Path of the Assassin

CHAPTER 15

The next day Scot felt well enough to check himself out, and Gary Lawlor drove him home. On the way, they stopped at his favorite burger joint in Alexandria — Five Guys, on King Street. As much as Scot enjoyed traveling, he was always glad to come back home. There was something about seeing the United States from abroad that reaffirmed for him how proud and fortunate he felt to be an American. The other thing foreign travel did was give him an overwhelming craving for a good cheeseburger and fries.

They made one more stop at the deli-market around the corner from Scot’s apartment, where he bought a six-pack of Sam Adams, and then Lawlor dropped him in front of his building.

“Morrell is going to want to send a courier over with the file for you to look at. There’s not much in it, but it’ll put you on the same page as everybody else,” said Lawlor.

“Okay,” said Harvath as he closed the passenger side door behind him. “Have him send it over this afternoon.”

“Do you have a shredder?”

“Yup.”

“Good. He’ll want you to shred and then burn it when you’re through.”

“You don’t have to worry about my tradecraft,” said Harvath. “Let’s just hope Special Assholes Staff doesn’t botch things up.”

“Scot, you’ve got to give that a rest. There’s too much at stake. I know you don’t like Morrell, but you’re part of their team now, so start acting like it,” admonished Lawlor, who then rolled up the window and pulled out into the street.

Harvath didn’t like that Lawlor had the final word, but the aroma of his cheeseburger and fries, as it wafted up through the grease-stained bag, quickly made him forget about it.

He held the cold six-pack and burger bag in one hand as he fished in his pockets for his house keys. The few possessions he had on him when he was jumped by Morrell and his colleagues in Jerusalem had been returned. Just to make trouble for Morrell, Harvath had claimed his wallet was about two hundred bucks short. The CIA duty officer signing him out had almost believed him until Lawlor told him to stop screwing around. Harvath was told that his bags had already been retrieved from the Jerusalem Hotel and would be delivered to his apartment in Alexandria. When asked if there was anything else the CIA could do for him, Scot asked who really killed Kennedy, but then Lawlor jabbed him in the ribs and told him to get moving.

He stopped by the building manager’s apartment and picked up the shopping bag full of mail she had been collecting for him and then headed up the stairs to his third-floor apartment. He checked to see that the hair he’d wedged into the upper-right corner of the doorframe was still there, indicating that the door to his apartment had not been opened in the weeks he had been gone. Still there.

Inside, the apartment was hot and muggy. Summers in D.C. could be unbearable. He walked over to his air-conditioning unit and switched it on full blast. He removed two bottles of beer from the carton, and put the rest of the beer in the fridge. He walked into his living room, sat down on the couch, and flipped on the TV while he began his meal.

It was the top of the hour and Fox News was running their top news stories. Scot recognized the façade of the Hotel Ritz in Paris immediately. It was surrounded by police cars and emergency vehicles. Apparently, the Prince Khalil assassination story had broken.

The reporter on the scene talked about a little-known toxic poison called Sadim, what dermal exposure was, and how death must have been for the Saudi prince and his two bodyguards. The Ritz was surely horrified by the publicity. The public still talked about how Princess Diana and her boyfriend, Dodi Al Fayed, had spent their last evening there and had died when their limousine crashed, a drunken Ritz chauffeur at the wheel.

Somehow, the reporter had obtained a copy of the letter in which the Hand of God organization claimed responsibility for the murders. After she had read it verbatim, the screen changed to a feed from Jerusalem and Fox’s Jerusalem bureau chief. The dark-haired man spoke for several minutes about escalating tensions and violence in Israel, then segued to a video package edited and narrated earlier that day. It showed footage of the carnage at Medina in Saudi Arabia, as well as the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. There was heavy troop and tank placement throughout villages along the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel had closed all of its border crossings in response to sixteen suicide bombings by Palestinians at crowded restaurants, shopping areas, and resorts popular with Israeli citizens. Hezbollah, Hamas, and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades were all taking credit for the attacks and stated that they were in retaliation for the Hand of God attacks. And so it went, with each subsequent attack ratcheting up the rhetoric and the violence. It was a vicious circle and it was spiraling out of control.

The video then cut to street scenes in Jerusalem in the aftermath of the attack on the Temple Mount. Palestinian youths threw stones at Israeli Defense Forces who returned fire with tear gas and rubber bullets. Jewish shopkeepers pushed and assaulted Palestinian customers and vice versa. It was sheer pandemonium.

