The Last Patriot

“You wouldn’t know it by looking at her,” added Leonard, somehow reading his mind. “If you’ve got her face on video, you should have been able to run it through all of your databases and get a match, at least for her passport photo.”

When Ozbek didn’t answer she said, “You didn’t have a match on her, did you? Why not?”

Ozbek replied truthfully. “The video footage from the bombing wasn’t good enough.”

Leonard leaned back in her chair. “Imagine that.”

“What about the man Harvath saved from the bomb?” asked the CIA operative.

“No idea,” she replied.

Her answer came a little too quickly for his liking. “Even though the video quality was bad,” he said as he picked up the digital camera and switched to the still pictures he had stored on it, “I ran his image through the database anyway.”

“Standard operating procedure, I would imagine,” said Leonard.

“We get paid for doing a little bit more than chasing our tails.”

Leonard remained silent.

“Anyway,” continued Ozbek, “we ran it and got hits all over the place. None of them were what we were looking for so we applied some filters to try to narrow it down. The one person I could tie him to was Harvath, so I started there. I ran the subject through the U.S. Navy database, the database at DHS, even the Secret Service.”

“You’ve been a naughty boy.”

Ozbek brushed off the remark. “Then on a real wild hair, I ran him through a different Secret Service database.”

Leonard raised her eyebrows. “Something tells me naughty may not exactly be enough to cover what you’ve been up to.”

“We got an eighty percent match on a repeat visitor to the White House, cleared and badged for all access except the situation room. Want to see his photo?” asked the CIA operative as he brought up the image on his camera.

“Not particularly.”

Ozbek turned the camera around for her to see anyway. “His name is Anthony Nichols. He’s a professor at UVA. He also holds an American passport and flew into Charles De Gaulle Airport from Reagan National two days ago.”

“That’s a hell of a coincidence,” said Leonard.

“I might agree with you,” replied Ozbek, “if it weren’t for the fact that I don’t believe in coincidences.”

Leonard didn’t say anything.

“Carolyn, there are a lot of dead people in Paris right now-two of them cops. The guy behind it all is very likely a former CIA operative named Matthew Dodd who staged his own death and went to ground several years ago.”

Ozbek thought about mentioning Marwan Khalifa, but until he knew that Khalifa was actually dead and that Matthew Dodd had something to do with it, he thought better of it. “This guy Nichols,” he said, “is in a lot of danger. More than he may know.”

“Dodd is that good?”

“He was one of our best. I need to stop him, but I can’t do it without your help. And no matter how good an operator Harvath may be, he has no idea what he is up against with Dodd,” said Ozbek as he set the camera down in front of her.

Leonard looked at Anthony Nichols’ face on the camera’s display for several moments.

After asking a few more questions, she powered the camera down, and slid it into her pocket. Rising from her seat she said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Where are you going?”

“Keep your phone on,” said Leonard as she walked away from the table. “I’ll be in touch.”

CHAPTER 36

Jack Rutledge set aside the file he was reading and removed his glasses as Carolyn Leonard knocked and entered the Oval Office.

“Thank you for seeing me, sir,” said Leonard. “I know how busy you are today.”

“I’m never too busy for the head of my Secret Service detail,” said Rutledge as he stood and invited her to join him in one of the two chairs in front of the fireplace. “Please come in.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Once she was seated, the president sat down across from her and remarked, “I get lots of people every day who’d like to have five minutes with me. Not many of them are as cryptic as you are about their reasons. What’s going on?”

“Mr. President, I hope you understand how seriously I take my job.”

“Carolyn, if you’re bucking for a raise,” kidded Rutledge, “you’re going to have to take it up with the director of the Secret Service.”

“No, sir,” replied Leonard. “This isn’t about a raise.”

“Then what do you need?”

“Mr. President, my job is to protect you, and I take that job very seriously.”

“For which I am very grateful,” said Rutledge, as he noticed her removing a small digital camera from her pocket.

Leonard smiled politely before continuing. “I would never want to jeopardize our professional relationship by overstepping my bounds-”

“Carolyn,” interrupted the president. “If I think you are overstepping your bounds, I’ll tell you. What’s this all about? Do you need a photo for someone? You don’t have to be embarrassed by that. All you have to do is ask.”

The Secret Service agent glanced at the camera and then back at the president. “I wish it were that simple, Mr. President. I’m here about the gentleman you hired to be your archivist.”