Blowback

TWENTY-ONE

It was called The Bunch of Grapes and turned out to be one of London’s oldest pubs. As Harvath led Alcott to a quiet table in the back, he noticed a sign that said it had been in existence since 1777. The rich, wood-paneled interior was steeped in London history and was exactly what one would expect to find in a traditional English public house, especially one that had been around for more than two hundred years.

After hanging their soaking wet coats near the door, Harvath ordered two Irish coffees from the bar and brought them back over to their table.

Jillian reached for her drink and in the most confident voice she could summon said, “I’m giving you five minutes to tell me who you are and what this is all about. Why would somebody want to kill me?”

Harvath was famished. He opened the package of salt and vinegar chips he had bought at the bar, took a couple of bites, and then washed them down with a mouthful of hot Irish coffee before responding. “My name is Scot Harvath, and I work for the American government. The man from the department store who tried to kill you is named Khalid Sheik Alomari. He’s an al-Qaeda assassin.”

“An al-Qaeda assassin is after me?”

“Yes.”

“And you just let him follow me all the way to Harvey Nichols?”

“I wasn’t able to get a good look at him until just before everything happened.”

“This is preposterous. Why would an al-Qaeda assassin be after me?”

“Because of your relationship with Emir Tokay.”

“My relationship? But Emir and I are just friends,” responded Jillian. “We went to university together. Why would someone, much less al-Qaeda, want to kill me over that?”

Most people would have missed it, but Harvath noticed a subtle shift in her facial muscles that signaled she was not being completely truthful. It was called a microexpression, and through their extensive training, U.S. Secret Service agents were the only human beings consistently capable of detecting them. It was a skill Harvath had worked tirelessly to keep sharp, and it was precisely at moments like this that he was glad he had. “There’s more to this than that,” replied Harvath, “and you know it. Emir was working on a very serious project that he contacted you about for help.”

“I don’t know anything about any project Emir was working on.”

There it was again, the tell. “Dr. Alcott, everybody on that project is dead now. Everybody except for Emir, and if you don’t want the same thing to happen to him, I suggest you cooperate.”

Jillian was silent as she decided what, if anything, she should divulge. This man knew that she had been followed since leaving Abbey College because he had been following her too. In her opinion, that made him just as suspect. Just because he managed to get to her first didn’t automatically make him one of the good guys. What proof did she have that he was telling her the truth? Emir had warned her to be extremely careful about whom she spoke to about anything regarding his work.

Jillian quickly made up her mind that before she would answer any of Harvath’s questions, she had a few more of her own she wanted answered. “If you work for the American government, why can’t we go to the police?”

“It’s tricky,” he replied.

“I can only imagine,” said Jillian, her courage bolstered by the Irish coffee and the presence of other people at the front of the somewhat crowded pub. “You are quickly running out of time to explain it to me.”

Harvath took a moment to compose himself as he chose his next words very carefully. “The man who shot at you at the department store—”

“Allegedly,” replied Jillian.

“What do you mean, allegedly?” said Harvath. “What do you think those mannequins were doing? Bursting with pride because they found work in the lingerie department?”

Jillian looked Harvath square in the face and said, “How do I know he wasn’t shooting at you and I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

Harvath couldn’t believe what a state of denial this woman was in. “Trust me. Khalid Alomari came to London to kill you.”

“Really?” she replied. “Then what was he waiting for?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said he’d been following me since I left the school. Why? Why follow me all the way to Harvey Nichols, then wait around while I was in the café? Why not kill me outside the school or even on the Tube? Why draw it out?”

“I don’t know,” replied Harvath. “The only thing I can think of is that he must have wanted something from you.”

“Like what?”

“Information, probably. Like how much you knew about Emir’s work and who else he might have been talking to.”

“Which are exactly the same things I assume you want,” she said as she looked at Harvath. “But that still doesn’t explain why he waited.”

“Maybe he planned on following you home. Do you live alone?”

“I’m not going to answer that.”

Harvath read her face and said, “You live alone, I can tell, but that doesn’t matter. Alomari is ruthless. He would have killed anyone who stood in his way of getting the information he wanted.”

“But I don’t have any information.”

Harvath could tell she was lying again, but he let it go. “When he saw me at the department store, he probably realized he wasn’t going to be able to get to you, and so he figured if he couldn’t, then no one would.”

“How romantic,” replied Jillian. “How do you know so much about this Alomari person?”

“Until recently, it was my job to hunt him down and bring him in.”

“So how come he’s still on the loose?”

“He’s very good at what he does and extremely adept at not getting caught. For over two months he’s been my number one priority, but all that’s changed now.”

“Why?” said Jillian. “What’s happened?”

“Emir Tokay is what happened. He and his colleagues have engineered an illness, which poses a serious threat to the West.”

Jillian’s mouth was agape. They had done it. “How come word of this hasn’t made it into the press?” she asked as she stared at the man sitting across the table from her. There was something about him, something she couldn’t put her finger on. She was torn between wanting to trust him and wanting to get up and run like hell. He could very well be one of the bravest, most confident men she had ever met, or the most insane and dangerous. There was a chance that he was just the wrong mix of all of the above. Until she uncovered why he refused to go to the police, though, there was no way she could even begin to consider answering his questions. Taking another sip of her drink, she said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Harvath, but I find it extremely disconcerting that you still haven’t explained why we, or more particularly you, can’t go to the police.”

