The Last Patriot

CHAPTER 3

Car thefts probably happened all the time in Paris, but Harvath had never seen one. He had also never seen such a smartly dressed criminal before.

As much as he was trying to escape his old life, his instincts were still attuned to the world around him. Just because a sheepdog had grown tired of fighting off wolves, it didn’t mean that wolves had grown tired of preying on sheep.

“What is it?” asked Tracy, as she followed his gaze across the street.

“Somebody just broke into that Peugeot.”

They both listened as the car’s engine came to life and the thief’s head popped back up from beneath the dashboard. Instead of driving away, though, the man just sat there.

“What’s he doing?” she asked.

Harvath was about to answer when he saw a silver Mercedes sedan approach. The thief must have seen it too because he immediately applied his blinker and pulled away from the curb, leaving the parking space to the Mercedes.

Harvath had spent enough time in cities like New York to know the lengths people would go to for a parking space, but stealing a car? This was ridiculous.

As the Peugeot slipped away, the Mercedes took its place.

No sooner was it parked than another well-dressed Arab opened the door, looked both ways up and down the street, climbed out, and walked away.

Tracy looked at Harvath again. “What the hell was that all about?”

“I’ve got no idea,” he replied. “I didn’t see that guy arm his car alarm, though. Did you?”

Tracy shook her head.

For a second or two, Harvath studied the Mercedes. Then he removed a twenty-euro note, laid it on the table, and said, “Let’s go.”

Tracy didn’t argue.

On the sidewalk, Harvath took her arm and picked up the pace.

“Shouldn’t we do something?” Tracy asked.

“We are,” responded Harvath. “We’re leaving.”

“I mean, report what we saw.”

Since retiring from the counterterrorism arena, Harvath had kept an exceptionally low profile. He loathed bureaucracies more than ever, and the Paris police had one of the worst.

Nevertheless, Tracy was right. What they had just seen didn’t make sense. It could, of course, be nothing, but Harvath doubted it. “The next phone we see, we’ll call it in,” he said.

In front of them, the door of a small bookshop opened and a man in his early fifties with a gray beard, wavy salt-and-pepper hair, and a blue blazer hurriedly stepped outside. Nearly bumping into Harvath and Tracy, the man excused himself in French and continued off in the direction of the café.

Normally, Harvath wouldn’t have given it another thought, but then he caught sight of the driver of the Mercedes standing near the corner. He watched as the man appeared to study a photograph and then raised a cell phone to his ear.

The Arab spoke no more than two words. When he nodded and hung up the phone, Harvath suddenly realized what was going on.

Letting go of Tracy’s arm, he spun and took off after the man in the blazer, praying he could reach him in time.