Omar was painfully shortsighted. He had access to unlimited funds and could have made an overwhelming preemptive bid for the book, but his desire to make his “statement” had gotten the better of him. Nichols wasn’t as easy to kill as the sheik had anticipated.

Dodd had no idea who the man and woman helping him were, but he intended to see them die. Too much had gone wrong, and Dodd needed to end his string of bad luck. The most important thing, though, was getting that book.

The assassin had already tossed Bertrand’s hotel room and had come up empty. Combing the man’s dossier now, he searched for anything that might lead him to where the book dealer was keeping the Don Quixote.

Bertrand reminded him a bit of himself. He was a loner who had no family he could have left the book with. He had been living underground, moving from crappy hotel to crappy hotel, always a step ahead of the police. While Dodd didn’t have to go to quite such extremes, he knew what those places were like and didn’t relish the idea of having to visit each flophouse to conduct his own investigation. That said, he couldn’t rule it out.

The assassin was about to log off, when something about one of the book dealer’s drug arrests grabbed his attention. Bertrand was caught purchasing heroin in the violent Parisian suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois. It was the same suburb that experienced rioting after French police chased two doomed Muslim teenagers into an electrical substation. It wasn’t his only arrest in Clichy-sous-Bois either.

Dodd began compiling a list of names of people arrested with the book dealer or named as being on the fringes of the police investigations. Several of them had very serious rap sheets. But more important than their criminal records was the fact that they were all of Moroccan descent and under investigation by the French internal intelligence service known as the Renseignements Généraux, or RG for short.

After spending considerable time trying to get in, Dodd realized that the RG’s servers were beyond his ability to hack. He would have to satisfy himself with what he could learn about the men from the French police. Along with their mug shots, Dodd compiled a list of last known addressees, the details of their various arrests and one final scrap of information the RG probably had no idea was on the French police servers.

France’s counterterrorism strategy was to disrupt violent attacks before they happened. To do that the RG had been monitoring every mosque, every cleric, and every Islamic sermon throughout France since the mid-1990s.

When the French police had mounted their own investigation of the men from Clichy-sous-Bois and had bumped up against the RG, they’d made mention of it in a memo. While details of the RG’s investigation had been scrubbed, the source of overlap hadn’t. The men associated with René Bertrand all attended the same mosque.

After printing out their pictures, Matthew Dodd shut down his computer and checked his watch. Depending on how long it took him to get ready and to get to Clichy-sous-Bois, he might even be able to attend evening prayers.

CIA HEADQUARTERS

LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

“What do we have?” asked Ozbek as he entered the crowded room and set his coffee at the head of the conference table. He’d been in his office talking with his veterinarian about his dog when the message from Steve Rasmussen came in on his BlackBerry.

“Within the last hour, there was a shooting in Paris,” said Rasmussen as he gestured to the flat-panel monitor at the other end of the room. On it was a feed from a French television channel that showed police, news crews, and first responders outside an ornate building. “It happened at an antiquarian book fair at the Grand Palais. The shooter used a large-caliber handgun. He took three shots. His targets were three French police officers. Two are dead and one is in critical condition.”

“If this was a Transept operative, the third cop would have bought it as well,” said Ozbek.

“The hospital says he’s as good as dead anyway.”

Ozbek worked the pieces in his mind as he spoke. “So we’ve got a car bombing earlier today outside a small café well off the beaten tourist track. Then, this. Do we have a description of the shooter?”

“Not much.”

“What about video? The Grand Palais must have CCTV footage.”

“They do and I’m almost ready to upload it,” offered Rasmussen.

“Give me the details about the shooting.”

One of the unit’s few female operatives, an attractive, fiercely intelligent brunette in her mid-thirties named Stephanie Whitcomb, responded, “According to preliminary reports, the shooter was seen with two other men. One is a French National and sometimes rare-book dealer named René Bertrand.

“Bertrand has a long history of drug-related offenses. He was being sought for questioning in relation to a smuggling ring out of Morocco.”

“So the police spotted him at the book festival,” said Ozbek, “and that’s when the shooting began?”

“Correct,” she replied. “The other man in the shooter’s party is presumed to be an American.”

“How do we know?”

“A witness overheard him earlier speaking English with a woman and a man, also presumed American. The shooter had the book dealer and the other man walk directly in front of him and probably had his weapon drawn, but hidden somehow. When the police ID’d René Bertrand and ordered him to stop, the guy started firing.”

Rasmussen jumped in, pantomiming an elbow to the back of his chair. “At that point, the American turned and struck the shooter, knocking him down.”

“Interesting,” replied Ozbek.

“In the chaos,” said Whitcomb, “the book dealer fled into the exhibit hall. The American chased after him and fired a shot from his own weapon into the air. Less than a minute later, the American fired two more shots. He then grabbed the book dealer by the neck and they were seen exiting the Grand Palais via a fire door.”

“What happened to the first shooter?”

“He disappeared,” she said.

“We’ve got our video,” said Rasmussen as he directed the unit’s attention back to the monitor. “According to our liaison with the French internal security service, the first shooter was very careful not to let his face be seen, but he screwed up.”

The group watched as Rasmussen ran the footage and continued to narrate. “The man in the white suit is René Bertrand. The other man is our American. And right behind them is the original shooter.”

Ozbek peered at the monitor. “I can’t see his face.”

“Keep watching,” said Rasmussen

They watched as the shooting unfolded. There were several different angles included with the feed. “Here it comes,” he said. “Right as he gets elbowed by the American, he doubles over and goes down. Everyone is running by this point; mass pandemonium. But when our shooter straightens up and searches for the other two men, he accidentally reveals his profile for a fraction of a second.”

“Can you enhance that?” asked Ozbek, thinking he recognized the face.

Rasmussen isolated the image and then enlarged it.

“Now run it against the Transept images. Start with our Killed in Action No Remains Located pal. Pull up his left side profile.”

Rasmussen found it and put it up in a split screen. Nobody said a word. After a pause, Rasmussen combined the images by sliding one on top of the other. It was a perfect match.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Ozbek. “Matthew Dodd aka Majd al-Din.”

“Holy shit,” replied Whitcomb.

“Holy shit indeed,” repeated Ozbek as everyone stared at the screen. “Now, our next question is, what the hell is he up to?”

Rasmussen tapped a few keys on his laptop and said, “Thanks to the French, we may have an idea.”