“I have to take care of something, but I’ll be back. Keep the door locked. Don’t let anyone in till I return,” Scorpion said, getting up. He had to find out about Najla. He had left her in the hotel room, washing her hair in the bathroom.
“Why should I trust you? I don’t know you. You come in with a gun—and listen to a fool’s story.”
“Because I’m the only one, including you, who wants you alive.”
“Then that makes two of us who are fools.”
“Lock the door. If anyone comes, no matter how well you know them or what reason they give you, don’t let them in. I’ll be back soon,” Scorpion said, opening the door.
He left the dwarf staring into his drink, and waited in the dimly lit hallway till he heard the door lock. He pulled a hair from his head and wrapped it from the doorknob to a screw he loosened in the doorjamb as a simple trap. He left his bicycle by the apartment house rack to help discourage anyone who might show up, by letting them think Tassouni had company, and caught a taxi back to the hotel. On the way, he tried calling her cell phone—he had taken the number off the phone in her purse in the morning before he got breakfast—but she wasn’t using it and it went immediately to voice mail.
He thought about it in the taxi. Langley had cleared her, but he didn’t buy it. Najla had earned her chops as a TV reporter, yet according to the BND and Bundespolizei, she didn’t have a single questionable contact. He’d been with her. She was smart and tough and hadn’t done it all on her looks. And it still didn’t explain why she’d followed him after staking out the mosque in the middle of the night. Langley was missing something. Being a reporter was classic cover for an operative, he thought. He had made a mistake letting her go. The sex had colored his judgment. He had to find her again, and if he were honest with himself, wanted to see her again.
Night had fallen, the lights of the city blurred by a drizzle. He could smell the canals. Going by the Dam Square in the taxi, the Royal Palace with its cupola, the Nieuwe Kerk church and the tall pillar of the National Monument were brightly lit. They gleamed wetly in the rain. The restaurants and the brown bars were open, and despite the weather, the streets were filled with people out having a good time. Back at the hotel, he raced back up to the room. The privé card he had put into the card key lock was gone. When he opened the door, the room was empty.
There was no sign of Najla. He searched the room carefully. There was nothing of hers, and so far as he could see, no bugs or traps left behind. She had gone through his carry-on; the way he’d arranged the location of things, like his disposable razor and toothbrush, had all been moved. She couldn’t have found out anything about him anyway. His important things—passports, money, laptop, extra cell phones, and such—were all locked in the roll-on carry-on he had taken from the BMW and put into a locker in the train station before moving the BMW to the station’s car park. The room was clean and the bed was made, so the chambermaid had come in. The sexual restraints he had used to tie her up were gone. She was really gone, he thought, acknowledging that he’d been hoping she would have waited for him, although he still had no way to know whether she was just a journalist who went back to Germany or part of whatever the Islamic Resistance still had going on. With a jolt, he realized that his body physically missed the touch of her. The whole thing felt strange, and he still had to get back to the dwarf. There was something wrong, and he didn’t know what it was as he went down to the lobby.
“The woman I was with, did she check out? Did she leave anything?” he asked the young man behind the desk. The man said something in Dutch to the young woman beside him, also wearing the hotel’s blue jacket.
“No, meneer. She left earlier today, but she left no message,” the young woman said.
“Was she with anyone?”
“I did not see, meneer,” the young woman said.
“It happens, meneer,” the young man said sympathetically, automatically assuming he was dealing with a jilted lover.
Scorpion nodded and headed out to the car park by the train station. He’d need the car and some of the things in it in case he had to evacuate Tassouni. On the drive to the dwarf’s apartment, he decided there were only two options. Either Langley was right and Najla had nothing to do with the Palestinian and was heading back to her normal life in Hamburg, glad to be free and out of jeopardy, or she was somehow involved in this and was searching the city for him or the dwarf. He pulled up to the corner of the street of Tassouni’s apartment building and parked the car illegally at the corner. One way or another, he wouldn’t be there long.
