Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Betrayal

“With you? That’s always a mistake,” Scorpion said.

The two men watched the elevator door close between them, then Scorpion walked to the men’s room and washed his hands and face in the basin. Not looking, he sensed Moretti come in. Scorpion wiped his face with a hand towel and looked at himself in the mirror. He’d had so many identities, the man who looked back at him was almost a stranger, face bruised and needing a shave, his gray eyes catching the overhead light like a cat’s eyes.

“Are you all right?”

“No,” Scorpion said. “There’s something very wrong. Buona notte to that bucket of yours.”

“I know. There were traces of radiation from uranium, as well as cesium, in the hold of that ship, the Zaina,” Moretti said. “He’s holding something back. What will you do?”

Scorpion looked at the two of them in the mirror: the stranger with gray eyes and the little Italian spy. There were only two possibilities, he thought. Either it was all Russian disinformation, or his operation against the Palestinian was, in CIA parlance, “window dressing,” a diversion from the real operation. If that was the case, whatever the operation was, it was still running. Either way, the feeling in his stomach was like something twisting inside, saying something truly terrible was about to happen. Worse, if he stayed with it, he was completely on his own. Harris had cut him off from both Rabinowich and the Company. Anything he did could be considered treason.

“Arrivederci, Aldo,” Scorpion said, putting his hand on Moretti’s shoulder. “This isn’t over.”

“Bene. You go to Torino? The air is good there this time of year.”

“Perhaps. Rome’s getting a little hot for me.”

“Keep in touch, Scorpione,” Moretti said. When Scorpion left him, the Italian was peering at the mirror, snipping at his mustache and nose hairs with a pair of tiny penknife scissors.

Torino, Italy

The warehouse was smaller than Scorpion expected. The polizia had roped it off as a crime scene, and at night the electric lamps in front made a hazy glow like the entrance to an underground nightclub. The street was empty, and close enough to the river that he could smell it. In this working-class neighborhood, there were few lights in any of the windows nearby. But although he couldn’t see them, he knew there might be eyes watching. He stepped around the police barrier, and two guardia policemen detached themselves from the shadows and came toward him. He showed them the badge he had used at the Palazzo delle Finanze and they gestured toward the building. He went inside.

The interior was gloomy, a dusty space lit only by a few overhead lights. It had an abandoned, almost desolate feel. A curly-haired Carabinieri lieutenant stood in the middle of the empty space, his Beretta pointed at Scorpion.

“Signor McDonald?” the lieutenant asked. The lieutenant’s uniform had an insignia that showed he was of the Special WMD unit.

“Buona notte, tenente. I’m Damon McDonald,” Scorpion said, showing the lieutenant his badge.

“Mi chiamo Giorgio. I have been ordered to show you everything,” the lieutenant said, putting his gun back in the holster. “You speak Italian?”

“Malissimo, I’m afraid.” Badly. “What have you found?”

“Much. Let me show you.” He led Scorpion to the small warehouse office, and once they were inside, turned off the light. It took a moment for Scorpion’s eyes to get accustomed to the darkness. Then he saw it. On the floor, two blood spatter patterns glowed a luminescent blue. “These were sprayed with Luminol,” Giorgio said, turning the light back on. When looked at in the light, the floors were spotless. “They try to clean it up, but of course microscopic particles are always missed.”

“What did they do with the bodies?”

“Come, I show you,” he said, and led Scorpion to a refrigeration locker at the back of the warehouse. He turned off the overhead light and lifted the lid in the darkness. Two smudges of blue glowed in the blackness at the bottom of the locker. He turned the light back on. “You can see, there were two bodies they stuffed in the armadio. When the poliziotti come, they find one body only.”

“Where’s the other one?”

“Chi sa?” Who knows? The lieutenant shrugged. “Now I show you something fantastico,” and he led him to a kitchen area near the office. The lieutenant opened a large duffel bag lying on the floor and pulled out a radiation protection suit and handed it to Scorpion, then took out another suit and started to put it on.

“Is this necessary?” Scorpion asked.

“I told you. Is fantastico.” The lieutenant gestured with his hand.

Scorpion took off his jacket and shoes and put the outfit on, zipping it closed so he was completely encased head to foot, with only a plexiglass visor to see through. When they were both suited up, the lieutenant checked their air supply connections, then took out two handheld radiation detectors. He left one on top of the duffel bag and picked up the other and they walked clumsily in the suits across the warehouse to a partitioned area with a door that had been locked by a padlock someone broke off. The lieutenant opened the door and they went inside and turned on the light. The area was filled with a large worktable and electric tools, rags, empty wooden crates, and flattened cartons strewn on the floor. He motioned Scorpion closer, turned on the radiation detector and ran it over a wooden box in the corner, then pointed at the LED screen that began rapidly registering numbers.

“You see. This is Cesio uno-tre-sette,” the lieutenant said. Cesium-137.

“How can you be sure?”

“The beta particle and gamma radiation levels and patterns are unmistakable. It’s all over this area,” he said, showing Scorpion on the LED as he walked around the room. “No one can use this warehouse anymore.”

“Is that it?” Scorpion asked.

“No. Here is what is fantastico. Look.” He passed the wand of the handheld detector over one side of the worktable. They watched the LED screen numbers. “You see, is alpha, not beta. The pattern is from sette, seven alpha emitters. Is not cesium. Can be only one thing.”

“Uranium?”

“Uranio due-tre-cinque.” Uranium-235. “The rates from Uranio-234 and 238 are different. Come. We must go out. Too long with cesium is not good,” the lieutenant said, leading Scorpion outside the partitioned area.

They walked back toward the front of the warehouse and took off their protective suits. The lieutenant and he went to the kitchen and washed their hands and face in the sink. The lieutenant ran the other detector over them. The LED registered only a fraction of what it had registered inside the partitioned area.

Scorpion looked around at the shadowed interior of the warehouse.

“What will they do with this place?” he asked.

“Non so.” I don’t know. “Maybe seal it up with concrete because of the cesium,” the lieutenant said as he put away his gear.

“I have to go, tenente. Per piacere, put your cell phone number in my phone and I’ll call you. I may need your help again,” Scorpion said, handing him the cell phone. He had to think. Moretti had confirmed there had been U-235 on the Zaina when it berthed in Genoa. Now the lieutenant had shown that the Palestinian brought it here to Turin. What Harris had said about the twenty-one kilos from Russia being disinformation was a lie. Whatever was running, the clock was ticking.

“Per piacere, call to me any hour. To do something besides technical is good for me.” The lieutenant smiled.

Scorpion had a late night snack of little tramezzini sandwiches and Chianti at a caffe on the Via Po. While he ate, he went over the report from the Carabinieri antiterrorism unit that Moretti had e-mailed to him. It listed all the male members between the ages of sixteen and forty-five belonging to the small garage mosque in Torino to which all three Moroccans killed at the Palazzo delle Finanze had belonged. The report noted that more than a dozen of them, in addition to the three who were killed, had stopped coming to Friday services at the mosque during the week prior to the Rome attack, and when questioned, some of their family had indicated that they didn’t know where they were. During the month before that final week, a number of them had told their families that they were doing something speciale for the mosque, but the imam told the polizia that, except for Friday services, they were rarely there.