Scorpion Betrayal

by Andrew Kaplan

  Scorpion heard a whirring sound and looked out the caffè window. A tram was going by, its windows lit like a ship in the night. He glanced at his watch. It was after midnight. This man was devout, and all of a sudden it all changed? Because his wife was worried about something that was going on at the mosque? How the hell had the Carabinieri let that remark slip by? He decided to pay Badoui a visit.

  Badoui’s apartment was in a run-down section of the Porta Palazzo district. The outer door to the apartment house was locked, but it only took Scorpion a second with a credit card to open it. He stepped into the entryway and using a little LED flashlight found Badoui’s handwritten name and apartment number on the wall next to one of the mailboxes. Scorpion went up the narrow stairs and stood outside the door to Badoui’s apartment, where he could hear a baby crying inside. He knocked on the door. There was no answer. He knocked again, harder, and when no one came, knocked again. Then he heard footsteps and the sound of the baby crying approaching the door.

  “Chi è là? Che cosa volete?” Who’s there? What do you want, a woman asked, sounding frightened.

  “È il Carabinieri. Apra il portello,” Scorpion said. It’s the Carabinieri. Open the door. He heard the woman whispering to someone and pounded on the door. The door opened suddenly and the woman stood there in a nightdress, winding a hijab on her head with one hand and holding the baby, still crying, with the other.

  “Già ho parlato con la polizia,” a thin, bearded man in pajama bottoms and an undershirt said, coming forward. Scorpion showed him his badge.

  “I have just a few more questions. You are Issam Badoui?” Scorpion asked in Fusha Arabic.

  “I have told the polizia everything I have to say,” the man answered in Arabic.

  “No, you haven’t. Tell your wife to go into the next room.”

  “I don’t know who you are, but I have nothing to say,” Badoui said.

  “Tell her to take the baby and go into the next room,” Scorpion said, in a tone that in Arabic implied the whole issue of male-female relations and a man’s ability to be master in his own house.

  “Go into the bedroom and close the door, and keep the baby quiet,” Badoui told the woman.

  “You see what happens with that mosque. I told you this would happen,” she said fiercely.

  “You told me nothing! Escoot! Shut up! Go inside and keep the baby quiet!” he snapped.

  “I told you, but you would not listen,” she said, and went into the next room and closed the door behind her.

  “The Carabinieri don’t come in the middle of the night. Who are you?” Badoui asked.

  “You know this man?” Scorpion asked, showing Badoui the photograph of the Palestinian on his cell phone. Badoui pretended not to look at it and didn’t say anything. “I can see that you have seen him before.”

  “I don’t know him. I told the guardia.”

  “You lied to the guardia. Don’t be afraid of this man. He’s dead.”

  “I’m not afraid. I don’t know him. Now get out. I have to go to work in the morning.”

  “Does not the Sura, the Cow, say: ‘Be steadfast in prayer; practice regular charity; and bow down your heads with those who bow down,’” Scorpion said, quoting from the Qu’ran. “Yet you haven’t been to salat at the mosque in a month. What happened a month ago? It was this man, wasn’t it?” He tapped Hassani’s face on the cell phone screen.

  “No, it wasn’t,” Badoui said in a strangled voice.

  “What happened a month ago?”

  “Nothing. My wife, she doesn’t like that mosque.”

  “Why not? Should we call her in?”

  “Leave her out of this,” Badoui said.

  “He wanted shaheedin to commit terrorism,” Scorpion said, tapping the cell phone, “and you didn’t want to. Isn’t that right? He warned you to tell no one or he’d kill you. Did he threaten your family as well?”

  “I don’t want any part of this.”

  “You won’t be. I promise. And I will keep my word, as is the hadith of the Prophet, rasul sallahu alayhi wassalam, peace be upon him, ‘The Prophet ordered us to help others to fulfill oaths.’ What did you see? Did he kill someone?”

  Badoui stared at him, his eyes wide.

  “You saw it, didn’t you?”

  Badoui nodded. “I saw him kill two men. One was only a boy. It meant nothing to him, like swatting a fly. He let me go and told me never to come back and to say nothing.”

