When Harvath’s eyes snapped back open, he had no idea how long he’d been out. Nearby, Hastings sat on the hotel steps talking with Cates and Herrington as she tried to shake pieces of ash and charred soot from her hair. Across the street, a Greek restaurant had taken over handing out bottled water to thirsty passersby. A group of businesspeople standing near the restaurant even managed a smile as one of them apparently said something worth smiling at. New Yorkers were an amazing bunch, and as terrible as it had been, they seemed to know that this day too would pass.
Harvath was about to close his eyes again, when he felt something vibrating between his elbow and his hip and realized it was his BlackBerry. Pulling the device out of its cradle, he saw the icons indiciating that he had new voicemail and e-mail messages, as well as an incoming call from his boss.
Putting the phone in his left hand, he raised it to his ear and said, “Harvath.”
“Scot, it’s Gary,” replied Lawlor. “I’ve been trying to reach you for the last half hour. What’s going on?”
Scot filled him in as best he could and then fell into an exhausted silence.
“Listen, I may have some good news for you,” said Gary.
“There isn’t much I’d consider good at this point, but go ahead, shoot.”
“The terrorists may be hitting a fifth location not far from where you are right now.”
Hearing that, Harvath sat up straight. “What location? Where? Wait a second. How do you know this?”
“Do you remember all the reports that bin Laden was on dialysis?”
“Of course, it was a rumor based on the Pakistani president claiming al-Qaeda had smuggled two dialysis machines into Afghanistan, right?”
“Exactly. Then one of our Delta Force teams discovered a sterile facility used for dialysis treatments at bin Laden’s Tora Bora base near Jalalabad.”
“So?”
“So they also found a patient log and discovered it wasn’t bin Laden getting treatment, it was Mohammed bin Mohammed, aka Abu Khabab al-Fari.”
“Wait a second,” said Harvath. “M amp;M? Al-Qaeda’s master bombmaker? He was the head of their entire weapons of mass destruction committee until he disappeared a couple of days before 9/11. Nobody has seen him since.”
“The DIA has,” said Lawlor.
Harvath was floored, and smoke was nearly coming out of his ears as his mind raced to put all of the pieces together. “What’s this have to do with them grabbing Sayed Jamal from us?”
“Apparently, they’re related-as in family. The DIA wanted to use Jamal as leverage in their interrogation of Mohammed.”
“The DIA has Mohammed?” Harvath couldn’t believe it. “Who told you this?”
“Stan Caldwell,” replied Lawlor.
“How does the deputy director of the FBI have that information?”
“According to Caldwell, it was DIA’s chief of staff who coordinated the Joint Terrorism Task Force ruse and then swore the Bureau to secrecy.”
“Based on what? What kind of sway does the DIA have over the Bureau?”
“I don’t know,” said Gary. “That’s all he would tell me. In fact I was surprised to get that much from him.”
Harvath thought back and replied, “That high-level al-Qaeda operative the U.S. took down-the one with the exploding laptop. Do you think that was Mohammed?”
“The timing on it would be right.”
“Then that intercept about the U.S. grabbing a bombmaker and bringing him into America against his will and in violation of international law wasn’t about Jamal after all. It was about Mohammed.”
“I think so,” said Lawlor.
“And you believe he’s here, in New York?”
“I’m almost certain of it.”
“But what’s the connection with the NSA’s deep black intelligence sites?” replied Harvath. “I don’t get it.”
“I don’t get it either. The only one who might have been able to explain it to us is Joseph Stanton, and he’s dead.”
“So how do you know there’s a fifth location and that it’s here in New York?”
“It all comes back to the dialysis machines. We interrogated one of Stanton’s analysts-a young man who worked closely with him on the Athena Program, and he told us that Stanton was very interested in recent sales of high-end units sold by a company called Nova Medical Systems. The name sounded familiar to me, but I couldn’t remember why. When I got back to my office, I did some checking.”
“And?”
“The machines found in the treatment room at the Tora Bora complex were the exact same kind Stanton had his analyst searching for.”
“And did he find any?”
“Yup, and that’s where I think the fifth location is.”
Though some of the dots still needed to be connected, there were enough of them lining up at this point to make Harvath believe that Lawlor really might be on to something. “We’re on it. Where is it?”
“That’s the problem. We can’t touch it.”
“What do you mean, we can’t touch it?”
“It’s recognized as the foreign soil of a sovereign nation. We’re not allowed in unless they invite us in.”
More bureaucratic bullshit, thought Harvath. All he wanted was an address. He’d let the hacks back in Washington mop up the fallout. “ Gary, if that’s where these terrorists are headed, trust me, whatever sovereign nation we’re talking about, they’re going to be begging us to come inside and help them.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure. The Libyans can be incredibly stubborn when they want to.”