Foreign Agent

CHAPTER 6

In Budapest, the CIA had a gray Mercedes waiting for them at the dock. Lara was going to the Four Seasons. Harvath was going to the airport. They were both exhausted.

Neither had wanted to face the raw emotion of their separation. It had been easier to let two bottles of champagne dull as much of it as possible, and they’d had one final, wild night.

They were a great couple — smart, passionate, and electric together. The fact that they couldn’t figure out how to make something so good work in the same city was crazy.

When it came time for the actual goodbye, Lara gave him one of the best kisses he’d ever had. Long, slow, sexy. Then she got out of the car, grabbed her bag from the trunk, and walked into the hotel.

Harvath sat in the backseat and stared at the polished glass doors. What the hell just happened, he wondered. It was like all the oxygen was just sucked out his lungs. Did I really let her walk?

Several moments passed as he sat there and tried to sort it all out. His driver finally interrupted his thoughts. “Are we ready to head to the airport, sir?”

The short answer was no. He wasn’t ready to head to the airport. He wanted to chase Lara up to her room, lock the door, and pretend he hadn’t said yes to Brussels. But he couldn’t do that. He had given his word.

Harvath usually enjoyed traveling by private jet, especially on something as luxurious as a Dassault Falcon 5X. But even its dramatic skylight failed to impress him today.

He mixed salt, sugar, and ground aspirin into a tall glass of tomato juice over ice. It tasted horrible.

After downing another, he stretched out on the white leather couch with a large bottle of water.

The CIA used an encrypted app that only allowed him to watch the Anbar video and view the image files once. It was more than enough.

ISIS was an Islamic death cult trying to usher in an apocalypse. The larger they grew, the more depraved they became.

Their ultimate goal was to meet the infidel in Dabiq, a tiny village in northern Syria. After a decisive ground battle, the Muslim messiah would return. Or so the ancient prophecy went. Harvath was willing to bet that the prophet Mohammed had never envisioned nuclear weapons.

If it were up to Harvath, he’d let the nukes fly. After dropping leaflets warning residents to flee, he’d flatten Dabiq and then Raqqa, the ISIS capital. There’d be no ground battle. There’d only be fields of glass. The ISIS savages were not worth another drop of American blood.

But it wasn’t up to Harvath. It was up to the President of the United States, who, for the moment, had a different plan.

He wanted to know how the SAD team in Iraq had come under attack. How had ISIS known they were there?

Harvath had gathered the intelligence for the operation. He was the one who had identified and pinpointed the high value ISIS target. The information had come from his contacts. Now thirteen Americans were dead.

The CIA had launched an immediate investigation. They learned that Ashleigh Foster had been in a relationship with one of the SAD team members. She had convinced two girlfriends from the Embassy to join her for the weekend and party at the safe house. Phone records, texts, and emails all backed it up. It was a case of extremely bad judgment across the board. The ISIS attack, though, was another matter.

The jihadists had come ready for the fight. They had not only overwhelmed the SAD team but had also downed two CIA helicopters. They knew exactly what they were up against. They’d even brought a video crew. Had they known the women were going to be there too?

All of this was what Harvath had been tasked with figuring out. And square one was in Brussels.

The city was more than twenty-five percent Muslim, and its most concentrated Islamic neighborhood was Molenbeek. Sitting on the wrong side of the canal, it boasted more than two dozen mosques.

It also boasted one of Harvath’s best contacts — a contact who had suddenly gone dark.

Either Salah Abaaoud was in trouble, or Harvath had been double-crossed.

If he’d been double-crossed, there wasn’t a hole deep enough for Salah to hide in. Harvath would find him. It was what he did.

Salah was a doctor with a storefront practice. Everyone in Molenbeek knew him. He was the unofficial mayor of the neighborhood. He settled disputes, helped new Muslim immigrants navigate the Belgian welfare system, pulled bad teeth, and even arranged marriages.

He was a generous contributor to local mosques and charities, drove a bright red BMW, and always had tickets to the best sporting matches.

By all outward appearances, Dr. Salah Abaaoud was a successful man. No one in the neighborhood had any clue about his criminal past. Even the Belgian government was in the dark.

Back in the Middle East, Salah had made a fortune as a smuggler. Leveraging his position as a doctor, he had exploited Red Crescent, UN and a host of other medical relief missions and convoys. He smuggled everything, from stolen antiquities, drugs, and weapons, to people. It was the weapons, though, that had gotten him caught.

At one point, he was moving a crate of stolen missiles from Morocco to Lebanon. Harvath had been tracking the cell behind the theft. One piece of information led to another until Harvath ended up on Salah’s doorstep. The only thing that had saved the doctor’s life was his willingness to cooperate.

With all his connections, Salah was in a position to know things. He had an impressive network, and Harvath wanted it.

Salah agreed to a generous monthly stipend and was allowed to continue breathing. Allah had doubly blessed him.

Harvath assigned him the code name Sidewinder, after the missiles Salah had been caught smuggling. But as time wore on, he realized the actual rattlesnake was an even better fit. Salah’s blood was cold, he made a lot of noise when he was upset, and he could strike without warning. The man required delicate handling.

Right now, though, Harvath wasn’t in the mood to be delicate. Thirteen Americans were dead. Ten of them had been operating on intelligence he had gathered. The other three had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. None of them, though, would have been there if it wasn’t for him. That was a fact, and it weighed on him. He tried to put it out of his mind as he hunted for Salah.

The first place he checked was the man’s house, but there was no sign of him or his red BMW. Next was the clinic.

It was locked up tight. Through the window, Harvath could see a stack of mail piled up on the floor. Had Salah skipped town? Had he fled the country? Harvath’s concerns over being double-crossed began to rise. There was only one other place he could think to look for him.

Salah’s piety had a limit. It ended right at his erogenous zone. He kept a love nest, along with a well-stocked liquor cart, in the fashionable Saint-Gilles neighborhood. Harvath had followed him there once. The apartment was located just off the Avenue Louise.

If the true measure of a person’s character was what they did when no one was watching, Dr. Salah Abaaoud would have scandalized the Muslims of Brussels. In addition to being a semiprofessional alcoholic, he was screwing the very attractive, very much younger, and very married nurse from his clinic, Aisha.

Harvath stood outside the door and listened. What was he expecting to hear? Sex? Even a man as gluttonous as Salah wouldn’t disappear for days on a bender. He was too careful. He had too much invested in his public image. Not so much, though, that it stopped him from screwing or drinking. He had simply gotten used to a certain level of risk.

Harvath could hear something coming from inside. It sounded like screaming, but it definitely wasn’t sex. A soccer game?

He twisted the knob of the brass bell in the center of the door and waited. The last time he had walked in on Salah, he had gotten more than an eyeful. Full frontal of any man, much less that fat and that hairy, was something he never needed to see again.

No one came to the door.

After waiting a few more moments, he removed a credit card — sized piece of steel from his pocket. Lockpick tools had been carved into it with a laser. All he had to do was pop out the ones he needed.

Studying the lock, he was in the process of selecting a pick when he decided to try the handle.

The door was unlocked. Salah never left anything unlocked.

Pushing the door open, he could see all the way into the apartment without stepping inside.

Someone had been here. And they had created their own Rembrandt.