Scorpia Rising

intelligence service. Razim read the letter with the faint twinge of something that might actually have been pleasure. He had heard the horror stories about the organization and he knew that it was work to which he was ideally suited. He packed immediately and left at six o’clock the next morning. Nobody at the university even noticed he had gone.
    For the next twenty years, Razim discovered the pleasure of being feared. Actually, it was more than that. Anyone who met him knew that he had absolute power over their life or death and that with one snap of his fingers they would never be seen again. If he were to point to a picture or a valuable vase in a man’s house, the object would be waiting at the door for him to take with him when he left. The same was true for the man’s wife or son. Razim boasted that he had so many enemies that he could have bathed daily in their blood. The rumor in Tehran was that he actually did.
    His power increased. Soon he had a house the size of a palace, filled with servants who fell silent and looked away when he came into the room. He had barely grown at all. He was still the same size and shape as a schoolboy, but rather curiously, his hair had turned silver while he was in his twenties, making him look both very old and very young at the same time. He also wore round, wire-framed glasses, and one of his officers had once joked that he looked like a Middle Eastern Harry Potter. Razim had enjoyed the joke. He was almost smiling as he stabbed the officer nine times with a paper knife.
    And then came the Iraq war of 2003 and the invasion by the American and British forces. Unlike so many of Saddam’s inner circle, Razim could see which way the wind was blowing and made plans to save himself. The night before the bombing of Baghdad, he slipped out of the country on the private eight-seater Beechjet 400 that actually belonged to the president’s younger brother, flying over the border into Saudi Arabia. He took with him all the treasures he could carry . . . artwork, diamonds, gold coins, and international bonds. All these would be easier to trade than cash.
    He settled in Riyadh and waited for the war to end, which it did—as he had expected—very quickly. It was clear to him that he couldn’t return to Iraq, not while it was being occupied by the British and American forces, but using the connections he had made while he was with the Mukhabarat, he contacted the local recruiting officer for Al-Qaeda and soon found himself in charge of his own extensive terrorist cell. He wasn’t paid, of course, but then he didn’t need to be. He was a wealthy man. Nor was he interested in religion or politics. For him, terrorism was like a jigsaw puzzle. You have an embassy and a bomb. How do you fit one into the other to create the most unforgettable picture? It was a challenge that stimulated his mind, and he helped plan more than a dozen attacks in Europe and America, carefully examining the results on the fifty-five-inch plasma screen he’d had installed in his luxurious house.
    This successful period in his life came to an end when his commanding officer suggested that, to show his devotion to the Islamic cause, he might like to become a suicide bomber himself. Razim was given a belt filled with high explosive and shown how to wrap it around his stomach and set it off with a single button on his mobile phone. He would be smuggled into Pakistan and dropped off at a central market. From there, it would be a short step to Paradise.
    Razim thought about all this for a few minutes, then used the explosive to blow up his commanding officer. It was time to move again. By now, the British and Americans were on his trail. Saddam had been hanged. Saddam’s sons had been shot. Razim had no doubt that one or another of these fates would be waiting for him if he was ever caught . . . unless, that is, Al-Qaeda found him first. It really was quite annoying to have so many enemies. He would just have to find another city where he could start his life again.
    He chose Cairo. With a population of seven million crammed into eighty-three square miles, he would be completely invisible. He briefly considered plastic surgery. There were plenty of clinics in the backstreets of West Zamalek, a high-rise area of the city on the edge of the Nile, and if you paid enough, nobody would ask any questions. But in fact very few people knew what he looked like. He had taken great care that this should be the case,