He took his time approaching the building, scanning the parked cars and the street and the rooflines. The street was quiet except for a small party in one of the ground floor apartments, the light and sounds of voices spilling out, cobblestones glistening from the drizzle. The approach to the building looked clean, but that meant nothing. There were lights in one of the windows, but not on the third floor, where Tassouni’s apartment was. He picked the front door lock and eased inside, walking carefully up the stairs to the apartment door. The hallway light was dim and there was no sound. He checked for the hair trap. It was broken. Someone had gone inside.
Scorpion took out his gun and knocked on the door. There was no answer. He knocked again. Still nothing. He didn’t think the dwarf had gone out again. His instincts were telling him it was a trap. It’s just nerves, he told himself. Najla had thrown him off. Langley was right. If she’d been involved in anything, they would’ve found it. Except he remembered something Koenig had said once. “When you don’t find anything on someone, in our line of work we call it ‘deep cover.’” He looked at the doorknob, afraid to touch it. He had to get in to see Tassouni; the little man was his only lead. Except his one certainty about his adversary was that he knew how to make bombs.
He went back out to the BMW, got the roll of duct tape from the trunk and went back to Tassouni’s apartment. He wrapped the tape around the doorknob and unrolled it until he was down the stairs and the hallway and well away from the apartment. Then he took a breath and pulled.
The explosion was deafening, slamming him against the wall. It rocked the building. He could smell flames and smoke as he raced back up the stairs to the shattered apartment. Two fingers of a small human hand were lying on the hallway floor. He could feel the heat of the flames coming from the door opening, what was left of the door hanging from a single hinge. He raced through the building knocking on doors, screaming, “Help! Vier! Politie!” Fire! Police! He heard people shouting and moving as he ran out of the building and back to the BMW. In the distance he could hear the horns of approaching fire engines.
Scorpion drove out of Amsterdam toward the A2 highway, the windshield wipers beating steadily against the drizzle. Along the way, he stopped in Zuid-Oost, broke the cell phone he had used in Amsterdam into pieces, and dropped them in different sections of a canal near the center of town. On the E35 to Utrecht, he realized he’d have to find an Internet café and let Harris know the mission had gone off the rails. He had a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach. He shouldn’t have let Najla go. Now she was gone, the dwarf—their only lead—was dead, and worse, the opposition was onto him. The hunter had become the hunted.
CHAPTER TEN
Straits of Messina, Mediterranean Sea
It was sometime after 0330 hours when the Palestinian decided he would have to murder the captain. He was standing the bow watch, the night clear and cool, the dark shadow of the Greek island of Milos passing off the port side. The Zaina was doing seventeen knots down the shipping lane through the Cyclades islands, latitude 36 degrees 44 minutes north, longitude 24 degrees 13.5 minutes east, on a heading of 193 degrees. It shouldn’t have been necessary, he thought. Freighters made unscheduled stops all over the world. He was proposing just a little detour. An extra sixteen hours, approved by the owners. But the Ukrainian was pigheaded. He had gone to the captain’s quarters an hour after dinner, enough time for the captain to get started on
his drinking, something everyone on the ship down to the lowest AB seaman knew about.
“What you want?” Captain Chernovetsky said, looking up from his bottle of Ukrainian Tavia brandy. His eyes were bleary and a porn DVD was on his TV, the sounds of sexual groans providing a backdrop to their conversation.
“We need to make an unscheduled stop in Genoa,” the Palestinian said, sitting down.
“What you say? What you talking?” Chernovetsky said, not taking it in.
“We need to stop in Genoa before Marseilles, Capitaine.”
“Pishov na khuj! Get out my quarters!”
“It’s only sixteen hours added to the schedule. We unload three containers and that’s it. There’s ten thousand euros for you and no questions,” the Palestinian said, taking a stack of euros in cash from his backpack and putting it on the table next to the brandy. Chernovetsky stared at the money, his eyes blinking.
“What is this? You don’t sit in captain’s quarters. Get fuck out!”
