Andrew Kaplan: Scorpion Betrayal

The first problem was how to coordinate multiple attacks simultaneously and get it done without breaching security. Hidden within that was the second problem, the attack that could not be known to the others and required transporting a large object into a city ringed with security checkpoints. The third task was the hardest. How to stage an attack on a location that would undoubtedly be protected by extraordinary security and that was completely off-limits to the public?

For weeks he had been thinking about how to do it. Was it possible? the blind imam in Holland had asked him, and he had been tempted to say no. Even now he wasn’t sure whether he had said yes, it could be done, out of faith or vanity that he would be the one to bring down the enemy. Phase one was nearly complete. Phase two would be far more terrible. A day that would change things far beyond September 11 in ways they couldn’t imagine, a day they would never forget. Both phases presented difficulties, but this target was the greatest challenge. There were so many things that could go wrong: someone who didn’t do what he was supposed to at exactly the right moment, an undercover agent betraying them, an overly zealous policeman at a checkpoint. Even the weather was a factor in a complex plan where the variability of a single degree of temperature could make a difference. He’d considered and discarded a dozen different ways of carrying it out. Sooner or later, in each of the scenarios he had come up with, he found a fatal flaw. Going over locations well before he finalized plans, learning the terrain, measuring distances as he had in Cairo, helped eliminate some possibilities, but still, the three main problems, each inside the other, remained unsolved.

He had explored the city, focusing on traffic flow and geography rather than the tourist attractions of ancient and Renaissance Rome, using a golf range finder to exactly measure distances, which would be critical. He’d spent hours at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, studying municipal schematics and plans going back to ancient times. He drove out on the A91 to inspect the warehouse he had arranged to rent. It was in an industrial suburb with small factories and working-class apartment houses across from open lots, and most important, inside the A90 Ring Road that encircled the city and where there would undoubtedly be checkpoints. The business card he’d given the warehouse owners said he was the owner of a transport and material freight company in Germany. If they called to check on him, they would find that the company registration, address, phone numbers, and website were perfectly legitimate; all calls and inquiries would be promptly answered and handled by the office management company on Heidenkampsweg Street in Hamburg. He paid the warehouse owners the first three months rent in cash and they were clearly delighted. They reiterated that the discretion he’d demanded would be honored without question. The owners were two brothers from Palermo, and they assured him to non preoccupare. Sicilians, they told him, knew how to keep secrets.

By the time he’d gone to the restaurant near the Piazza di Spagna on the second day, he had solved two of the three problems. But the solution to the third and most difficult problem still eluded him. He looked up and caught the American college girl glancing at him. He smiled, and she smiled back. He wondered if he should have her or use her as a test for the police with explosives. With her long brown hair, she reminded him of someone, and then he remembered the young Bangladeshi woman in Queens with the haunting dark eyes. He recalled how she kept glancing not at the camera, but at him, when she made her martyr’s video. Or maybe it was the video he remembered. In a way, it was more real to him than she herself was.

She was not a true shaheedah martyr. She liked America and her job in Manhattan, but her brother was a coward. He owed money to a Bangladeshi gang, had sworn himself to jihad and martyrdom to get the money and then backed out because of his fear, trying to use his two small children as an excuse. She was doing it to keep the Bangladeshi gang members from killing her brother and leaving his children fatherless. She would never do it for herself or for the brother, but would do it for the children, and also because the way she looked at him when she made the video made him think she was attracted to him. Her martyrdom was a gift for him, he thought, glancing now at the American girl talking and laughing with her friends. The waiter came with the Campari and soda he’d ordered and he was about to tell him to give Camparis to everyone at her table when just like that, he had the solution.

The American girl raised her wineglass toward him, her eyes crinkling at the corners, confident of herself and her looks. Instead of responding, the Palestinian stood up, tossed some money on the table, and left in a hurry, the girl never knowing how close to death she had come.

He went back to his hotel near the top of the Spanish Steps, packed and got the rented Mercedes coupe from the underground parking garage. Once on the A1 and out of Rome, he drove through the darkness on the autostrada at over a hundred miles per hour, the radio blasting music by Euro groups like Tokio Hotel and Fettes Brot. Near Florence, he called ahead and made a late reservation. By midnight he was checking into the Principe di Savoia Hotel in Milan. In the morning he went to the San Vittore prison in the center of the city.

C armine Bartolo came into the visitors’ area and sat across the glass partition from him with a swagger, despite his shackles. Although he was of medium height, he looked bigger, almost hulking. His thick hair and heavy brows made his eyes seem small and dangerous. Inside the Naples Camorra, the mafia gang that virtually ran that city, Bartolo was known as “Il Brutto” for his perpetually nasty sneer and his legendary use of a butcher’s cleaver as his preferred form of intimidation. He said something in a rapid slang Italian that the Palestinian didn’t understand.

“Non capisco. Parla inglese? Francais? Deutsch?” the Palestinian asked.

“English,” Bartolo said, pronouncing it “Eengleesee.” He leaned closer toward the glass. “What are you? Turco? Musulmano? Muslim boy?”

“Businessman. I’m here to buy something.”

“You want buy, go to Rinacente store. This is prigione. Capisce?” Bartolo said, glancing sideways at the guard standing by the wall to see if his humor was being properly appreciated. The guard looked away, bored. He was paid to look away and not to hear.

The Palestinian motioned Bartolo closer. “I’ll pay you a hundred thousand euros cash for what I want.”

Bartolo’s eyes narrowed under his heavy brows. He looked like the brute killer he was, the Palestinian thought.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Someone who can pay,” the Palestinian said, and covering his mouth so a camera couldn’t pick it up, whispered what he wanted.

Bartolo’s eyebrows came together, forming a single ridge across his forehead, making him look almost like a Neanderthal.

“What you want for? A job, si?”

“None of your business. Part of what I’m paying for is no questions.”

“Figlio di puttana!” Bartolo said, standing up, hunching over slightly because of the shackles. “I don’t fare affare with Turco I don’t know.”

“A hundred thousand. I can always try the Zaza brothers or the Nuova Famiglia,” the Palestinian said quietly.

“You go Zaza, do business with those busones? Me ne infischio,” Bartolo said, jerking his chin at the Palestinian in lieu of the usual obscene gesture, because of his shackles. The Palestinian beckoned him closer to the glass.

“A hundred twenty thousand cash. Half now, half on delivery.”