The Last Patriot - Brad Thor [104]
“With the time I had available it wasn’t feasible,” replied the assassin.
Waleed stopped leafing through the pages. “You had all night.”
“I could have had two nights. It still would have been very problematic.”
Omar raised his eyebrows. “Why?”
“Whoever these men are, they are highly trained operatives.”
“Even so,” interrupted Waleed.
Dodd raised his voice and rolled right over him, “I wouldn’t expect you to understand what situational awareness means.”
“They had no idea you were coming. You said so yourself.”
The assassin had never liked Abdul Waleed. Nothing would have made him happier than to crush the man’s windpipe. “Killing a professional takes much care and attention to detail, especially when you intend to kill him on his own ground. Too many things can go wrong if you aren’t properly prepared.”
“So by your own admission, it isn’t impossible,” stated Waleed as if he had scored a decisive debating point.
Dodd turned his gaze to Omar. “We have everything now. They have nothing. That was my assignment and I completed it.”
“No,” said Waleed from the couch. “Your assignment was—”
“Be quiet,” ordered Omar raising his hand. He shifted his eyes from the wheel cipher to Dodd. “The dogs may bark, but the caravan moves on.”
The assassin looked at him. “Meaning?”
“Meaning, you cannot remove from their minds what they have already learned. Don’t assume that because you have taken away their material that you have taken away their will. They’ll keep going.”
Dodd tried to interrupt, but Omar stopped him. “How do you know they even need this material anymore? Maybe they already have everything necessary to locate the final revelation.”
The assassin didn’t need to look at Waleed to know the man was gloating.
“We need to know,” said Omar, “beyond any doubt that the threat has been completely neutralized.”
“What do you want done?”
Handing over everything that had been taken from Bishop’s Gate the sheik said, “You need to solve this riddle and make sure the final revelation is never found.”
Dodd reached out for the items, but as he tried to take them, Omar hung on to them just a moment longer. “Make sure there are no mistakes,” he added as he let them go.
CHAPTER 75
“Explain to me why Jefferson didn’t just come right out and say what this thing was and where it was hidden,” asked Ozbek as they drove south toward the last person who might be able to help them.
Nichols didn’t answer. He was in a state of shock. Sitting on his lap was the folder he had taken to bed last night. Inside were two centuries-old documents—all that remained of his research. One looked like a blueprint and the other a mechanical schematic of some sort. The writing on each was only partially decoded. Had the professor left them in the study, they, like the wheel cipher and the Don Quixote, would be gone as well and they would have had nothing at all to go on.
The professor was reliving in his mind how he had been on his way back to the study after only a couple of hours of sleep when he had found Gary Lawlor on the kitchen floor. Ozbek had to repeat his question two more times before he got his attention.
“Excuse me?” replied Nichols.
“Why didn’t Jefferson just spell everything out? Why go to all this trouble?”
“He had a lot of enemies.”
“Including Congress,” added Harvath, “who went back to an appeasement policy of paying off the Muslims once Jefferson left office.”
“What was the last phrase you decoded?” asked Ozbek.
Opening the folder, Nichols fought back the car sickness that always overtook him when he tried to read while driving and replied, “It says that the prophet’s final revelation lies with the scribe.”
“With the scribe,” repeated Harvath unenthusiastically from the front seat. “Not his scribe?”
Nichols shrugged. “It says the.”
“So what does that mean?” asked Ozbek. “Was that Jefferson’s way of saying the secret died with Mohammed’s scribe?”
“Without the wheel cipher