Scorpia Rising Read Online Free PDF

courtyard. The beam of the spotlight swept the ground just ahead. Still smoking, he went into a circular building with a domed roof and a tower. This had once been a chapel. Razim had found faded pictures of various saints on some of the walls and there was even a stained-glass window—the only glass in the entire place. Perhaps French soldiers had come here once to pray that they would soon be sent home. Razim had smashed the window and painted over the frescoes. They were of no interest to him. He had, of course, never believed in God.
    The interior was brightly lit and kept at a pleasant temperature by a sophisticated air-conditioning system. The walls were now all white and purposefully thick, to keep out the heat. There were machines everywhere: computers, television monitors, different-sized boxes with dials and gauges. In the middle of all this, trapped in a pool of brilliant light, a man sat in a leather dentist’s chair, tied to it by soft cords around his ankles and wrists. The man was wearing only boxer shorts. Dozens of wires had been attached to him—to his head, his chest, his pulse, his abdomen—held in place by sticky tape. By a happy coincidence, the man was French. He was about thirty years old and he was trying not to look afraid. He was failing.
    Razim knew his name. It was Luc Fontaine and he worked for the DGSE, which is the French intelligence agency dealing in external security. The man was, in other words, a secret agent, a spy. Razim had always known that foreign investigators would come looking for him and he therefore kept a careful lookout for them. This one had actually gotten closer than many. He had been picked up asking questions in the central market— or souk—knocked out and then brought here. He was still pretending to be a tourist, but only halfheartedly. By now he knew that he was in the hands of a man who did not make mistakes.
    There was a trolley covered with a white cloth next to the dentist’s chair. Razim wheeled it around and uncovered it to reveal a series of knives lined up in neat rows, each one a different shape and size, gleaming in the harsh light. There were other instruments too: swabs and silver bowls, hypodermic syringes, vials containing liquids that were colorless but somehow didn’t look like water. Fontaine saw this. He tried not to show any emotion. But his naked skin crawled.
    Razim pulled up a stool and sat down. He drew on the cigarette. The tip glowed.
    “What do you want?” Fontaine asked. He spoke in French. His voice was hoarse.
    Razim didn’t answer.
    “I’m not going to tell you anything.” The secret agent had dropped the pretense that he was a tourist. He knew there was no longer any point in it.
    “And I am not going to ask you anything,” Razim replied. His French was excellent. It was one of the languages he had learned at school. “You have no information that I wish to know.”
    “Then why am I here?” The young man flexed his arms, the muscles rising, but the cords held fast.
    “I will tell you.” Razim tapped ash into one of the bowls. “I have been many things in my life,” he said, “but when I set out, I was an engineer. That is how I was trained. Science, in its many varieties, has always been an interest of mine. And you should be glad that you are here with me tonight, Luc. Do you mind if I call you Luc? I am pursuing a project that will be of great benefit to the world, and fate has chosen you to help me.”
    “My people know I’m here.”
    “Nobody knows you are here. Even you do not know where you are. Please try not to interrupt.”
    Razim put out his cigarette. He licked his lips.
    “It occurred to me some years ago that everything in this world is measured and that many of these measurements have been named after the great engineers. The most obvious example is the watt, which measures electricity, and which was named after James Watt, the inventor of the modern steam engine. Joule and Newton were both