Blowback

SEVENTEEN

Khalid Alomari tried to keep his anger under control as he flipped his cell phone closed and tossed it onto the wooden table in front of him. As the noise of motorbikes whizzing past mingled with the sounds of shopkeepers hawking their wares to the tourists who crowded the dusty sidewalks, Alomari wondered once again why none of his contacts was producing. Secrets didn’t keep long in a country like Bangladesh, but for some reason this one was eluding him. As he tried to piece together what had happened, he thought seriously about having one or two of his lowlife associates there killed to help motivate the others.

None of it made any sense. Men like Emir Tokay didn’t simply vanish. They didn’t have the aptitude. Tokay was a scientist, after all, not a trained intelligence operative. There had to be a way to find him, thought Alomari. The assassin had gotten to all the other scientists on the list and didn’t like coming up one short. His situation was made even more difficult by the fact that there was very little time left.

The last time he had spoken with his employer, who was known to him only as Akrep, or the Scorpion, the man had been enraged. He had chastised the assassin for moving too slowly with the kills and somehow knew, as he always seemed to know everything, that the last scientist had disappeared. Once more, Alomari questioned the benefit of ever having gotten involved with such a man.

True, Alomari specialized in killing for hire, but his targets had always been the obvious enemies of Islam. The only comfort he took in this assignment was that the Scorpion himself was a true believer and had pledged his life in service of the faith.

His faith notwithstanding, the Scorpion was known for being absolutely ruthless. Even bin Laden, a man not frightened by anyone, was said to conduct himself toward the Scorpion with an amazing degree of respect and admiration. It was even hinted that al-Qaeda had been the Scorpion’s idea, hatched in the mountains of Afghanistan with bin Laden during the great holy war against the Soviets.

In the end, Alomari held no illusions about why he had taken the assignment — he needed the money; or more importantly, al-Qaeda needed the money. With bin Laden cut off from a significant portion of his funds and forced into hiding along the Pakistan-Afghan border, the al-Qaeda organization was starved for cash. While the cell in Madrid might have sold drugs to keep themselves afloat and finance their spectacular train bombings, there were plenty of other good Muslim members of the organization who would not stoop to such a thing, and Alomari was one of them. He had had no choice but to take the Scorpion’s assignment.

It had been months since he had last been able to make contact with his mentor. Bin Laden was constantly on the move, and he expected his followers to be able to think on their own and make their own decisions. He couldn’t be expected to hold their hands like children. Throughout the grueling assignment, Alomari had tried to remind himself to be thankful. The Scorpion could have selected any number of other assassins to do this job. Alomari knew that bin Laden had played some part in recommending him, and that only made him feel doubly guilty for having failed. At first, it had seemed as if Allah himself was smiling down upon him by handing him this assignment. But he had no idea why Allah would want to halt his progress when he was so close to closing out his list and collecting his much-needed money.

The Scorpion was someone Alomari had never met face-to-face. They had only spoken by telephone. Any actual face-to-face contact was always through his second, a man named Gökhan Celik. As Alomari watched Celik enter the taverna and make his way toward the table, he slid his hand along the outside of his sport coat, just to reassure himself that the ultra-compact Taurus PT-111 pistol was still there. He cared little for whatever relationship existed between bin Laden and the Scorpion; he was taking no chances, not even with this wiry shadow of a man who was the Scorpion’s second.

Gökhan Celik was seventy-five years old if he was a day, with a pair of narrow, dark eyes and a long pointed nose that floated above a set of terrible teeth. The man was devoid of any chin, and as a result, his face seemed to be only an extension of an otherwise twig-thin neck.

Despite his appearance, Alomari knew the man was brilliant. It was said that Celik had been the Scorpion’s counselor since he was a teen, and almost everything the Scorpion had learned, he had learned from Gökhan Celik. In other words, Celik was not a man to be underestimated either.

Dressed in a chic linen suit, Celik could have been any aging Greek businessman out for an early, run-of-the-mill business lunch with a colleague, except that Celik was no Greek and this was no run-of-the-mill luncheon. Celik had come to pink-slip one of the world’s deadliest assassins.

Ever affected by his mother’s cultured influence on his upbringing, Alomari asked his guest if he cared for something to eat or drink before they began.

Celik looked at him and replied, “Let’s not waste any more time, Khalid. You know why I’m here.”

“To discuss the remaining scientist.”

“No. That subject is no longer open for discussion. I’m here to dismiss you. You’re fired.”

