The Last Patriot - Brad Thor [19]
They stayed in the receiving area for as long as they could. When it became too difficult to breathe, Harvath opened the door and they exited onto Rue Christine.
People were already spilling out of the nearby shops and businesses at the sound of the alarm to see what was going on.
Tracy took Nichols by the arm, turned left, and headed away from the hotel toward Rue Des Grands Augustins. Harvath crossed to the other side of the street and hung back to make sure they weren’t being followed.
They met up at the corner and moved quickly to Place St. Michel. There, they hid themselves among the throngs of tourists who clogged the narrow streets around Rue St. Séverin.
Harvath kept Tracy and Nichols moving as he doubled back three more times over the next twenty minutes. When he was convinced no one was on their tail, he purchased an international calling card and found a telephone.
They needed to get off the streets as soon as possible. Harvath had no desire to go back to his hotel, and checking into a new one was too risky. They needed someplace safe; someplace where nobody would know who they were or why they were there.
For that kind of anonymity, there was only one person Harvath trusted enough to call.
CHAPTER 14
“Port de la Tournelle,” said the voice on the other end of the phone, “lower quai, facing the Ile Saint Louis.”
Ron Parker was director of operations for a private intelligence organization known as the Sargasso Intelligence Program. Its chairman and founder was a successful hotelier and former no-holds-barred fighting champion named Timothy Finney. Harvath had a long history with both of them and he trusted them with his life. They were also the unofficial dog-sitters for Harvath’s Caucasian Ovcharka, Bullet, whom he had left with them when he and Tracy had decided to leave the country six months ago.
Sargasso was one of several heavily guarded, highly secretive programs Finney ran behind the scenes of his private, five-star Elk Mountain Resort outside Telluride, Colorado. Much like private military corporations augmenting American forces in different hot spots around the globe, Finney had decided to do the same thing, but in the intelligence arena. He had been after Harvath for years to come to work for him.
It was a tempting offer. Sargasso’s elite client list read like a who’s who of the American intelligence community. Not only did Sargasso collect and analyze information, they also developed assets, fielded operatives, and ran operations around the world. They were a first-class outfit, run by two patriots who put their love of country above their bottom line and in doing so had become more successful than they ever could have imagined.
The key to their success was giving their people every tactical and operational advantage needed to get the job done. To that end, Sargasso had been developing a string of safe houses around the world, including one in Paris.
“I know you wanted to get away from the St. Germain area,” Parker added, “but it’s the best we can do for you.”
Harvath memorized the rest of the information, thanked his friend, and hung up.
Fifteen minutes later, he, Tracy, and Nichols arrived along the Seine and laid eyes on the Sargasso safe house. She was known in French as a péniche—a sleek, decommissioned barge—which had been painted jet black. He found it just a bit ironic that the Arab World Institute—an organization created to disseminate information about Arab cultural and spiritual values—was headquartered just above the boat at street level.
Harvath punched a code into the recessed keypad near the wheelhouse and the lock released with a hiss. The door was very heavy, and Harvath guessed that it had been armor-plated. He rapped on one of the windows as he stepped inside and noticed that they were not made out of actual panes of glass, but heavy sheets of bulletproof Lexan. Finney and Parker had