“I have the paperwork here. I just need you to sign and go along.” He took the port papers out of the backpack and put them on the table next to the money.
“Stand up, sooka suna! You don’t sit here. Who are you?”
The Palestinian sat back and stared at him.
“I represent the owners. FIMAX Shipping. We need to make an unscheduled port stop in Genoa. Happens all the time. The ten thousand is for you. No one knows.” He nudged the money closer to the captain.
“FIMAX Ukraina company. You are not Ukraina,” Chernovetsky said, his voice thick with the brandy. He picked up the remote and shut the TV.
“FIMAX is Ukrainian based in Kiev, but the owners are not Ukrainian.”
“How you know this?” Chernovetsky said, his voice uncertain for the first time. The Palestinian suspected it was because the captain knew the owners were Arabs, who had purchased the company six months earlier. “They send you spy on me?”
“Everyone knows about the drinking, mon capitaine. I am from the owners. Do this one favor and your position is secure.”
“This money for do nothing? Stop in Genoa, unload containers. Inside what? Drugs? Guns? Contraband? Pishov na khuj! You think no one ever offer me money for smuggle before? I lose my captain ticket. Get out or I throw you off ship!”
“The owners want a stop in Genoa.”
“I am captain of Zaina,” he said, taking a swallow of the brandy. “I decide, not owners. We go Marseilles.”
“No drugs, no guns, no problems, I promise. I’ll make it twenty thousand euros. What’s so important about Marseilles? You have a little pétasse whore in port? With twenty thousand you could buy a hundred women. Don’t have to watch DVDs,” the Palestinian said coldly.
“Get out, sooka suna! I throw you in irons!” Chernovetsky shouted, standing up and gesturing with his glass, spilling the brandy.
The Palestinian stood and retrieved the money and the papers from the table.
“You need a drink, Capitaine. Have another brandy. Think it over. The offer is still good,” he said, and left the cabin.
He went out on the deck to wait. He didn’t think Chernovetsky would try to arrest him. He would start to do it but first have another drink, and somewhere he would figure that if the owners wanted it to happen, it was better to leave it alone. Either way it didn’t matter. He had already made his arrangements with the first and second officers, both of whom were Muslims. The first officer, Ademovic, was a Bosnian from Sarajevo; the second officer a Turk from Kusadasi. He had paid them five thousand apiece to make sure they would back him up. He had given the captain his chance, he thought. Now there was no choice. One way or another the Zaina had to make port in Genoa, where, if the deal he had made with Francesca Bartolo of the Camorra held, the contents of the containers would be through Italian customs in a few hours.
He looked forward, the horizon invisible in darkness that was complete except for the stars and the running lights of a container ship off the starboard bow, heading north, in the opposite direction, no doubt for Piraeus. The sea was running easy with one- to two-foot swells, the ship dark and silent, but for the running lights and the light on the bridge. The odds were good he could leave his post for twenty or thirty minutes without being detected. It was the perfect time.
He went to the lifeboat where he had stored a backpack with things he didn’t want found. There was a complication. It was important that the captain’s death not be thought of as suspicious. Otherwise they might hold the ship and the crew while they investigated, which in Italy could take Allah knew how long. He poked around in the backpack in the darkness, not wanting to show any kind of light, until he felt the pouch with the disposable latex gloves, hypodermic, and pills. He slipped the pouch into his jacket pocket and made his way aft, back to the captain’s quarters. He listened at the hatch and could hear Chernovetsky snoring even through the metal door. He looked around the passageway for a final check. The only sound was the throbbing of the engine. He checked his watch; it was nearing eight bells, and realized he’d have to move quickly.
He opened the hatch as quietly as he could, closed it behind him, and turned on his key-chain pocket light. The captain was sprawled on his bunk, his snores rattling noisily at the back of his throat. He was still in his pants and undershirt, one bare foot half hanging off the bunk. The bottle of Tavia brandy on the table was nearly empty, the glass on its side, vibrating with the ship’s movement. Assuming he was out cold enough not to feel the injection, he took the latex gloves and Demerol pills out of the pouch and placed them on the ledge next to the bunk. He removed the tip from the syringe, filled it with the entire ampule of liquid Demerol, and put the tip and the empty ampule back into the pouch. This was the critical moment, he thought, positioning himself so he could do the guillotine choke hold if Chernovetsky woke up.
