And then, whether it was the vodka or his letdown at having the American part of the operation finally in place, or the sheer femaleness of Liz, the memory of the day that had made him who he was came to him like a nightmare. His hand gripped the arm of the seat as he remembered the night lit bright by the flares and the intense heat, the sounds of soldiers, the fear that made him wet himself, and her eyes looking at him.
He finished his drink and tried to get control of himself. He pressed the button for the stewardess to bring him another. This jihad he had committed himself to was so hard, so schwierig, he thought in German. He checked his watch. Hamburg was nine hours ahead of Los Angeles. It was just after six in the morning there. No one would be in the management company office yet, but he could leave a message to be forwarded. He wondered if he should chance it. He was losing a full day on the flight to Europe due to the time change, and was almost certain that in less than a week he would be dead.
His hand trembling, he started to reach for the phone in the seat back in front of him and was about to call when he remembered all the security cameras at the Frankfurt airport and that all in-flight calls were monitored, and knew it was impossible. It was stupid to have even thought of it. He took a deep breath and reminded himself who he was. “You are the most important man in the world,” the blind imam in Utrecht had told him.
“Dankeschön,” he said to the stewardess when she brought him the drink. He finished it and, once more in control, his hands dead steady, tilted the seat back to try to get some sleep. He would kill the nightmare, he thought. He felt better now. He was ready to die.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Castelnuovo, Italy
The safe house was a villa in the Lazio region, some twenty-five kilometers north of Rome. It was on an unmarked country road off the SS3, shaded by overhanging trees, their leaves dusty in the sunlight. The villa was surrounded by high hedges and could not be seen from the road, and the minute Scorpion turned his rented Fiat into the lane, he knew he was under surveillance. He spotted glints of sunlight reflected from camera lenses hidden in the foliage, and a man at a villa across the way, dressed in shorts and a gaudy shirt that only a tourist would wear, was taking enough time watering a row of flowers to drown the roses. As he parked the car on the grassy shoulder, he glanced in the rearview mirror and saw a Mercedes sedan parked on the side of the road near the corner behind him. If it was a trap, it was already too late; he was boxed in.
He got out of the car, and as he opened the wrought-iron entrance gate, caught the shadow of a silhouette on the roof. Sniper, he thought. They had him. He wasn’t going anywhere. He walked up the flagstone path to the villa, painted a holiday pink and white, and rang the bell. A trim young woman in shorts and a U2 T-shirt opened the door.
“Signor Mangazzoni?” she said. Although she was smiling, she kept her right hand behind her, and he’d have bet serious money she was holding a gun.
“Sono Nicolo Mangazzoni.” I am Nicolo Mangazzoni. “I’m here to see Signor Fantini,” he said in his limited Italian.
“Entri prego. He’s waiting for you in the dining room,” she said, indicating the way. He walked into the dining room and found Bob Harris, looking like a Ralph Lauren ad in white slacks and a polo shirt, fiddling with a computer hookup. The dining room opened to a terrace that looked out over the trees and across the valley to the medieval town of Castelnuovo di Porto perched on the steep green hills.
“Have a drink,” Harris said, gesturing at the bottle of J&B whiskey on the terrace. Scorpion went outside, mixed himself a drink with ice and soda, and came back in.
“Nice view. You feeling nervous?”
“What do you mean?” Harris said, looking annoyed at the computer.
“The SAS team crawling all over this place. Why didn’t you take out an ad?”
“There’s a lot going on,” Harris said, raising his glass. “Cin cin.”
“Vaffanculo,” Scorpion said, putting his drink down without drinking. “Why did the DGSE detain Najla Kafoury at the Marseilles airport?”
Harris’s answer was a stunner. “They didn’t.”
“What do you mean they didn’t? Who did?”
“We’re not sure.”
“This is bullshit. Where is she?”
“We don’t know.”
“You’re becoming tiresome, Bob. At the very least, these little meetings of ours always had a certain entertainment value.”
