Allah's Scorpion (9 page)

Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Allah's Scorpion

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“I’ve heard the offer,” McGarvey said. “Now get on with it, Otto. What’d you bring for me?”

“Nine months ago NSA began picking up references to something called Allah’s Scorpion, buried in a couple of Islamic Internet sites. Nobody knew what it meant, but we started to get the idea that it might refer to another al-Quaida strike. Possibly here in the United States, possibly elsewhere.”

“We’ve been getting those kinds of signals for a long time,” McGarvey said. “But there’s been no way of quantifying any of them; telling which one is real and which one is pure fantasy.”

“But the chatter has been pretty consistent, Mac,” Otto said. He was starting to vibrate. “Over the past few months the talk has spread to just about every Islamic Web site, sat phone, and courier network that we’ve got handles on. Allah’s Scorpion is al-Quaida, we’re pretty sure of that. And we think it’ll be another sea operation. They might try to hijack a ship, take on a cargo and hit us, or our interests, somewhere in the world.”

“Come on, Otto, you guys know that the real key is bin Laden,” McGarvey said. When he’d been DCI he’d gone over the same argument with the White House almost on a daily basis. The president had agreed, in principle, but the Company had never been given real marching orders.
Find bin Laden, but don’t make waves; we have enough on our plate in the Arab world as it is.

Otto’s head bobbed up and down. “We’re looking for him, Mac. Big-time. Honest injun. But right now we’ve got this problem to deal with, and we think it’s become immediate.”

“They’d need a crew.”

“Two days ago an al-Quaida strike force broke into Camp Delta down at Gitmo, and tried to spring five Iranian prisoners,” Otto said. “They didn’t get out of there, in fact when they knew they were cornered, the al-Quaida guys killed the Iranians, and then blew themselves up.”

“Navy?”

“Bingo,” Otto said. “But they would need a captain. Someone who really knew what he was doing. And the good news is that there just ain’t that many guys out there, on the loose, or buyable, who’d go to work for bin Laden.”

“Have you come up with a short list?”

“As of yesterday morning, six guys,” Otto said. He was excited. “But on the way down I narrowed it to one strong possibility. Guy by the name of Rupert Graham, ex–British Royal Navy, till he got kicked out over some
issues stemming from his wife’s death. Abuse of power. Excessive use of force. Poor judgment, leading to several international incidents that were embarrassing to the government.”

“Continue.”

“Until eighteen months ago we think he was pirating in the South China Sea,” Otto said. “And doing a bang-up job of it. Of course that’s mostly speculation, nothing could ever be proved against him.” Otto got up on the tabletop and sat on his legs, something he did when he was superexcited. “He dropped almost totally out of sight, but the Brits, who’ve got him on a watch list, may have spotted him in Karachi eight months ago, and Islamabad two months after that.”

“Bin Laden?”

“It’s a thought, Mac,” Otto said. “But best of all Graham might have been seen in Mexico City last week. One of our guys, spotting flights to and from Havana, shared the pictures with Gordon Guthrie, the MI6 chief of station there. Looked like a match.”

“So Mr. Graham gets around,” McGarvey said.

“You don’t get it, Mac,” Otto said. “He flew down to Maracaibo three days ago.”

“Oil tankers,” McGarvey said.

“Security is pretty tight in the lake. It’d be tough for an imposter to talk his way aboard a ship, and then convince the crew to sail it out of there for him. But the Venezuelan currency has taken a dump. Could be he’s shopping for a crew.”

“Has Venezuelan intelligence been notified?” McGarvey asked.

“On the back burner,” Otto said. “They’ve tightened security, but that’s about it. Al-Quaida isn’t their fight.”

How many times had he been called to arms like this? Dozens, and yet he could remember each and every incident as if it was the only one.

“You’d have limited cooperation down there from their Central Intelligence Division,” Otto went on. “They made it very clear to me that they didn’t want to get involved, but they won’t get in your way. In fact, your passport won’t even be stamped. You’ll never have been there.”

No coastal city on the planet would be safe. And it came down to one man—as it almost always had.

“Find him for us, Mac,” Otto said. “Take him out. We’ve got no one else who can do the job. If a guy like Graham gets his hands on a ship, even with
a minimum crew, he could get to within spitting distance of New York, Washington, Miami, anywhere, and set off a dirty nuclear weapon, or even lob a missile into the heart of downtown.” Otto shrugged. “Could be done, ya know.”

