Hassani’s kidney as they grappled for the gun. Scorpion tried to point the gun at him, but another wristlock combined with a Sambo sidekick enabled Hassani to twist the gun away from him.
The Iranians had gotten their training from the Russians, Scorpion realized, which told him the style of countermoves he could expect. As Hassani turned the gun in his hand and aimed, Scorpion grabbed a laptop computer from a table nearby and smashed the edge of it into Hassani’s wrist, knocking the gun out of his hand, then smashing it into the side of his neck, knocking Hassani sideways. Scorpion combined it with a leg sweep that took him down.
He jumped on top of Hassani then, smashed the edge of the laptop down into Hassani’s face, breaking his nose and knocking out teeth. Hassani’s mouth was bleeding, but he managed to grab the side of the laptop and twist it, putting his left leg behind Scorpion’s neck then bringing his right leg up to the front of Scorpion’s neck in a Sambo leg chokehold.
Unable to breathe, Scorpion knew he had to do something quickly or he’d be unconscious in about ten seconds. He tried to countertwist the laptop while hammering his fist into Hassani’s groin. Hassani screamed but was strong enough to hold on with his leg chokehold. Scorpion felt himself starting to black out. He groped with his hand, at first missing, then grabbed Hassani’s testicles and squeezed, ripping at them as hard as he could. An unearthly animal scream came from Hassani and suddenly the chokehold was broken. As Scorpion pulled back, gasping for air, Hassani somehow managed to roll away and stagger to his feet, bent over in agony.
“Khara Yahud!” he gasped, calling Scorpion a dirty Jew and groaning in pain as he picked up a wooden chair. Scorpion realized that Hassani assumed Scorpion was what he most feared: Israeli Mossad.
“Ana min Amreeka, ibn el metanaka,” Scorpion said as Hassani smashed the chair at him. I’m an American, you son of a bitch. He tried to block the chair with his forearms, but it knocked him back. He stumbled on a ripple in the carpet and fell backward, his head banging against the side of a marble fireplace. The world began to tilt. Dazed, Scorpion managed to roll to the side as Hassani lifted the chair and smashed it onto the marble fireplace base, cracking it. He ripped away one of the wooden legs. Using it as a club, Hassani pounded down at Scorpion’s head. Scorpion tried to block him, grunting as each blow stunned his arms with agonizing pain. He knew he couldn’t use his arms much longer.
Hassani dropped down on top of Scorpion and jabbed the chair leg at his eyes. Scorpion just managed to parry it and grab Hassani’s wrist, holding on to try to go into a Kimura. Hassani, face contorted in agony and rage, understood what Scorpion was trying to do and put his hand around Scorpion’s back, his knuckle digging into Scorpion’s kidney. Gasping in pain, Scorpion countered by going into the Brazilian move, sitting up as best he could, sliding his right arm to the side and around the back of Hassani’s neck and into a guillotine chokehold that he secured with his left hand grabbing his right and squeezing Hassani’s neck. He completed the move by crossing his feet around Hassani’s torso and pressing down with his crossed feet while pulling up with his arms, tightening the choke.
Hassani struggled furiously, his left hand pounding at Scorpion’s face and banging his head against the marble as Scorpion tightened the chokehold on his neck with every fiber of his strength. For a second Scorpion almost blacked out, and then he felt Hassani weaken. Hassani punched him in the eye, but it was weak, almost a push, and then Scorpion felt Hassani go slack. Tightening his grip with his last bit of strength, he hung on, counting to thirty, and then let go, utterly exhausted.
Putting his fingers to Hassani’s neck, he checked for a pulse. There was none. He’d thought he would feel some sense of triumph, but he was so exhausted he could feel nothing.
He rolled over, his legs still around Hassani, then got up and went through Hassani’s pockets, finding another cell phone, a contact number on the screen. It had been damn close, he thought. His hands shaking, he just had time to remove the SIM chips from both cell phones so they couldn’t be used, when a heavily armed squad of real Carabinieri came into the room and placed him under arrest.