“Fired?”

“Of course you can keep the two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar deposit you were paid, but that’s all you are going to receive.”

“But that doesn’t begin to even cover my expenses.”

“Too bad. You knew the deal when you took it — all the items on the list were to be taken care of. You failed.”

Alomari had suspected that this was the reason Celik had demanded the meeting, but true to his Arab heritage, he haggled desperately for a few moments in an attempt to keep the assignment alive.

“The contract is canceled, and that’s final,” said Celik as he placed his gnarled hands on the table and rose from his chair. “I thought we owed it to you to tell you in person.”

That was the least they owed him, and if nothing else, it should have been the Scorpion himself sitting across from him, but Alomari let it slide. “I can still finish the assignment,” he said. “There’s still time.”

“No, there isn’t, and this has gone far beyond your capabilities.”

“What do you mean?”

“What do I mean? I mean that if you had acted faster, maybe you would have gotten to Tokay before he talked.”

“He talked? To whom?”

“That’s what we’re going to have to find out. Now, we not only need to locate and silence Tokay, but we also need to silence anyone else he may have talked to. But we’re going to do that without you. Consider yourself lucky that your ineptitude isn’t getting you silenced as well.”

Alomari was seething, and subconsciously his hand began to move for his pistol. When he realized what he was doing, he tried to calm himself. Not here. Not now. It must be someplace else, away from witnesses.

As Gökhan Celik left the taverna, the assassin came to the conclusion that the Scorpion had made a very grave error in underestimating him. For that, Gökhan Celik was going to lose his life. The key would be in making it look like an accident, but accidents were the al-Qaeda operative’s specialty.

An hour later, his anger only partially cooled, Khalid Alomari crossed the lobby of the most elegant hotel in Athens, the Grande Bretagne. He was disgusted not only with how the Scorpion conducted business but also with how he protected, or more appropriately didn’t protect, his people. Gökhan Celik was supposed to be the man’s most important lieutenant, but the Scorpion allowed him to stay, unguarded, in the same suite of the same hotel every time he came to Athens. The Scorpion’s reputation might frighten most of the people who knew him, but it didn’t frighten Khalid Alomari, especially when so much money was on the line.

“How dare you?” demanded Celik as Alomari forced his way into the suite and knocked the old man to the floor.

“I want to know everything you know about Emir Tokay and who he was talking to before he disappeared.”

“You’ve already been told that’s no longer any of your concern.”

“You should have paid me what you owe me, Gökhan.”

“What do we owe you? You failed. We owe you nothing.”

“It was a small price compared to what it’s going to cost you now.”

“What do you mean, what it’s going to cost us now?”

“We both know that Emir Tokay has knowledge you don’t want anyone else to have. I’m going to find him, and when I do, I’m going to sell him back to the Scorpion at ten times what you should have paid me,” replied the assassin as he slammed his foot down into the old man’s hip and heard the bone snap like dry kindling.

“You are a dead man!” howled Celik.

“Everyone must die,” replied Alomari, “but not all of us get to choose when. Answer my question and I will let you live. Who was Emir talking to before he disappeared?”

Celik spat at the pants leg of his attacker. “I will see you dead. Do you understand me? Do you know what Akrep will do to you?”

Alomari shook the spit from his trouser leg and said, “You have cheated me out of what is rightfully mine. Do you just expect me to slink away? I will give you one last chance to answer my question. What do you know about Tokay?”

Celik glared at the man in defiance.

“You should have known I wouldn’t give up, Gökhan. Things will only get worse from here. If you do not answer me, I will track down your daughter and your grandchildren, and they will be next. I am a man of my word. You know I will do it. Even if it takes me the next five years of my life, I will not stop until I have visited upon them deaths more horrible than any you can possibly imagine.”

Celik’s body was trembling.

“What will it be, Gökhan?”

“Akrep will know you did this.”

“I don’t think so,” said Alomari as he withdrew an empty hypodermic syringe from his sport coat pocket. “Embolisms are quite regrettable, but not uncommon in men of your age. Our friend the Scorpion may have his suspicions, but with the fall you took that broke your hip, I don’t think they will trouble him for too long.”

“You will be punished for this,” moaned Celik.

“As you will have Allah’s ear in Paradise before I do, I am certain you will do all you can to make that so. In the meantime, it is not too late for you to save your family.”

Celik didn’t need any further convincing to know the man was telling the truth. The assassin’s reputation was assurance enough.