Andrew Kaplan: Scorpion Betrayal

He went outside and got back into the Service. They’d tortured her before they killed her. This is my country, she had said. The mission had barely started and already he had casualties.

They stopped at the Syrian border station and went through the procedure again, then got back in the Service and drove on. The only light came from the headlights of the Service carving into the darkness of the road.

They arrived in Damascus before midnight, dropped off at the main bus station in Soumaria. Although it was late, there were still a few vendors selling roasted meat kabobs over glowing charcoal braziers and a line of taxis waiting at a stand. Scorpion took a taxi to Le Meridian, the type of hotel a French journalist would stay at. As he handed his luggage and backpack to the hotel porter, he spotted two men he had seen standing near the taxi stand at the bus station, one with a mustache in a white shirt and blue pants, the second in a dark patterned shirt, both with bulges for holsters under their shirts. He was being followed.

Utrecht, Netherlands

The Palestinian heard the call of the muezzin echo from the mosque loudspeaker out over the rain-slick street. He stood in the Moroccan grocery store across the way, watching the worshippers-men still in their work clothes and a few women in black hijab head scarves-enter the mosque. The store smelled of couscous and fresh khobz bread and spices: cinnamon, cumin, mint, ginger, and green coriander leaves for tagines. He would not enter the mosque. It was sure to have been infiltrated by AIVD informers even before Cairo, and now the Dutch were under even greater pressure from the Americans and the other European intelligence services. He bought a sprig of mint leaves wrapped in paper and stood outside the store. There was nothing about him to attract attention, just a man under an awning, taking shelter from the rain.

A woman in a hijab and a small boy walked toward him on their way to the mosque.

“Salaam aleikem,” he said.

“Aleikem es-salaam,” the woman said, still walking.

“Do you know the imam? Imam Mohammad Solilah?” the Palestinian asked in Fusha Arabic.

“I know him,” the boy said, turning back. “He comes to our class sometimes.”

“Could you give him this?” he said, handing the boy the package of mint leaves. He added, “This is for you,” handing the boy a two euro coin. The boy took the coin and looked at his mother.

“You are a friend of the imam?” she asked, looking at him for the first time. He was taller than average, close to six feet, with smooth, even features and skin that had recently spent time in the sun. He looked exceptionally fit, with a lean athletic build, and although he was smiling at her and the boy, there was something in his brown eyes that made her uneasy. She took the boy’s hand and pulled him closer to her.

“Aywa, an old friend. Mint for his tea. And this for you.” If he handed her a twenty euro note and mussed the boy’s wet hair with his hand. “You’d better go in or you’ll drown.”

She hesitated to take the money, but Kanaleneiland was a poor immigrant neighborhood, and after a moment she put the money in her pocket.

“Should I tell him anything?” the boy asked.

“La, nothing, ma’a salama,” the Palestinian said, and opening his umbrella, walked away in the rain.

She watched him for a moment, then holding tightly to the boy’s hand, crossed the street and went into the mosque.

The Palestinian walked to a corner kiosk, where he bought a German newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine, then he went into a small cafeteria that appeared to be frequented mainly by Moroccans. There did not appear to be much mixing between them and the many Turks in the area.

He sat down with a tray of chicken and rice and read the newspaper while he ate. From time to time he glanced up from his paper and through the cafeteria window at the darkening street, the lights from storefronts and streetlights reflected in puddles and wet sidewalks. No one paid any attention to him. This was a rough Muslim neighborhood and they were used to people with no work and time on their hands.

He was still jet-lagging from Mexico, in his mind seeing hawks riding the thermals in the sky over the desert east of Mexicali, shacks along the road, and Cesar, the vicious little coyote in an Angels baseball cap waving his pistola in that tunnel under the border to the U.S., saying, “No more mierde, cabron. Show me what’s in your pack.” Then the surprised look on Cesar’s face a second later with a bullet hole in his forehead.

Once he was on the U.S. side in Calexico, it was so easy. All he had to do was go into a Kinko’s and FedEx a box containing the pack to the office of the fictional chemical company he had set up months earlier in the industrial Sunset Park section of Brooklyn in New York, after which he just crossed back into Mexico through the border station, no questions asked.

The waiter, a young Moroccan in a soiled apron, came over, and the Palestinian ordered a cup of tea. The waiter put the paper slip for the bill under the saucer and whispered in Arabic, “Ask for Said.”

The Palestinian saw a local telephone number handwritten on the slip. He memorized it, then spilled some tea on the slip till it nearly dissolved, and rolling it into a tiny ball, dropped it into his pocket. He asked if he could use the cafeteria phone, explaining that his cell phone battery was low, and they pointed him to a public phone near the toilet in back. Calling the number, he said he wanted to speak to Said, and a man on the other end said “Prins Claus Brug” and hung up.

The Palestinian went out into the rain and walked along Churchillaan Street toward the Prince Claus Bridge over the canal. As he walked, he checked his reflection in rain-streaked store windows to make sure he wasn’t followed. He walked past apartment houses, satellite TV dishes sprouting like mushrooms on the sides of the buildings, graffiti from Turkish and Moroccan gangs painted on alley walls. This wasn’t the guidebook’s Utrecht, with its clean streets, world-class university, medieval Dom Tower dominating the skyline, and the tree-lined Oudegracht Canal, with its charming cafes and restaurants along the water. This was Muslim Europe, the heart of the struggle. It wasn’t just the Americans. The Europeans too would be punished, he thought. A more terrible punishment than they could imagine.

Near the corner, a group of tough-looking young Moroccan men were crowded under an awning, smoking cigarettes and what smelled like hashish. They watched him, saying nothing as he walked past, his posture utterly still even as he moved, something about that stillness precluding them from challenging him. He walked along the path beside the canal, raindrops making circles in the dark water, the ripples shattering the reflections of the streetlights. As he walked, he flicked the tiny ball of paper he had spilled the tea on into the canal.

Just as the Palestinian went up onto the bridge, a BMW sedan pulled up beside him. Two Arab men got out, hands in their raincoat pockets. “Get into the car,” one of them said in Arabic.

He got in the backseat, sandwiched between them. The car drove across the bridge, suddenly spun around on the other side and headed back onto the bridge going the other way.

“Lo tismah, we have to do this,” the first Arab apologized, putting a blindfold on the Palestinian. He sat quietly, letting them do it, swaying as the car made turns, changing directions so they couldn’t be followed and so he couldn’t find his way again.

After what seemed a long time but might have been less than half an hour, the car stopped and they led him out, knocked twice on a door and took him inside a building. The first Arab took off his blindfold. They were standing in the vestibule of an old-fashioned apartment building near a dimly lit staircase. He smelled damp rotting wood and water and thought they might be in an older part of the city, near the Oudegracht Canal.