L ate that night, his face and clothes still stained with Hassani’s blood, Scorpion was taken in handcuffs from his jail cell and put into a windowless police van. When the van stopped, they led him out to a piazza bordered by a large multistory building, lit ghostly white by floodlights. The area was surrounded by armed Carabinieri, their hands on their guns as the polizia led him toward the building.
“What place is this?” he asked one of the policemen.
“Il Palazzo Chigi,” the guardia replied. “That is the Colonna of Marcus Aurelius,” he said, pointing to a marble column in the center of the piazza. They led him past the towering column, into the palazzo building and up to the Italian prime minister’s office.
“Buona sera! The man of the hour, lo Scorpione,” said a tanned middle-aged man in shirtsleeves and tie, seated behind the desk. Moretti and Bob Harris and another man in a dark suit, who looked like an aide to the prime minister, were also in the room.
“Take the handcuffs off him,” Moretti said in Italian to the two policemen who had come in with Scorpion. One of the guardia fumbled for a moment and then unlocked the cuffs. Moretti gestured for them to go, and they both immediately left the large ornate room.
“Please, sit,” the prime minister said, gesturing to Scorpion. “You like cigar? It is Cubano.” He nodded to his aide, who held out an open box of expensive cigars from the prime minister’s desk.
“Grazie,” Scorpion said, picking out one of them. He waited while the aide lit it for him. “Didn’t know you were in Rome, Bob.” Seeing Harris gave him a bad feeling. All through this mission, there had been the thought in the back of his mind that, as always, Harris was dealing from the bottom of the deck, and that he would be the one to pay the tab.
“I was in London coordinating with MI6, the AISE,” Harris said, gesturing to Moretti, “and some of the other services, when I heard what happened. I want you to know, the DNI is very pleased. He’s approved your bonus. He’s convinced keeping you under deep cover on the Palestinian op was his idea and is citing this success as a result of cooperation between the DIA, NSA, and CIA that he implemented.”
“In Italy, it is the same. The big fish takes the credit,” Moretti said.
“As it should be,” the prime minister said. “But we in this room know the truth. This man,” pointing at Scorpion, “saved many lives-and the honor of the Italian nation. I am curious. How did you know that the Palestino was coming in a truck disguised as a camion di Carabinieri?”
“You had to look at it from Hassani’s point of view,” Scorpion said. “His problem was how to get past the barriers of the polizia in order to attack the conference. When I recognized him on the TV with la donna inglese, I couldn’t figure out why he would risk his entire operation just to attend a street demonstration. And then it hit me. He needed a symbol, like a female victim of the polizia, to ensure that there would be violent demonstrations the day of the conference, so the polizia at the barricades wouldn’t question the necessity of a Carabinieri truck coming through with reinforcements.”
“Why didn’t you give us the photograph and let the AISE and the Carabinieri try to find him?” the aide asked.
“It would have alerted him. He could have detonated the bomb remotely anytime. We had to get him and the bomb together,” Scorpion said.
“Generale Lombardi of the Carabinieri and I came to the same conclusion,” Moretti put in. “The only place where both the Palestino and the bomb would be at the same time was at the Congresso.”
“A dangerous strategy,” the prime minister said, looking at Moretti.
“Ours is a dangerous business, Prime Minister,” Harris said. “Happily, there’s more good news. Thanks to the lead on the English girl-Welsh, actually-and you won’t be surprised to learn that the photograph of her covered with blood and beaten by the Italian police was a fake.”
“Of course. This I knew all the time,” the prime minister snapped.
“We were able to round up most of the Islamic Resistance network. The young woman was a pawn. She didn’t know she was being used by the Palestinian.”
“She lied about the beatings. We must investigate. Arturo, make a note,” the prime minister said to his aide.
“Of course, Prime Minister,” Harris said. “You’ll have to work that out with the British, although you may want to wait till after Scotland Yard is done. She is cooperating with them. She gave them the lead that her girlfriend- English, named Liz-was Hassani’s girlfriend, and that before they came to Rome, Liz and Hassani had been staying with jihadis in Turin. After that, it was just a matter of tracking down all the foreigners and Muslim jihadi types who had been in Turin at that time, with I must say a great deal of help from the AISE and the Carabinieri.” He gestured