Man-on-the-street interviews were volatile, with each side calling for war and the extermination of the other. Not only did the citizens of Palestine and Israel seem to overwhelmingly agree that they should go to war and settle things once and for all, but they were all sure their “God” would lead them to victory.

Just when Harvath could barely stand it any longer and was about to turn the TV off, the piece turned to a man walking through a rubble-strewn Palestinian village. People lined the streets to greet him. When the camera pulled back to reveal the Fox reporter, Scot recognized her right away. It was Jody Burnis, the former CNN reporter who had broken the story of the president’s kidnapping and had implicated him as her inside source. He turned up the sound on the remote as a montage of images filled the screen.

“… Ali Hasan, chief Palestinian negotiator and a rising star on the Palestine political landscape. He grew up on these same mean Ramallah streets, only a stone’s throw away from PLO headquarters. He has been a vigorous proponent for an independent Palestinian homeland and establishing a lasting peace with neighboring Israel — a difficult and, some would say, impossible dream.

“As violence worsens here in the wake of the Hand of God terrorist attacks, Hasan’s voice is one of the few still calling for calm. It has been his steadfast refusal to condemn terrorism that his detractors most often cite. But by the same token, observers far and wide agree that in the tumultuous arena of Palestinian politics, if he hopes to lead his people, he could not come down on what is seen by most Palestinians as the only tool which allows them to be taken seriously on the world stage.

“Hasan has been a frequent guest speaker at the League of Arab Nations and is on very good terms with most of the region’s leaders, both secular and religious alike. He has been compared to a coin flipped high into the desert air. On one side of the coin is the barbed specter of war, the other, the white dove of peace. On which side will the coin fall? Only time will tell, though many here believe that with the European-sponsored peace summit only weeks away, time is quickly running out.

“Reporting from Ramallah in the West Bank, this has been Jody Burnis for Fox News.”

Scot clicked off the television and walked into his bedroom to change into some workout clothes. After he found a clean pair of white socks and his Nikes, he grabbed a cold bottle of water from the fridge and clipped the CIA beeper to his waist. He locked the apartment door behind him, placed a hair in the upper-right-hand corner of the doorframe, and made his way down to the basement, where the landlady had let him set up his workout gear in an unused corner.

If there was one thing Harvath couldn’t stand, it was sitting on his ass. While he couldn’t control how long he would have to wait until Morrell paged him, he could control what he did with his time. Workouts always helped Harvath relax and clear his mind. As he slapped the forty-five-pound plates onto the bar and got ready to do a warm-up set of bench presses, the rest of the world and everything in it began to fade away.

An hour later, Scot had a good sweat going and was on his last set of hammer curls. He felt the satisfying fatigue and burn in his muscles. It was good to get back to the weights. Though he had been relegated to push-ups, dips, and crunches in hotel rooms and Claudia’s apartment over the last several weeks, he was still in excellent shape. In fact, he was in just as good shape, if not better, as when he had been in the SEALs. There were few who would dare mess with him, and those that did found him to be extremely lethal.

After putting the dumbbells back where they belonged, Scot did a few exercises to work his obliques and then stretched out his legs. Though he had a treadmill in the basement, when the weather was nice, he preferred to run outside.

Despite the humidity in the summertime, Harvath enjoyed living in Alexandria. Its architecture and layout still retained its historic port city charm. It was the hometown of George Washington, and oftentimes Harvath wondered what the former president would think of Alexandria if he came back and saw how well preserved it was today.

Harvath jogged to the Chinquapin Park Recreation Center, where he was greeted by Tera, one of the front-desk staffers, who knew him on sight. She checked him in and agreed to hold on to his pager and come find him if it went off.

The center had a fully equipped locker room, where Scot kept a swimsuit, a pair of goggles, and some assorted toiletry items. After a quick shower, he jumped into his suit and hit the twenty-five-meter indoor pool.

Having already performed a full weight workout, Harvath felt himself, understandably, growing tired much quicker than he normally would, but he simply adjusted his pace and kept going. Scot liked to push himself. Both in the SEALs and then later when he was recruited into the Secret Service, Harvath was known by his code name, Norseman. It referred to a string of Scandinavian flight attendants he had dated while going through his SEAL training, but seeing him in action suggested another meaning. Whenever he thought he couldn’t go any further, he reminded himself of the SEAL motto, “The only easy day was yesterday,” and would push himself some more.

