Path of the Assassin (39 page)

Schoen swung the pistol back again, but stopped in midair. Adara, on her hands and knees, was sobbing. Blood trickled from her mouth as well as her thigh, where one of Harvath’s shots had caught her and knocked her down outside.

“I had no idea my son had become involved with an Arab. I sent him to Oxford to propel him forward in life, and he made a decision that could only drag him down. What’s worse, it could have dragged me down along with him. Can you imagine? A top-ranking member of the Mossad with an Arab for a daughter-in-law? I had no idea at the time who her father was or what he had planned for her. But in hindsight, I can see that my intuition and actions were one hundred percent justified.”

“
Justified?”
said Harvath. “What did you do?”

“I did the only thing I could do. I tried to reason with my son, but he wouldn’t listen. He actually wanted to marry the girl. Can you believe it?”

“What
did
you do?” repeated Harvath.

“I withdrew my son from Oxford and forced him to come home to Israel. His mother was sick, and I used that to get him back. When the letters from the girl came, I intercepted them. I had one of our forgers at the Mossad draft a new letter—a Dear John, as you call it. I did the same thing in reverse to the girl at Oxford and included a doctored photo of Daniel with a young Israeli girl. It worked, Daniel never heard from her again.”

“You bastard,” sobbed Adara. “All of you Jews are fucking bastards! Every one of you deserves to die.”

“It is not the Jews who deserve to die. It is your people who must be eradicated,” said Schoen as he grabbed a handful of her thick black hair and jerked her head back. “You know,” he said as he looked at Harvath, “my Daniel never got over her. I tried to encourage him to find another love. I introduced him to nice Israeli girls, but until the day he volunteered for that terrible mission and never came home, he pined over this Arab whore.”

“Whore?” said Adara. “If I am a whore, what does that make your son? He wanted me to bear his children—your grandchildren.”

“Liar!” screamed Schoen as he repeatedly brought the butt of the pistol down into her face. “Liar! Liar! Liar!”

“Schoen, stop it! You’re killing her,” yelled Harvath “This is war and Israel will triumph!” he screamed.

It was obvious, even to Schoen’s men, that Schoen was so consumed with rage he couldn’t even think straight anymore.

One of the men finally intervened and took Schoen’s pistol from him. Another pulled him down the corridor toward the exit of the cellar. Two others lifted Adara and started marching her in the same direction.

“Where are you taking her?” demanded Harvath as he took a step toward of one of the remaining men.

The man’s response was simple and straight to the point. As a matter of fact, he needed no words at all to convey his meaning. He simply raised his submachine gun and pointed it first at Harvath chest and then Meg’s, as he backed down the corridor and finally disappeared from sight.

Meg looked at Scot, who had been mumbling to himself and whose voice was now getting louder, “…eight Mississippi, nine Mississippi, ten!”

He grabbed Meg’s arm and started running for the stone steps that led out of the cellar.

“What are we doing?” she yelled as they ran.

“We’re going after them. Adara is going to pay for what she did, but not at the hands of Ari Schoen.”

“They’ll kill us. We don’t even have a weapon.”

“We don’t need one.”

“Are you crazy?”

“They probably have a car or a van stashed somewhere up there. We need to ID it so we can get the Italian police on their tail right away.”

The door to the cellar was barricaded from the outside. Harvath figured it was probably the large terra-cotta urn he had seen when they came in. He rammed the door several times with his shoulder, but the object wouldn’t move. It wasn’t until Meg threw her weight in as well that it began to budge.

When the door finally opened, they ran up the short flight of flagstone steps toward the villa and the sound of an engine growling to life. Clearing the parking lot, they could see Adara and Schoen being loaded into a windowless, black Fiat van. They hid behind one of the vineyard’s tractors parked off on the grass. Harvath tried his best to make out the van’s license plate number and soon detected another sound over the noise of the engine. It was faint, but growing—
sirens!

“I don’t believe it. The cops! Thank God,” said Harvath.

