Path of the Assassin

CHAPTER 52

The new United States Embassy in Tunisia’s capital, Tunis, was located at the intersection of the La Marsa Highway and the road to La Goulette — literally the gullet, which connected the Gulf of Tunis to Tunisia’s main seaport. The sprawling, intricately landscaped compound occupied approximately twenty-one acres and included a chancellery, guardhouses, motor pool, commissary, low-rise office building, warehouse, shops, Marine barracks, recreation center, and embassy staff town houses. All U.S. Embassy operations for Tunisia were headquartered there. Some might wonder why the U.S. needed such a large compound in Tunisia, but Harvath knew the answer.

The embassy served as a major intelligence-gathering center. Its off-limits areas, with raised floors and next-generation satellite listening-and-surveillance equipment, ran at a frenetic pace day and night as operatives tried to stay three steps ahead of everything that was happening in “their corner of the world.” From this forward outpost, the United States monitored, collected, and processed sensitive information regarding most of the Mediterranean, North Africa, and the Middle East. Almost the entire staff was on either the NSA’s or CIA’s payroll, and it was no surprise to Harvath that after their extraction from Libya, this was where they had been brought for debriefing.

It had been intense. Though Harvath tried to interject on his behalf, Gordon Avigliano took quite a verbal beating from Rick Morrell for coordinating the unapproved rescue operation. To Avigliano’s credit, he shielded his two fellow operatives from most of the heat and claimed sole responsibility for disobeying a direct order from his superior. Harvath was seeing, yet again, a different side to the CIA and, in particular, the Special Activities Staff. He was beginning to think that his earlier assumptions about the group as a whole might have been wrong.

The debriefing was an endless session of finger-pointing and shouting. Harvath was repeatedly blamed for screwing up the operation by going in too close and getting captured. Though Harvath claimed that they had acquired excellent intelligence, Morrell would hear nothing of it. Morrell was certain that even if Abu Nidal had a daughter, there was no way she would ever be put in charge of his organization. At best, the whole scenario, stated Morrell, was established to put Harvath off-guard to get information from him that would be useful to Hashim Nidal.

Round and round the debriefing went until Harvath was excused from the room so Morrell and his men, along with the Tunisia CIA station chief, could finish the meeting in private. Harvath didn’t like being shut out, but it had also been over forty-eight hours since he’d had any sleep. As he got up to leave, he asked for access to one of the embassy’s other secure conference rooms to make a telephone call.

“If you’re looking for a secure line,” responded the station chief, “you can use the STU in my office.”

Harvath wanted a secure telephone unit, all right, but he also wanted to be in a room where he was guaranteed no one would overhear his conversation. “I need to make a report to the president. I’m sure you can appreciate my desire to keep the conversation private.”

Once an aide had shown him to the secure conference room and the double doors had locked behind him, Harvath made himself comfortable at the head of the table and picked up the STU. He dialed Gary Lawlor’s direct number at FBI headquarters in D.C. by heart.

“Deputy Director Lawlor’s office, may I help you?” Lawlor’s assistant, a woman Harvath had known for years named Emily Hawkins, picked up on the second ring.

“Emily, it’s Scot Harvath. Is Gary in?”

“Hi, Scot. Where in the world are you?”

“U.S. Embassy, Tunis. I’m on the STU. I don’t mean to be short, but I need to talk with Gary right away.”

“He’s not here right now.”

“Where is he? Can you patch me through to his cell?”

“He’s with the president at the White House. They’re in the situation room. I can put a call in and interrupt if it’s that important.”

Harvath thought about it for a second. He needed to talk to Lawlor and find out what was going on back in Washington, but the last thing he wanted to do was interrupt a meeting with the president. “Any idea when the meeting is supposed to end?”

“It could be a while. The FBI arrested three terrorists this morning in D.C. who were plotting to detonate a dirty bomb. Apparently, they were one of Hashim Nidal’s sleeper cells, and there’s reason to believe other attacks were planned to go off at the same time in multiple cities around the country.”

“Did they say when the attacks were supposed to happen?”

“The only thing being said right now is that they were in the advanced planning stages and that radioactive and bomb-making materials were discovered at two of the men’s apartments.”

“As soon as you talk to Gary, please have him contact me at the embassy here.”

“Will do. You take care of yourself.”

“You too.”

Harvath reset the STU and dialed his home phone in Alexandria. The last message on his voice mail was a series of discordant digital tones, which signaled he had messages waiting on his secure cell phone. Once again he reset the STU, and this time dialed his digital phone, which had been left behind in Alexandria, per Morrell’s orders. He had one message waiting. Harvath pressed 1, to play the message.

