Scorpion Betrayal (32 page)

“Tun sie mögen Dallmayr kaffee
?” she said, asking him if Dallmayr coffee was okay.

“Es ist fein. Ich bin nicht ein kenner.”
It's fine; I'm not a connoisseur, Scorpion said.

“So what makes Rabinowich imagine I would jeopardize my position at the university to do something that is possibly illegal?” Reimert said, coming in. He was tall and thin, with long gray hair, and behind his glasses his eyes were a piercing blue.

Scorpion smiled. “He says you cheat at chess.”

“Kompletter unsinn!
He can't forgive how I sacrificed my knight at F6 to beat him in an interesting queens gambit declined game we once played.”

“They play online,” Ulrike explained. “Sometimes I think the neighbors will hear Gerhard cursing. They're incorrigible, those two.” She shook her head.

“He is the cheater! I wrote a computer program to track his moves, and even when I show him, he denies them. For a time I thought a mind like his is a waste in your Amerikanisch Commerce Department till I realized that he was undoubtedly CIA. Tell him his secret is no longer safe. The next time he cheats at chess, I will publish his true identity on the Internet. As for you, you are no doubt a CIA agent as well,” Reimert said, leaning forward.

“We need your help. It's important and it's urgent,” Scorpion told him.

“Yes. Rabinowich said it was, how do you say
‘bevorzugung' auf Englisch
?” he asked Ulrike.

“A favor.”

“That's it. He asked for a favor. So why don't you go to the Bundespolizei or the Bundesnachrichtendienst? Why come to me?”

“We don't have time. And there are other reasons,” Scorpion said.

“You mean you don't trust the BND.”

“If I don't get your help tonight, people will die.”

“Why should I, a German, trust the CIA, whom many people despise, over the German authorities?”

“This is not our business,” Ulrike said, pouring the coffee.

“It is,” Scorpion replied. “The reputation of the university is at stake. Believe me, you don't want the authorities involved at this stage. Please, come with me to the campus now. See with your own eyes. If I'm lying, call the Bundespolizei.”

“You say this involves
terroristen
?”

“These are Muslims?” she asked.

“Most likely,” Scorpion said.

“One tries to be open-minded. Many of them are good students, decent people. Still…” Reimert said, looking at his wife, who was looking at Scorpion in a way that gave him the impression she was comparing Scorpion to him. Reimert stood up. “As a professor, I have the right to look at student files. Therefore, I am doing nothing illegal. You won't tell me what this is about?” he asked.

“Better if you don't know.”

“Better for whom?” Ulrike said, carrying the coffee cups to the kitchen.

“For everyone, especially you two. Whatever happens, don't tell anyone about this.”

“You mean better for you,” she said, coming back in.

“No, better for you. I know you think we Americans are all paranoid, but there are some very dangerous people out there.”

“We'll go. But only because I'm curious,” she said, pulling on a leather jacket and handing a windbreaker to Reimert. “It's not because I believe you. I don't. If it is not as you say, we will call the Bundespolizei.”

Reimert drove them onto the campus and parked near a modernist multistory building of glass, metal, and concrete. A sign over the doorway read:
FAKULTÄT FÜR PHYSIK
. Despite the evening hour, there were still lights on in the building and students with backpacks walking or bicycling along the paths. They went up the stairs and down a long hallway to Reimert's office.

Ulrike turned on the light and sat down at the computer. After a few moments she turned to Scorpion. “How many students?” she asked.

“Just three,” Scorpion said, handing her a slip of paper with the names.

“Ulrike was my
unterrichtassistent,”
Reimert said. “Now she's an administrator. Better for her to do it. She knows the system better than I.”

“Here's the first,” she said, bringing up a student record. “Sermin Bayat. Here's his transcript. Emigrated from Ankara in Turkey fourteen years ago.
Diplom
in
biotechnologiewesen,
after which he did his
doktorat
at Bonn University, where, yes, he is on the faculty. Here's his address in Bonn.”

“Could you call him?” Scorpion said, looking at the face in the file photograph from ten years ago.

“Why?”

“To confirm. It's standard. Tell him you're from the alumni office just verifying his address.”

“If you insist,” Ulrike said, clearly annoyed. She dialed a number and spoke briefly in German, said,
“Entschuldigen sie mich, bitte,”
then slammed the phone down. “He wasn't so pleased. He was watching the football highlights on the television. Is that sufficient for you?” she said, looking sharply at Scorpion.

“What about the next?”

“Dieter Bockmeyer. He doesn't sound Muslim,” she said, typing on the keyboard. “There it is,” bringing up the file.
“Diplom
in
informationstechnik.
After graduation, went to work for Siemens in Munich, then transferred to the Siemens office back here in Karlsruhe. Secretary of the Alumni Association. Shall I call?”

“Please.”

She called the number and listened for a moment. “It's asking for a message.”

“No message,” Scorpion said. “Try the next one.”

She typed in
Bassam Hassani
and waited while the screen took longer than usual to display. When it did, except for a single line, the screen was blank.

“What is it?” Reimert asked.

“Impossible,” she said, staring at the nearly empty screen. She typed another search on a wider database and the same screen came up again. “Nothing. No records, no transcript, no application file, no forwarding address. Just a single line.
Diplom
in
chemieingenieurwesen,
chemical engineering, nine years ago. It cannot be.”

“It's been deleted,” Scorpion said, his heart beating faster. “You don't have a photograph, anything else on this man?”

