“An Iranian ship called the Shiraz Se just left the Ekateringofskiy port. She may have unloaded an atomic device. This is not business as usual and it involves more than the FSB.”
“An atomic bomb, no less. Beautiful women who disappear. The CIA. You do weave stories, Mr. McDonald; no doubt not your real name. And how do I know this is true, instead of a rare form of insanity, baiting me this way?”
“Because you’ll check me out with your contacts in the FSB and you’ll kill me if I’m lying. Probably painfully,” Scorpion said, standing up. He reached over, took a pen off Vasiliev’s desk and wrote something on a slip of paper.
“You cannot imagine,” Vasiliev said, looking at him as if memorizing his face.
“This is my cell phone number,” Scorpion said, handing him the paper. “Call me when you have something. Oh, and tell your byki to give me back my gun. It has sentimental value. Checkmate himself gave it to me,” he added as he went to the door.
“You don’t seem the sentimental type.”
“I’m not,” Scorpion shot back as the door slid open.
Outside, coming to the edge of the line of trees, he spotted the Coffee House in a clearing next to a lake. It was a rectangular building that looked like a nobleman’s summer house from the time of the tsars. The house was closed and the clearing empty; the only sound the water dripping from the trees. He saw something move near the edge of the clearing, and through the underbrush spotted the barely visible silhouette of a man hidden in the foliage, kneeling in a shooting position, rifle aimed at the clearing. Najla had been with two men, and there might well be more, he thought, studying the trees. His eyes scanned the same spot three times before he saw another man, well camouflaged and wearing night goggles, holding a pistol with a silencer. Fortunately, the man was looking at the clearing and not at him. They hadn’t expected him to come from this direction. Although in this light he couldn’t be sure, he thought he recognized the man with the night goggles as one of the Iranians at the club. He had to assume at least two, possibly more, in the ambush. And where was Najla? If he shot one of the gunmen, the other would take him out. He would have to take one out quietly and then try to get the other.
Scorpion put his pistol back in the holster at the small of his back. He crept forward on all fours toward the first man; silently, only his fingers and toes touching the soft ground. He could smell the wet earth. The man ahead of him was holding what looked like an AK-104, a compact version of the AK-47. The trick was how to come at him silently from behind without the man turning the rifle around.
He moved close enough to see the Iranian breathe, and then launched himself out of his crouch, the man already starting to turn around at the sound. Scorpion got him in a choke lock with his right hand while grabbing and breaking the man’s trigger finger with a sudden twist with his left hand. The Iranian gasped, the sound choked off by the choke hold, as Scorpion did the Krav Maga wrist lock to twist the rifle away. The Iranian countered by smashing back with his elbow at Scorpion’s head, causing him to drop the choke hold, switching into a wrist lock to force the Iranian to his knees. The man cried out in pain, “Son of a bitch!” in English.
Scorpion wondered what was going on as he stepped over the Iranian and bent his left leg at the knee, catching the man, who was struggling furiously, in a leg choke hold to his neck. Kneeling down, he applied the choke pressure with his weight through the crook of his knee.
“Are you American?” Scorpion asked. He could feel the man try to nod yes and was about to release him when he heard the soft pfffft of silenced shots. The man sagged, suddenly dead weight. Scorpion dived behind his body as silenced bullets thunked into the man’s body and the tree he’d been hiding behind. He grabbed the AK-104 and was about to shout “Don’t shoot!” when automatic weapon fire with the unmistakable staccato sound of AK- 47s opened on his position from two different directions. What the hell? he wondered again as he rolled behind a tree and came to his feet, hidden behind it. It sounded like one of the shooters was moving, getting closer. He had to get out of here.
He began running in a zigzag pattern, using the trees for cover. A bullet ripped a spray of wood from a tree next to his leg as he passed it. Still running, he pointed the AK-104 back and fired an automatic three-shot burst, then leaped to the side to avoid a burst of return fire at the spot from where he’d fired. Panting, he broke out of the trees and onto a path. Knowing he couldn’t stay in the open for more than a few seconds, he threw himself behind a statue of a female nude in a gap in a hedge beside the path. He rolled into a prone firing position with the AK-104, panting for breath and struggling to hold the rifle still. A shadow emerged from behind a tree and he fired a full burst at it. The shadow went down, and before it hit the ground Scorpion was up and running again. He ran out the park gate and across the street bridge over the canal, then down a side street, where he broke into a parked car and jump-started it. He drove around the block to make sure they weren’t on his tail yet and abandoned the car on a street near the Metro station, leaving the rifle in the trunk.
He descended what seemed an endless escalator, looking back up behind him all the way down, his hand near his gun in the holster at the small of his back. The city of Saint Petersburg is built on swampland, and because of it, the subway is the deepest in the world-some of the stations were used as bomb shelters during World War Two, when the besieged city was called Leningrad-and it seemed forever till the escalator reached the platform, where he watched the entrance. If anyone came from the park, it was essential he get a shot off first. He waited, every nerve straining, but only an old tired-looking babushka came. At last a train pulled in. Scorpion waited till the few people who were on the platform boarded. As it pulled out again, he walked to the underground passageway to the Nevsky Prospekt station and took the long escalator back up to the street.
He walked back to his hotel and went back up to his room, washed his hands and face, looked at himself in the mirror and tried to understand what had just happened. He wondered if he’d imagined the dead Iranian saying “Son of a bitch” in English, because if he had heard it, nothing made any sense. But he knew he had, and that meant everything he thought he understood about the mission was wrong.
He went to his laptop computer and turned it on. The software Ivanov had given him and the GPS tracking were working perfectly, as though he were living in a rational universe. It was superimposed on a street map of the city. The transmitter he had slipped into Najla’s Burberry pocket when he bumped into her at the club showed that she was stationary at a location in the Narvskaya area near the port complex in the western part of the city.
After changing his clothes and checking his gun, Scorpion caught a taxi outside the hotel. Najla had set him up, he decided as the taxi drove through the city, the sky already starting to lighten in the east with the predawn. He no longer had a choice. He would get to the bottom of things or he would have to kill her.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Narvskaya, Saint Petersburg, Russia
The warehouse was a gray building that seemed to blend into the gray dawn sky. It was near the port, with its smell of the sea and diesel fuel and machinery. There were no lights in any of the windows, only exterior lights, and Scorpion wondered if he had gotten lucky and they were all asleep. There were security alarms and cameras over the main and side doors, but they were old-fashioned single-circuit setups that shouldn’t present any problems.
Keeping to the shadows across the street from the warehouse, he walked around the building. Apart from the main door and the loading dock, there was a side entrance and, in back, a fire escape that led down from the roof with no security cameras. He decided to go in that way. He looked toward the port and then down the empty street toward Prospekt Stachek, where he’d had the taxi drop him off. The drizzle had stopped and there was a thin ribbon of blue on the horizon. It was going to be a nice day. He wondered if he would live to see it.
Checking around one last time, he pulled down the ladder of the fire escape and climbed up to the roof, taking care to make as little noise as possible. Passing a second story window, he peered inside, but it was dark and it didn’t look like there was anyone about. He went up on the roof and looked around 360 degrees. From up there he could see the gantry cranes of the port and the Gulf of Finland. It reminded him of Karachi, where he had started this mission. It seemed a thousand years ago. Back then, there hadn’t been anyone he cared about. Now there was, and he was on his way to kill her.
Scorpion tried the metal roof door, but it was locked. He used his universal key with a tap of his gun to open it. The door was rusty and hard to move. It creaked as he forced it open, and he froze at the sound, listening intently, his gun ready. He thought he heard something but wasn’t sure. He tiptoed carefully down iron stairs to an
