Scorpion Betrayal

by Andrew Kaplan

  They went back to the hotel after stopping off in a children’s toy store in the Piazza Navona, to buy balloons they would use to hold the blood. The two young women ran around and played like children among the stuffed animals. They stopped and took “Before” photographs of Alicia outside the toy store, to post on the Web and to TV stations. Afterward, they went up to Alicia and Cristiano’s dormlike hotel room. They talked about how they would do the blood the next day, then Liz and Cristiano left, leaving Alicia sitting on the bed, the Palestinian pulling on a pair of latex gloves.

  “You’re very brave,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder, then slapped her, and before she could even gasp, punched her in the ribs and backhanded her across the other cheek. He smacked her around a few more times, blackening her eyes, then punched her hard in the face, breaking her nose.

  “I’m sorry. So sorry,” he said, putting his arms around her.

  “The children,” she managed to say, looking up at him, tears in her eyes. He leaned forward, and as he did so, his hand cupped her breast. She looked at him questioningly as he pushed her down on the bed, his lips about to brush hers, when the door burst open and Liz rushed in.

  “You bastard!” she screamed. “You just wanted to fuck her! I hate you!”

  “Shut up,” he said, getting up off the bed. “She agreed to it. Didn’t you?” Alicia, her face starting to swell and bruise, stared wide-eyed and nodded tentatively. “So did you,” he told Liz. “We’re going to tell them the polizia beat and raped her. We’re not playing here.”

  He grabbed Liz by the wrist. She tried to pull away, and he twisted her hand behind her back. “It had to be done. We’ll meet you tomorrow for the demonstration,” he told Alicia as he forced Liz out of the room. Cristiano was outside in the corridor. “Domani. La gelosia delle donne causa molta difficoltà,” he said to Cristiano by way of explanation, while forcing the struggling Liz toward the elevator. Tomorrow; the jealousy of women causes much trouble.

  “I hate you,” she said as they got in.

  “Shut up or I’ll hurt you before this elevator reaches the ground floor.”

  “Go ahead. Hit women. That’s what you know how to do.”

  “Y’allah, the Americans and the Israelis have missiles and F-16s. All we have is our courage and our bare hands. You said you understood. This war isn’t fought on a battlefield, but in the media. Bloody women and dead children—these are our weapons. I don’t care about Alicia.”

  “Oh God, oh God, I’m damned,” Liz sobbed as they left the elevator and went out to the street. A number of the backpackers outside the hotel stared at them, but hookups and lovers’ quarrels were commonplace here and no one said anything.

  They walked, his arm around her, toward the Stazione Termini. As they approached the red and white Metro sign, he said: “Should we go to the warehouse or the apartment?” referring to a small apartment he had rented near the Campo dei Fiori as a fallback, where he kept additional weapons and explosives.

  “I want to go home,” she said, tears in her eyes. “I want to go back to England.”

  “As soon as we do what we came here to do. You tell me, the warehouse or the apartment?”

  “The apartment,” Liz whispered, pressing against him. “Please, let it be like Mykonos again.”

  “She means nothing to me. I swear,” he said, leading her to the Metro entrance.

  As they started down the escalator, he could feel her trembling beside him. He would get rid of her when they got to the apartment. In the morning, he would tell Alicia and Cristiano that she’d gone back to London. The Moroccans at the warehouse would need no explanation.

  When they got to the platform, he put his arms around Liz, and as he did so glanced at his watch. He could deal with her and be back at the warehouse in an hour. Then he realized he might still need her as a decoy or hostage if the authorities or whoever was hunting him from Utrecht got close.

  “I’m sorry. We need to go back to the warehouse,” he whispered as he held her close.

  “Why?”

  “I just realized. I can’t trust them on their own. I need you,” he said, pressing close to her.

  Liz started crying again, pressing herself against him. “Oh God, I need you too,” she said, her voice muffled by his shoulder and the sound of the approaching train.

