secrecy laws, investigating companies headquartered there was next to impossible, even when international treaties were invoked. Farm equipment was a perfect cover for fertilizer for explosives. The sporting goods company could buy and sell as many guns and other weapons as they wanted. As for the Ukrainian shipping company, if you wanted to move something for which the logistics were almost impossible, like nuclear material or weapons from Russia, given the corruption in Russia and the Ukraine, a legitimate shipping company was perfect cover. He was so occupied, thinking and snapping photos under the lamplight, he didn’t hear Abdelhakim come in.
“You have to stop. Someone’s coming,” the Moroccan said from the doorway.
“Get rid of them,” Scorpion said, taking out the HK pistol.
“What if I can’t?” he hissed.
“Who is allowed to come into the imam’s office?”
“Only the imam and his sons,” Abdelhakim whispered, and ran toward the door. Scorpion grabbed the papers, making sure they were in the original order. He was about to put them back into the safe when he saw it: a contract in English between Baselux Pharma, Ltd., a Swiss-based pharmaceutical company, and the Bukhari Nederland-Maroc holding company. It was for the Swiss company’s entire yearly output of an experimental gram negative antibiotic, Ceftomyacole. Scorpion remembered Rabinowich on the iPod talking about the plague bacillus: “resistant to virtually every antibiotic known.” It was a holocaust they were planning-only the Islamic Resistance was planning to survive.
Scorpion heard the front door open and Abdelhakim speaking to someone. He was out of time. He stuffed the contract into his pocket, put the rest of the papers back into the safe and locked it. He had just managed to turn off the desk light and grab his backpack when he heard voices coming toward him. He was trapped.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Papendorp, Utrecht, Netherlands
The musalla prayer hall was dark. Scorpion crept into it on all fours, feeling his way across the carpeted space to the minbar, the wooden pulpit where the imam would give the sermon at Friday services. He heard Abdelhakim talking with someone, and the lights came on just as he climbed the stairs of the minbar and crouched hidden behind the podium.
“What’s happened? Where is the imam?” he heard Abdelhakim say in Arabic.
“Never mind. Go keep watch,” a man answered. Probably one of the imam’s sons, Scorpion thought. “We’ll talk in here. Keep the lights out,” the same man said to someone else, not Abdelhakim. They were standing in the middle of the empty musalla, their voices barely audible from where Scorpion was hiding.
“What about the guard?” a second man said in Fusha Arabic.
“What about him?”
“He saw my face.” His words riveted Scorpion-and there was something about this man’s voice, but he couldn’t place it.
“He’s loyal, a good Muslim.”
“Good Muslims can be turned. Show me the…” The words were lost as the voices moved toward the imam’s office, then the light in there came on.
He knew if he was to get out, this was his chance. But who didn’t want his face to be seen? The Palestinian! Was it possible? That voice! It could be the same one he’d heard on Harris’s cell phone in Karachi. It’s him! a voice screamed in his head.
He’d been given a chance in a million. It wasn’t the perfect time or place, but he had to take him out now, Scorpion decided, carefully opening his backpack and screwing the silencer onto his 9mm pistol. But he couldn’t do it from the minbar. He had to assume that both the imam’s son and the Palestinian were armed, and if they started shooting, he had little doubt what the little guard, Abdelhakim, would do with his gun. Three against one in a static position wouldn’t work. He had to move.
Scorpion crept down the steps and just started toward the imam’s office door when the lights came on in the musalla. Abdelhakim, who had just turned them on, loudly cried out, “Saadni! Help! Intruder!” and reached for his gun, his eyes filled with hatred. A tall bearded man with a turban-he had to be the imam’s son, Scorpion thought- filled the doorway of the imam’s office and aimed his gun at Scorpion, caught in the open in the middle of the musalla, while a figure behind the imam’s son ran out another door.
