The Last Patriot

Instead of vintage academia, the décor was quite stylish. The furniture was sleek and modern. Oil paintings of early American scenes were interspersed with tasteful black-and-white photography. Nichols was turning out to be somewhat of an iconoclast.

The focal point of the room was a stunning, dark wooden Bauhaus desk positioned in front of the windows with a ribbed leather desk chair and matching blotter. A vintage 1930s black Bakelite telephone retrofitted for modern use sat next to a sleek Apple computer. The desk was polished to such a shine that Harvath could actually see his reflection in it.

Wooden file cabinets ran the length of one wall while bookshelves ran the length of the other. There were the requisite historical texts one would expect to find in the office of a Jefferson scholar, as well as tomes by leading Democratic authors from the last several decades. Removing a couple of them, Harvath noticed that many had been signed. It was an impressive collection.

He tracked down the two Jefferson volumes the professor had asked for and slid them into his bag.

In the far corner of the room, just as Nichols had said it would be, was his blue KIVA-brand athletic bag with a tennis racquet and info on UVA’s Snyder Tennis Center sticking out of it. Though Nichols claimed he was the only one with keys to his office, Harvath had worried that his choice of a hiding spot for his flash drive might have been a little too attractive for thieves.

Unzipping the main compartment of the bag, Harvath removed a pair of shorts and a Clinton/Gore T-shirt, and then found what he was looking for.

Pulling the plastic lid off a can of tennis balls, he dumped them into his hand. He had to give the professor credit. In practice, it actually was a rather ingenious way to hide his flash drive. Harvath probably never would have looked there. He found the razor-thin incision in the last ball and ripped it the rest of the way open.

The flash drive had fit perfectly inside. So snug was it that someone could have bounced the tennis ball and not even heard the device rattling within. Harvath removed the drive and slid it into his pocket. He had at least a two-hour drive in front of him and he still needed to swing by Nichols’ house to pick up his clothes, as well as some other items. Exiting the professor’s office, he pulled the door shut and locked it behind him.

Once outside, Harvath headed toward the central part of campus where his SUV was parked.

He entered the dramatic, colonnade-lined commons known as the Lawn. At the very top was the Rotunda, the architectural and intellectual heart of UVA, which Jefferson had designed himself and based upon the Pantheon in Rome.

The thought of the Pantheon brought back a flood of memories for Harvath. The last time he had seen it he’d almost been killed.

With that realization, a strange feeling washed over him. It took him a moment to realize that the feeling had nothing to do with cheating death all those years ago in Italy. It had to do with right here and right now.

As the hair on the back of his neck stood up, Harvath’s hand slid into his bag and searched for the butt of his Heckler amp; Koch.

Somebody was following him.

CHAPTER 58

Hamza Ayyad and Rafiq Sa’id were no strangers to killing. Ex-Saudi Intelligence operatives, they had been steeped in every facet of tradecraft and the black arts known to man.

As well as being especially skilled at taking lives, they were exceptional stalkers who could seemingly appear and disappear at will. At least that was how things operated in the Middle East. In the United States, it was a bit different.

While the two men were of average height and unremarkable facial features, their Arab appearance made it harder for them to blend into American crowds, even on a diverse campus like UVA. What’s more, they were stalking a professional-someone who instinctively checked for tails.

Failing to kill Andrew Salam when Hamza and Rafiq had had the chance was an unforgivable offense. Salam should have died alongside Nura Khalifa. The only thing that had redeemed the two Saudi operatives in Sheik Omar’s eyes was the exceptional job they had done planting the evidence of a failed relationship between the young man and woman.

Mistakes did happen, but that was not what Hamza and Rafiq were being paid for. Omar had brought them to America for results. He would not react well to another failure, which was all the more reason they had to succeed now.

Monitoring Randall Hall and Professor Nichols’ campus apartment had been a tedious chore, but Omar had insisted on it. The operation in Paris had been a total failure and the sheik was beyond angry.

Al-Din, Omar’s American assassin, had e-mailed the sheik French security-cam photos of the man and woman who had been helping Nichols. Hamza and Rafiq had been told by Omar in no uncertain terms what he expected them to do if they came across Nichols or any of his associates.