Andrew Kaplan: Scorpion Betrayal

Suddenly, there was shouting and the rattle of automatic weapons down on the main floor of the warehouse. A savage firefight erupted and his ears rang with the sound of shattering glass and bullets flying everywhere. He heard bursts of firing and the pounding of feet coming closer on the walkway and toward him. He put his gun down and stood up, moving to the side, so if they shot through the door there was a chance they wouldn’t hit him. He raised his hands over his head as a blast of bullets tore holes through the door.

New York, United States

“Where was the bug?” Rabinowich asked. They were sitting in a midtown delicatessen just off Lexington Avenue. Periodically, Scorpion glanced toward the front of the deli, but he didn’t expect to see any watchers. To anyone who might be looking, they were just two men having a late business lunch.

“In the gun, the SR-1 Gyurza that Checkmate gave me. It was inside the handle. After he let me go, I figured he would keep tabs on me. I checked all my clothes, but I didn’t have time to take the gun apart. Then I figured either he hadn’t planted one on me while I was in detention, or if they had, I was better off with the bug, because if I disabled it, he’d know and he might have his FSB byki pick me up again and I’d never get to Najla,” her name hitting him in the pit of his stomach like a punch.

“What about the bomb?” Rabinowich said, chewing and putting down his double-decker corned beef and pastrami on rye sandwich. “Instant heart attack,” he called it.

“Hidden under a load of coal on a barge on the Fontanka Canal, a few blocks away. The FSB found it after they raided the warehouse and arrested me.”

“Why a barge?”

“Either they wanted to run it on the canal to the middle of town, say to the Nevsky Prospekt, to maximize the number of casualties, or if you were right about the Twelfth Imam and it being some kind of Iranian doomsday scenario, they could run it down the Neva and Svir Rivers to the Volga-Baltic Waterway and take out Moscow. Nobody inspects coal barges on the canals.”

“Was the device workable?” Rabinowich asked, glancing around to make sure no one heard him.

Scorpion nodded. “He was brilliant, Hassani. Fifty-one kilos at ninety-two percent purity. Twenty-one from the Zaina, that we knew about, and thirty from the Shiraz Se. From what they said, he used the gun mechanism that Professor Groesbeck told me about. Think male-female. The conventional explosive shoots a male plug into a hollow U-235 cylinder. Hassani almost did it. Ivanov said, ‘It is terrifying to think what one person on his own can do.’”

“They treat you all right?” Rabinowich asked, taking a gulp of his Guinness beer so he didn’t have to look at Scorpion. In a way, it was bad form to ask. An operative picked up by a nonfriendly service was expected to be able to handle the torture. “They didn’t rough you up too badly?”

“I’m a hero.” Scorpion shrugged. “After I handed them the SIM from Najla’s cell phone and they saw how close it had been, Ivanov told me, ‘This makes us even for Arabia.’ They even wanted to take me to Moscow so the Russian president himself could thank me personally, just like Italy. Now you answer a question for me. Who blew my cover so the FSB were able to pick me up? Was Harris just being a screw-up about the safe house in Castelnuovo or did he blow my cover on purpose to make sure once I’d taken the Palestinian out that I was out of the game?”

“You’ll have to ask him. I really don’t know,” Rabinowich said, glancing up at the television over the deli counter.

Scorpion followed his glance. CNN was showing the arraignment of one of the terrorists picked up by the FBI, involved in what the announcer was calling “the recently uncovered plot.”

“Fucking idiots,” Rabinowich muttered. “Did anyone tell you what happened?”

“All Harris told me in Rome was that the mission was over. ‘You’re a hero. Now go screw yourself, you’re done.’”

“He tried to get rid of me too. Then America would’ve just had good old Bob Harris to defend it. Think about that. Fortunately, I still have a few friends left or I’d be manning the desk on Tibet or Uruguay or something else no one gives a shit about,” Rabinowich said, nibbling a bite of potato salad. “As for rounding up Hassani’s recruits, the FBI almost blew it.” He shook his head. “The first one was easy. The Kabir woman’s brother, Zahid Kabir. Even the Keystone Kops were able to figure out he might be involved.

“Then, even though they’d been given the cell phone number of the Pakistani college student in Marquette Park in Chicago, with the al Jabbar code and everything, they just managed to grab this dude, literally as he was on his way to the El near Midway Airport, wearing a vest filled with HMTD. He was going to blow himself up when the train got to the Loop.

“But L.A. was the worst. This Iraqi guy, he’d been a doctor in Iraq but couldn’t get licensed here, drove a rental truck loaded with fertilizer and diesel into the parking structure of Beit Israel Hospital. The Iraqi panics at the valet parking and leaves the truck sitting there while he runs through the reception area and disappears. The valet, a Mexican, gets suspicious, checks the back of the truck, figures it out, and completely on his own-’cause his boss is yelling at him to just park the damn truck-drives it out of the parking structure and down San Vicente Boulevard, where it blows a fifty-foot deep crater in the pavement.

“Luckily it was early in the morning or God knows how many would’ve been killed. As it was, there were four badly injured; no one was killed except the Mexican. There was enough explosive in the truck to bring the entire building down. Thousands killed, a major medical institution, one of the best in the country, destroyed. Jewish, of course. That’s why it was the target, though you’d think someone might’ve figured that out. You want to hear the punch line?”

“Sure.”

“This is L.A. The Mexican was an illegal. Him and his whole family. Now he’s dead, and as a reward for saving thousands of people and billions of dollars, his wife and kids are being deported back to Mexico. These idiots can’t stop terrorists, but that they know how to do,” he said, raising his beer in a mock toast, then drinking.

“What about the Mossad? Where were they in all this?” Scorpion asked.

“You know, you’re not unintelligent. I enjoy our little chats. What makes you think they’re involved?”

“For Israel, Iran is an existential issue. They’ve got Iran on the brain. Also, when I called the contact number in Hamburg, I was told ‘M’ was sameach. Hebrew for ‘happy’ about what I’d sent from Damascus, so I knew you and Harris were sharing the wealth with the Mossad. But most of all, Harandi, the guy in the Hamburg Islamic Masjid, was a Mossad sleeper, probably an Iranian Jew. Hamburg was the communications hub for Al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya, especially between Damascus and Utrecht, so Harandi was in a perfect position to misdirect Najla and her brother. Except peripherally, this was never about stopping the Palestinian. So what is this about, Dave?”

“No one’s talking,” Rabinowich said.

“I think I killed two Americans, CIA operatives, in the Summer Garden.”

“I don’t know anything about it,” Rabinowich whispered, looking nervously around the deli. “Whatever this was, it’s not just you. If you’re right, it could destroy the Company. All of us.”

“What were they doing there?”

“There’s only one person who can answer you, and he never tells the truth.”

“He will this time,” Scorpion said.

T he fund-raiser was a black tie affair at the Peninsula Hotel on Fifth Avenue. The heavyweight guest list included party leaders and high-powered donors, who for a minimum donation of $100,000 had been guaranteed photo ops with the guests of honor, the U.S. Vice President and the Secretary of State. Security was heavy and all guests had to go through metal detectors before they were allowed into the ballroom. For Scorpion, getting an invitation wasn’t difficult. All it took was a rented tuxedo and using a credit card to open the door lock and sneak into deluxe suites on an upper floor of the hotel. In the second one he entered, he found an invitation and a wallet on the desk. He pocketed the invitation and the man’s driver’s license, and after pausing at the bathroom door and listening to someone in the shower, he went down in the elevator to the ballroom. He showed the invitation and the ID to the security guards, went through the metal detector and walked in.