“No, thank Cassidy,” replied Meg.

“‘Thank, Cassidy’?
What are you talking about?”

Meg held up the Italian Special Forces radio she had been given. “I heard one of the pilots come back on the radio while we were in the cellar. I kept the transmit button depressed so long I thought my finger was going to fall off. We were live the entire time.”

Harvath was about to give Meg a huge kiss, when his blood froze in his veins. Appearing like a wraith out of the vineyard was Hashim Nidal. He was running right at them with several hand grenades in each hand. He also had a headset and radio, which he must have taken from one of the dead Italian soldiers. Harvath prepared himself for the attack, but Hashim ran right past them.

The torture and ignoble death that he knew Adara would face at the hands of the Israelis was more than Hashim could bear. Without her, his life and their cause meant nothing. There was no other choice. The Jew who had caused his sister and their people so much pain would finally be put to death.

Screaming at the top of his lungs, Hashim Nidal took the Israelis completely by surprise. He jumped into the van just as the door began to close.

Harvath threw himself on top of Meg. The grenades detonated and the van exploded into a billowing fireball.

It was a picture perfect day in Washington as Harvath cleared White House security and made his way down to the situation room. A week had passed since he and Meg had left Italy, and the time off had provided him with ample opportunity to decide what his next moves, both personal and professional, would be. On the personal front, he knew Meg was going to be a very important person in his life. In terms of his career, he knew the president was not going to like what he had to say, but his mind was made up.

There was the familiar click of the situation room door lock releasing, followed by the hiss of air as it swung open.
The things I’ll miss,
Harvath thought to himself.

Seated around the long cherry-wood table were all the faces he had expected to see and one that he didn’t.

Rick Morrell rose from his chair and walked across the room to meet him halfway. “I never got a chance to tell you what a hell of a job I thought you did,” said Morrell, offering his hand. “You didn’t get near the cooperation from us that you should have, and I apologize. We should have listened to you.”

Harvath couldn’t believe his ears. Rick Morrell,
apologizing?
He shook the man’s hand and said, “It’s the final outcome that matters the most.”

“Precisely what we’re here to talk about,” said President Jack Rutledge, who had entered the situation room behind Harvath. “If everyone would please take their seats.”

As Morrell turned to walk back to his chair, he said, “After this, the team is meeting at the Old Ebbitt Grill for a couple of beers. Why don’t you join us?” Harvath nodded his head and said he’d be there, then took the empty seat next to Gary Lawlor.

“First of all,” began the president, “I want to congratulate everyone involved in Operation Phantom. We were able to stop the Nidals and, in so doing, avert a war. I cannot overstate what an all-out war in the Middle East would have meant. Despite our direct support, if pushed hard enough, this administration does not doubt that the Israelis would have exercised their nuclear capabilities against the Arabs. But, as I’ve said, that was all successfully avoided. And now that the truth about the Hand of God organization is out in the open, the Arab world has so much egg on its face, I think it’ll be a long time before they dare point any fingers at Israel, about anything.

“That being said, I think it’s important for you all to know that with some subtle pressure from the United States, the Israelis were willing to make some notable concessions in the Italian peace summit. We should all be hearing about significant breakthroughs later today.”

A round of applause broke out around the table and the president waited for it to die down before continuing. “There are a couple of loose ends I would like to address before we adjourn this meeting. As to the radiological material found in Rome, the Department of Energy is still trying to find out who sold it to the Nidal family. The source of the money for its purchase, a Mr.—” the president paused to refer to his notes, “Marcel Hamdi, is less of a mystery. Mr. Hamdi was briefly detained by Moroccan authorities upon his return to Casablanca and during questioning, with no less than a dozen lawyers present, admitted to knowing Abu Nidal’s daughter, but emphatically denied any knowledge that she was involved in terrorism. When asked about his substantial cash withdrawal from the Palma de Mallorca branch of Deutsche Bank, his attorneys argued that as one of Morocco’s most prominent businessmen, Hamdi was constantly moving large sums of money and that he had broken no laws in doing so.

