Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Betrayal

Bartolo sat down again.

“Plus forty per cento what job you doing,” he said.

“Twenty-five percent-and no questions.”

“Trenta. Thirty. You talk my wife,” Bartolo said. He took a small pencil stub and wrote something on a scrap of paper. He slapped the paper against the glass so the Palestinian could read the telephone number he had written on it. Then Bartolo crumpled the paper up in his hand, spit on it, chewed and swallowed it, and stood up.

“You don’t pay, maybe you don’t look so good. Maybe don’t feel so good, Turco,” Bartolo said, shuffling toward the door, his shackles clanking.

“Andiamo,” the guard said, unlocking the door.

“Vaffanculo!” Bartolo cursed, shuffling out.

The Palestinian left the prison and drove the Mercedes out of town, heading for Turin. Along the way he bought two disposable cell phones and called a number in Turin from an Autogrill rest stop on the autostrada.

“Fee ay fis sinima il layla di?” he asked in Arabic. What’s playing at the movie tonight?

“Piazza della Republica, Porta Palazzo Nord,” a man replied, and hung up. The Palestinian used the second phone to call a number in Holland.

“Bitnazaam gawalaat?” he asked in Arabic. Do you arrange tours?

“Abu Faraj is dead. In his home in Damascus,” the voice at the other end said, using the nom de guerre of Dr. Abadi. The Palestinian watched the traffic on the A4 go by. Suddenly, it seemed as if every car was a potential danger. Impossible, he told himself. They couldn’t be on to him so quickly after Cairo. “Also his wife and three guards.”

“Who was it?” he asked.

“We don’t know. The Jews or the Americans. Pick one. Whoever, the dog got away,” the voice said.

“He was good enough to get past all the guards and alarms. That house was like a fortress.”

“Khalli baalak,” the voice said. Be careful. “Whoever it was is very dangerous. He also took a folder and may have accessed his computer. Is there anything on it of you?”

“Wala haaga.” Nothing, he said, his thoughts racing. This plus the near capture of Salim Kassem in Beirut meant they were after him. Even if they didn’t know who or where he was, someone was getting closer.

“Are you sure?”

“Nothing,” he said, remembering the long walk he had taken with Dr. Abadi in the Bekaa Valley after the 2006 July war with the Israelis. You do not exist. It is the only way, Dr. Abadi had said. There would be nothing of him on Abadi’s computer, or anywhere for that matter. He was certain of it. He waited, and when the voice did not continue, finally said it: “Do we go on?”

“Allahu akhbar!” the voice said. God is great.

“Allahu akhbar!” the Palestinian replied and hung up. It was as they had agreed. No matter what, there would be no turning back.

Making sure he wasn’t watched, he pulled out the SIM cards, placed the two cell phones and SIMs just behind his front tire, and backed the Mercedes over them. He jumped out, picked up what was left of the phones and tossed the pieces at intervals into the brush along the autostrada to Turin.

It was getting warm, the sun glittering on the Po River and on the mountains as he drove into Turin and parked in a structure near the Porta Palazzo. It was a working-class area, and he passed warehouses and cheap couscous restaurants as he walked to the piazza and waited on the sidewalk near a cluster of market stalls. Within minutes a van pulled up. Two Moroccan men jumped out and shoved him into the back. One of the Moroccans started to put a hood on his head.

“U’af!” Stop! “No hood. I want to study the area,” the Palestinian said sharply in Arabic. One Moroccan looked at the other, who didn’t say anything. He kept the hood in his hand. “Where are we going?” the Palestinian asked the driver.

“Across the river. Make sure no one is following,” the driver said, weaving through the traffic, mostly Fiats, of course, from the big Fiat factory in the suburbs of the city, past the lush green of the Royal Gardens and the towering four-sided dome of the Mole Antonelliana, Turin’s signature landmark. Designed to be a synagogue, the Mole was now Italy’s National Movie Museum, and was said to be the tallest museum in the world. They drove across the bridge over the Po River, then cut illegally across the oncoming lane to a side street, turning back on the Via Bologna and recrossing to the western side of the river. After another ten minutes going back and forth on side streets to make sure no one was following, the driver pulled up to the loading dock of a small warehouse a few doors down from a garage that had been converted into a mosque. They got out and went inside the warehouse.

There were six young Moroccan and Albanian men in work clothes, two of them wearing the green coveralls of Italian sanitation workers, and two women in hijabs. They stood around or sat on metal chairs near a stack of crates in a corner of the warehouse. A bearded young Moroccan man sat behind a folding table in the front of the group, sipping a bottle of Orange Fanta. An older man in an embroidered taqiyah cap, who the Palestinian assumed was the imam, sat beside the bearded Moroccan.

“Salaam aleikem,” the imam said.

“Wa aleikem es-salaam,” the Palestinian replied, taking a seat and turning the chair sideways so he could see the two men at the table and the rest of the group. The bearded man put a Beretta pistol on the table.

“You are welcome, Brother,” the imam continued in Arabic. “We have been instructed to assist you in all possible ways.”

“Assist, yes. But in Torino we lead,” the bearded man said, his hand touching the gun.

“You are GICM?” the Palestinian asked, naming the terrorist Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group responsible for a series of deadly bombings and kidnappings across northern Italy.

The bearded man nodded.

“Give me your gun,” the Palestinian ordered, standing and holding out his hand. The bearded man picked up the pistol and pointed it at him.

“I give the orders here,” he said.

“Do you submit to Allah? Have you said the Shahadah?” the Palestinian demanded, his eyes burning. “We are the Al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya. Do you know there is a fatwa against any who would lift a hand against me because of my work in our holy cause?” He stepped closer to the table and held out his hand. “Either kill me now and burn forever in jahannam or give me the gun, Brother.”

The bearded man’s eyes darted around, looking at his friends and followers. Everyone was riveted on the confrontation. One of the Moroccans from the van started to pull his gun out of a shoulder holster, then stopped halfway. From outside the warehouse came the sound of a car honking in traffic. No one moved. The bearded man’s fingers tightened on the gun. The Palestinian could see specks of dust floating in the shafts of sunlight coming through the high warehouse window, and he wondered if it would be the last thing he ever saw. At last the bearded man exhaled. Without a word, he pushed the gun on the table toward the Palestinian.

“Allahu akbar,” God is great, the Palestinian said, picking up the gun. The others started to echo “Allahu akbar” when the Palestinian aimed the gun and shot the bearded man in the head, the shot ringing unbelievably loud in the silence. One of the women gave out a muffled cry as the body slumped to the side of the chair.

The Palestinian turned on the group and stared at them. “Our moment of truth has come. There can be only one leader here,” he said, and told them what he wanted them to do.

“W here do you want the delivery?” Francesca said, tossing her long blond hair, her dark roots showing only at the part. They were having dinner in a small exclusive restaurant in Milan, near Sempione Park.