The Last Patriot

While people outside of Islam spoke of the need for it to reform, next to nothing was being done on the inside of Islam-where the commitment and desire really mattered. If Thomas Jefferson had been successful in discovering lost Koranic texts and if those texts could uncouple Islam from its militant, supremacist tendencies, then the entire world needed those texts now more than ever.

Harvath’s thoughts were interrupted by a middle-aged, bearded man wearing gray trousers and a black cardigan sweater.

“As sala’amu alaikum,” said the man, extending his right hand.

“I’m sorry,” replied Harvath, careful to remain in character. “I don’t speak French.”

The man smiled. “It means, Peace be upon you. And it is not French; it is Arabic.” His English was accented, but understandable.

“Oh,” said Harvath, feigning ignorance as he returned the smile and shook the man’s hand. “Thank you.”

“How may I help you?”

“I am looking for Monsieur Namir Aouad, the mosque director?”

“And you have found him,” said Aouad. “You must be Professor Nichols’ assistant from the University of Virginia.”

“Kip Winiecki,” said Harvath recycling an old alias.

The mosque director pointed at Harvath’s rolling suitcase. “Do you plan on staying with us long?”

Harvath looked at the suitcase and laughed politely. “No, sir. Professor Nichols has me booked on a flight home tonight. He wants me to begin getting things ready for the arrival of the Don Quixote.”

Namir Aouad was charming. Harvath had to remind himself to remain on his guard.

“I was surprised when Monsieur Bertrand told me that Professor Nichols would not be coming himself,” remarked Aouad. “For something of such great value, doesn’t the professor want to authenticate it in person?”

It was a question Harvath had been prepared for. “Novels in the picaresco style of the late sixteenth century are not exactly the professor’s forte.”

“Which is why he selected you?”

“Precisely,” replied Harvath as he pushed the glasses he was wearing back up his nose.

Whether the mosque’s director was suspicious of the response or not, he didn’t let on. “You can leave your bag here,” said Aouad. “No one will touch it.”

Harvath didn’t doubt him, but he needed it with him. “I have some materials in it I may need while examining the book.”

“As you wish,” said the man as he gestured toward his office.

Harvath followed. Along with the glasses and wig he had purchased, Harvath had adopted a slightly stooped posture. He completed his hopefully disarming disguise by placing a stone in his right shoe, which gave him a pronounced limp. Right now, Scot Harvath looked like anything but a counterterrorism operative.

Aouad’s office was fronted by a traditional Islamic door-shorter and wider than those normally found in the West. The door seemed to be one of the only upgrades that had been made.

Inside, the office looked much like Harvath imagined it had for more than sixty years, the main furniture consisting of a cheap metal desk at one end and two metal chairs. A somewhat rusty gooseneck lamp sat atop the desk and aided the sputtering fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling above.

Along the walls were pieces of art that incorporated Koranic verses proclaiming the glory of Allah. A collection of scratched bookcases contained multiple volumes of the Koran, the Hadith, and other Islamic texts. There was a computer, a printer, a telephone, steel file cabinets, and all of the other equipment one would expect to find in almost any kind of office.

“May I offer you tea?” asked Aouad.

“Yes, please,” replied Harvath. “Thank you.”

As the mosque director walked around his desk and picked up the phone, he motioned for Harvath to take a seat.

Harvath left his suitcase near the door and walked over to one of the chairs. French was his second language. He had learned it in grade school under the strict tutelage of the nuns of the French order of the Sacred Heart and he listened now with interest as Aouad requested the tea as well as two additional men.

It wasn’t necessarily an unusual request, especially considering the circumstances, but what bothered Harvath was the way Aouad had looked right at him when he’d asked for the two men. It was an odd tell.

Moments later, two large men knocked and entered Namir Aouad’s office. The fact that one of them was carrying a diminutive tea tray did nothing to quiet the alarm bells that began going off in Harvath’s head.

CHAPTER 35

OLD EBBITT GRILL

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Aydin Ozbek met Carolyn Leonard at a quiet table near the back bar. The head of Jack Rutledge’s Secret Service detail, she was in her late thirties, about five-foot-ten, and very fit. She wore her red hair down around her shoulders, and her understated Brooks Brothers suit concealed a.40 caliber Sig Sauer 229, two spare magazines, a BlackBerry, Guardian Protective Devices “pop-and-drop” OC grenades, and a few other tools necessary to her trade.