Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Betrayal

After dinner he got up, went outside and caught a taxi, telling the driver to take him to a nightclub where he would find Serbians. Lots of Serbians.

“You want sex club?” the taxi driver asked.

“Do they have Serbian girls?”

“Sure. Serbian, Ukrainian, Asian, even Nederland girls,” the driver joked.

“I want Serbian-and don’t take me to the place that pays you the biggest commission.”

“You Serbian?”

“Just take me to a Serbian club,” Scorpion said. He didn’t give a damn about Serbians or their girls, but much of the organized crime in Amsterdam had been taken over by Nas Stvar, the Serbian mafia, and right now what he needed was a forger. The taxi dropped him off at a neon-lit club in Pijp near the old Heineken brewery. Inside, the club was dark, neon red light casting shadows, and he had to fend off a half-dozen women who wanted him to buy them champagne. A twenty euro note to the bartender got him a conversation with a sweaty Serbian in a black sweater with a two-day beard stubble who called himself Javor and kept looking around as if they were being watched.

“You want identity, I got all kinds. Credit cards, American Express, Visa Black, whatever you want,” Javor said.

“I want a blank Nederland passport and identity card. Official stamps. I’ll put in the name and information.”

“Better I do it. You do it, it won’t pass,” Javor said.

“Maybe I don’t trust you.”

“Nobody trust nobody. That’s the best way.”

“Good,” Scorpion said. “All right, we do it now, but I watch you while you do it. I hear the standard is two hundred. You do the job and forget you ever saw me and I’ll pay you double, but we do it right now.”

“Double? Why didn’t you say before? I thought you was a smeerlap flikker son of bitch,” Javor said, getting up.

Scorpion followed him out of the club. The night had turned cold and a wind had come up, the overhead tram wires at the corner swaying. They got into the Serb’s car and drove to a small print shop in Westerpark, near the Houthaven port. The Serb unlocked the door and Scorpion followed him into the back. Scorpion handed him the Xerox copy of Ouaddane’s identity card and told Javor to use that information for the new card and passport.

“I’ll need a beard,” Scorpion said.

“What kind?”

“A Vandyke, like this.” Scorpion indicated on his face. Javor nodded, rummaged around in a box and came up with a paste-on beard. He put it on Scorpion, who looked in the mirror, asked for a scissors, and holding up the picture of Ouaddane, trimmed the beard to match the photograph. Javor perched Scorpion on a stool and took his photograph, then used the computer to transfer the image to the new identity card and passport in Ouaddane’s name.

“Give me the chip,” Scorpion said, holding out his hand.

“What?”

“The camera memory chip. Give it to me.”

Javor opened the camera and handed Scorpion the chip, who put it in his pocket, then took off the beard. When the new Dutch identity card and passport were complete, Javor handed them to Scorpion, who studied them both carefully and put them in his pocket.

“It’s good, the identiteitsbewijs, yes? Fool this guy’s own mother,” Javor said.

“Now the computer. Delete the files and then empty the Deleted Files folder.”

Scorpion watched him do it. When he was satisfied, he gave Javor the money, then took out his gun and pointed it at the Serb. Javor’s eyes narrowed and he held out the money.

“Take it back. I don’t want,” he said.

“The only way to be sure you’ll keep this to yourself is to kill you,” Scorpion said.

“Please, meneer. This is my business. If I am talking, people don’t come to me. Someone would kill me before this. I don’t even know your name. Take money back.”

“Keep the money,” Scorpion said, putting away the gun. “Just remember. This never happened. You never saw me. You don’t know the name on the card or passport.”

“I swear,” Javor said.

“Don’t bother,” Scorpion said as he opened the shop door. “If you lie, you’re dead anyway.”

He walked the dark streets to the Metro station, checking his reflection in store windows and waiting at corners to make sure he wasn’t followed. He took the Metro to Central Station and slept for a few hours in a nearby hotel. He woke up suddenly in the middle of the night, short of breath and staring blindly into the darkness. They were hanging by a thread, he thought. The entire operation had come down to a night security guard and a whore. He got up and drank some water from the bathroom sink and fell back into a fitful sleep.

I n the morning, he put on the fake beard and went to the ABN-Amro bank in the business district and opened an account for Ouaddane, using the fake ID and the papers supplied by Zeedorf. He got rid of the beard in a FEBO restaurant bathroom, then went to an Internet cafe and transferred the money from the account in Luxembourg to Ouaddane’s new account. He finished by getting cash at the Credit Suisse branch near the Van Gogh Museum and caught the next train back to Utrecht, where he picked up the motorcycle from the parking lot.

He met Anika for lunch at a pub by the Oudegracht Canal. This time she wore tight jeans that were more than sexy enough and a Disturbia THIS AIN’T NO DISCO T-shirt. With her blond hair pulled back and without the heavy makeup, she looked like a fresh-faced college student. They sat inside at a back table, Scorpion facing the front of the restaurant.

“Why are we sitting inside?” she asked.

“We can’t be seen together.”

“We were seen together last night.”

“Last night I was just a john. Twice is a relationship.”

“What’s wrong with relationships?” she said, provocatively licking the mayonnaise off her pomme fritte with the tip of her tongue, then smiling.

“They complicate things. Besides, this is business, isn’t it?”

“Speaking of which, you never told me. What is your business?”

“I’m a lawyer. I’m on a case.”

“Not a very ethische, how do you say it?”

“Ethical?”

“Yes, not a very ethical one.”

“I’ve got plenty of company.”

“So now what do we do?” she said suggestively, touching her lip with the tip of her tongue.

“We rent you an inexpensive car. The kind a university student would drive. Then we go to the apartment so you know where it is and you can get used to it, so you can act like you live there. Did you buy a book?”

She showed him a large textbook on Islam and its role in the contemporary world.

“Did you read any of it?”

“Very little. It’s stupid,” she said. “The whole thing is stupid.”

“You won’t tell him that?”

“I’ll tell him it’s interessant, so interessant, but I need someone to explain things to me and I’ll lean forward and let my breasts touch his arm.”

“That should do it.” Scorpion smiled. “It would do it for me, but I’m easy.”

“No,” she said, studying his gray eyes. “You aren’t.”

After they rented the car, he showed her the apartment and gave her a key. He watched her drive off in the rented Renault Clio, then headed to the camera shop he’d found on the Internet in nearby Nieuwegein and got the minicamera and recorder and tools. He installed the camera behind a wall in the apartment. He set it so it could shoot Anika’s bedroom through a hole in a print of a windmill hanging on the wall. Afterward there was nothing to do but sit in a chair in the other bedroom and think of all the things that could go wrong.

He awoke with a start. He must’ve fallen asleep, he realized. The room had grown dim. Shadows from the window stretched across the floor. He heard the sound of the key turning in the front door lock. It must have been what woke him up.