After an hour in the pool, Harvath’s body was beyond fatigued and his mind was numb. He didn’t have the energy to compose a thought any more complicated than grabbing a shower. He stood under the needlelike spray and let the water bounce off his body as he leaned against the wall for support. After twenty minutes of hot, he turned the faucet all the way to cold and forced himself to stand beneath the spray until his blood was racing through his body and every nerve ending was tingling.

Harvath toweled off and put on his running clothes again. He picked up his pager from Tera, stopped by the snack bar, and chugged down a large bottle of Gatorade before leaving the complex. Morrell hadn’t called, and it didn’t surprise Harvath. It could easily be weeks before he heard from him.

When he returned to his apartment, he checked the hair before opening the door and letting himself in. He needed to get out of his running clothes and take another shower. Just walking home, he had broken a sweat in the lovely July humidity. As Harvath made his way past the kitchen toward his bathroom, something in the kitchen caught his eye. The refrigerator door was standing wide open. That was odd. He wouldn’t have left it that way. Maybe the seal was going, he thought to himself. As he went to close the fridge, he noticed something else — his remaining four bottles of Sam Adams were gone. He knew he didn’t do that. Someone had been in his house, but whoever they were, they’d been clever enough to replace the hair in his doorframe. Coming through a window was out of the question. Entry could have been gained only through the front door.

Because his sidearm was in his bedroom, the best he could do for a weapon was the Louisville Slugger he kept in the hall closet. Quietly he retrieved the baseball bat and crept toward the rear of the apartment. The living room was clear, as was his bathroom. His bedroom door was closed, something he never did, and as he approached it, he tightened his grip around the bat. He took a deep breath and freed his left hand to turn the knob. When the door gave way, he put all of his weight behind it, charged into the bedroom, and fell flat on his face. He had tripped over something.

Harvath quickly spun into a sitting position and raised the bat above his head with both hands, ready to come down hard on the intruder. Then he saw what he had tripped over. He set the bat down and hopped up onto his feet. Sitting on the floor in front of him was his bag from the Jerusalem Hotel. He quickly glanced around his room and noticed that his bed had been turned down. On his pillow was a smiley face with two Hershey’s chocolate Kisses for the eyes and four Sam Adams bottle caps for the smile.

“Asshole,” Harvath said out loud.

He knew it had to have been Morrell who had gotten into his apartment and placed his bag in the bedroom. Out of all the many distasteful things he remembered about the former Navy SEAL turned CIA assassin, was that he was a fiend for candy. The smiley face was his calling card, all right. On top of getting his ass kicked, Rick Morrell now owed Harvath a six-pack of Sam Adams.

Harvath was just about to unpack his bag when he heard a knock at the front door. He pulled his SIG Sauer from underneath his nightstand and held it behind his back as he approached the front door.

“Who is it?” he asked as he stood to the right of the doorframe.

“Special courier. I have a delivery for Mr. Scot Harvath,” said a man’s voice.

Harvath stepped in front of the peephole and peered out. Standing in the hall was a tall, blond kid about twenty-five years old. Harvath was only in his early thirties, but any young CIA hard-ons, which this one obviously was, were referred to by guys in the Special Operations community as snot-nosed CIA kids. Harvath opened the door.

“Do you have any ID?” Harvath asked the kid, who, now that he could see him full on, looked more like a muscle-bound southern California surfer than a CIA operative.

“Yes, sir,” replied the young man, who was wearing a briefcase chained to his right wrist. With his free left hand, he reached inside his suit coat for his wallet. That’s when Harvath swung his gun around and pointed it at the kid’s forehead.

“Dumb move, dude,” said Harvath. “You should never let your guard down like that. Those are very important documents in there. What if I was here to steal them from you?”

At that precise moment, the CIA kid swung hard with the titanium briefcase at Harvath’s head, but missed him by a mile. Harvath was much too fast for him and had moved out of the way when the kid telegraphed his intent with his eyes. Harvath answered the assault with a quick blow to the kid’s solar plexus. He fell to the floor with the wind knocked out of him.

“That was an even dumber move,” said Harvath, offering his hand to help the kid off the floor, but he waved it away, still trying to catch his breath.

Harvath helped himself to the kid’s breast pocket and removed his identification.