He felt between the captain’s toes for the dorsal digital vein. Chernovetsky snorted in his sleep but didn’t stir. As soon as he thought he felt the vein, he jabbed the needle into the space next to the big toe and pushed the top, emptying the syringe. Chernovetsky’s snore stopped in mid-snore and he started to move. The Palestinian glanced at his face. The captain’s eyes were open but with consciousness just returning. Chernovetsky was about to breathe in to shout when the Palestinian grabbed the pillow and shoved it over his face, holding it down with all his strength as the captain thrashed feebly against the pressure. Half unconscious, with a rapid intravenous injection of Demerol that could cause cardiac arrest multiplied by the effects of the alcohol, the captain would be dead shortly either way.
After a minute that seemed almost endless, his arms pressing the pillow down with his weight, all movement stopped. He held the pillow over Chernovetsky’s face another thirty seconds, then lifted it off and felt for the pulse in the neck. Chernovetsky was dead.
He put the syringe back into the pouch, opened the Demerol pill container, and just to be sure, wiped the container and cap clean of fingerprints with a corner of the sheet from the bunk, then pressed the captain’s fingers on the container and cap. He placed the pillow under Chernovetsky’s head and closed the open staring eyes, shoving two of the pills deep into Chernovetsky’s mouth. Chernovetsky was still alive for about half a minute after the injection, so anything other than an exhaustive autopsy would likely conclude that he had died from a heart attack caused by the combination of Demerol and alcohol, he thought, as he put the pouch back into his pocket and quietly exited the cabin.
Back on deck, he dropped the gloves, syringe, tip, ampule, and the empty pouch one at a time over the rail into the sea. He went forward to finish his watch. The night was still dark, except for the stars and the lights of the container ship he had seen earlier, now well astern. He scanned ahead, the constellation Leo midway to zenith over the bow. He lit a cigarette and for the first time in a long time allowed himself to think about her and wonder where she was.
The steward’s assistant, a Filipino everyone called Manolo, found the captain a
t 0830 hours when he brought him his usual breakfast of buckwheat pancakes and tea. Later that morning First Officer Edis Ademovic sent for Seaman Lababi to meet him in the officers’ mess. They were alone, but Ademovic put a finger to his lips, opened the hatch and looked around the passageway to make sure no one was listening.
“Did you do this?” Ademovic said.
“I was on watch,” the Palestinian said.
“So you had nothing to do with it?”
“The captain was an ivrogne.” A drunk. “Everyone knows it. Who knows what else he took?”
“So you know there were drugs?”
“How would I know? I’m just a seaman.”
“So you say.”
“Are we going to Genoa?”
“You have the papers?”
“Here,” the Palestinian said, handing him the bill of lading papers and authorizations. “You just have to initial at the bottom.”
“I’m captain now,” the Bosnian said.
“So?”
“I should get ten thousand,” Ademovic said, moistening his lips with his tongue.
The Palestinian looked at him coldly. Abruptly, he smiled; a smile that had nothing to do with his eyes. “I don’t have it.”
Ademovic leaned close. “What can you give?”
“Seven, no more. But I’ll put in a good word for you with the owners.”
“Seven,” Ademovic said, taking the papers and initialing them. “You leave the ship at Genoa?”
“Once the containers are off, you can find my replacement in Genoa or sail one AB short.”
“Bring the money before officers’ mess tonight. I have to go to the bridge,” Ademovic said, getting up.
“So the capitaine was taking drugs?” the Palestinian asked.
“Painkillers.”
“Painkillers and booze. A bad combination.”
“So are you. Bring the money. After, when we get to Genoa, get off my ship,” Ademovic said.
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