The Last Patriot - Brad Thor [44]
“This is what you’re so good at. You know how these people play and you know how to beat them at their own game. You’re angry with the president because he made some secret deal that freed a terrorist who stalked your friends and family. It’s done. Get over it. This isn’t about him. This is about right and wrong. And you need to do the right thing here.”
“But you need help.”
“Okay,” she relented. “I need help. I’ll get it. But I’m going to get it without you. And that’s not open for discussion.”
“Tracy, listen.”
“Scot, if I have to get up off this bed just to beat some sense into you I will. I won’t like it, but I’ll do it.”
Harvath smiled. Tracy Hastings was the most amazing woman he’d ever met. If they were blessed with a hundred years together, he could spend every single day of it telling her how much she meant to him without ever really coming close to how deeply he felt.
“I want to be happy and I want it to be with you. But for the two of us to work,” she continued, “you can’t stop being who you are.”
“Even if I’m the guy who disappears for weeks at a time and can’t tell you where I’m going or when I’ll be back?”
“As long as it’s not with a mistress, I think we’ll find a way to make it work.”
Harvath was at a loss.
“Now,” said Tracy, sitting up straighter, “bring that laptop over here and let’s figure out how we’re going to get you into that mosque so you can get that book back.”
CHAPTER 30
The book dealer had been careful in his dealings, very careful. Dodd had simply chalked it up to eccentricity. But it wasn’t eccentricity, it was an over abundance of caution and now he knew why.
Hacking the French servers had proven easier than he’d expected. The dossier on René Bertrand made for interesting reading. The man had a long history of offenses, most of them drug-related, but they had been escalating. Currently, the French police were looking into the book dealer’s association with a smuggling ring that operated between Morocco and France. The investigation had everything: money, women, weapons, drugs, and lots and lots of people who had turned up dead.
As far as the authorities were concerned, Bertrand was definitely a person of interest, but the most telling detail, at least for Dodd, was the fact that the book dealer seemed to be reviled by everyone he had ever come in contact with.
René, the heroin fiend, needed to disappear and was desperate for money. No wonder he risked having his face seen in Paris. He needed to move the Don Quixote so he could cash in and evaporate. Until the police had appeared at the Grand Palais, Dodd had never suspected Bertrand had such skeletons in his closet. He should have known better.
His plan had been to make contact with the book dealer and keep active surveillance on him until Nichols showed up. At that point, Dodd had wanted to simply move in and take the man out. He could have done it a number of ways, but a knife in close would have been best.
Instead, Omar had laid out the car bombing scenario. Though Dodd strongly objected, the sheik had insisted on making a statement. The statement had failed, as had its follow-up attempt. Nichols had survived and now the book dealer and the Don Quixote had been taken out of play.
Omar was painfully shortsighted. He had access to unlimited funds and could have made an overwhelming preemptive bid for the book, but his desire to make his “statement” had gotten the better of him. Nichols wasn’t as easy to kill as the sheik had anticipated.
Dodd had no idea who the man and woman helping him were, but he intended to see them die. Too much had gone wrong, and