  The demonstration the following morning was smaller, less violent, although there was enough of a scuffle with the polizia for them to use Alicia. The three of them stood around her, cut their fingers and dripped the blood into the balloon. They poured the blood from the balloon over her head and face, then took videos of her lying in the street and helped her, staggering for effect, past the reporters and TV cameras on the Via Umbria. Afterward they split up, Cristiano returning to the hotel with Alicia to clean her up and keep her hidden from the press.

  By the time the Palestinian and Liz got back to the warehouse, the YouTube video and Twitter photos of Alicia—the Before shots of the pretty college girl and the After shots of her with her eye blackened, nose broken, face bruised and covered in blood—had gone all over the Internet and were seen around the world. Images of Alicia were featured on the Italian RAI Uno and Canale 5 television news and on TV networks across Europe and on U.S. nightly news. There were allegations of beatings and rapes of demonstrators by the Italian polizia and calls for an investigation into police brutality by left wing parties in the Italian Chamber of Deputies. Angry rallies broke out in a dozen European cities, and a German journalist was nearly killed by a mob in Bologna, as more demonstrators began heading to Rome.

  Watching the Italian morning TG1 news on the TV in the warehouse office where they shared a mattress on the floor, Liz said, “You were right. It’s in the news. I’m so sorry, but it just kills me to see you near another woman.”

  “I told you, except as a symbol, she doesn’t matter to me,” the Palestinian told her. “But there is something else you can do for me,” he added, pulling her down, his arms around her as she began to smile.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Saxa Rubra, Rome, Italy

  They met in a trattoria in Trastevere on a side street near the Piazza di Santa Maria. The cobblestone street was shaded from the bright sun by a plane tree. From an outside table with his back to the wall, Scorpion could see anyone entering the narrow street from either direction. He had put a folded copy of the Corriere della Sera on the table as a signal that it was clear to approach.

  Aldo Moretti was a short well-dressed man with round button eyes and a sharp Roman nose between them, under which a small mustache gave him the look of a somewhat cynical bird of prey. Moretti sat down, ordered a glass of the red vino della casa, and they nodded at each other before they drank.

  The problem, Scorpion reflected, was that the bureaucrats had taken over. Rabinowich told him the DIA hadn’t informed the AISE, Italy’s CIA, about the missing U-235—intimating that this had come down from the DNI himself—so the Italians were treating it like a garden-variety threat, the kind that came once or twice a week and at every international conference. Security would be heavy for the conference venue, but that was normal.

  “I see you as a courtesy to Signor Brooks,” Moretti said, using Rabinowich’s cover name. “Try the pasta here. It is not so terrible,” he added, tucking his napkin in his shirt. The waiter came back with the wine and they ordered. Scorpion waited till the waiter left.

  “What have you heard about the Palestinian?”

  “Solo un po’.” Just a little. “Of course, I hear of the Budawi assassination in Cairo and that everyone is looking. You think he is here in Roma for the conferenza? Metterlo qui,” put it over here, he told the waiter bringing him a plate of tortellini.

  “Grazie.” Scorpion nodded as the waiter put down his plate of spaghetti and replaced the bread basket with a jar of grissini bread sticks. The Italian was sharp as a tack. He’d picked up on the mention of the Palestinian and put it all together immediately. “I know he’s here. I�
��ve been tracking him across Europe all the way from Damascus.”

  “È così? And yet your DIA,” glancing around to make sure he wasn’t overheard, “they tell us nothing about this.”

  “There’s a lot they are not telling you. You’re right,” Scorpion said, talking while eating.

  “About?”

  “The pasta here is good.”

  “What else they don’t tell?”

  “On orders, a lot, molto. Here we get onto difficult ground.”

  “We italiani have been good partnership. For the Company, the best. Troppo buona.”

  “D’accordo, probably too good,” Scorpion agreed. He leaned forward. “The information I have is something you need to know. My problem is that I must tell it to someone who can do something with this information, but not tell anyone else in the AISE.”

  “Perhaps because if everyone in the AISE knows, it gets back to your padroni in the DIA and CIA who do not wish to share with us.”

  “It is good to talk to a man who understands how such things work. It would be better if we could imagine you and I were just private citizens sharing pasta and opinions.”

