The Last Patriot

Dodd had underestimated the response time of the French authorities. He knew the RG didn’t have enough manpower to monitor all 1,700 mosques and places of Muslim worship every day, so when he cased the Bilal for surveillance shortly before entering the café across the street and didn’t see any, he had assumed it wasn’t on the RG’s list for that night.

That didn’t mean there couldn’t have been undercover operatives inside the mosque, though, but in the pandemonium that had ensued, they would have been hard-pressed to ID him as the shooter unless they had been standing right next to him and even then, he was wearing a disguise.

Nevertheless, someone had given the RG a description of him, and the two dead operatives had started looking for him the moment they got the call. Their hastily mounted ambush had been a very bad idea and it was going to cost the RG more than just two dead agents.

Having tried earlier to crack the RG’s servers without any luck, Dodd now had an open door. He pulled up all of the alerts that had been issued since the bombing that morning and studied them.

In minutes, he was able to put together a picture of just about everything the French police and intelligence agencies knew.

He noted that he had slipped up at the Grand Palais and had been caught on video, but it was only his profile. The authorities had perfect shots of Nichols, as well as the man and woman who were helping him.

With this much of a manhunt on for them, they wouldn’t even be able to hop on a skateboard without being stopped.

Still, the man in the café who was working with Nichols had been smart enough to disguise himself. He’d also been clever enough to slip away from the stampede in the mosque. Dodd needed to reassess who he was up against. Nichols had help and it was well trained help. This wasn’t something that had been pla

The assassin scrolled to the most recent alert and learned to his surprise that the woman had been apprehended.

Her name was given as Tracy Elizabeth Hastings, age twenty-seven, American citizen. The alert revealed that she was being held, pending medical treatment, at the American Hospital of Paris.

Dodd thought for a moment about going to the hospital but then changed his mind. Though he could probably slip inside undetected, the risks associated with getting to the woman and smuggling her out were far too great.

Even if he were successful, what would he do with her? Trade her for the book? What if Nichols had already copied the information from it that he needed? There were too many unknowns.

Nichols was where Dodd’s focus needed to be. And before the assassin decided what to do about him, he needed to have the best view of the battlefield available. He needed to know as much of what Nichols knew as possible. But how to do that?

Dodd’s eyes looked up to check his mirrors and the rest of his surroundings and then fell back to the MDT. As they did, something about its rugged, rubberized casing caught his attention.

It reminded him of the laptop he had taken from Marwan Khalifa just after killing him in Rome and gave him an idea.

Careful to cover his tracks through a series of intermediate servers, the assassin searched the Internet for any news of Khalifa’s death.

Reports of the fire at the Italian State Archive Services were available in several Italian dailies, and while a handful of the articles mentioned bodies having been discovered at the scene, there was nothing yet that identified one of them as being that of Dr. Marwan Khalifa.

With that knowledge, Dodd began formulating a plan. He remembered the e-mail Nichols had sent to Khalifa. If Nichols was successful in getting back to the United States, there was every reason to believe that he still pla

CHAPTER 47

“Tell me everything you know about him,” said Harvath as he chased two aspirin with a glass of water.

Bertrand had been moved to one of the vacant staterooms so Harvath and Nichols could speak in private.

“Where should I start?” replied the professor. “Marwan Khalifa is one of the most respected Koranic scholars in the world. He’s a Georgetown professor and we had worked together before, which made him a perfect choice for this project.”

“When had you worked together before?”

“About five years ago. Right after 9/11, I wrote a paper about the First Barbary War and America’s introduction to Islamic terrorism. Marwan helped me with some of the finer points of Islamic history.”

“When was the last time you spoke with him?” asked Harvath.

“I sent him an e-mail shortly before I left for Paris to confirm a meeting we have Monday in D.C.”

“How much did he know about what you were working on for the president?”

“Everything,” stated Nichols. “He was practically my partner on this project. He knows more about the Koran and its history than anyone else I can think of.”

“And the president was okay with this?” asked Harvath.

“Of course. In fact having a scholar of Marwan’s standing on board will lend much needed weight to this discovery.”

“Why would you and the president need any additional weight?”

Nichols looked at him over the top of his mug. “First of all, the president doesn’t want any recognition for the discovery.”

Harvath chuckled. “Almost every single violent conflict around the world right now involves Muslims, yet with this discovery virtually overnight, all of these conflicts have the potential to come to a halt and Jack Rutledge won’t want to take any credit for it? Please.”

Nichols thought Harvath was being rather disrespectful, but he chose not to engage in an unproductive confrontation. “The president is worried that his involvement might politicize the discovery and detract from its true importance.

“If we find what I think we are going to find, there will be many elements within Islam who will do everything they can to discredit the discovery.”

“You mean the radical fundamentalists,” said Harvath.

Nichols nodded. “They won’t go easily and unfortunately, they are masters at perverting the truth and creating myriad conspiracy theories. The president decided it would be best if he wasn’t seen to have any involvement with this at all. The last thing he wants to do is empower the Islamists.”

“If this turns out to be that threatening, orthodox Muslims are not going to take it lying down.”

“No, they won’t. The Danish cartoon riots were nothing compared to what this will look like. It will be an outright attack on their legitimacy, and they will do everything they can to discredit it. What’s more, as crazy as it sounds, they have God on their side.”

“What do you mean?” asked Harvath.

“The mere suggestion that the Koran is incomplete runs absolutely counter to what every Muslim is taught. To accept the premise that the Koran is incomplete would mean accepting that it is not perfect. And from there it is not a huge leap to wonder what else might be incorrect or incomplete about their holy book.

“It’s a test of faith that many, no matter how moderate, may not want to accept,” said Nichols.

“So how do you win? Just go public with the information and hope that the truth wins out?”

“That’s what we’ve been wrestling with. The Islamic regimes that could be most helpful in publicizing this message will probably be threatened as well. Most likely, they’re going to be lining up to discredit the find.”

“So then how do you win?” repeated Harvath.

Nichols set his mug down, took a deep breath, and said, “This is where we have to trust the moderates and by that I mean the true moderates, like Marwan. If the reform movement doesn’t come from within the Islamic faith, it will never be accepted as legitimate. We in the West can demand reform all we want, but we can’t force it upon the Muslim community. But if we can get to the bottom of what Jefferson was after, we will be handing the moderates the biggest broom they’ve ever had with which to sweep clean.”