Scorpion whirled and fired at the imam’s son, who cried out in pain as he flattened himself behind a narrow wooden post. After faking to one side as Abdelhakim fired, the bullet missing, Scorpion jumped out on the other side and shot the Moroccan in the head, the distinctive thunk of his silencer the only sound. Then he turned back to the imam’s son, whom he’d shot in the belly. As the wounded man struggled to raise his gun, Scorpion shot him again, this time hitting him in the neck. The imam’s son dropped to his knees, blood gurgling from his throat as he toppled over.
Scorpion went over and kicked the gun away from his hand. The imam’s son lay on the carpet choking on his own blood, his eyes dimming as he watched Scorpion pick up his gun and put it in his jacket and run to the mosque door. He opened it just in time to see a black Fiat with its lights out race down the street, its tires screeching as it made the turn at the corner.
Scorpion ran out to where he had left the BMW and jumped in. He hadn’t seen the man’s face or anything more than a moving figure behind the imam’s son, but it had to be the Palestinian, he told himself as he put the BMW into gear and roared after the Fiat. There was still a lot to do at the mosque, but the Palestinian took precedence over everything he thought as he turned the corner and caught a glimpse what might have been the Fiat heading toward the roundabout.
Scorpion drove the dark streets past stores and apartment houses. The Fiat had gone around a corner, and when he turned at the same corner, the Fiat was gone. Unsure which way to go, after a moment he headed for the roundabout. Just as he entered it, he saw a black car that could have been the Fiat, only now with its lights on, coming out of the roundabout and heading toward the canal. It was moving fast, and Scorpion edged the BMW to over 130 kilometers per hour in the narrow streets, hitting the brakes as he swerved through the roundabout and raced after the Fiat as it skidded around a corner. He was starting to gain on the other car as he slid into the corner, barely missing a parked van as the Fiat made another turn and raced down the broad boulevard that led to the suspension bridge over the canal, its single pylon and wires gleaming in the lights on the bridge.
Gunning the BMW, he pulled close enough to the Fiat to see the back of the Palestinian’s head above the headrest. Scorpion picked up his pistol and held it ready as he started to pull into the lane next to the Fiat when he saw a car coming from the other direction in his lane. He hit the brakes and swerved back behind the Fiat, the BMW’s tires skidding all over the road, the car swinging wildly left and right as he fought for control, losing precious feet behind the Fiat. The two cars raced across the bridge at over a hundred miles per hour, the Fiat skidding as they came onto the Papendorp side of the canal. It had shut its lights again and was hard to see as it raced past flat farmland beside the canal. In the distance on the far side of the fields, Scorpion could see the dark rectangular shadows of office buildings in industrial parks and the distinctive oval silhouette of the Daimler building.
The light turned red at an intersection. Scorpion gunned the engine again, planning to race through it, when he caught a glimpse of a small car filled with teenagers entering the intersection. He saw their eyes going wide, their mouths open in screams he could almost hear as he hit his brakes, throwing the BMW into a violent skid that flung it sideways at an angle to avoid the collision. The car bounded up on the curb and slid into the soft earth of the field, and kicking up dirt as it came to a sudden stop. When he looked up, Scorpion could just see the shadow of the Fiat far ahead, heading for the industrial park buildings. Stepping on the gas, he drove back to the intersection, driving around the stalled car, the teenagers cursing him in Dutch as he headed down the street toward the buildings where he’d caught a glimpse of the Fiat driving into a parking garage next to an office building.
Scorpion drove carefully into the garage; the Palestinian had to know he was close behind him. Because it was night, the structure was empty except for a few cars, none of them a Fiat. He drove slowly, his eyes darting in all directions. The garage interior was dimly lit, except for an overhead light over each lane. It wasn’t till the third level, his nerves screaming at every turn, that he spotted the Fiat parked in an empty row facing the wall. Only a few other cars were parked on this level.
Scorpion stopped the BMW well away from the Fiat and got out. Using his car as a shield, he quartered the
