The Last Patriot - Brad Thor [62]
“Tracy’s gone.”
Parker straightened up and leaned forward into his camera. “What happened?”
“She left while I was out. She said she needed to find a doctor.”
“For what? Is she injured?”
“She’s had headaches. Bad ones, apparently.”
“What do you mean apparently?” asked Parker. “You don’t know?”
“She didn’t want me to know,” replied Harvath. “She’d been taking painkillers under the radar.”
“If you sit tight, she’ll probably come back in a bit. Don’t worry.”
“Ron, I am worried. Every cop in this city has to be looking for us. You’ve got contacts here that I don’t. How quickly can you find out where she is?”
The video chat room was not as fast as Harvath would have liked and it took a moment for Parker’s response to be piped back.
“I’ll reach out to my guys now, but Tracy could be anywhere—a hospital, a doctor’s office. I’ll try my embassy sources first. We’ll see if anyone contacted them looking for a referral.”
“No,” replied Harvath. “No one from the embassy. I want this kept off their radar screen.”
“That might be tough.”
“Why?”
Parker adjusted his camera so Harvath could see the owner of the Sargasso Intelligence Program, Tim Finney, who was sitting off to his side.
Finney was a former Pacific Rim shootfighting champion now in his early fifties who towered over Harvath by at least seven inches and rang in at an impressive two hundred seventy-five pounds of solid muscle. He had intense green eyes and, like Parker, his head was completely shaved—a similarity that Harvath had often attributed to Finney’s resort having the world’s laziest or most uncreative barber. But despite his size and his reputation as an absolutely ruthless, no-holds-barred fighter in the ring, Finney, like Parker, was one of the best friends an honest man could ever have.
Finney held up a pink telephone message sheet while Parker said, “Gary Lawlor is looking for you. He’s called twice already. He says he has a message from the president.”
“Why would he call you two?”
Finney took the microphone away from Parker and said, “Don’t be an idiot, Scot. He knows damn well there’s only two numbers you dial when you’re in trouble and since his phone hasn’t been ringing, it isn’t hard to figure that you reached out to us. Now what should we tell him?”
“How much does he know?”
“He knows you’re in Paris.”
“How does he know that?” asked Harvath.
“He says that’s what the president wants to talk to you about.”
Harvath had told Nichols not to make any calls or to use the computer while he was gone. He wondered if the professor had disobeyed him. He doubted it. More than likely, the French had already ID’d him and had contacted the president. Either way, things were now even more screwed up than before.
“Gary asked if we were putting you up,” continued Finney, “and how he could contact you.”
Harvath had no desire to hear what the president had to say. “What’d you tell him?”
“We told him that if we heard from you, we’d tell you to check in with him.”
“Did he buy it?”
Finney put his hands up. “I’ve got no idea, Scot. He’s your boss.”
“Was my boss,” clarified Harvath.
“Whatever. Why don’t you call him and ask him yourself?”
“I’ll think about it,” he lied.
“Well think about this. You’re in the shit way up past your eyeballs, and so is Tracy. I don’t think we’ve got a rope long enough to throw to you. You might want to put your pride on the back burner and think of someone other than yourself for a minute. Gary Lawlor and President Rutledge might be the only people who can help untangle this mess.”
Finney was right, but Harvath was hardheaded enough to not want to admit it.
When he didn’t reply, Parker took the microphone back and said, “I’ll get back to you as soon as we have something. In the meantime, get yourself cleaned up.” Then the feed from Sargasso went dead.
CHAPTER 43
Harvath had always had a good relationship with Gary Lawlor. The former FBI deputy director had been a close friend of the Harvath family for almost