“We’re still checking. Marseille Provence Airport security is handled by a private security firm, Société Provence National de Valeurs Mobilières. They detained her at the request of La Piscine.” He’d used the well-known term for the French foreign intelligence service, the DGSE, known in the intelligence world as the Swimming Pool because their headquarters in Paris was located next to the office of the French Swimming Federation. “They turned her over to four DGSE agents who took her away in an unmarked van, except La Piscine claims they never sent a request to hold her. Whoever took her wasn’t DGSE. The van was last seen heading up the A7 toward Cavaillon. That’s all anyone knows.”
“So the Swimming Pool doesn’t know where she is, and you guys don’t know who she is. Just out of curiosity, do you have anybody working this besides me?” Scorpion asked.
“For what it’s worth, what you provided from Utrecht was gold, plus your lead on al Jabbar, the constellation Orion, was the key that enabled NSA to break the code the Islamic Resistance is using. Rabinowich has a whole fancy explanation he’s dying to show you, if you give a damn,” Harris said. “Apparently ‘al Jabbar’ was a keyword for the code, only with the Arabic letters reversed and each letter used only once, so the keyword would be ‘RABJL,’ or whatever. The important thing is that we now know the target and when the attacks are supposed to take place.”
“So do I. The Palazzo delle Finanze, site of the EU conference to consider Israel’s application for permanent associate membership with the European Union. That’s why I came to Rome instead of Genoa.”
Harris nodded. “Exactly. Once we knew about the Zaina making an unscheduled stop in Genoa, we should’ve figured. It wasn’t just the Camorra getting the containers through customs. The Palestinian didn’t want to transport U-235 across any borders. You did a hell of a job,” Harris said, raising his glass to Scorpion and taking a sip. “Too good.”
“What happened?”
“The DNI stepped in. He says that now that we know the target cities and the date, it’s a straightforward counterterrorist op. He’s given it to the Crash and Bangers,” he said, referring to the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency. “We’re out of business.”
“Are they crazy or just totally fucking insane?” Scorpion put his drink on the table. “I’ve been hunting the Palestinian. I’ve got a feel about him. Crash and Bang won’t stop him.”
“For once, we agree. It’s Washington. The CIA and the DIA are like the Yankees versus the Red Sox. General Clayton made the case that nuclear was DIA’s baby. And I haven’t told you the really bad news.”
Scorpion went dead still, knowing instantly what it was; the loose end that had been dangling in front of him all along. All this time he’d been telling himself there was no nuclear bomb, that like Groesbeck had said, twenty-one kilos of U-235 wasn’t enough. Now he remembered something else the professor had told him: that if there were another thirty kilos of U-235, he would definitely worry.
“You’re a bird of ill omen, Bob. Now that I think of it, you always were.”
“We had a Russian source on the weaponized plague bacteria. We were able to get a sample to CDC. Turns out it’s completely resistant to all normal antibiotics, except one that’s still in development.”
“Don’t tell me. That Swiss drug company I sent you.”
“Bingo,” Harris said. “And here’s the icing on the cake. Their entire supply of antibiotics for the rest of the year has been bought out by that Muslim company in Luxembourg for transshipment.”
“Don’t tell m
e,” Scorpion said. “They’re going to send it to Tehran. This thing’s got Iranian fingerprints all over it.”
“How do you know?”
“There was a photo of the Eighth Imam’s shrine in the imam’s office in Utrecht,” Scorpion said. Harris nodded grimly.
“Speaking of Tehran,” Harris continued, “an Iranian ship, the Shiraz Se,” the Shiraz Three, Scorpion mentally translated, “sailed from Bushehr and transited the Suez Canal. She left Port Said three days ago. We have no idea where she was headed or where she is now.”
“There are nuclear reactors at Bushehr,” Scorpion observed.
“While the ship was in the Persian Gulf, a U.S. Navy patrol detected traces of radiation.” Harris took out a cigarette and lit it. “I gave up smoking fourteen years ago. I just started again,” he said, and Scorpion wondered if he was telling the truth. With Harris, you never knew.
“When were you planning on telling me?”
