Brad Thor - The Last Patriot

“And why is he not here?”

“He’s getting the rest of your money together.”

René Bertrand smiled; his teeth stained from a lifetime of cigarettes and coffee. “That is very nice, but he has yet to make me an offer I can accept.”

Harvath noticed that Bertrand was perspiring. “Are you feeling okay, Monsieur?”

The smile never wavered. “The offer, please?” he asked.

“We are prepared to beat the competitive offer by one hundred thousand.”

“Euros?” asked Bertrand.

“Naturally,” Harvath replied. “I also have been authorized to give you this,” he said as he tapped the outside of his jacket. “Ten thousand euros cash, right now, in exchange for just ten minutes of your time?”

“Ten minutes of my time for what?”

Now it was Harvath’s turn to smile. “For me to explain why you should close the bidding and why the University of Virginia is the right home for this very special book.”

The book dealer’s heavy-lidded eyes narrowed. “And I get to keep the ten thousand no matter what?”

Harvath nodded. “No matter what.”

“May I see the money, please?” asked Bertrand.

Withdrawing the envelope from his inside pocket, Harvath discreetly opened the flap and showed him the stack of bills. “Perhaps we can find a café nearby?”

Bertrand loved dealing with universities, especially American universities. In his experience, they always had much more money than sense. “There’s a café not far from here,” he responded. “I need to use the facilities anyway. Let’s make it quick. I have a meeting with your competition in thirty minutes.”

In espionage, operatives learn to discern and then play to a subject’s vulnerabilities. For Harvath, René Bertrand, to employ a very bad pun, was like an open book. He stood to make a lot of money from his role in the sale of the Don Quixote , but ten thousand euros for ten minutes of his time was a sweetener the man couldn’t say no to. Espionage was often part con game. The surest way to get people under your control was to ask them to do you a favor.

And that’s exactly what Harvath had done. Now, for his plan to work, he needed to get Bertrand out of the building.

The ten thousand euros was nothing more than bait, and the book dealer had taken it. No doubt he saw Harvath as a fool, but he was about to learn who the fool really was.

The pair worked their way up the crowded main aisle to the front of the Grand Palais. They were about two hundred feet from the entrance when Harvath felt something hard pressed into the small of his back.

At the same time, a man leaned in toward his ear and warned, “Do anything stupid and I’ll pull this trigger and sever your spine.”

He had appeared out of nowhere; not exactly a difficult feat at such a crowded exposition, but Harvath should have sensed his approach. He should have been more on his guard.

The man’s English was perfect. Immediately, Harvath ruled him out as being French. He could have been security for Bertrand, but somehow Harvath doubted it. He hadn’t yet done anything to the book dealer that would have required such a reaction. He had been waiting until he got him outside and away from the exhibition hall for that, which left only one other option.

The man must have been Bertrand’s other buyer for the Don Quixote . “The competition” as the book dealer had put it, whom he was supposed to be meeting in thirty minutes.

Whoever this mystery man was, he had a gun to Harvath’s back. And regardless of how angry Harvath was at being taken by surprise so easily, he had no choice but to follow the man’s orders.

With his free hand, the gunman grabbed René Bertrand by his reed-like arm, flashed his weapon, and drew the rare-book dealer up against Harvath as he shoved the pair forward. Bertrand was terrified and barely able to utter, “You.”

Harvath’s mind raced for a solution; some way to distract the man behind him and grab his gun, but there was little he could do. They were in the center of a horde of people slowly shuffling their way toward the exit. He could practically feel the breath of his assailant against the back of his neck. Harvath barely had any space between himself and the people in front of him. Hoping for a space to open up in front of him and at the same moment chaos to be created as a distraction was asking for a miracle. But a miracle was exactly what happened.

Past the bobbing and weaving heads of the crowd in front of him, Harvath noticed three French national policemen standing near the exit. One of them appeared to be scanning the faces of the crowd and referring to a sheet of paper in his hand at the same time.

The gunman saw them too. He tightened his grip on the book dealer’s arm and pressed his gun even harder into Harvath’s back as he said, “One false move and I will kill both of you before the police even realize what’s happening.”

There was no question in Harvath’s mind who he would rather take his chances with. He only hoped the French police were looking for him and that the piece of paper one of the cops was carrying had his photo on it.

As they got closer to the exit, the crowd in front of them began to thin out and the police began checking the faces of the people nearest to Harvath. Knowing that the gunman couldn’t see his face, Harvath started rapidly moving his eyes in hopes of capturing their attention.

Glancing to his left, he saw that sweat was pouring down the bookseller’s face and that he was shaking. Either he was growing more petrified of their abductor, or there was something else going on with him. It didn’t take long to discover what it was.

As Harvath and the book dealer approached the police, the officer with the paper recognized them. He checked one more time and then alerted his colleagues, one of whom instantly got on his radio.

Harvath thought for sure he was the one they’d recognized, but when the men drew their weapons they yelled for René Bertrand to stop.

The gunman wasted no time. Pointing his Heckler amp; Koch pistol around Harvath’s right side, he fired several shots in rapid succession as all hell broke loose in the lobby of the Grand Palais.

Harvath spun and drove his elbow into the gunman’s solar plexus. As the assassin fell backward, Harvath drew his weapon and looked over just in time to see René Bertrand running back into the hall.

All three cops were down. Two of them were bleeding out and Harvath feared they weren’t going to make it. The third was on his radio, calling for backup.

As people ran screaming in all directions, Harvath had to make up his mind. His priority was the book dealer and after one more glance at the gunman, he took off after him.

Twenty yards ahead, he could see Bertrand, but because of the crowd he couldn’t close the distance. He felt like the proverbial salmon swimming upstream. Raising his weapon into the air, he fired a shot.

Instantly, the crowd parted and Harvath raced after the book dealer. Bertrand took a sharp left, banging his shoulder into a large bookcase and knocking it over.

Harvath leapt over the spill of books and kept on, pushing people out of his way as he ran. He had to remind himself to scan and breathe, scan and breathe. He had no desire to be taken by surprise again.

Less than ten yards away from Bertrand, he noticed what he was running toward-an emergency exit.

As the book dealer neared the door, Harvath fired two shots into the frame and yelled for him to stop. Bertrand might have been foolish, but he wasn’t an idiot. He stopped right where he was.

In the blink of an eye, Harvath was on him. Securing his weapon, he grabbed the book dealer by the collar and punched him hard in the gut with his other hand.