Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Betrayal

“I kill him,” Khmelnitsky said. “But for only one euro. This is all this huesos is worth.”

By late afternoon the big rig arrived carrying the steel drums and ingots. Before they loaded the cargo, the Palestinian inspected the steel drums marked SPECIAL ORDER for the hairs from his head he had glued from the tops to the sides. They were unbroken. They hadn’t been tampered with. He used his laptop to send the authorization for the bank transfer and waited till Khmelnitsky came back after checking it out.

“Money kharasho. Everything kharasho. You see, we do kharasho good business,” the Russian said, clapping the Palestinian on the shoulder.

“Da svidaniya,” the Palestinian replied, shaking Khmelnitsky’s hand. The Russian was smiling so broadly, he thought, you could almost forget he was called “Kolbasa.”

The Palestinian walked up the gangplank onto the ship, pulling his carry-on behind him. A Turkish crewman pointed him to the bridge, where he showed his papers to a man named Chernovetsky, a bearded Ukrainian in a soiled white captain’s cap. The papers identified him as a Moroccan seaman named Hassan Lababi. The captain squinted closely at the photograph on his papers then handed them back.

“New crewman takes midnight watch,” Chernovetsky said in a heavily accented English.

“Oui, Capitaine,” the Palestinian replied, using French to reinforce his Moroccan nationality.

The Palestinian went below and stowed his gear in the crew’s quarters, then went out on deck. He watched the crewmen toss the hawsers and felt the shudder of the engines as the ship left its berth. The Zaina cleared the breakwater and began an easy pitching as it headed out into the deeper water of the Black Sea. The ship was bound through the Bosphorus and the Dardenelles for its next port, Marseilles, where the steel drums were to be unloaded. The Palestinian leaned on the rail and smoked a cigarette and watched the sun as it set behind the western hills of Odessa, the sky a vivid purple and red. As the lights of the city receded in the darkness, he smiled in the knowledge that the Zaina would never reach Marseilles.

Amsterdam, Netherlands

“Now that you have me, what are you going to do with me?” she asked. They were sitting in a brown bar just off the Prinsengracht, not far from the Anne Frank House.

“Why were you following me?” he said, poking at a fritte mayonnaise.

“I told you, I’m following a story,” she said, putting down her witte beer and lighting a cigarette. It gave her a chance to study his face. It was a strong face, with dark tousled hair and shadows under gray eyes that gave nothing away. There was a scar over one of his eyes that she suspected wasn’t a sports injury. His hands looked strong enough that she knew if he wanted to, he could tear her apart, and it made something shiver inside her.

“You’re doing it again,” he said.

“Doing what?”

“Lying when you don’t have to. Whatever you were following me for, it wasn’t for the TV news.”

“How do you know?”

“You’re Najla Kafoury, a one-name talking head on TV. You’re national in Deutschland. You don’t do local breaking-and-entering stories, and nobody stakes out a mosque at night on the off chance the alarm’ll go off. Why were you there and why did you follow me?”

She exhaled cigarette smoke at him and didn’t say anything.

“Last chance,” he said.

“Or else what? What’ll you do if I don’t say? Tie me up? Spank me?”

“I wish I could. Sounds like fun,” he said, sipping his pils beer.

“What will you do?” she said, suddenly serious.

“Introduce you to people less willing to let you lie than I am. Trust me, you won’t like it.”

“I believe you,” she said. She exhaled a stream of smoke and looked around the bar. It was dark, crowded, and noisy, and a number of football fans were arguing loudly about the upcoming match between the leading Dutch rivals, Ajax and Feyenoord. “I could make a scene.”

“Not a good idea.”

She looked into his gray eyes, and whatever she saw made her go cold inside.

“You’re right,” she said. “It wasn’t a story. Islamic extremism is my enemy. You know that. You were at the demonstration, weren’t you?”

He nodded.

“I thought I had seen you,” she said. “There was something going on at the mosque. For weeks I’d been getting hints, e-mails, tweets, Muslims not from Hamburg coming and going. Something was about to happen. I could feel it. I was thinking maybe a terroristischen attack. Then tonight the alarm went off and you came out and I decided to follow. I thought you were a terrorist. When you first grabbed me, I thought you were going to kill me. Maybe you still are,” she added softly.

“Ja — and if Ajax loses Suarez as striker?! Then what?” a red-faced Dutchman at the bar wearing the Ajax team colors, red and white, demanded loudly.

“That call I made before,” Scorpion said, referring to a cell phone call he had made earlier, while they were still driving to Amsterdam. “I’m waiting to hear.”

“You’ll let me go?”

“I don’t know. We’ll have to see.”

“You could let me go right now. You could let me just stand up and walk out the door and no harm. You could do it,” she said, her hand resting on her handbag as if she were getting ready to leave.

“Drink your beer. Don’t do anything stupid,” he said.

“You’re scaring me. I thought you liked me.”

“Flirting too. You’re putting on quite a show. Too bad we both know this isn’t personal,” he said. “What were you doing outside the Islamisches Masjid in the middle of the night-and please don’t tell me again you were waiting for a story to drop into your lap. We’re past the Girl Journalist Makes Good phase.”

“I told you. They’re up to something. I thought you were one of them. I’m beginning to think you really are.”

“Let’s go,” he said, standing.

She looked up. “Where are we going?”

“To get a room,” he said, grabbing her arm and pulling her close.

“Is that what this is?” she asked, looking into his eyes.

“I need to sleep. So do you. By morning we’ll know more,” he said, helping her into her Burberry.

Holding her by the arm, they left the bar. He hailed a taxi and told the driver to take them to the Rosseburt; the Red Light District. The driver dropped them off on a walking street with thinning groups of men and a few lingering tourists viewing the rows of red-lit windows filled with women in sexy lingerie and stockings. The windows cast a neon-red glow into the street. It was late. The night was cool and smelled of beer and hashish. Street hustlers selling drugs approached them and Scorpion shook them off.

“You already have me. How many women do you need?” Najla said as they walked by the windows where young women posed and beckoned male passersby.

“For the moment, none. You’re a complication, not an asset,” he said, pulling her into a sex shop. They went to the S amp;M section, where he picked out handcuffs, restraints, a leather gag, and a roll of duct tape.

“You are getting stranger by the minute.” She looked around at the leather restraints, masks, and whips. “In case you’re wondering, I’m not into this,” she said.

“Well, we don’t know what kind of a girl you really are, do we?” he said, paying for what he had picked out and then grabbing a taxi that took them to an inexpensive hotel near the Dam Square parking structure where he’d left the BMW. He checked them in using a Canadian passport that identified him as an engineer from Toronto named John Crane.

“Is that what I call you? Herr Crane?” she said as they stepped into the small hotel room smelling faintly of disinfectant. “Or maybe John. Like I am the prostitute and you are the john, ja?”