Path of the Assassin

CHAPTER 53

Harvath tried to connect Schoen’s new dots as he walked back to the staff town house where he and Meg were staying. The door to her room was slightly ajar and as he looked in, he could see she was sleeping. It was just as well, she probably still wasn’t speaking to him. He walked quietly down the hall to his room, popped several Tylenols, and fell asleep the minute he hit his bed.

Later that afternoon, Harvath awoke to the smell of fresh brewed coffee. When he entered the kitchen, he found Meg sitting at a small table dressed in civilian clothes and reading a day-old copy of The International Herald Tribune.

“Did you get a good sleep?” she asked, folding the paper and setting it on the counter behind her.

“Good enough for now. Is that coffee I smell?”

“Yup, Starbucks even. I got it at the commissary, along with some croissants and a paper. Help yourself.”

“You get the clothes there too?”

“No, an embassy staffer brought them over. I guessed at your sizes. Yours are on the chair in the hall.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

“So, you’re talking to me again?” said Harvath as he found a cup and poured himself some coffee. The kitchen window had a nice view of a small courtyard outside.

Meg paused before responding. “You could have told me what was going to happen. I kept waiting for the helicopter to reel us in because you made it seem like it was going to be like one of those Coast Guard rescues. You lied to me.”

“Let’s just say I didn’t paint the full picture.”

Meg tore off a small piece of croissant before responding. “I guess I owe you a thank-you.”

“I guess you do.”

“Well, thanks.”

“Well, you’re welcome,” said Harvath.

Meg knew the helicopter extraction had been their only means of escape, and she also knew that her being angry with Harvath was just a way of ignoring the anger she felt with herself. It was her fault that they had gotten captured and that the mission had been botched, but what was done was done. They could only move forward.

“How’d the debriefing go?” she asked, trying to change the subject.

Harvath stared absentmindedly over the top of his coffee cup at her. Even after everything they had been through, she was still incredibly beautiful. Here they were sharing coffee, croissants, and the morning paper at this little breakfast table as they skirted an argument and Meg tried to steer the conversation in another direction. The whole scene was almost too surreal for Harvath.

“Not good,” he replied as his mind slipped from fantasy back to reality.

“Not good how?”

“Morrell refuses to believe that a woman is running Abu Nidal’s organization.”

The indignation rose in Meg’s voice as she slammed her coffee cup down. “But we saw her. We talked to her! He has no idea. He wasn’t there.”

“And he doesn’t seem to care.”

“Why the hell couldn’t a woman be manning the operation?”

Harvath smiled at her choice of words. “It’s completely out of keeping with Islam and their male-dominated society. Muslim men, especially extremists, will not take orders from a woman.”

“But they don’t. They take them from the brother. He’s the puppet and she pulls the strings.”

“I told them all of that, and they wouldn’t listen.”

“What about the fact that you could connect her to all of those assassinations around the globe.”

“A woman as an assassin, that they could accept, but it still doesn’t make her their main focus. They see the brother as being in charge, and for the time being, that’s where all their resources are going to be placed.”

“So what’s next?”

“I’ve given them detailed descriptions of both Hashim and his sister. The CIA is gathering all the materials they can from Oxford, and you and I are going to review every last scrap of it to see if maybe she slipped up and allowed herself to be photographed at some point during her time there.”

“If she was ever there,” said Meg.

“She could have been lying, but I don’t think so.”

“Is Morrell going to send another team back into the camp to try and take them out?”

“From what we can tell, the camp has been abandoned.”

“Abandoned? Why?”

“I don’t think there’s a terrorist on this planet that isn’t familiar with what we did to the Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. Our satellites picked up a lot of vehicles leaving, followed by several very large explosions.”

“From Avigliano?”

“No. These were explosions Adara’s people set off afterward to cover their tracks. I’m guessing that whatever sensitive equipment or information they couldn’t move out of there right away, they destroyed.”

“So what happened to the two of them?”

