Path Of The Assassin

The courier began to reach into his breast pocket, and Harvath pointed the gun back between the young man’s eyes. “Ah. Ah. Ah. Remember what I said about leaving by the window.”

“It’s just a release form, honest. Jesus, this has been hard enough already. Besides, if I was going to pull a gun on you, I would have done it while your head was in the refrigerator.”

“Good point,” said Harvath as he slowly released the hammer and put his pistol on the kitchen counter. He accepted the form and signed it as he said he would, “Samuel Adams.”

“Wait a second,” said the courier. “I was told I could only release these documents to Mr. Scot Harvath.”

“And you have.”

“But the name here-”

“Will be perfectly clear to your superior when you report back. Now pop the top and give me what you got.”

The courier deactivated the locking system and withdrew a thin manila envelope, which he handed to him. It was sealed and stamped, “Top Secret. Agent Scot Harvath U.S. Secret Service Eyes Only.”

Harvath walked the young man into the hall.

“So, are you going to be graduating to real fieldwork soon, Gordo?”

“I already have.”

“Well, just try not to get any of the wrong people killed, okay? You have a good day now,” replied Harvath as he turned back into his apartment and kicked the door shut behind him.

He sat down on his couch and spread the contents of the file on the coffee table. There was a brief history of Abu Nidal followed by a series of photos from scenes of terrorist attacks attributed to his son. Theories and possible strategies occupied the space of a two-page “brainstorming” memo that was long on speculation and short on actual facts.

Lawlor had been right; there wasn’t much in this file that Harvath hadn’t already been told. At least, though, he was now truly operating off the same page as everyone else. After reviewing the material for a fifth time in as many hours, he ran it through his shredder and then burned the remains in a metal garbage can he had placed in his bathtub.

As Harvath got ready for bed, he thought about Ari Schoen. What role did he really play in all of this? Could he be useful? Was he involved with the Hand of God? Was Schoen telling everything he knew? Was the CIA? That was the trouble with this business. You never could tell who was telling the truth and you never knew whom to trust. Everyone was suspect.

Harvath gathered the bottle caps off his pillow and threw them into the garbage can beneath his desk. He unwrapped and ate one of the chocolates before climbing into bed. He was dead tired and looked forward to a good night’s sleep. As he crawled beneath the covers, his feet came to an abrupt halt.

Morrell had short-sheeted his bed.

16

Meg Cassidy was never much for following the crowd, but when United Airlines’s flight 7755 touched down at Cairo’s new Mubarak International Airport, she found herself caught up in the emotion of the moment and joined right in with the wave of applause that swept through the sleek new 747-400 jetliner.

She then leaned her head back against the stylish leather business-class sleeper seat and offered up a prayer of thanks. It was easily the greatest PR coup of the year. Somebody up there liked her. At twenty-seven, the attractive, blond public relations whiz kid was already being called a PR maven, and owned one of Chicago’s fastest growing and most successful agencies. Her offices were located in the swanky Beckwith Realty loft building on Hubbard Street, not far from the best seafood restaurant in town, Shaw’s Crab House. She had just purchased a new summer home on Wisconsin’s famed Lake Geneva, and Today’s Chicago Woman and Crain’s Chicago Business were planning cover stories on her within the next month. The editors had sought her out for her street smarts and business acumen, though the fact that she was a dead ringer for Meg Ryan hadn’t hurt either.

What she had accomplished was truly amazing. Competing against agencies three times their size, Meg and Cassidy Public Relations had beat out every comer to win the United Airlines local account. The first assignment they were handed was the opening of United’s new service to Cairo-the first nonstop route from Chicago to Cairo. Meg had worked tirelessly with United’s ad agency and helped to develop a fabulous campaign that included a tag line seen on billboards and buses all over town, “From the heart of America to the heart of the Middle East. No One Unites the World Like United.” But she didn’t stop there. If this was going to be a Meg Cassidy event, it had to be bigger than big.