  “You were afraid. I understand. This was at the warehouse, wasn’t it? Did you ever go back?”

  Badoui hesitated, then said, “No.”

  “You went back, didn’t you?” Scorpion asked. Badoui didn’t say anything. Scorpion took out money and counted out ten hundred-euro notes and put them on the coffee table.

  “What’s that?” Badoui asked.

  “I want to help you, min fadlak, please. You have a baby. Keep the money. No one will know. In a minute I’ll go and you will never see me again. What happened?”

  Badoui didn’t answer. He looked at the money and at Scorpion. Then he took the money. “My wife,” he said. “She is a friend of the wife of Jamal, one of those who was with this man. We called the man ‘Mejdan.’ Jamal hadn’t come home or called in days and she was worried. My wife was pestering me, as she does, talking about how maybe Jamal had a woman and was thinking of divorce. She was making me crazy, so I took an hour away from work and went to the warehouse last week. It was very strange.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Jamal was there with Hicham, another of the group. He is a sanitation worker. They were with a woman and they had a metal coffin. I thought it was to get rid of the body of one of the men Mejdan killed.”

  Scorpion sat up. An aluminum coffin could be used to transport a uranium bomb. It would be perfect to house the gun mechanism that Professor Groesbeck had described to him in Utrecht. As for the woman, even before he asked the question, he knew what Badoui would say.

  “Describe the woman.”

  “Beautiful, like a supermodel. She was wearing a suit with a skirt. It looked expensive.”

  “Was she an Arab?”

  “Yes. Her hair was blond, but she was an Arab. If you saw her, believe me, you would remember her.” I believe you, Scorpion thought. I can’t get her out of my mind. The only change was that Najla had dyed her hair blond.

  “Did they say anything?”

  “They were startled when they saw me. I told Jamal to call or go see his wife because my wife was driving me crazy, and they laughed. I left quickly. I don’t think they wanted me there.”

  “No, of course,” Scorpion said, getting up. “Shokran and don’t be afraid. Mejdan is dead. He was one of those killed in Rome. I’m sure you’ve seen it on the television. As for my visit tonight, this conversation never happened. I was never here.”

  “Tell that to my wife,” Badoui said, walking Scorpion to the door.

  In the taxi back to his hotel Scorpion called the Carabinieri lieutenant, Giorgio. He told Giorgio what he needed and to call him when they had something.

  In the morning, after working out and cleaning up, he was having breakfast in the hotel, near a window overlooking the red-tiled roofs and the imposing spire of the Mole, the city’s landmark, when Giorgio called.

  “È Giorgio. You must to come at once.”

  “Where are you?” Scorpion asked.

  “The airport.”

  “I’m on my way,” Scorpion said. Within an hour he was sitting with Giorgio and two of his men, looking at videos from airport security cameras on a closed circuit monitor.

  “We do as you suggest,” Giorgio said. “We get the videos of the woman from the German television. We take into account what you said, that she become a blond,” he explained as they sped through a video, people moving in a blur till one of the Carabinieri said something and they slowed it down.

  Scorpion studied the screen intently. He watched people standing in lines and going by and then saw her at
the Lufthansa ticket counter, only as Badoui had said, she was a long-haired blonde, and he wasn’t sure it was her. Then she turned and headed toward the security check, and as soon as he saw her face, he was certain. It was Najla.

  “The video is from three nights ago,” Giorgio said. “She was taking a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt, traveling on a German passport in the name of ‘Brynna Escher.’”

  “Was Frankfurt the final destination?” Scorpion asked, keeping his voice calm, trying to ignore what the sight of her stirred up in him.

  Giorgio shook his head. “In transit. Frankfurt to Saint Petersburg, and she wasn’t alone.”

  “Oh?”

  “She was traveling with a body. Claimed it was her brother, Pyotr. Had all the correct paperwork. They X-ray it of course. There was definitely a body inside. Have no idea who. Nobody open it. People don’t like to disturb coffins.”

  “Did they scan it for radiation?”

