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Scorpion only used the Collins alias at various marinas and sailors’ pubs around the Mediterranean where they held mail.
    What made it more ominous was that it had come, according to Abrielle, from a “Russian” yacht. That made no sense. If Ivanov, aka Checkmate, head of Russia’s FSB Counterintelligence Directorate, was after him, there would be no note. It would be Spetsnaz-trained operatives in the night, and Scorpion knew he would never see them coming. The only thing he could think of was that either the SVR—the Russian equivalent of the CIA—was after him, or some private Russian outfit had been contracted by someone else he had pissed off, like al Qaeda or Hezbollah.
    The worst of it was, they had managed to find him in the one place in the world he thought was safe.
    No one in the world knew he lived in Sardinia, not even Rabinowich.
    For Scorpion, Sardinia was the answer to a unique business problem. As an independent intelligence agent, a freelancer, he sometimes made very dangerous enemies. His only protection was to be able to make himself invisible. After the realtor, Salvatore, Abrielle’s father, had shown him the escape tunnel hidden underneath the old farmhouse in the hills, no doubt used by bandits years ago, he’d decided to make Sardinia his base. The locals had a history of banditry and isolation and tended to mistrust outsiders. They even had their own language, Limba Sarda, in addition to mainland Italian. Sardinia was convenient to Europe and the Middle East, where he did much of his business.
    That still left one problem. Anyone who came after him would be looking for an American. He had taken great pains—hacking into databases both outside and within the Swimming Pool, as the French foreign intelligence service, the DGSE, was known because their headquarters in Paris was located next to the French Swimming Federation—to ensure that his French cover identity was bulletproof.
    Now all of that might have been blown, and he had no idea how—or who was after him. Unless, and this was worse, he had gone over the edge.

    O n the flight to Nice, deliberately booked with the Collins ID—he could either find them or make it easy for them to find him—he went back over what he’d learned about the yacht. Using a computer at Fiumicino Airport, he discovered that the Milena II was convenience-flagged in Malta, and as he suspected from the telephone area code, it was registered to a privately held company in Luxembourg. Landing in Nice, he used the Arthur Collins British passport for the rental car, spotting two burly-looking men in leather jackets near the car rental counter.
    Using a disposable cell phone, he called the phone number on the card from the yacht. He left a message in response to a recorded voice, telling it in English that he would be waiting at Le Carpaccio, a waterside restaurant in Villefranche, a resort town on the coast east of Nice, not far from Monaco. He picked a public place to try to minimize the damage if they were going to come right at him.
    A few minutes out from the airport, Scorpion spotted the gray Mercedes sedan following him. The men in leather jackets he had seen near the car rental were in it. Just to be sure, he pulled into an Agip station and knelt down to check the air in his tires, watching the Mercedes drive by. The two men barely glanced at him. He waited five minutes, then drove the Basse Corniche road between the hills and the sea toward Monaco, and a few minutes later saw the Mercedes waiting at a turnout. As he drove past, they started up and followed. A blue BMW pulled in front of him, with two men in that car as well. He was boxed in.
    He had an armed escort to Villefranche.

Chapter Five
    Milena II
    French Riviera
    T he main salon of the mega yacht, Milena II , was furnished in white Italian leather, soft and buttery to the touch, and looked out to the aft pool deck. The designer had gone for Metro modern,