“Agent Harvath, this is Ari Schoen. I have been trying for some time to get hold of you. I have been hesitant to leave a message, but I think it is of the utmost importance that we speak. Please return my call. You already have my number.”

Schoen? After what Frank Mraz had said about him possibly being involved with the Hand of God attacks, Harvath had decided to avoid him. But what if he wasn’t involved? What if Schoen was one of the good guys? What if Mraz was wrong? What if Mraz wasn’t telling him the truth?

Harvath figured there was no harm in calling Schoen back and seeing what he had come up with. He dialed the secure number Schoen had given him. After several rings, the voice with the pronounced lisp answered, “Thames & Cherwell Antiques.” Another tumbler fell into place in Harvath’s mind.

“Ari, it’s Scot Harvath. I received a message you might have information for me.”

“You are on a secure line?”

“Trust me. I could not be any more secure than I am right now.”

“Agent Harvath,” lisped the voice. “It is good to hear from you. I was beginning to wonder if you were ever going to contact me again. I thought we had an agreement. A sort of quid pro quo.”

“I apologize, Mr. Schoen. I have been… how shall I put it? — very busy of late.”

“So I’ve heard. You haven’t been pestering any of our mutual friends in Libya lately, have you?”

Nothing amazed Harvath anymore, especially in the world of intelligence, but even so, Schoen had some incredibly well-placed sources if he had already heard about the Operation Phantom attempt in Libya. If Schoen knew enough to mention Libya, then he probably had at least part of the bigger picture. Harvath decided to play along. “Funny you should mention Libya, Ari.”

“I’m guessing,” said Schoen, “that you were unsuccessful in completing your assignment.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Well, if you had, you would never have bothered returning my call.”

“Touché.”

“So you were unsuccessful, then.”

“Not completely.”

“What do you mean?”

“We learned something quite remarkable. We have reason to believe that the Abu Nidal Organization is not headed by his son, but by his—”

“Daughter,” completed Schoen.

Harvath was completely shocked. “How did you know?”

“It’s a very long and complicated story, Agent Harvath. Did you actually see her? The one with the silver eyes?”

“Yes, I did, but how did you—”

“Where is she now? Is she still in Libya?”

“She has probably already left.”

“Do you know where she was going?”

“We don’t know that yet. Listen, if you knew there was a daughter involved with all of this, why didn’t you say so?”

“Have you told the CIA what you discovered?”

“Of course,” said Harvath.

“And what was their response?”

Harvath began to see why Schoen might have been holding back on him. “Though they didn’t say it in so many words, they think it’s nuts. They don’t believe Abu Nidal would have turned the organization over to a daughter, even if he had one. What’s more, they said none of Nidal’s men would ever take orders from a woman.”

“And by now you know about both the sister and the brother?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” said Schoen as a long pause occupied the scrambled phone line.

“Good? Is that all you can say? This isn’t exactly quid pro quo.”

“I can say the same for you, Agent Harvath. You have not been fully forthcoming with me either. Where have they gone?”

“I don’t know. What I do know is that despite what I told them, the CIA is still focusing on Hashim, the brother,” said Harvath, trying to fit the pieces together in his mind.

“Let the CIA chase him. He’s not the one you want. It’s her.”

“And you want her too, don’t you, Ari?”

“I want her more than you will ever know, Agent Harvath.”

“Then tell me what you know.”

“It is not much, but maybe it will prove useful. Abu Nidal had a longtime friend and financial partner — an extremely wealthy Moroccan named Marcel Hamdi. We had him under surveillance in Marbella, Spain, where his yacht, the Belle Étoile, left the Puerto Banus two days ago. I’m going to have my people post the surveillance materials for you within a web site we occasionally use.”

“What does that have to do with Nidal’s daughter?”

Schoen was a very bright man and no stranger to manipulating people. He was sure that the CIA had informed Harvath that they believed he was connected to the Hand of God attacks. He had to play his hand very carefully. If he could stall Harvath long enough to get the cooperation he needed, then nothing else would matter. And the way to do that was to tell Harvath almost everything he knew.

“Hamdi is like a second father to her. We intercepted a communication that we thought might have been from her, but couldn’t be sure. Then the Belle Étoile left Marbella heading east. Yesterday, Hamdi stopped in the open ocean and was met by a seaplane. One of his bankers from the Palma de Mallorca branch of Deutsche Bank boarded the yacht with two large suitcases for him. Those suitcases contained over fifteen million U.S. dollars, cash. From what our sources tell us, Hamdi and the Belle Étoile are headed for an island somewhere off the southern coast of Italy.”

“Where? Sicily? Sardinia? Corsica? Which island?”

“That’s the problem, Agent Harvath. At this point, we have absolutely no idea.”