  “No. You think it have—” Scorpion pulled him aside, looking at the other two Carabinieri, before Giorgio could say more.

  “Whatever you’re thinking, stop,” he whispered. “Say nothing to no one except Moretti. No one else, capisce?”

  “You go to Saint Petersburg?” Giorgio whispered back. Scorpion nodded. “I wish I could go with you.”

  “Grazie—a tutti,” Scorpion said to all of them.

  He went to the Lufthansa counter and booked the next flight via Frankfurt to Saint Petersburg. What the hell was going on? he wondered, waiting for his flight. It made no sense. He didn’t need the ship, the Shiraz Se, to see this thing had Iranian fingerprints all over it. Someone with very deep pockets had spent a lot of money to fund the Palestinian’s operation. Just the cost of the enriched uranium could have cost millions. So of all the places in the world, why would the Islamic Resistance, which, like the rest of Hezbollah, had to be funded by Iran, want to attack the Russians, their primary supplier for nuclear material, technology, and missiles? He had the sense he’d had much earlier in the mission, of being in the middle of a battle while in a fog, not knowing who or where the different opponents were or even what game they were playing. The only thing he knew was that Najla was in Saint Petersburg, and for a moment he could almost feel her body next to his, as though back in that hotel room in Amsterdam.

  He was sitting in the transit lounge in Frankfurt when the text message came in. He didn’t recognize the phone number it came from, but it was a scrambled text so he knew it was Rabinowich using the Vigenère code. He drew a Vigenère Square on a piece of paper he got from the lounge bartender and it didn’t take long to unscramble the text. After decryption, it read in clear text: gondolashirazsest-peteonetwoimam. “Gondola” meant Venice, so the message was urgent. The Iranian ship, the Shiraz Se, was in Saint Petersburg, stpete, and again he wondered why on earth Iran would want to attack Russia. It was crazy. The answer had to be the last thing Rabinowich had sent, because onetwoimam was another matter, and it was apocalyptic.

  The “one-two” or the “Twelfth Imam,” was Muhammad al-Mahdi, the “Mahdi,” or Messiah. According to the Shi’a Muslims, he was born in 869 AD and supposedly never died. When he comes out of hiding, he’s supposed to wield the Sword of God and kill the unbelievers on Judgment Day. There were many among the top leadership in Tehran who were “Twelvers,” as believers in the Twelfth Imam were called, and the Iranian government had even built special new boulevards in Tehran and in the holy city of Qom for the Mahdi to enter the city. Still, he wondered if Rabinowich had lost it, because it made no sense. Unless he was suggesting that somehow blowing up Saint Petersburg was to fulfill the prophecy.

  Then it hit him. Saint Petersburg was Russia’s main port. It was where the Iranian ship came in, but that didn’t mean it was the final destination. What about Moscow? What would happen if they smuggled the bomb from Saint Petersburg to Moscow?

  Russia was a top-down society. Always had been. If the head were decapitated, what was left might retaliate against the U.S. or Europe, unless the Russians knew it was the Iranians. They certainly wouldn’t believe anything the Americans would say. It was insane, but those conditions would exactly fulfill the Twelfth Imam prophecy. And even if it didn’t, there would be a free-for-all in the Ekaterinburg oblast. Whoever had guns and money could get anything they wanted, including the nuclear weapons and missiles. It would be a game changer. Except it was crazy, he thought. Even most Shi’ites didn’t believe the Twelfth Imam was on his way. Except he could almost hear Rabinowich saying, “Sure, it’s wacky, but remember, a lot of otherwise perfectly rational people believe Jesus is coming back any day now too.”

  On the airport lounge TV, the German news announcer was talking about terrorist actions in the United States. The two killed in New York. No mention of bioweapons. In Chicago, a Pakistani college student had been taken into custody. It was suspected that an explosion in Los Angeles was related to a terrorist group linked to al-Qaida. After all he had supplied, alerting the NSA to the al Jabbar code, how in hell could an explosion have happened in L.A.?