“Gordon Avigliano,” he said, reading the name off the driver’s license. “Well, Gordy, what do you have for me?”

Harvath offered the kid his hand again and was once again waved off. The young man struggled to his feet and, with his wind back again, asked, “Can we do this inside, please?”

“Sure thing, Gordo; just no funny business. I’ve already seen you do dumb and dumber, but if you go for stupid, you’re gonna leave through the window. Understand me?”

The young man nodded his head. Harvath showed him inside and pointed toward one of the two chairs next to the small table in the kitchen. The CIA courier put his briefcase on the table and looked up.

“Can I see some ID please, sir?” he asked.

Harvath, who was rummaging around inside the refrigerator, blindly pointed his pistol over his shoulder at the courier and said, “Tell your boss that Agent Harvath wasn’t home, but his buddy Samuel Adams signed for the papers.”

“But, sir, I really do need—”

The courier stopped midsentence when Harvath cocked the hammer of the SIG Sauer.

“They told me this might be difficult, and I said, ‘Difficult? Naw, it’s just a routine delivery.’ Why do I get all the bad jobs?” the courier said to himself.

“Unless you have a nice cold six-pack in that little case of yours, I suggest you give me what you’ve got and clear out. I am not in the best of moods.”

“I can see that.”

“What was that, Gordo?” said Harvath, who withdrew his head from the fridge and shot the kid a look.

“Nothing, sir. Nothing at all.”

“I didn’t think so. Let’s get on with it. I’ve only got ten minutes until Oprah.”

“Until Oprah?” the courier asked, confused.

“Yeah, you heard me. Oprah.”

“Okay, then, I just need to ask if you’ve had your domicile swept for bugs recently.”

“Bugs? Here do it yourself,” said Harvath as he reached next to the fridge for a fly swatter and threw it at the kid. “I don’t talk in my sleep, nor do my lips move when I read. I plan on digesting what you have in your lunch box there, and then I will shred and burn all of it.” Harvath had no fear of bugs as he had his apartment swept regularly by a friend who was a former FBI agent and now one of the East Coast’s top security consultants.

The courier began to reach into his breast pocket, and Harvath pointed the gun back between the young man’s eyes. “Ah. Ah. Ah. Remember what I said about leaving by the window.”

“It’s just a release form, honest. Jesus, this has been hard enough already. Besides, if I was going to pull a gun on you, I would have done it while your head was in the refrigerator.”

“Good point,” said Harvath as he slowly released the hammer and put his pistol on the kitchen counter. He accepted the form and signed it as he said he would, “Samuel Adams.”

“Wait a second,” said the courier. “I was told I could only release these documents to Mr. Scot Harvath.”

“And you have.”

“But the name here—”

“Will be perfectly clear to your superior when you report back. Now pop the top and give me what you got.”

The courier deactivated the locking system and withdrew a thin manila envelope, which he handed to him. It was sealed and stamped, “Top Secret. Agent Scot Harvath U.S. Secret Service Eyes Only.”

Harvath walked the young man into the hall.

“So, are you going to be graduating to real fieldwork soon, Gordo?”

“I already have.”

“Well, just try not to get any of the wrong people killed, okay? You have a good day now,” replied Harvath as he turned back into his apartment and kicked the door shut behind him.

He sat down on his couch and spread the contents of the file on the coffee table. There was a brief history of Abu Nidal followed by a series of photos from scenes of terrorist attacks attributed to his son. Theories and possible strategies occupied the space of a two-page “brainstorming” memo that was long on speculation and short on actual facts.

Lawlor had been right; there wasn’t much in this file that Harvath hadn’t already been told. At least, though, he was now truly operating off the same page as everyone else. After reviewing the material for a fifth time in as many hours, he ran it through his shredder and then burned the remains in a metal garbage can he had placed in his bathtub.

As Harvath got ready for bed, he thought about Ari Schoen. What role did he really play in all of this? Could he be useful? Was he involved with the Hand of God? Was Schoen telling everything he knew? Was the CIA? That was the trouble with this business. You never could tell who was telling the truth and you never knew whom to trust. Everyone was suspect.

Harvath gathered the bottle caps off his pillow and threw them into the garbage can beneath his desk. He unwrapped and ate one of the chocolates before climbing into bed. He was dead tired and looked forward to a good night’s sleep. As he crawled beneath the covers, his feet came to an abrupt halt.

Morrell had short-sheeted his bed.