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 cafe 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 petasse 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
