“Does not the Sura, the Cow, say: ‘Be steadfast in prayer; practice regular charity; and bow down your heads with those who bow down,’” Scorpion said, quoting from the Qu’ran. “Yet you haven’t been to salat at the mosque in a month. What happened a month ago? It was this man, wasn’t it?” He tapped Hassani’s face on the cell phone screen.
“No, it wasn’t,” Badoui said in a strangled voice.
“What happened a month ago?”
“Nothing. My wife, she doesn’t like that mosque.”
“Why not? Should we call her in?”
“Leave her out of this,” Badoui said.
“He wanted shaheedin to commit terrorism,” Scorpion said, tapping the cell phone, “and you didn’t want to. Isn’t that right? He warned you to tell no one or he’d kill you. Did he threaten your family as well?”
“I don’t want any part of this.”
“You won’t be. I promise. And I will keep my word, as is the hadith of the Prophet, rasul sallahu alayhi wassalam, peace be upon him, ‘The Prophet ordered us to help others to fulfill oaths.’ What did you see? Did he kill someone?”
Badoui stared at him, his eyes wide.
“You saw it, didn’t you?”
Badoui nodded. “I saw him kill two men. One was only a boy. It meant nothing to him, like swatting a fly. He let me go and told me never to come back and to say nothing.”
“You were afraid. I understand. This was at the warehouse, wasn’t it? Did you ever go back?”
Badoui hesitated, then said, “No.”
“You went back, didn’t you?” Scorpion asked. Badoui didn’t say anything. Scorpion took out money and counted out ten hundred-euro notes and put them on the coffee table.
“What’s that?” Badoui asked.
“I want to help you, min fadlak, please. You have a baby. Keep the money. No one will know. In a minute I’ll go and you will never see me again. What happened?”
Badoui didn’t answer. He looked at the money and at Scorpion. Then he took the money. “My wife,” he said. “She is a friend of the wife of Jamal, one of those who was with this man. We called the man ‘Mejdan.’ Jamal hadn’t come home or called in days and she was worried. My wife was pestering me, as she does, talking about how maybe Jamal had a woman and was thinking of divorce. She was making me crazy, so I took an hour away from work and went to the warehouse last week. It was very strange.”
“What did you see?”
“Jamal was there with Hicham, another of the group. He is a sanitation worker. They were with a woman and they had a metal coffin. I thought it was to get rid of the body of one of the men Mejdan killed.”
Scorpion sat up. An aluminum coffin could be used to transport a uranium bomb. It would be perfect to house the gun mechanism that Professor Groesbeck had described to him in Utrecht. As for the woman, even before he asked the question, he knew what Badoui would say.
“Describe the woman.”
“Beautiful, like a supermodel. She was wearing a suit with a skirt. It looked expensive.”
“Was she an Arab?”
“Yes. Her hair was blond, but she was an Arab. If you saw her, believe me, you would remember her.” I believe you, Scorpion thought. I can’t get her out of my mind. The only change was that Najla had dyed her hair blond.
“Did they say anything?”
“They were startled when they saw me. I told Jamal to call or go see his wife because my wife was driving me crazy, and they laughed. I left quickly. I don’t think they wanted me there.”
“No, of course,” Scorpion said, getting up. “Shokran and don’t be afraid. Mejdan is dead. He was one of those killed in Rome. I’m sure you’ve seen it on the television. As for my visit tonight, this conversation never happened. I was never here.”
“Tell that to my wife,” Badoui said, walking Scorpion to the door.
In the taxi back to his hotel Scorpion called the Carabinieri lieutenant, Giorgio. He told Giorgio what he needed and to call him when they had something.
In the morning, after working out and cleaning up, he was having breakfast in the hotel, near a window overlooking the red-tiled roofs and the imposing spire of the Mole, the city’s landmark, when Giorgio called.
“E Giorgio. You must to come at once.”
“Where are you?” Scorpion asked.
“The airport.”
“I’m on my way,” Scorpion said. Within an hour he was sitting with Giorgio and two of his men, looking at videos from airport security cameras on a closed circuit monitor.
“We do as you suggest,” Giorgio said. “We get the videos of the woman from the German television. We take into account what you said, that she become a blond,” he explained as they sped through a video, people moving in a blur till one of the Carabinieri said something and they slowed it down.
Scorpion studied the screen intently. He watched people standing in lines and going by and then saw her at the Lufthansa ticket counter, only as Badoui had said, she was a long-haired blonde, and he wasn’t sure it was her. Then she turned and headed toward the security check, and as soon as he saw her face, he was certain. It was Najla.
“The video is from three nights ago,” Giorgio said. “She was taking a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt, traveling on a German passport in the name of ‘Brynna Escher.’”
“Was Frankfurt the final destination?” Scorpion asked, keeping his voice calm, trying to ignore what the sight of her stirred up in him.
Giorgio shook his head. “In transit. Frankfurt to Saint Petersburg, and she wasn’t alone.”
“Oh?”
“She was traveling with a body. Claimed it was her brother, Pyotr. Had all the correct paperwork. They X-ray it of course. There was definitely a body inside. Have no idea who. Nobody open it. People don’t like to disturb coffins.”
“Did they scan it for radiation?”
“No. You think it have-” Scorpion pulled him aside, looking at the other two Carabinieri, before Giorgio could say more.
“Whatever you’re thinking, stop,” he whispered. “Say nothing to no one except Moretti. No one else, capisce?”
“You go to Saint Petersburg?” Giorgio whispered back. Scorpion nodded. “I wish I could go with you.”
“Grazie — a tutti,” Scorpion said to all of them.
He went to the Lufthansa counter and booked the next flight via Frankfurt to Saint Petersburg. What the hell was going on? he wondered, waiting for his flight. It made no sense. He didn’t need the ship, the Shiraz Se, to see this thing had Iranian fingerprints all over it. Someone with very deep pockets had spent a lot of money to fund the Palestinian’s operation. Just the cost of the enriched uranium could have cost millions. So of all the places in the world, why would the Islamic Resistance, which, like the rest of Hezbollah, had to be funded by Iran, want to attack the Russians, their primary supplier for nuclear material, technology, and missiles? He had the sense he’d had much earlier in the mission, of being in the middle of a battle while in a fog, not knowing who or where the different opponents were or even what game they were playing. The only thing he knew was that Najla was in Saint Petersburg, and for a moment he could almost feel her body next to his, as though back in that hotel room in Amsterdam.
He was sitting in the transit lounge in Frankfurt when the text message came in. He didn’t recognize the phone number it came from, but it was a scrambled text so he knew it was Rabinowich using the Vigenere code. He drew a Vigenere Square on a piece of paper he got from the lounge bartender and it didn’t take long to unscramble the text. After decryption, it read in clear text: gondolashirazsest-peteonetwoimam. “Gondola” meant Venice, so the message was urgent. The Iranian ship, the Shiraz Se, was in Saint Petersburg, stpete, and again he wondered why on earth Iran would want to attack Russia. It was crazy. The answer had to be the last thing Rabinowich had sent, because onetwoimam was another matter, and it was apocalyptic.