“We didn’t know about the Shiraz. The DIA didn’t pass it on to us. Sometimes you wonder whose side they’re on. Or maybe they didn’t think it had anything to do with what we were doing. Remember, your op was a sideshow on a strict ‘need to know’ basis. No one knew about you except you, me, Rabinowich, Rick”—he was referring to Harris’s immediate boss, Richard Haley, the director of the National Clandestine Service—“the DCIA and General Brown, the President’s National Security Advisor. That’s not all.”
“Don’t stop now. You’re on a roll.”
“Rabinowich thinks the twenty-one kilos were at ninety-plus percent, not seventy-six. The NSA picked up a COMINT from the Russian MOD. The Russkis are really scrambling. It seems our friend Checkmate may have lied when I met him in Estonia.”
“A Russian spy lying. Imagine!”
Harris took an awkward puff and exhaled, and Scorpion wondered how much of this was a show for his benefit. “I know. I keep thinking about that horrible prophetic line of Winston Churchill’s, ‘The terrible ifs accumulate.’”
“So who are the SAS teams for?” Scorpion asked, making a gesture that took in the paramilitary operatives around the safe house. “To protect you against Islamic Resistance or against the DIA?”
Harris grimaced. “Maybe against you. Look, don’t worry, you’ll be paid in full.”
“You better believe I’ll be paid in full,” Scorpion said, going out to the terrace. He added ice to his drink and looked out over the valley and the hills. The sun cast the shadow of the sniper on the roof onto a tree in front of the villa. Harris followed him out on the terrace and stood beside him.
“The worst part is we’re done. Crash and Bang’s on their way to Rome. By tomorrow they’ll be over it like white on rice. The Palestinian’s their baby.”
“They won’t stop him. They don’t know what he’s going to do, where he is, or what he looks like.”
“I know. That’s why I’m here.”
Harris waited, like a good salesman who knows the customer has to talk himself into it. He’s good, Scorpion thought. Give him that. The son of a bitch is good. “The job’s not done,” Scorpion said.
“We want you to stay on it—on your own.”
“Who’s we?”
“Rabinowich and me.”
“What about Haley?”
“He doesn’t want to know. As far as he’s concerned, we’re done. It’s DIA’s baby now. Anything you do that comes back to bite us, I’ll be the first to deny it. You’re a rogue agent, completely on your own. The official line will be that you betrayed us.”
“Completely on my own? No backup, nothing?”
“You and Rabinowich. He volunteered too.”
“I should do this why?”
“Because they’ve declared war on us. Not just us,” Harris amended. “It’s Rome, for chrissakes. It’s Western Civilization, Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn, the Sistine Chapel, though God knows, I’m a nonbelieving Catholic who hasn’t seen the inside of a church since the day as a teenager I figured out that sex with girls felt good.”
“It’s no good,” Scorpion said finally. “Crash and Bang’ll cover the palazzo, but when it comes to the Palestinian, I don’t know any more than they do.”
“That’s why I brought this setup. Line’s totally secure.” Harris gestured at the computer inside. “Rabinowich wants to talk to you.” They walked back in and Harris typed on keys and brought up a link to a Web cam showing the top of Rabinowich’s balding head as he fiddled with something on his computer. “Hey Dave, we’re here,” Harris said. Rabinowich looked up, his paunchy face looking like he hadn’t shaved in days.
“You’ve put on weight, Dave,” Scorpion said.
“It’s terrible,” Rabinowich nodded. “I just have to look at a lettuce leaf and I pack it on. You on board?”
“I need something. This guy’s a ghost. He can cross borders like he’s invisible, put together a nuclear bomb with a pocketknife, and apparently he was never born or went to school or ever had his picture taken.”
“I’ve been data mining,” Rabinowich said, taking a sip of coffee from a Star Trek mug, reminding Scorpion that Rabinowich, like a lot of nerds, was a Trekkie. “I started with the assumption that our guy’s good not just with explosives, but nuclear, so he probably had some kind of technical education, probably engineering.”
“We know he’s smart. I’ve thought all along he had a technical university background,” Scorpion said.