“Now that we’re on to them, Gadhafi won’t be much help anymore. I’ve got to imagine we’re already ramping up to teach him a lesson for harboring them. Adara and Hashim Nidal are probably going to be hotfooting it out of Libya real soon. For all we know, they’re already gone. Which begs the question, where are they going?”

“With the list of places we know Adara has already been, the answer is anywhere.”

“I know, and that’s our biggest problem. I have a source that’s been watching an old friend of the Nidal family and thinks Adara might have made contact with him. Shortly thereafter his yacht was seen leaving port.”

“Which port?”

“Puerto Banus. It’s on the Costa del Sol.”

“Near Marbella, I know it. Where was it headed?”

“That’s where it starts to get like a needle in a giant haystack. According to my source, the yacht was headed for an island somewhere off the southern coast of Italy.”

“Italy? Maybe your haystack’s not as big as you think,” said Meg as she set down her coffee cup. She walked into the living room, retrieved an atlas from the bookshelf, and brought it back to the table.

Harvath watched her flip pages until she found the one she wanted and spun the book around so he could see it. “There,” she said.

Her finger was resting on a small island west of Naples named Capri. “Why do you think this is our island?” asked Harvath.

“It’s a hunch, but so many signs point to it, it’s got to mean something.”

“What signs?”

“When Adara made us have dinner with her, she said something about being so close to you in Jerusalem that you could have smelled her perfume.”

“So?”

“Well, each time she leaned in my direction, I could smell her perfume, and I recognized it.”

“You did?”

“Not only that, but remember when you guys came into my room and I mistakenly hit Avigliano with the vase?”

“Yeah. My room was totally bare. Never in a million years would they have left something behind that I could have used as a weapon.”

“My room was bare too, but Adara brought me the flowers herself.”

“Why’d she do that?”

“I think she was trying to put me further at ease, but that’s not important. When the vase broke on Avigliano’s rifle, we were both splashed. It took a few minutes, but that’s what reminded me. I could smell the flowers on me from the water.”

Harvath reached for a croissant, and said, “I’m not following.”

“When I studied in Rome, we spent spring break on the island of Capri. There’s a story about how the prior of a local monastery created a perfume out of water from a vase filled with the island’s most beautiful flowers. When I was there, I bought some. It’s manufactured exclusively on the island from twenty-five different types of Capri flowers.”

“And that’s what Adara Nidal was wearing?”

“Yes. It’s called Caprissimo.”

“Maybe she knows someone who gets it for her. Maybe she bought it in a duty-free shop at the airport in Milan while changing planes.”

“There was also a picture of Capri in her study,” said Meg, impatient with Harvath for not following her train of thought.

“What picture?” answered Harvath, his mind racing back to one of the pictures that was still sticking with him, but for what reason, he didn’t know.

“There was a very provocative picture of her in a bathing suit on a yacht. I’m actually surprised you missed it.”

“Another picture had caught my attention. What did you see?”

“The one I saw showed Adara sunning herself on the back of a boat with the Faraglioni in the background.”

“What is the Faraglioni? ”

“They’re three huge rocks jutting out of the ocean on the southern coast of the island.”

“Do you remember anything else about the picture?” asked Harvath. “Were there other people in it? Could you see the name of the boat, or anything else in the background?”

Meg was silent as she tried to remember the details of the photo.

“You saw Adara and you saw the Faraglioni,” said Harvath, trying to coax her memory. “How do you know she was on a yacht?”

“She was sitting on a long white leather banquette, and the picture was taken from out on the ocean looking back at the island.”

“What else did you notice? C’mon, Meg, think.” There had to be more. Something that could validate Schoen’s information and tell them that they were on the right track.

“I think the boat was either moving or it was windy.”

“Why?”

“There was a big red flag billowing off the back.”

“Were there other colors in it besides red?” asked Harvath.

“I don’t know. It was all red… except for a small green star.”

“Bingo. Morocco.”

“What is it? Do you know the boat?”

“I do now.”