  Watching the German TV news made him think with a pang of Najla, and he returned to the main question: Who was she working for? For Harris on an op that Harris didn’t want him to know about, or for the Iranians? And why?

  Whatever was going on, the answer was in Saint Petersburg.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Saint Petersburg, Russia

  The prisoner’s hands were bound and chained to a beam from which he hung naked, like a side of beef, his toes dangling above the cell floor. His head hung loosely from his neck, the face bruised and swollen, and there were red marks on his torso where he had been beaten. The two interrogators, hefty FSB types, attached electrodes to his genitals. One of the interrogators sat down and turned a dial, and the man screamed, his body and bound feet jerking wildly until the electricity stopped and the other interrogator went over and slapped him in the face and asked him something.

  Watching it through one-way, soundproof glass, Scorpion said, “We’ve found these methods are iffy in the way of real information, and that’s even before it leaks and the media and the politicians go crazy.”

  Ivanov shrugged. “He’s Chechen. Of the Daikhoi teip. They’re tough, these Chechens. To them, a beating is like how you say hello. He won’t tell us anything. We think he’s from a cell of SPIR, the Chechen terrorist group. This,” gesturing at the Chechen writhing and crying out as the current ravaged his privates, “is just for show so he thinks he’s resisted us. Later we give him a shot. We tell him it’s a truth drug, but it’s really just a barbiturate. Once he’s unconscious, we endoscopically insert a tiny tracking transmitter and attach it to the inside of his stomach. In the morning, when he wakes up, we let him go. He doesn’t know we’ve done anything and we don’t have to put surveillance on him or anything. The bug is GPS-based. We can track exactly where he is every second on a laptop computer. Over the course of a week or two he will lead us to his associates, and when we’re ready, we pick them all up.”

  “I could use one of those,” Scorpion said.

  “Ladno.” Sure. “I’ll see that you get it before you leave. Just don’t use it on one of my people.”

  “Tell your people to stay the hell out of my way.”

  “Izvinitye, but you aroused our curiosity. Come,” Ivanov said, leading him away from the one-way glass. They walked down a concrete corridor to a steel prison door. Ivanov tapped on the thick door glass and a guard opened it and they stepped into a tiled corridor. They climbed a steel staircase and Ivanov led him to an office with a window that looked out over the Neva River. It was a cool, gray day. Dark clouds were bundled over the buildings along the river, the water dark as the clouds. Ivanov sat down behind the desk wearing the well-tailored suit of a senior apparatchik in the New Russia. He had cold intelligent eyes behind steel-rimmed glasses, his hair iron-gray, and he looked fit for a man in his sixties.

  “I’m borrowing this office while I’m in Saint Petersburg. Poz
halsta,” please, he said, gesturing for Scorpion to sit down as an aide came in and put a bottle of vodka and two glasses on the desk. Ivanov filled both glasses to the brim. “This is Stolichnaya Elit. The best. The other Stolichnayas are govno shit. Na sdarovy,” he toasted, raising his glass.

  “Budem zdorovy,” Scorpion toasted back. “I’m flattered at the attention.”

  This wasn’t the reception he’d expected when they picked him up outside the Astoria Hotel, the black Mercedes sedan swerving to cut off the taxi he just got into, the four tough-looking types who surrounded the taxi, showing him and the driver their guns. He’d gotten into the backseat, sandwiched between two beefy men with the universal look of cops, without any idea who they were or how they’d ID’d him. At first he wasn’t sure if they were FSB or Russian mafia. When he saw the grim red brick prison, he’d expected to be treated more like the poor Chechen bastard whose gonads were being used to complete an electrical circuit. It never occurred to him that Checkmate, Vladimir Ivanov himself, would have come all the way from Moscow just to see him.

  “You are too modest, Scorpion. We heard about the Palestinian. My congratulations. As I told your Mr. Harris, we have an interest in this matter.”

  “He’s not my Gospodin Harris.”

  “So. That is interesting,” Ivanov said, studying him intently. “But I don’t believe you as a double. That would take more than electrodes on your testicles to convince me. I understand New York, but why did the Palestinian also choose Rome?”