The video then cut to street scenes in Jerusalem in the aftermath of the attack on the Temple Mount. Palestinian youths threw stones at Israeli Defense Forces who returned fire with tear gas and rubber bullets. Jewish shopkeepers pushed and assaulted Palestinian customers and vice versa. It was sheer pandemonium.
Man-on-the-street interviews were volatile, with each side calling for war and the extermination of the other. Not only did the citizens of Palestine and Israel seem to overwhelmingly agree that they should go to war and settle things once and for all, but they were all sure their “God” would lead them to victory.
Just when Harvath could barely stand it any longer and was about to turn the TV off, the piece turned to a man walking through a rubble-strewn Palestinian village. People lined the streets to greet him. When the camera pulled back to reveal the Fox reporter, Scot recognized her right away. It was Jody Burnis, the former CNN reporter who had broken the story of the president’s kidnapping and had implicated him as her inside source. He turned up the sound on the remote as a montage of images filled the screen.
“…Ali Hasan, chief Palestinian negotiator and a rising star on the Palestine political landscape. He grew up on these same mean Ramallah streets, only a stone’s throw away from PLO headquarters. He has been a vigorous proponent for an independent Palestinian homeland and establishing a lasting peace with neighboring Israel-a difficult and, some would say, impossible dream.
“As violence worsens here in the wake of the Hand of God terrorist attacks, Hasan’s voice is one of the few still calling for calm. It has been his steadfast refusal to condemn terrorism that his detractors most often cite. But by the same token, observers far and wide agree that in the tumultuous arena of Palestinian politics, if he hopes to lead his people, he could not come down on what is seen by most Palestinians as the only tool which allows them to be taken seriously on the world stage.
“Hasan has been a frequent guest speaker at the League of Arab Nations and is on very good terms with most of the region’s leaders, both secular and religious alike. He has been compared to a coin flipped high into the desert air. On one side of the coin is the barbed specter of war, the other, the white dove of peace. On which side will the coin fall? Only time will tell, though many here believe that with the European-sponsored peace summit only weeks away, time is quickly running out.
“Reporting from Ramallah in the West Bank, this has been Jody Burnis for Fox News.”
Scot clicked off the television and walked into his bedroom to change into some workout clothes. After he found a clean pair of white socks and his Nikes, he grabbed a cold bottle of water from the fridge and clipped the CIA beeper to his waist. He locked the apartment door behind him, placed a hair in the upper-right-hand corner of the doorframe, and made his way down to the basement, where the landlady had let him set up his workout gear in an unused corner.
If there was one thing Harvath couldn’t stand, it was sitting on his ass. While he couldn’t control how long he would have to wait until Morrell paged him, he could control what he did with his time. Workouts always helped Harvath relax and clear his mind. As he slapped the forty-five-pound plates onto the bar and got ready to do a warm-up set of bench presses, the rest of the world and everything in it began to fade away.
An hour later, Scot had a good sweat going and was on his last set of hammer curls. He felt the satisfying fatigue and burn in his muscles. It was good to get back to the weights. Though he had been relegated to push-ups, dips, and crunches in hotel rooms and Claudia’s apartment over the last several weeks, he was still in excellent shape. In fact, he was in just as good shape, if not better, as when he had been in the SEALs. There were few who would dare mess with him, and those that did found him to be extremely lethal.
After putting the dumbbells back where they belonged, Scot did a few exercises to work his obliques and then stretched out his legs. Though he had a treadmill in the basement, when the weather was nice, he preferred to run outside.
Despite the humidity in the summertime, Harvath enjoyed living in Alexandria. Its architecture and layout still retained its historic port city charm. It was the hometown of George Washington, and oftentimes Harvath wondered what the former president would think of Alexandria if he came back and saw how well preserved it was today.
Harvath jogged to the Chinquapin Park Recreation Center, where he was greeted by Tera, one of the front-desk staffers, who knew him on sight. She checked him in and agreed to hold on to his pager and come find him if it went off.
The center had a fully equipped locker room, where Scot kept a swimsuit, a pair of goggles, and some assorted toiletry items. After a quick shower, he jumped into his suit and hit the twenty-five-meter indoor pool.
Having already performed a full weight workout, Harvath felt himself, understandably, growing tired much quicker than he normally would, but he simply adjusted his pace and kept going. Scot liked to push himself. Both in the SEALs and then later when he was recruited into the Secret Service, Harvath was known by his code name, Norseman. It referred to a string of Scandinavian flight attendants he had dated while going through his SEAL training, but seeing him in action suggested another meaning. Whenever he thought he couldn’t go any further, he reminded himself of the SEAL motto, “The only easy day was yesterday,” and would push himself some more.
After an hour in the pool, Harvath’s body was beyond fatigued and his mind was numb. He didn’t have the energy to compose a thought any more complicated than grabbing a shower. He stood under the needlelike spray and let the water bounce off his body as he leaned against the wall for support. After twenty minutes of hot, he turned the faucet all the way to cold and forced himself to stand beneath the spray until his blood was racing through his body and every nerve ending was tingling.
Harvath toweled off and put on his running clothes again. He picked up his pager from Tera, stopped by the snack bar, and chugged down a large bottle of Gatorade before leaving the complex. Morrell hadn’t called, and it didn’t surprise Harvath. It could easily be weeks before he heard from him.
When he returned to his apartment, he checked the hair before opening the door and letting himself in. He needed to get out of his running clothes and take another shower. Just walking home, he had broken a sweat in the lovely July humidity. As Harvath made his way past the kitchen toward his bathroom, something in the kitchen caught his eye. The refrigerator door was standing wide open. That was odd. He wouldn’t have left it that way. Maybe the seal was going, he thought to himself. As he went to close the fridge, he noticed something else-his remaining four bottles of Sam Adams were gone. He knew he didn’t do that. Someone had been in his house, but whoever they were, they’d been clever enough to replace the hair in his doorframe. Coming through a window was out of the question. Entry could have been gained only through the front door.
Because his sidearm was in his bedroom, the best he could do for a weapon was the Louisville Slugger he kept in the hall closet. Quietly he retrieved the baseball bat and crept toward the rear of the apartment. The living room was clear, as was his bathroom. His bedroom door was closed, something he never did, and as he approached it, he tightened his grip around the bat. He took a deep breath and freed his left hand to turn the knob. When the door gave way, he put all of his weight behind it, charged into the bedroom, and fell flat on his face. He had tripped over something.