  “Perhaps you overestimate the danger. Our security is of the best in the world.”

  “That’s what Budawi thought. We believe there will be multiple attacks coordinated by one man in a number of cities in Europe and the U.S. Why of all of these cities do you think I’m in Rome?”

  Moretti straightened. He wiped the corner of his mouth with the napkin. “I should be hearing this through official channels. Except, of course, according to you, official channels will tell us nothing, will they?”

  “You know Checkmate?”

  “The Russian, Ivanov? Only by reputation. He is more your problem than ours,” Moretti said, taking some wine.

  “Not always. Sometimes we have mutual interests.”

  “Is this such a time?”

  “So you have heard nothing about the missing Russian U-235?”

  “Russians say many things. On very rare occasions, they are even true,” Moretti shrugged. “My dear Signor McDonald from South Africa, although our encounter has, how you say, American fingerprints all over it, I like your manner. You speak straight. In Italian we say ‘palare fuori dai denti,’ to speak outside one’s teeth. But you are asking me to take everything on faith, like a priest. This I cannot do for many reasons, one of which is if only not to lose your respect, one professional to another.”

  “Signor Aldo Moretti, who officially works in the Ministry of the Interior in something to do with immigration, but in fact is a deputy director in AISE,” Scorpion said, at which Moretti gestured as only Italians can and mouthed Bravo, “a week ago a Ukrainian ship, the Zaina, out of Odessa, convenience flagged in Belize, made an unscheduled stop in Genoa after her captain died under unexplained circumstances. Check it out for yourself. I would be most interested in the autopsy report of what killed her captain.”

  “Call me Aldo,” Moretti said. “And let me also speak straight, outside my teeth. You think the Palestinian killed the capitano and used the ship to bring highly enriched Uranium into Italy?”

  Scorpion nodded. “Another curious thing,” he added. “While the Zaina was in port, she unloaded only three containers. They went through your dogana inspection in less than four hours.”

  “That, I confess, is not normale. If Italy would ever be so efficient, we would be richer than America. You think the Palestinian bribed the Camorra?”

  “It’s been known.”

  “He is like your Superman, this Palestinian. If I believe what you are saying, he can do anything, non è così?”

  “The more I learn about him, the more dangerous he becomes. There’s more.”

  “What you tell me is already bad enough,” Moretti said, motioning the waiter over and ordering espresso and cannoli for both of them. Scorpion shook his head no. “Per piacere, they make it good here. You will like. Besides, you are paying.”

  Scorpion motioned Moretti closer. “Five days ago an Iranian ship, the Shiraz Se out of Bushehr, transited the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean. No one knows what happened to her or her cargo.”

  “Is too much. Now you are trying to disturb me. I thought that for you and I, like Mr. Humphrey Bogart and Signor Claude Raines in the movie Casablanca, this would be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. But this I do not like,” Moretti said, wagging his finger.

  “I ask you again, il mio amico Aldo. Ask yourself one question: of all the cities in the world where we believe something is going to happen, why is the Palestinian in Rome? Why am I here?”

  “I see,” Moretti said. He took a bite of the cannoli, then put down his fork. “It’s good, but you’ve killed my appetite. I did not know that was possible with cannoli.” Moretti got up. “You give me things to do. We will talk again. Subito, very soon,” he said, and began to walk away.

  “You say something about ‘in the wolf’s mouth’?” Scorpion called after him.

  Moretti stopped and pivoted with a small man’s grace. “For good luck, sí. And the proper response is, ‘Crepi il lupo.’ May the wolf die.”

  That morning, Scorpion checked the DIA’s security arrangements for the conference. Thanks to Moretti, he had acquired a badge that allowed him access through all police checkpoints. He explored the Palazzo delle Finanze venue for the conference and the polizia lines and reviewed the security operations. The DIA had set up sharpshooters at all locations approaching the venue and on the approaches and roof of the palazzo, and together with the AISE and the police were tapping all telephone and cell phone communications in Rome. At Moretti’s insistence the Italians had pushed the polizia barriers out another block from the venue and had doubled the police and Carabinieri presence, along with helicopters flying overhead nonstop not only at the conference site, but at all hotels and foreign embassies where delegates were staying. Police checkpoints were set up on the A90 Ring Road around the city. Two Italian F-16s were fueled and standing by on the runway at the Italian Pratica di Mare air force base outside Rome, ready to take off at a moment’s notice.

