Andrew Kaplan: Scorpion Betrayal

“My father made my brother and me hide in the closet. He told us to huddle down next to the panel in the wall he had put in. He told us not to come out, no matter what happened. I didn’t want to get into the closet. It was hot and dark, with only cracks by the side of the door that let slivers of light through. It was too hot and I refused, but my father gave me that look he sometimes did, and my brother took my hand and we went in and sat on the closet floor and my father closed the door. I could hear the guns and the men and the trucks coming closer and I held tightly onto my brother’s shirt in the dark. Then I heard sounds of shooting outside. It was very loud and very close, and there was shouting and then a woman screaming ‘Ibni, ibni, my son, my son,’ over and over until I thought it would never stop.

“Then I heard men coming up the stairs and loud voices and screams and they were banging on our door. My heart was pounding so hard I thought it would come out of my chest. I couldn’t help myself. I peeked through the crack and saw men dressed like soldiers come into the apartment. They started smashing everything and they grabbed my father and tied his hands with those plastic ties.” She looked at Scorpion. “When you tied me up like that in Amsterdam, you have no idea what you did to me,” she said softly, and lit another cigarette. “Do you know why they bothered to tie his hands? Because they wanted him to watch.

“Four of them grabbed my mother. At the time, I didn’t understand what they were doing. I just thought they were pushing her, but when I was older, in Germany, it came back to me and I understood, one at a time, the others holding her down and laughing, and when the last one was zipping himself up, one of them took out a knife and carved a cross on her naked chest, the cross bar right across her breasts, the cut dripping blood like Christ himself. My mother was begging and screaming, and my father was yelling, ‘Don’t beg, min fadlik, don’t beg!’ and then they shot her, and carved a cross on my father’s chest with the same knife.

“My brother was tugging at my arm. I had to watch. I couldn’t pull away from the crack by the side of the door. But he pulled me back and pushed me into the opening of the panel at the back of the closet, which led to the closet of the apartment next door. I heard them shooting in our apartment, very close and loud, and I’d never been so scared in my life. My brother just had time to follow me through the opening and close the panel as they opened the closet door and light came in.

“My brother and I stood in our neighbor, Assayeda Sayegh’s, apartment. My brother was ten and he was embarrassed because there was a big stain in front, where he had wet his pants, but he took my hand and pulled me away. I wanted to say something, but he put his fingers to my lips to stop me and we started to run. I don’t know how we got out of the building. All I remember is that we ran out into our street and we saw the bodies of young men, at least twenty of them, lying along the wall, blood leaking from their heads. We ran and ran. I didn’t know where we were going, hiding from the Christians as they went from street to street, and then we came to an open street and there was a crowd of people. The Christians were around them with guns and loading them into trucks. We stopped and tried to run the other way and two soldiers caught us.

“‘Here’s two more kids,’ one of them shouted, and they pulled us by our hair and forced us to climb up into one of the trucks. There were only women and children in the trucks and some of the children were crying, but they kept loading the trucks. I was so scared I couldn’t breathe. I thought they were going to take us somewhere and kill us. One woman asked, ‘Where are they taking us?’ and another said, ‘Our men are dead, now they want us too,’ and I knew I was about to die.

“When they had filled the line of trucks, they began to roll toward the gate of the camp. I wanted to ask my brother what was happening and what I should do, because he was everything to me then, but he shook his head and indicated that I should say nothing. He was sitting with his hands over his lap to cover the wet stain on his pants. The sun baked down on us. The sides of the truck were too hot to touch. The trucks moved through the dusty streets, and there were bodies on every block. If bodies were in the way, the trucks rolled over them. The bodies had begun to bloat in the sun and the stench was unbearable. I wanted to throw up, but I was so afraid I could barely breathe. We came to the entrance to the camp where I had lived all my life. I had never been outside before. There were Israeli tanks lined up outside and I thought, ‘I am going to die now.’ And then the thing happened that I told you about, the thing that changed who and what I am.

“Two trucks were in the front of our column. They were filled with Christian Phalangist soldiers. They stopped at the gate of the camp, and then an army jeep pulled up in front of them and a man got out. He walked in front of the trucks with all those soldiers and their guns and said to them in Arabic, ‘No more killing. You have a half hour to get all your men out of the camp. It’s finished.’ He was a lone Israeli officer. He didn’t even have a gun. And just like that, he stopped the massacre. Can you imagine? To have that power. To be able to decide life or death without even holding a gun. They could’ve stopped it at any time, but they chose to let it happen. They chose death. Do you understand? That’s the Palestinian option. When given a choice, to choose death.”

“How’d you get to Germany?” Scorpion asked.

“A German refugee organization brought my brother and me to Germany. They had to split us up. I cried and clung screaming to my brother. I didn’t want to go. My new family in Germany was Lebanese. They wanted me to change my name. My brother told me to do it, that it would be safer. You see, he was already planning.”

“You mean his revenge.”

“No, not revenge. Power! The power of that Israeli who didn’t even have to carry a gun. Even at that young age, my brother knew what he had become, what we had both become,” she said, finishing her cigarette and stubbing it out.

“Why Russia? Why Saint Petersburg?”

She shrugged. “They reneged on a deal, or so I was told.”

“With the Iranians?”

“You know too much. I was right to follow you in Hamburg. I knew you were dangerous.”

“When you were split up, your brother was sent to Cologne?”

“How did you-” she looked at him sharply.

“His name was Bassam Hassani. Hassani was your family name in Beirut.”

“Was?” she said, her breasts rising and falling rapidly with her shallow breathing.

“He was one of the terrorists killed in Rome.”

She got up off the bed, went to the window and raised the shade. The sun was up and he could see the building across the street. She was a silhouette against the bright light.

“I must look a mess,” she said, and went to the table and picked up her handbag. Her hands were shaking. “Did you kill him?” she asked, not looking at him.

“Yes,” he said.

She screamed at the top of her lungs. It was like nothing human. Still screaming, she began tearing through her purse and then picked up her cell phone. She was so fast, she had caught Scorpion by surprise. He didn’t have time to reach her before she sent the call.

He raised his gun and fired, the bullet hitting her in the head and spraying out blood and fragments of brain matter as she crumpled to the floor. He grabbed the cell phone out of her hand, opened it and pulled the SIM card out. She lay exposed on the floor, her slip hiked up on her hips, blood leaking from her head. She looked helpless, her face spotted with blood, still beautiful. They had to have heard, there was no more time, he thought. He pulled her slip down so she was covered.