Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Betrayal

“I already told you.” Groesbeck shrugged. “It depends.”

“On what?”

“Many factors. The shape and fit when the pieces of uranium are pushed together. The temperature. The density when fission starts to expand the uranium. What kind of a reflector around the U-235 is used to bounce the neutrons back into the uranium. What kind of emitter you use to start the reaction. Of course, the big problem is how do you slam the separate pieces of uranium together.”

Groesbeck leaned closer. “The simplest way, the way I would do it if I were a small group instead of a government, is the gun mechanism. As you know, the basic principle of all explosives is that explosive force is directed perpendicular to the surface of the explosive material. By shaping the material you can aim the force of the explosion like a gun. Using a small regular explosive, just shoot one piece of U-235 into another, like a bullet into a cylinder made from the second piece of U-235, and have the impact start the neutron emitter. The whole thing should take less than a second or the bomb won’t work.”

“Maybe I’m wrong but it doesn’t seem like twenty-one kilos would be enough?”

“At seventy-six percent, extremely unlikely.” Groesbeck shook his head and motioned having a drink at the blonde, who signaled back Why not? “Unless you have a very sophisticated device, I would say fifty kilos of ninety-plus percent pure U-235 would be the minimum.”

“I get the feeling you don’t believe the seventy-six percent figure.”

“Seems unlikely. It’s not that hard to go from seventy-six to over ninety percent. Why would you stop? Of course, there is another possibility, I’m sure you thought of.”

“You mean, what if there’s more? The thought had crossed my mind.”

“Suppose your imaginary terrorist already has, say, another thirty or so kilos of almost pure U-235 sitting somewhere to add to the twenty-one, which is maybe already ninety-plus. Then, my friend, I would definitely worry. Actually, I would worry more about your terrorist selling it to someone who does have the resources to do something with it, like the Iranians. Listen, I have a colleague I absolutely have to speak to,” Groesbeck said, getting up and going over to the blonde at the bar. Which now left Scorpion sitting in a car in Utrecht in the middle of the night with the pieces to a puzzle that didn’t fit. What in hell did the Palestinian want with the twenty-one kilos of U-235, which probably cost millions, if it wouldn’t make a bomb?

He had other concerns too. His only lead to the Palestinian had suddenly become what Groesbeck would have called a “supercritical” red zone. According to the detective, Zeedorf, whom he had called on his cell phone from the BMW after meeting with Groesbeck, the imam of the Kanaleneiland mosque hadn’t been seen in over a month.

“The imam’s name is Ali el Alechaoui, age seventy-four,” the Dutch detective had said. “He is an immigrant from Rabat, Morocco; a widower, with three grown sons and sixteen grandchildren. The only address listed for him is the mosque. He receives a disability pension from the government.”

“What’s his disability?”

“He’s blind, despite which, he has written a book. A commentary…” Zeedorf paused, and Scorpion waited while he consulted his notes. “…on the Hadith of Sahih Bukhari, which is, I gather, some sort of Muslim religious text. I have a copy of his identiteitsbewijs card if you wish. One interesting thing.”

“What’s that?”

“He regularly led services at the mosque, but for the past five or six weeks he seems to have dropped out of sight. I have been unable to get any information from our sources with either the Utrecht or the KLPD National police as to whether the imam is or was under surveillance. Although he has not been seen, no one has filed a missing person report. Of course, he may be traveling or ill. I have not had a chance to check the hospitals.”

“Anything else?”

Zeedorf hesitated, and Scorpion sensed he was debating with himself before he said it.

“What is it?” Scorpion asked, prodding the detective.

“Nothing definite, but something curious.”

“What?”

“We can’t confirm it, but apparently it’s not just the imam-one of his sons and a number of his grandsons also seem to have recently dropped out of sight, not even appearing for Friday prayers.”

Scorpion arranged payment and ended the call, his mind racing. They were going operational. Whatever happened, he had to get into the imam’s office in the mosque.

He studied the building and the dark street, where nothing moved but bits of trash stirred by the wind. It was after midnight, and for the past few hours there had been no one coming or going to the mosque. The only sign of life was the silhouette of Abdelhakim occasionally appearing in a window, ghostly green in the night vision goggles. Scorpion got out of the BMW. He wore his motorcycle helmet with the visor down to prevent security cameras from identifying him and carried all the gear he would need in a backpack. He went to the front and side doors and, keeping out of the line of sight, disconnected the security cameras, then knocked on the side door to the mosque.

After a moment Abdelhakim opened the door and gaped at him till Scorpion flipped the helmet visor up and said, “It’s me.” He checked for internal cameras and spotted them in the usual places, near ceilings and in the musalla prayer area on the wall to the right of the qiblah wall that in every mosque faces Mecca.

“No one must ever know I was here. Where’s the recorder for the cameras?” Scorpion asked, looking around. There were no wires, so it was an RF setup.

“Come, I’ll show you,” Abdelhakim stammered. He led Scorpion to a panel in the wall that he removed. Scorpion set the replay on the recorder to essentially have the last five minutes recorded over with nothing happening.

“They won’t know something was erased?” the little Moroccan asked nervously.

“Not unless you tell them. If anyone ever does ask, tell them there was a brief electrical surge outage and you think the recorder reset itself. Where’s the imam’s office?”

Abdelhakim led him to a small room at the back of the building. He was about to turn on the light and Scorpion stopped him and turned on his flashlight instead. The room was sparse, with a few bookcases, a desk, a low bronze table with cushions on the floor to serve food, and a battered metal teapot for making Moroccan mint tea. There were no computers in the room, and then Scorpion remembered that the imam was blind. He was chilled by the terrible thought that he had gone to all this effort and had come up empty.

“Where does the imam keep important papers?” he asked.

Abdelhakim, watching from the doorway, just shrugged.

“What about computers?”

“In the office. I’ll show you,” he said.

“La.” No. “I’ll find it. You go back to your usual post. Pretend I’m not here. I’ll be gone soon.”

“Then I get the extra ten thousand euros?” Abdelhakim asked.

“That’s right,” Scorpion said, thinking, I’ve got you, ibn hamar. The little Moroccan was hooked, all right. He’d be able to turn the Joe over to Peters, or whomever Peters’s replacement would be, to run for as long as they wanted. As a center for the Al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya, Utrecht was compromised from here on out. But that didn’t get him any closer to the Palestinian, he thought as his eyes ranged over the walls and ceiling. He went over to the bookcases and looked behind them, but there was nothing. There were no pictures on the walls. The imam is blind, he reminded himself.

He quartered the room with the beam from the flashlight. There had to be something. The imam had written a commentary on Bukhari, considered by many Muslims as the most authentic collection of the Hadith or sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, and second only to the Qu’ran itself in holiness. It was inconceivable that Imam Ali would be such a highly regarded religious authority and not be either at the center of things or at the least had given the Palestinian his spiritual blessing. And the imam had disappeared, which meant they had gone operational. There had to be something in the office, he thought while staring at a rug on the floor under the desk. It was the only rug in the room, he realized, and it was not where people might walk on it or sit or pray, but under the desk.