Harvath looked past her to the small television in the bar area that had just been switched to the evening news. Already the press was reporting breaking news of a shootout at the upscale Knightsbridge department store. In some small way it was a relief to see something other than his al-Jazeera footage leading the news. His relief was short-lived, as the footage from the al-Karim bazaar was the next story the anchor cut to. There was no getting away from it. Harvath had a decision to make.

He had taken a chance with Nick Kampos, and now he was going to have to take a chance with Jillian Alcott. If he didn’t trust her, there was no way he could expect her to trust him. “Turn around,” he said.

Jillian half expected to see either the police or the assassin from Harvey Nichols standing in the front of the pub, and it took her a moment to figure out what Harvath was looking at — the television. The footage was all too familiar to her by now, but she watched again as the American soldier mercilessly beat the unarmed Iraqi. Each time she saw it, it was more distressing than the last. When it was over, she turned back and looked at Harvath. “Not a good day for America’s public image.”

“Nor mine,” replied Harvath.

“Why?” said Jillian. “Wait a second. Are you telling me that was you? You’re the man beating that innocent Iraqi?”

“He was far from innocent, believe me. That man was paid a lot of money to act as somebody’s decoy.”

“Whose decoy?”

“Khalid Alomari. The man who tried to kill you less than a half hour ago.”

“That’s why you can’t go to the police?”

Harvath nodded his head. “That’s part of it. It’s important I keep as low a profile as possible right now.”

Jillian looked at him and replied, “You might want to start by not shooting up department stores.”

“Thanks. I’ll make sure I remember that the next time I see someone getting ready to use the back of an innocent high-school teacher’s head for target practice.”

Jillian ignored his remark. “What about going to the American embassy?”

“I definitely can’t go to the embassy.”

“Why not?”

“Because a subpoena has been issued for me back in the States. The president’s political opponents want to run him out of office on a rail. They think the way to do it is to have me testify in open court about what happened in that market in Baghdad.”

“So why not do it? If you didn’t do anything wrong, why not go and clear your name?”

“Because the whole Baghdad thing is just the tip of the iceberg. That’s only where it starts. Regardless of how it’s handled, it could be extremely embarrassing for the president.”

“Is there anything he’s done that should make him embarrassed?” she asked.

Harvath didn’t like talking about sensitive political matters with an otherwise perfect stranger, so he once again chose his words very carefully. “Absolutely not.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“The problem is how his opponents could make it all look. Often the mere suggestion of impropriety is enough to ruin someone.”

Jillian respected Harvath’s apparent loyalty to his president.

“The other thing I’m not too crazy about,” continued Harvath, “is that they want to televise the hearings. Even if I’m cleared, my career will be over, but that’s not the worst of it. There have been more fatwas issued against me than you can shake a falafel at, and once my face is made public, I’ll have to look over my shoulder for the rest of my life. I don’t want to do that.”

“It sounds like you are in a very difficult situation, and I would like to say that I sympathize,” said Jillian, “but none of this makes me any more inclined to believe you. I don’t even know if that’s really you in that al-Jazeera footage. All I can see is the back of that soldier’s head.”

She didn’t trust him, and Harvath couldn’t blame her, but by the same token, he could still sense that part of her wanted to believe that he was here to help her. “Listen, when this thing is all said and done, I don’t really care about my career, or the president’s for that matter. I care about the threat to my country. Foreign policy isn’t my department, but I can tell you one thing: I have seen how this illness kills, and no one deserves to die like that. No one.”

Jillian tried not to appear too interested, but her scientific curiosity was on fire. Emir’s accounts had been somewhat vague, and she was very keen to know what Harvath had seen. “You’ve actually seen the illness at work in human beings?”

Harvath nodded his head.

“How does it manifest itself? What’s the progression like?”

Though he hated to even relive it in his mind, Harvath explained in detail what the disease was like from the moment it first made itself known to the last horrifying minutes of a victim’s life.

Jillian was quiet for a moment as she thought about everything she’d been told. If it weren’t for the fact that Emir Tokay had completely fallen off the face of the earth and had stopped returning her e-mails, she would have already left the pub. Draining the last draught of warm liquid from her glass, she asked, “What’s happened to Emir?”

Finally, progress, thought Harvath as he replied, “He was kidnapped a couple of days ago not far from his office in Dhaka. Do you have any idea who might have wanted to kidnap him?”

“God, that’s awful. No. I have no idea at all.”

Harvath studied her face. She appeared to be telling the truth. “What did Emir want your help with?”

“How much do you know about what he was working on?”

“I know that his team had engineered something called the sword of Allah,” said Harvath, “and that it’s a weapon of some sort intended to cleanse the world of all but the most faithful Muslims.”

“You obviously don’t know much then,” replied Alcott, “because you’re wrong on both counts.”