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 mogen 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.”

“They play online,” Ulrike explained. “Sometimes I think the neighbors will hear Gerhard cursing. They’re incorrigible, those two.” She shook her head.

“He is the cheater! I wrote a computer program to track his moves, and even when I show him, he denies them. For a time I thought a mind like his is a waste in your Amerikanisch Commerce Department till I realized that he was undoubtedly CIA. Tell him his secret is no longer safe. The next time he cheats at chess, I will publish his true identity on the Internet. As for you, you are no doubt a CIA agent as well,” Reimert said, leaning forward.

“We need your help. It’s important and it’s urgent,” Scorpion told him.

“Yes. Rabinowich said it was, how do you say ‘bevorzugung’ auf Englisch?” he asked Ulrike.

“A favor.”

“That’s it. He asked for a favor. So why don’t you go to the Bundespolizei or the Bundesnachrichtendienst? Why come to me?”

“We don’t have time. And there are other reasons,” Scorpion said.

“You mean you don’t trust the BND.”

“If I don’t get your help tonight, people will die.”

“Why should I, a German, trust the CIA, whom many people despise, over the German authorities?”

“This is not our business,” Ulrike said, pouring the coffee.

“It is,” Scorpion replied. “The reputation of the university is at stake. Believe me, you don’t want the authorities involved at this stage. Please, come with me to the campus now. See with your own eyes. If I’m lying, call the Bundespolizei.”

“You say this involves terroristen?”

“These are Muslims?” she asked.

“Most likely,” Scorpion said.

“One tries to be open-minded. Many of them are good students, decent people. Still…” Reimert said, looking at his wife, who was looking at Scorpion in a way that gave him the impression she was comparing Scorpion to him. Reimert stood up. “As a professor, I have the right to look at student files. Therefore, I am doing nothing illegal. You won’t tell me what this is about?” he asked.

“Better if you don’t know.”

“Better for whom?” Ulrike said, carrying the coffee cups to the kitchen.

“For everyone, especially you two. Whatever happens, don’t tell anyone about this.”

“You mean better for you,” she said, coming back in.

“No, better for you. I know you think we Americans are all paranoid, but there are some very dangerous people out there.”

“We’ll go. But only because I’m curious,” she said, pulling on a leather jacket and handing a windbreaker to Reimert. “It’s not because I believe you. I don’t. If it is not as you say, we will call the Bundespolizei.”

Reimert drove them onto the campus and parked near a modernist multistory building of glass, metal, and

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