  Scorpion contacted Rabinowich from an Internet café off the Piazza Barberini near the Trevi Fountain. The café was loud and noisy. It was filled with tourists and people from the demonstrations, many of them young and carrying backpacks. A flat-screen TV near the front of the café showed the Italian TG1 television news. The TV announcer, a handsome man in a striped Armani suit who obviously liked his pasta, was talking again about the beautiful young Englishwoman who had been reportedly beaten by the police during the demonstrations. The screen showed side-by-side photos of her, the pretty smiling brunette before the attack and then after, with her battered face covered in blood. The images had been displayed repeatedly around the world, to the point where they had almost become iconic. There were dark allegations that the woman had not only been beaten, but raped by the polizia, the announcer said, lowering his voice to imply the gravity of the charge. Known only as “la donna inglese,” she had reportedly gone into hiding.

  “What do you think?” one blond long-haired backpacker with a British accent said to his friend, watching the TV.

  “Beats me,” his friend, an American said. “She’s pretty. That’s why they’re playing it up.”

  “Not anymore,” the Brit said, and his friend laughed as they wandered away.

  The TV cut to a police assistente capo who was shown strenuously denying that the young woman had ever been taken into police custody. He pointed to a somewhat jerky security camera video that Scorpion had seen on the news that morning in his hotel room. It showed someone in the crowd who might possibly be the young woman—it was difficult to tell from the video—being pushed back by a policeman’s shield at a street barrier. Something in the video this time caught Scorpion’s attention, but it was gone too fast. He needed to see it again, frame by frame.

  He sat down at an open computer, called Rabinowich using his latest disposable cell phone, and hung up
the second he answered, then set up a real-time online chat session, using slang and abbreviations he knew Rabinowich would understand.

  u ‘ve any idea time here? 5 in f-ing am, Rabinowich typed.

  wakey, sleeping beauty . Need new HA pix, Scorpion typed back, referring to Hearing Aid, their code name for the Palestinian.

  u’ve any idea how many farangi come US in 6 mos? 12.5 f-ing million. Take time, Rabinowich making a joke mixing the Thai word for foreigners with the word for an alien race with a dubious reputation on the Deep Space Nine TV series.

  ng . need pix asap. whats new?

  From amigos in P nr biergarten, and Scorpion understood that the “friends” he was referring to was the German BND secret intelligence service; biergarten probably referred either to the Octoberfest or Hitler’s Beer Garden Putsch, and either way it was Munich, so P near Munich had to be Pullach, a suburb of that city where the old BND headquarters were located.

  HA fr 1st base 2 foster firebravo k Abitur, Rabinowich sent.

  Scorpion took a deep breath. His first stop on this mission, “first base,” had been Beirut. It meant that according to the BND, Hearing Aid—Hassani—was originally from Beirut or somewhere else in Lebanon. He had to think about firebravo for a second before he realized that Rabinowich was just using Bravo in military parlance for the letter B. These were World War Two German references: fireb plus war suggested firebomb, and firebombing in World War Two could refer either to Hamburg or Cologne. The k had to be for Cologne, spelled Köln in German. The message suggested that Hassani had come as a child from Lebanon to Cologne, where he had been raised in “foster” care and gone to school for his Abitur—his high school diploma.

  Scorpion sat back, his heart pounding. The conclusion was inescapable and he knew it must be as obvious to Rabinowich. If she’d told him the truth, Najla Kafoury had also come as a child from Lebanon to Germany.

  ditto Fräulein N, he typed.

  yup. defense? Rabinowich was acknowledging the fact that both Najla and Hassani were from Lebanon was unlikely to be a coincidence. His question about defense meant he wanted Scorpion’s evaluation of the security measures for the conference.