The Last Patriot - Brad Thor [50]
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.
As a rule, Ozbek never dated women who were in the military, law enforcement, or the intelligence realm. For Carolyn Leonard, though, he’d long been willing to break that rule. She was easily one of the most attractive and eligible single women in D.C., a fact that most likely had made her rise to one of the most prominent positions in the Secret Service much more difficult than it should have been.
Despite his obvious attraction to her, Carolyn had never showed him any interest beyond friendship. It was probably for the best. Meeting up, hooking up, and breaking up would not have been conducive to the favor he needed now, even for a professional like Carolyn Leonard.
“I can’t talk to you about this,” she said as she pushed the small Sony Cybershot camera back across the table.
Uploading the stills and closed-circuit footage to a digital camera seemed a lot more discreet to the CIA operative than handing Leonard a big manila envelope with a couple of VHS tapes and a stack of 8 x 10 photographs inside.
“Come on, Carolyn,” he replied. “I’m not asking for state secrets here. I just need you to ID the guy and answer