“There's nothing. I don't understand,” she said, looking at Reimert.

“Nine years ago?” Reimert mused. “In chemistry. I seem to remember something.” He looked at his wife. “Do you remember Keck? Bernhard Keck?”

“Must've been before my time. Or maybe when I was a freshman,” she said.

“Yes.” He tapped the desk with his finger. “I remember something about heat transfer. Look up Keck in the
Universitat Karlsruhe Journal für Anorganische und Allgemeine Chemie.
Now.”

She typed it in and a number of links came up. There was nothing of use in the first two, but when she clicked on the third link, it brought up a nine-year-old article in the university's chemistry journal with a photograph of a research team that had apparently come up with a breakthrough on explosive chemical heat transfers. The caption identified one of the team in the photograph as Hassani.

I've got you, you bastard! Scorpion thought. “Could you please make the photo bigger?” he asked as he intently studied the face of the man identified as Hassani in the caption. It was a young man's face, dark-haired, with dark serious eyes, good-looking enough, if he were interested and not so serious, to be able to beat women off with a stick. Nine years was a long time. It would be better if he had a more recent photograph, and then he realized that of course there was a more recent photo. “Look, could you please send the link to that file to Rabinowich? It's urgent.”

“I'll do it right now,” Ulrike said, typing. “There you are. It's done.” She looked at Scorpion. “This is very strange. I can't understand why whoever deleted the record left the single entry about the
diplom.”

“Vanity perhaps,” Reimert shrugged.

“Or credibility among his own. Whatever the reason, it's a break for us or we would never have found him,” Scorpion said.

“I prefer vanity as an explanation. It's more Greek,” Reimert said.

“You're a romantic, a
Sorrows of Young Werther
type,” Scorpion said, smiling.

“You found him out,” Ulrike laughed. “When we first met, he presented me with a copy of that book. I wasn't sure whether he wanted to have sex with me or kill himself.”

“Sex. Believe me, sex,” Reimert said, kissing her cheek. “This man,” meaning Hassani, “he is dangerous?”

“I know of at least six people he's already killed. I have to go. I know you may not believe me, but what you did tonight was important.” He started to get up when suddenly he had an idea. “Can you access the university's exchange servers?”

“I don't know how,” she said.

“May I?” he said. She got up, and he sat at the computer and logged her out. He plugged in the NSA flash drive and was shortly on the network with administrator privileges.

“How do you say ‘exchange mail server' in German?” he asked.

“Austauschcomputerbediener.
What are you looking for?” she asked.

“E-mail inquiries,” he said, typing on the keyboard.

“Wouldn't whoever deleted the record have deleted any e-mails too?”

“Doesn't matter,” he said, logging onto the mail server. He opened the header log files and began searching. After several minutes he found what he was looking for. Two entries to the mailbox, one incoming, one outgoing. Someone had sent an e-mail query for information on Hassani. The messages themselves were not there, but the records contained the date, time stamps, and IP addresses of the sending and receiving machines. Scorpion mentally calculated the date. Four weeks before the Budawi assassination. He used his cell phone and an RSA key to access the restricted URL of the NSA's Whois database of classified IP addresses worldwide, and there it was.

The e-mail inquiry had been sent from the Egyptian Bureau of Educational Tourism, a front organization for the Egyptian Mabahith. That was the real reason Budawi had been assassinated! If Budawi had learned the Palestinian's actual identity, it would have imperiled Hassani's entire mission. Budawi had to be eliminated. Scorpion logged off the computer and stood up.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” Ulrike asked.

“More than you know,
danke,”
he said.

“Come. We'll take you back to your auto,” she said, shutting down the computer and getting up. They barely spoke on the short drive back to where he had parked his car near their house.

“Auf wiedersehen,”
she said. “This has been a strange evening. I did not expect this.” She looked at him oddly as he got out of the car.

“It is a disturbance to think that one of our students may be a terrorist. He was not a student of mine, but still…” Reimert trailed off.

“Don't ever speak of this to anyone,” Scorpion said. “If anyone ever asks, even the Bundespolizei, say nothing. For your own safety, please, what you saw tonight never happened.” He started to go, then turned back.
“Vielen dank.
I'll tell Rabinowich he owes you a favor.”

They watched him walk back to his car, and after a moment the car lights came on and he drove away.

Scorpion drove to the A5 autobahn to get back to Frankfurt. While on the highway he called Rabinowich on his cell phone, told him about the Budawi e-mail query, and they discussed ferreting out more information on Hassani, whom they code-named ‘Hearing Aid' from the phrase ‘engine ear' for ‘engineer,' and most critically, they also discussed getting a more recent photograph. The odds were high that Hearing Aid had been in the U.S. at least once, probably more than once, in the last six months, which meant that Homeland Security had a photo and fingerprint on file. It would be under a different name, but hopefully, facial recognition software might find a match.

This time he didn't have to say anything; it was Rabinowich who brought up the fact that Najla was also from Germany. Scorpion didn't respond, and for a moment the only sound was that of the car speeding on the autobahn.

“I know,” he said finally. They briefly discussed operational details, then Scorpion hung up. He glanced down at the speedometer. He was doing over 150 kilometers per hour. With any luck he'd reach Frankfurt in time to catch the next flight and be back in Rome that night, where somewhere, in a city preparing for the EU Conference, the Palestinian was making his final preparations.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO