marks where a screw driver or worse yet, a hammer and chisel or pry bar had been used to force it open.

As Harvath ran his fingers across the front surface, he discovered a barely discernable, inlaid monogram that bore the initials TJ.

Harvath and his father had attempted crafting rudimentary puzzle boxes of their own, but certainly nothing as beautiful as Jefferson’s. It took Harvath back to the woodshop in his family’s garage and he wondered what his father would have thought of being able to run his hands along a work of art that had once belonged to such a notable American.

Harvath’s interest in the puzzle box was not lost upon Aouad. “The box is also available for purchase. For an additional fee, of course.”

“I’ll be sure to let the university know,” said Harvath as his eyes fell upon the object of his assignment.

Sitting in the center of the box, the book lay wrapped in a long strip of muslin discolored with age. Carefully, Harvath removed the book and set it upon the desk. “Do you mind?” he asked as he reached right across Aouad’s chest and adjusted the gooseneck lamp to better the lighting.

“Be my guest,” said the man as he stepped around to the opposite side of the desk to give Harvath more room to work.

Harvath spun his briefcase around and removed a pair of white cotton gloves. Now, a portion of Aouad’s desk was obscured from the mosque director by both the lid of Jefferson’s box and of Harvath’s briefcase.

Aouad watched as Harvath laid a small jeweler’s mat on the desk and then delicately unwound the strip of fabric from the tome.

As Nichols had warned him, the book was in poor condition. Harvath tsked loudly and shook his head as he explored its original limp vellum binding.

“Had the book been in perfect condition,” offered the director, concerned that Harvath was mounting a case for a lower offer, “the price would have been much higher.”

Harvath ignored him and continued his examination. The book was exactly the size the professor had said it would be, but it was heavier than they had expected.

Harvath placed the series of images which had been e-mailed to Nichols off to the side of the box and gently opened the more than four-hundred-year-old book to its first page.

Readily visible were the first edition hallmarks Harvath had been told to look for. There was the dedication to the Duke of Bejar, a descendant of the royal family of the ancient kingdom of Navarra, as well as the Latin phrase, “After the shadows I await the light.”

He compared the images to the aging book before him and then slowly turned to its twenty-sixth chapter. Nichols had instructed him that only the first edition bore a description of Don Quixote forming a rosary from his shirt tails. In subsequent editions it was changed to “oak galls” in order to appease seventeenth-century Spanish censors. Someone who truly knew how to authenticate the book would have known to look for this and Nichols had made sure that Harvath, who spoke limited Spanish, knew exactly where to find it.

It took him several minutes, but Harvath finally found it. It was amazing. Out of an original four hundred copies of Don Quixote only eighteen first editions were known to still exist. What Harvath now held in his hands was the nineteenth.

It was an incredible discovery made even more remarkable by its provenance and the secrets it promised to unlock. Harvath was left with only one final item to authenticate.