The difficult part would be explaining to Katy why he had to do it. Only this time he was going to finish the job once and for all. He would stop Graham, but afterwards he would find bin Laden and put a bullet in the man’s brain.

EIGHT

APURTO DEVLÁN,
WESTERN CARIBBEAN

Alone in his quarters Rupert Graham replaced the slide on his Steyr GB, clicking it home, and pressing the muzzle cap against its spring until it latched in place. With the pistol cleaned and reassembled, he methodically reloaded three magazines of ammunition, slid one into the handle of the gun, and the other two into the pocket of his dark jacket hanging in the closet.

“There must never be mercy for the infidel until our
jihad
is finished,” bin Laden said to him in the beginning. “It is something you might not understand.”

“But I’m an infidel,” Graham had responded. Eighteen months ago he did not care if he lived or died. “Does that mean I shall be killed?”

“We all die when Allah wants us,” bin Laden said indulgently. “For now you are an instrument of His Messenger.”

It was a lot of bleeding bullshit, only now that he was in the middle of a mission, he didn’t want to die. He wanted to continue with the fight; stick it to the bastards, and keep sticking it to them. He lowered his head and closed his eyes for a moment.

It was shortly after one in the afternoon. He had disassembled his weapons, spreading the parts out on his bed; cleaned them, reassembled them, and reloaded them, getting ready for tonight’s killing.

He’d risen early, before dawn, after only a couple hours of sleep, to be on the bridge when the first morning watch under Third Officer George Novak came on duty. He had stayed up there until an hour ago, when he’d returned to his cabin, and ordered a lunch tray to be brought up from the galley.

In the past few days he had started to get worried. He could bring up a picture of bin Laden in full detail in his mind’s eye. That was easy. But he was losing the details of Jillian’s face. His wife had been a small woman; her features round, her dark hair usually cut short, bangs across her forehead; she’d looked like a pixie.

He knew all that intellectually, but he couldn’t see her, and he was afraid that he might be losing his mind.

He opened his eyes when someone knocked at the door. He got up, flipped the bedcover over his Steyr, the .22 caliber pistol he’d used to kill Slavin, and the Heckler & Koch M8 baseline carbine, and went out to the sitting room, closing the door to his bedroom before he answered the outer door.

The Russian steward, Irina Karpov, was there with a tray. “Your lunch, Captain,” she said, smiling. She was a small girl, with narrow shoulders, dark eyes, and short dark hair that framed a round, pixie face. She was dressed in dark trousers and a crisp white jacket.

For just an instant Graham was struck dumb by the similarity between this girl and his wife. He hadn’t noticed the resemblance when he’d seen her for the first time yesterday. But her face was the same.

He stepped aside for her and she came in and set the tray on the small table. She took the covers off the dishes. “Cook has made borscht just for you, and some smoked salmon with creamed cheese, onions, capers, and corchinons, and toasted bagels.”

“It looks good,” Graham said. “Please thank Mr. Rassmussen for me.”

“We didn’t know if you wanted wine, beer, or mineral water, so I brought all three,” Irina said. It seemed as if she were stalling, for some reason, a sly look in her wide eyes.

“Very thoughtful of you, Ms. Karpov.”

“Spassibo bolshoyeh,”
she said.
Thanks very much.

Graham suddenly understood what she was trying to do. She was suspicious of him. He let his expression darken. “I hope that I do not have to continually remind you that the language aboard this vessel is English.”

She lowered her eyes. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“If it happens again, I’ll leave you ashore at Long Beach and hire another steward.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you understand this perfectly?”

She nodded. “I just wanted to thank you for your compliment, sir.”

And test my Russian.
“I know,” Graham said. “Now return to your duties.”

“Sir,” she said, and she went past him to the door.

“Ms. Karpov,” Graham said, before she went out.

She turned back. “Sir?”

“Pazhaluystah,”
he told her.
You’re welcome.

She was startled. It wasn’t what she’d expected. She said something else in rapid-fire Russian that Graham didn’t catch, then nodded. “Yes, sir,” she said. She gave him a final, searching look and left.

Graham’s jaw tightened. It’d been a mistake to speak Russian to her. Even one word. He’d seen the immediate understanding on her face that she knew he was an imposter. He turned away from the door, his mind in a dark turmoil. He wanted to lash out; strike something; destroy someone; shatter them, drive them to their knees, kill the bastards who were responsible.

He slowly came back from the brink, unclenching his fists, willing his muscles to relax.

