The Last Patriot

CHAPTER 45

Dodd had found the director of the Bilal Mosque in his office. “The police are on their way!” he screamed at Dodd in French after the assassin had kicked in his door and entered his office.

“They’ll come all right,” replied Dodd as he closed the door behind him, “but not until they have amassed many men. Your neighborhood doesn’t exactly have the best reputation. Frankly, the police are just as terrified of coming here as everyone else.”

Namir Aouad eyed the intruder’s weapon. “What do you want?”

“Why was the American here?”

“What American?”

Dodd removed the suppressor from beneath his shirt and screwed it onto the threaded barrel of his pistol. “Why was he here?” he repeated.

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Aouad stammered.

The assassin didn’t like being lied to. He raised his H&K and fired, slamming a round into the wall just above the mosque director’s head. “Tell me why the American was here or I’ll find something other than the wall for my next shot.”

Aouad studied the man’s thick beard, clothing, and distinctive Islamic cap. “You look like a Muslim.”

“I am.”

“Then you cannot shoot me,” declared Aouad. “It is forbidden for a Muslim to harm another Muslim.”

For a moment, Dodd’s mind drifted to his deceased wife and child and what he imagined their deaths had been like. His eyes then went cold. “When you choose to aid an infidel over another Muslim, you are no longer a Muslim.”

“I have not aided any infidels,” protested the director.

“Tell me about René Bertrand.”

Aouad’s eyes looked up and to the right. “I do not know this man.”

Dodd had his pistol up before the man had even finished his lie. He pulled the trigger and drilled a round through the mosque director’s shoulder.

Aouad screamed in pain as his hand flew to the wound. Within seconds, a dark, moist stain began to spread across his sweater. He drew his hand back and almost passed out from the sight of the blood. “The American came for the book,” he wailed. “He came for the book.”

The assassin was amazed. “Bertrand left the book with you?”

“Please, I need an ambulance,” pleaded the injured mosque director.

“You’ll need a hearse if you don’t answer my questions,” threatened Dodd.

“I was holding the book for its owners.”

“You mean the men who stole it,” clarified the assassin.

The mosque director nodded eagerly. He was losing a lot of blood and did not want to be shot again. “Please! I need an ambulance,” he repeated.

Dodd wasn’t paying attention. He was too preoccupied with his own thoughts. The assassin was stunned that the book had been in the mosque all this time. If only he had known! “We would have paid you much more money for that book.”

Aouad was confused. “You?”

“Yes, you idiot,” yelled the assassin as he raised his pistol again. “Who was he? How did Bertrand make contact with him? I must have that book.”

Aouad was starting to feel dizzy. “It’s gone. The American stole it,” he said pointing at the wooden box on top of the file cabinet.

The assassin crossed to the cabinet.

“Please,” moaned Aouad. “Let me call an ambulance.”

“Shut up,” snapped the assassin.

He opened the lid and looked inside. An old volume lay on top of an aged piece of cloth. The cover was rough and faded.

Dodd was an expert on many things, but rare books wasn’t one of them. He only had the recollections of what René Bertrand had e-mailed him to go on. As he opened the Don Quixote and scanned the first several pages, he couldn’t understand what the mosque director was talking about. They looked exactly as he remembered them.

Leafing beyond those pages, though, he soon figured out what had happened. The first few pages had been glued into the book instead of being stitched. It was a fake.

“You fool,” he roared as he turned to face Aouad.

The mosque director opened his mouth to reply only to have the enraged assassin fill it with four rounds from his silenced pistol.

Matthew Dodd waited for his breathing to come back under control and then wiped his prints from all of the surfaces he had touched. Stepping out of the director’s office, he exited the mosque and stepped into the street.

He blamed Omar for this, all of it. If only the man had listened to him from the beginning, this business with the book would have already been finished.

A cold rain began to fall again, but it did little to cool Dodd’s anger. Nichols and his people had the book now. The assassin could lay the blame anywhere he wanted, but in the end, he had failed and he didn’t like the taste of failure, especially when something so significant was at stake.

Dodd started walking. He needed to get himself under control. As he walked, he was so busy fuming that he almost missed the dark blue Opel driven by two North African — looking men as it sped past him.

Deciding that it wasn’t a threat, the assassin filed the car and its two occupants away in the back of his mind and turned his attention to what he was going to do about that book.

Up ahead, the Opel turned the corner and disappeared from sight.