“Moroccan authorities bought it, but the United States didn’t. After reviewing our extensive file on Hamdi and his funding of various terrorist organizations hostile to the United States, I have made a decision. Suffice it to say that very soon, Mr. Hamdi will cease being a problem for this country, or any other, for that matter.”

Another, more subdued round of applause swept the situation room and when it had died down, the president continued. “The FBI believes it has succeeded in tracking down almost all of the cells here in the U.S. to whom the Nidal organization had sent the components for fabricating dirty bombs. In conjunction with several NEST teams, the remaining shipments are being investigated. We have also launched a major investigation into the international shipping practices of both FedEx and UPS. Homeland Security director Driehaus has assured me that this is a hole in our national security that he intends to plug immediately.”

The president addressed a handful of additional items and then adjourned the meeting. As the attendees filed out of the situation room, he asked Harvath and Lawlor to stay behind. Once the door had clicked shut, the president looked at Harvath and said, “I want to talk with you about your promotion to director of White House Secret Service Operations.”

Here it was—the moment Harvath had known he was going to have to face eventually. “I’m glad you brought that up, Mr. President, because I would like to talk about that as well.”

“Listen to what I have to say first. As much as I hate to do it, I’m going to have to rescind my offer,” replied the president. “I don’t think your qualifications are right for the position.”

Harvath couldn’t believe his ears. “I’m
not qualified?
” he said. “This has got to be a joke.”

“It’s no joke,” replied the president. “This is very serious.”

“I must be missing something, because this doesn’t make any sense.”

“Scot, you’re the best agent the Secret Service has ever seen,” continued the president, “but the Secret Service isn’t the right place for you.”

“Mr. President,” interjected Harvath, “if there’s a partiuclar issue you have with my work, I’d like to know what it is.”

The mind was a funny thing. Harvath had arrived that morning fully prepared to tell the president he wouldn’t accept the position of director of White House Secret Operations, but the minute it became obvious the job was being taken away from him, he wanted to fight for it.

“Actually there’s several,” said the president.

“Several?”

“Maybe
‘not qualified’
isn’t the best way of characterizing this,” offered Gary Lawlor.

“Very true,” answered the president. “Scot, the fact of the matter is that you are
over
qualified for the position. You’ve done great work for the Secret Service, but your talents are being wasted. You’ve proven that.”

“Wow, fired before I’ve even started. That’s got to be a world record, even by Washington standards.”

Both President Rutledge and Gary Lawlor smiled.

“We want to offer you something else,” said Lawlor, “a way to serve your country and utilize your training and abilities to their fullest.”

“I’m listening,” replied Harvath.

“Scot, the world has changed and so must we,” said the president. “I know it sounds cliché, but the best defense the United States can mount is an exceptionally superb offense. And I want you to lead that offensive.”

“How so?”

“From here on out, America is going to be operating on a well-defined ‘strike first’ policy. We will never again wait for terror to come to us.”

“Whom would I be working for?”

“Me,” said Lawlor, drawing Harvath’s attention. “The president is creating a special international branch of the Homeland Security Department. It’s being called the Office of International Investigative Assistance, or OIIA, for short. The OIIA will represent the collective intelligence capability and full muscle of the United States government to help neutralize and prevent terrorist actions against America and American interests on a global level. As I’ve been asked to head the division, you would be reporting directly to me.”

“And what would my job be?”

“Exactly what you have been doing since the president was kidnapped—hunting down terrorists.”

“When would you want me to start?”

“Immediately,” said the president.

“Then I accept,” answered Harvath.

“Excellent,” replied the president as he nodded to Gary Lawlor.

Lawlor withdrew a folder, slid it across the table to Harvath, and said, “Marcel Hamdi will be in Havana tomorrow night for a meeting. We do not want him to leave that meeting alive.”

Harvath smiled to himself. He could already tell he was going to love this new job.