Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Betrayal

“I want to stay,” she said.

“It’s dangerous,” he said. “Once I start making it, it could explode any second. This mixture, HMTD, is the most volatile thing you can imagine. The slightest jar, ordinary room temperature, anything can set it off.”

“I want to be part of this,” she said, putting her hand on his shoulder, looking at him like a soldier with Palestine her flag, and the two of them kissed, her tongue darting into his mouth, a portable Mykonos.

While they waited for the apartment to cool, he put on latex gloves and took the backpack out of the FedEx box, tearing up and flushing any identifying labels from the box down the toilet. He took the spray equipment stamped APASNAST! — Danger! — in Cyrillic lettering out of the backpack and made sure it was ready. When the apartment was cold enough, Liz helped him carry the shopping bags from the other room to the bathtub along with a big mixing bowl and other implements.

“Here we go,” he said, opening the first jar. He took a deep breath before pouring the liquid into the bowl. “This is a very bad explosive. I hate it.”

“If it’s so bad, why do you use it?”

“It’s terrible to work with, but it has one enormous advantage. We don’t have to take it through customs. You can make it anywhere from ordinary household ingredients: hair bleach, a food flavoring, and something you can buy at any camping or sporting goods store. It’s powerful, completely legal, and the authorities never know a thing until it blows up,” he said, and despite the coldness of the bathroom, which was making her shiver, he wiped a bead of sweat from his brow.

When he was done, he had about a dozen pounds of solid HMTD, which he set with a detonator connected to leads from a cell phone, before putting it in a plastic bag. He placed the bag in the backpack surrounded with pellets of dry ice to keep it cold. Then he put the spray equipment back into the backpack on a piece of canvas on top of the dry ice. He put the backpack on, turned everything off in the apartment, locked it, and they walked the four blocks to the apartment of the young Bangladeshi woman and her brother, careful not to jar the backpack and calling first to make sure the brother and sister were both home from work.

Bharati opened the door and let them in. Her brother, a small dark man with longish hair, who called the Palestinian “Bahadur” and Liz “Begum,” led them toward the kitchen. The Palestinian took off the backpack and carried it like a priest with a chalice of holy wine to the kitchen, but there wasn’t enough room in the refrigerator and he had them empty food out to put the backpack in.

They sat in the living room and the young woman, her large dark eyes glancing first at Liz and then at the Palestinian, served them tea. After they had sipped the tea, the brother blurted: “About the money?”

“Do you have a computer?” the Palestinian asked. The brother nodded. “Check your account.”

While they waited, the Palestinian asked the young woman if she was ready. She looked down, glancing shyly at him from under her lashes, and nodded.

“I have two children. My sister loves them. She will do what is needed,” the brother said, coming back in.

The Palestinian told him to leave.

“She is my sister. I should be here,” the brother said.

“In that case, I’ll have to kill you,” the Palestinian said, taking out a gun. The brother blanched. “We need to talk of operational matters. Afterward, the police may come to you. You can’t tell them what you don’t know.”

The Palestinian went into a shooting stance. The brother couldn’t take his eyes off the gun. After a moment he nodded and left.

The Palestinian turned to the young woman. He went over how to use the spray equipment in the backpack and showed her the photograph of the helicopter pilot, Atif Khan, on his cell phone screen. When she was sure she would be able to recognize the pilot on sight, he erased the image. He spread out an MTA map of the New York subway system they got at the hotel and went over when and how she would rendezvous with Khan. The Palestinian took a photo of her with his cell phone to show Khan.

“You understand we considered other alternatives,” he told Bharati. “The simplest would have been to do it in the subway, but there was no way you could have gone through a train spraying and not attract attention. We want days for the pathogen to incubate before the authorities know what has happened.”

“My brother’s children, my family, will be safe?” she asked, her eyes searching his face. Liz watched her like a hawk.

“They must use the antibiotic I have given you. No other kind will work. Do not go near the refrigerator till it is time. The explosive must be kept cold, but the spray should not be frozen. If you need to, eat out. Here’s money,” he added, giving her cash. “You will know the exact day when you get a phone call that uses the phrase ‘al Jabbar, the Giant, is high in the sky.’” He showed her how to use the cell phone for the explosive. “Remember, the explosive is only if something goes wrong. They would do things, you understand? I don’t want them to hurt you.”

“We have to go,” Liz said, standing up.

“Will I see you again?” the young woman asked softly, not daring to look at him.

“It will be a long time before it’s safe for me to be in America,” he said.

On the train back to Manhattan, after they left the apartment, Liz turned on him: “What the bloody hell was that? If she could’ve, she’d have gobbled you up like a Cadbury.”

“She wanted me to save her,” he said. “Her brother got into money trouble with a local Bangladeshi gang. She’s doing it to save her nieces from being without a father. She doesn’t want to die.”

“I could scratch her eyes out. She could barely keep her hands off you.”

“I brought you with me to see her, didn’t I?” he demanded over the screech of the wheels on the track. “Don’t make me think you’re a liability.” He looked hard at her, forcing her to look away. When she looked back, her eyes were swimming. She tried to smile.

“Will she go through with it?” she asked finally.

“She’s a good Muslim girl. I trust her more than some of these bullshit young men who talk jihad and killing and in the end piss themselves like children when it comes time to do something.”

“I hate to admit it, but she’s worth ten of the brother,” Liz said.

“Yes, but she and the brother won’t see it that way.”

They took the train back to Grand Central, where they parted; he to meet with the helicopter pilot, while she checked out of the hotel and left for the airport. They would meet in Chicago. He took the BMT Brighton line to the Midwood section of Brooklyn, getting out at the Avenue H station and walking to the apartment house where the Pakistani helicopter pilot lived with his wife and two young boys. The Palestinian knew that, Khan, the Pakistani wasn’t a true believer. Khan had a Brazilian girlfriend, and the money was for a new start for him and his girlfriend in Brazil.

They sat in the small living room after Khan told his wife to get out and bring them chai. A few minutes later she brought them green qehwa tea and a plate of qalaqand sweets and left, silent as a ghost. The Palestinian showed the photo of the young woman, Bharati, to Khan, and they went over the plan and the al Jabbar code sign. The helicopter pilot demanded more money.

“You any idea how expensive it is in Fortaleza? That’s where her family’s from. Once I leave here, there’s no coming back, bro’,” Khan said.

“You’re getting half a million dollars. You’ll be a king in Brazil,” the Palestinian said. “But if you really aren’t interested…” He got up to leave. Khan grabbed his arm. The Palestinian looked at him, and there was something in the look that made Khan let him go.