“Then it hit me. Suppose the ‘Palestinian’ wasn’t a code name. Suppose Budawi’s notation was a little note to himself, that he knew something about who he was going to meet that day.”
“You mean the target really is a Palestinian?”
“Say from the West Bank, Gaza, or Lebanon.”
“Lebanon,” Scorpion repeated, almost to himself.
“What about Lebanon?” Harris said.
“Nothing,” Scorpion lied, remembering that Najla had told him she was born in Lebanon. “Doesn’t prove anything. The Palestinian Diaspora is all over the world. He could’ve come from anywhere.”
“True,” Rabinowich nodded. “But based on what you dug up on the Islamic Resistance in Beirut, Damascus, Hamburg, and Utrecht, with possible links to Tehran, the Palestinian wasn’t Muslim Brotherhood. He wasn’t home-grown in Egypt; that means he came in and left on a foreign passport, almost certainly not from a Middle Eastern country.”
“Because after the attack, the Egyptians had the same clue,” Scorpion said, thinking aloud. “They would’ve been looking for a Middle Eastern male trying to leave Egypt who might be linked to the Brotherhood, or al-Qaida or Hezbollah.”
“Exactly. The next step was to cross-check the Egyptian records on every foreign male who left Egypt, no matter how or from where—anytime during the month after the Cairo attack—against the data records of every male who went to a technical university anywhere in the world within fifteen years of the attack, most likely in Europe or the U.S., in which case it was probably on an immigrant or a student visa. Where we could match names, we did, but those were of less interest since we always figured the Palestinian used a cover name on the passport in Egypt. Instead, we matched the passport records by gender and age against the college records and saw what came up.”
“That’s what took so long. I take it back, Dave,” Scorpion said.
“Take what back?”
“The number of times I’ve cursed you in my head for not doing anything. So what’ve you got?”
“Have you ever been to Karlsruhe? There’s a very fine technical university there.”
“Damn! I knew it was Germany!” Scorpion snapped.
“How?” Harris asked.
“Something Dr. Abadi said in Damascus. It kept bugging me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. At first Abadi wanted to know if I was Mossad. That was obvious. They’re paranoid about the Israelis. But then he asked me if I was BND. It was a slip on his part. Just from that I should have known the Palestinian’s base was in Germany.” Scorpion looked down
at his scotch and soda. He hadn’t stated the obvious, what was out there right in front of them. Najla Kafoury was also from Germany. There are no coincidences in this business. None, he remembered Koenig saying once. The minute you get near anything that even remotely looks like a coincidence, pull the ripcord, because you are looking at something that’s about to explode.
“What about the plague?” Scorpion asked.
“It’s the FBI’s baby now,” Rabinowich said. “They’ve got HRT teams on it.”
“We can’t do this hookup again,” Harris said to Scorpion. “From now on, you don’t exist.” He looked around. “By tomorrow this place’ll be just another summer rental.”
“What are you going to do?” Rabinowich asked Scorpion.
“What I’m being paid to do,” Scorpion said, getting up. “I’m going to kill the Palestinian.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Karlsruhe, Germany
Professor Reimert’s house was on a tree-lined street in the Oststadt district, just east of the university campus. It was nearly eight in the evening by the time Scorpion had driven to Karlsruhe from Frankfurt Airport. Reimert’s wife, Ulrike, a tall blond woman half Reimert’s age, offered him cookies and coffee in the dining room.
“Tun sie mögen Dallmayr kaffee?” she said, asking him if Dallmayr coffee was okay.
“Es ist fein. Ich bin nicht ein kenner.” It’s fine; I’m not a connoisseur, Scorpion said.
“So what makes Rabinowich imagine I would jeopardize my position at the university to do something that is possibly illegal?” Reimert said, coming in. He was tall and thin, with long gray hair, and behind his glasses his eyes were a piercing blue.
Scorpion smiled. “He says you cheat at chess.”
“Kompletter unsinn! He can’t forgive how I sacrificed my knight at F6 to beat him in an interesting queens gambit declined game we once played.”
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