The stupid bitch had no proof. And in twelve hours she and the others would be dead.

No one was using the officers’ mess this noon, but Irina stopped by to make sure that the coffee and tea service was clean and filled. She busied herself loading the few dirty cups, glasses, spoons, and tea bags and wrappers onto a tray, and replacing the stale lemon wedges with fresh ones from the small refrigerator under the counter.

She didn’t want to think too hard about the captain, because that would lead her into places she did not want to go. But for the life of her she couldn’t understand why Captain Slavin was pretending to be a Russian, when clearly he was not.

Ever since she was a child in Moscow, her father, who had been a brilliant physicist, encouraged her to be an independent thinker. “Do not be shy,” he would say. Her mother, on the other hand, was a typical Russian who loved to quote proverbs to get her messages across. Her favorite for
Irina was that once a word was out of your mouth, you couldn’t swallow it again. And another was, all the brave men and women were in prison. Her father wanted her to speak up, while her mother wanted her to keep her mouth shut. She’d been torn between the two all her life.

Only a couple of stragglers lingered in the crew’s mess room when she brought the tray of dirty cups and glasses to the galley. She rinsed them off and loaded them onto the dishwasher belt. She was confused.

Rassmussen was busy rolling out piecrusts for this evening’s dessert. He looked up, a sloppy grin on his broad Norwegian face. He always seemed to be in a jovial mood. “Son of a bitch, what’d the captain say about my borscht?” he boomed.

Irina was startled. She spun around. “What?”

“My borscht. What’d the captain say?”

“He said thank you.”

“Thank you!” Rassmussen shouted. His grin widened. “Son of a bitch, wait’ll he has my pumpkin pie tonight.”

“Russians don’t eat pumpkin pie,” Irina said absently.

“This one does, he asked for it. Son of a bitch.”

Irina turned back to work, rinsing the rest of the lunch dishes, loading them onto the belt, and starting the dishwasher. The galley was clean, as were all but one table in the mess room. Alicia had tided up before going off duty.

“I’m going to my cabin for a couple hours,” she told the cook.

Rassmussen nodded. “Be back at four. I’m roasting turkeys with all the trimmings. You’ll serve the wardroom.”

“Yes, sir,” Irina said tiredly. She dried her hands and went up one deck to her cabin in crew territory. She’d been up since four thirty to help with the morning meal for the change of watch standers, and she wanted to rest for an hour or so. Sleep. Shut her mind down. But she couldn’t stop from thinking about the captain. The man was pretending to be a Russian, and she could make no sense of it.

Alicia had just gotten out of the shower, and she was in her robe in front of the mirror drying her spiky hair. She looked around when Irina came in. “Hi, sweetie,” she said, smiling. But then she lowered the hair-dryer. “You looked bushed. Are you okay?”

Irina took off her jacket and tossed it on her bed. “I’m just a little tired, is all.”

“Nope,” Alicia said. She put down the hair-dryer and came out to Irina. “What’s the matter?” she asked, concerned. “Is George hitting on you again?” The third officer had been trying for three months to have Vasquez talk Alicia into setting him up. He wanted the same arrangement with Irina that Vasquez had with Alicia.

“No,” Irina said. “It’s the captain, he’s an imposter.”

Alicia was surprised. She shook her head and laughed. “That’s rich,” she said. “Would you mind telling me how you came to such a brilliant conclusion?”

“His name is Grigoriy Slavin. He comes from St. Petersburg.”

Alicia laughed again. “Don’t Moscow girls get along with guys from St. Petersburg?”

“He doesn’t speak Russian,” Irina blurted. “When I tried to talk to him yesterday, and just now when I brought his lunch tray to his cabin, he told me that we had to speak English.”

“It’s a sensible rule,” Alicia said. “We must have ten different nationalities aboard.”

“But I thanked him in Russian, and he said, ‘You’re welcome,’ in Russian.”

“Okay, so he was being nice.”

Irina shook her head. “But his accent was all wrong. Sounded like he was from Tajikistan or someplace like that. But that’s not right either. It’s driving me crazy.”

“Come on, kiddo, you’re just tired and you’re imagining things.”

“Just before I left his cabin, I said something else to him in Russian. If he’d understood he would have fired me on the spot.”

Alicia shrugged. “What’d you say?”

“Yob tvoyu mat …”

“In English.”

“I said, ‘Fuck your mother, but I think you’re a prick,’” Irina said.