The “one-two” or the “Twelfth Imam,” was Muhammad al-Mahdi, the “Mahdi,” or Messiah. According to the Shi’a Muslims, he was born in 869 AD and supposedly never died. When he comes out of hiding, he’s supposed to wield the Sword of God and kill the unbelievers on Judgment Day. There were many among the top leadership in Tehran who were “Twelvers,” as believers in the Twelfth Imam were called, and the Iranian government had even built special new boulevards in Tehran and in the holy city of Qom for the Mahdi to enter the city. Still, he wondered if Rabinowich had lost it, because it made no sense. Unless he was suggesting that somehow blowing up Saint Petersburg was to fulfill the prophecy.
Then it hit him. Saint Petersburg was Russia’s main port. It was where the Iranian ship came in, but that didn’t mean it was the final destination. What about Moscow? What would happen if they smuggled the bomb from Saint Petersburg to Moscow?
Russia was a top-down society. Always had been. If the head were decapitated, what was left might retaliate against the U.S. or Europe, unless the Russians knew it was the Iranians. They certainly wouldn’t believe anything the Americans would say. It was insane, but those conditions would exactly fulfill the Twelfth Imam prophecy. And even if it didn’t, there would be a free-for-all in the Ekaterinburg oblast. Whoever had guns and money could get anything they wanted, including the nuclear weapons and missiles. It would be a game changer. Except it was crazy, he thought. Even most Shi’ites didn’t believe the Twelfth Imam was on his way. Except he could almost hear Rabinowich saying, “Sure, it’s wacky, but remember, a lot of otherwise perfectly rational people believe Jesus is coming back any day now too.”
On the airport lounge TV, the German news announcer was talking about terrorist actions in the United States. The two killed in New York. No mention of bioweapons. In Chicago, a Pakistani college student had been taken into custody. It was suspected that an explosion in Los Angeles was related to a terrorist group linked to al- Qaida. After all he had supplied, alerting the NSA to the al Jabbar code, how in hell could an explosion have happened in L.A.?
Watching the German TV news made him think with a pang of Najla, and he returned to the main question: Who was she working for? For Harris on an op that Harris didn’t want him to know about, or for the Iranians? And why?
Whatever was going on, the answer was in Saint Petersburg.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Saint Petersburg, Russia
The prisoner’s hands were bound and chained to a beam from which he hung naked, like a side of beef, his toes dangling above the cell floor. His head hung loosely from his neck, the face bruised and swollen, and there were red marks on his torso where he had been beaten. The two interrogators, hefty FSB types, attached electrodes to his genitals. One of the interrogators sat down and turned a dial, and the man screamed, his body and bound feet jerking wildly until the electricity stopped and the other interrogator went over and slapped him in the face and asked him something.
Watching it through one-way, soundproof glass, Scorpion said, “We’ve found these methods are iffy in the way of real information, and that’s even before it leaks and the media and the politicians go crazy.”
Ivanov shrugged. “He’s Chechen. Of the Daikhoi teip. They’re tough, these Chechens. To them, a beating is like how you say hello. He won’t tell us anything. We think he’s from a cell of SPIR, the Chechen terrorist group. This,” gesturing at the Chechen writhing and crying out as the current ravaged his privates, “is just for show so he thinks he’s resisted us. Later we give him a shot. We tell him it’s a truth drug, but it’s really just a barbiturate. Once he’s unconscious, we endoscopically insert a tiny tracking transmitter and attach it to the inside of his stomach. In the morning, when he wakes up, we let him go. He doesn’t know we’ve done anything and we don’t have to put surveillance on him or anything. The bug is GPS-based. We can track exactly where he is every second on a laptop computer. Over the course of a week or two he will lead us to his associates, and when we’re ready, we pick them all up.”
“I could use one of those,” Scorpion said.
“Ladno.” Sure. “I’ll see that you get it before you leave. Just don’t use it on one of my people.”
“Tell your people to stay the hell out of my way.”
“Izvinitye, but you aroused our curiosity. Come,” Ivanov said, leading him away from the one-way glass. They walked down a concrete corridor to a steel prison door. Ivanov tapped on the thick door glass and a guard opened it and they stepped into a tiled corridor. They climbed a steel staircase and Ivanov led him to an office with a window that looked out over the Neva River. It was a cool, gray day. Dark clouds were bundled over the buildings along the river, the water dark as the clouds. Ivanov sat down behind the desk wearing the well-tailored suit of a senior apparatchik in the New Russia. He had cold intelligent eyes behind steel-rimmed glasses, his hair iron-gray, and he looked fit for a man in his sixties.
“I’m borrowing this office while I’m in Saint Petersburg. Pozhalsta,” please, he said, gesturing for Scorpion to sit down as an aide came in and put a bottle of vodka and two glasses on the desk. Ivanov filled both glasses to the brim. “This is Stolichnaya Elit. The best. The other Stolichnayas are govno shit. Na sdarovy,” he toasted, raising his glass.
“Budem zdorovy,” Scorpion toasted back. “I’m flattered at the attention.”
This wasn’t the reception he’d expected when they picked him up outside the Astoria Hotel, the black Mercedes sedan swerving to cut off the taxi he just got into, the four tough-looking types who surrounded the taxi, showing him and the driver their guns. He’d gotten into the backseat, sandwiched between two beefy men with the universal look of cops, without any idea who they were or how they’d ID’d him. At first he wasn’t sure if they were FSB or Russian mafia. When he saw the grim red brick prison, he’d expected to be treated more like the poor Chechen bastard whose gonads were being used to complete an electrical circuit. It never occurred to him that Checkmate, Vladimir Ivanov himself, would have come all the way from Moscow just to see him.
“You are too modest, Scorpion. We heard about the Palestinian. My congratulations. As I told your Mr. Harris, we have an interest in this matter.”
“He’s not my Gospodin Harris.”
“So. That is interesting,” Ivanov said, studying him intently. “But I don’t believe you as a double. That would take more than electrodes on your testicles to convince me. I understand New York, but why did the Palestinian also choose Rome?”
“The EU Conference and the Israelis. Cradle of Western civilization. The Vatican, home of Christianity. Take your pick. Maybe they don’t like pasta.”
“Maybe they don’t. So the operation is over. Backs are slapped, champagne corks are popped, politicians and senior officials like myself who had nothing to do with it take the credit. As Voltaire says, all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds. So what is the Scorpion doing in Saint Petersburg?”
“How’d you find me?”
“You’re concerned there’s a mole in the Company? You wouldn’t expect the truth from me on something like that?”
“I wouldn’t expect the truth from you on anything,” Scorpion said, suspecting Ivanov was just fishing with his talk of a mole. The only people on earth who knew he was coming to Russia were him, the Italians, and Rabinowich. It could have been Moretti or one of the Carabinieri, but he didn’t think so, and he knew Dave wouldn’t have betrayed him. How’d they find him?
“Can’t you guess?” Ivanov teased.
It had to be something obvious, Scorpion thought. To get a Russian visa, he’d provided a photograph, and as they required a local address in Saint Petersburg, he’d made reservations at the Astoria Hotel in the center of town, so if they knew who he was, it would have been easy for them to pick him up. But how did they know who he was and what he looked like? Who could have seen him and taken a photograph without him knowing? Unbidden, an image floated up of a man in shorts and a gaudy shirt watering flowers in a rented villa. Harris! That son of a bitch! Either Harris had sold him out or the safe house in Castelnuovo wasn’t safe.
“You were looking for me. You had a picture of me from Italy and you had software matching it to my visa photograph, probably matching visas from every Russian embassy and consulate in Europe. You went to a lot of
