Scorpion Betrayal

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Palazzo delle Finanze, Rome, Italy

The delegates to the European Union Conference began arriving at ten in the morning. Flags hung from the window balconies of the Palazzo delle Finanze and the sounds of a military band could be heard from the building’s interior courtyard as the limousines rolled up. It was already hot, and the sun-bleached sky promised even greater heat later in the day. The polizia had banned traffic in the area and set up barricades on streets leading to the palazzo from every direction.

Scorpion, using a pair of binoculars, watched undercover agents checking out the demonstrators at the barriers. DIA sharpshooters were on the roof of the palazzo and two Italian military helicopters circled overhead. He was positioned on an elevated stand occupied by cameramen from various European TV networks inside the barricades near the entrance on Via 20 Settembre. If he was right-he admitted to himself it was a hell of a big if-the Palestinian and his crew would be coming toward that entrance from Via Quintino Sella. It was the most logical route, and if challenged at the polizia barrier at the Via Flavia intersection, they could still break through and detonate close to ground zero.

Earlier that morning, around six, he’d introduced himself to the DIA sharpshooters on the roof, one a former Delta and the other three ex-Navy SEALs. They shared a few war stories about EOD explosives training at the “Point” in North Carolina, in particular about a certain well-endowed female bartender named Melissa in Elizabeth City known to one and all, and they gave him a red armband to wear on his left arm as a way to make sure, as they put it, that if they shot him, he’d know they’d meant to.

Through the binoculars, he could see the crowds at the barriers, numbering in the thousands, many carrying signs with the now-famous photograph of la donna inglese, blood streaming down her face, and screaming “Fascism!” and “Israeli Nazis!” The Palestinian would not be among them, Scorpion knew. But they were his catalyst; he had risked everything to join them, because without them, his plan wouldn’t have worked. Scorpion had referred to it last night on his cell phone conversation with Rabinowich, making the call from the Metro station not far from the bottom of the Spanish Steps, chancing the voice call because they had run out of time.

“Helluva mess at the Coliseum and the Campo dei Fiori. Someone trying to kill the tourist trade in Rome?” Rabinowich observed.

“Anybody say anything?” Scorpion asked over the echoes of people going by in the train station.

“Not a word from our Italian friend. He sees it like you do with respect to our C and B amigos. You two getting married?” Rabinowich joked, indicating that Moretti hadn’t spoken to anyone in the AISE or to the DIA or the Italian polizia about Scorpion’s possible involvement in the death of the bus driver or the explosion in Campo dei Fiori, which the Italian police were saying on TV was caused by a faulty gas line in the old building.

“First I’d have to divorce you.”

“No Hearing Aid?” Rabinowich was asking whether Hearing Aid got away. When Scorpion didn’t answer, he added, “Do you know moo?” asking Scorpion if he had an idea about how the Palestinian planned to do it, his method of operation.

“I think so,” Scorpion said, his voice barely audible over the sound of a train coming into the station.

“But you’re not sharing with any of our friends?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Because it’s like horseshoes. He only has to get close. So it has to be you.”

“You shouldn’t always be the smartest kid in the class, amigo. You’ll never get promoted,” Scorpion said, and ended the call. The good thing was that, at least for now, Rabinowich was on the same page: the Italians and the DIA couldn’t stop the Palestinian. Moretti hadn’t said anything about what happened at the Coliseum and the Campo dei Fiori for the same reason. As Rabinowich had pointed out, the Palestinian only needed to get close; if it started going south, he could detonate at any time. Scorpion was the only one who knew what Hassani looked like and what his plan was. He was the only one with a chance of stopping him.

He watched the demonstrators through the binoculars and on the TV monitors on the camera stand. People began to surge forward and fists and rocks were thrown at a number of the police barriers. There was a breach at a barrier on the Via Voltumo and a platoon of riot police with shields moved forward, clubs extended like the swords of Roman legionnaires. He watched on one of the monitors as a reporter from France 3 News shouted rapidly into his microphone as the demonstrators began throwing things at police at the Via Umbria barrier. Someone from the crowd tossed a Molotov cocktail in a high perfect arc that crashed against a police car, and the car burst into flames. More rocks and Molotov cocktails were thrown and things began to get out of control. A woman screamed and people were trampled as some demonstrators surged toward the polizia, while others tried to fall back. A troop of helmeted Carabinieri moved toward the demonstrators, pushing them back, marching over people who had fallen in the streets.

Scorpion focused his binoculars on the barrier on the Via Quintino Sella. The polizia were being swarmed as they tried to push the crowd back, and suddenly he saw what he had been looking for without knowing exactly what it would be until he saw it. A dark blue Mercedes UniMOG truck with the red stripe and insignia of the Carabinieri approached the barrier, and he knew, with a certainty he couldn’t explain, that it was the Palestinian. That’s how he had planned to do it, with a Carabinieri truck. That’s why he’d risked everything to ensure that there would be violent demonstrations.

The polizia moved the metal barrier aside and waved the UniMOG through. Scorpion watched it make its way toward the front of the palazzo. It pulled into the parking area right next to the building, where it had no need to be for riot control purposes. He caught a glimpse through the binoculars of the Palestinian’s face. He was sitting next to the driver, dressed as a Carabinieri officer, and a moment later Scorpion had ripped off the binoculars and was down from the platform, sprinting toward the UniMOG before it came to a stop.

He came at it from the street side as two men in Carabinieri uniforms got out of the back of the UniMOG. He was running hard, less than thirty meters away, Harris’s SIG Sauer in his hand, when one of the two spotted him. As the man started to unsling his Beretta assault rifle, Scorpion dropped to one knee and fired, hitting him in the chest. The second man turned, his rifle coming up toward Scorpion when he was dropped-by what, it wasn’t clear, till the sound of the shot echoed and Scorpion saw that he had been hit in the top of the head. It was one of the sharpshooters on the roof, who must have spotted his red armband and understood what was happening. The driver of the UniMOG, looking Moroccan despite his peaked Carabinieri cap, turned toward Scorpion, who fired three shots in quick succession through the UniMOG door and window, killing him.

Scorpion could hear screaming and people running. Someone on a police loudspeaker shouted, “Non si muova! Posi la pistola!” Don’t move! Put down the gun! He couldn’t see the Palestinian, who had gotten out of the truck on the other side, and then he saw him running toward the building entrance. Hassani’s Carabinieri cap had fallen off and he was frantically opening his cell phone. The cell phone trigger would kill them all, Scorpion’s mind screamed.

Stopping in a two-hand stance, Scorpion barely had time to aim and fire at Hassani, who was leaping to the side. The shot missed, but another shot that came from the roof ricocheted off the pavement within an inch of Hassani’s foot. Hassani looked up, suddenly aware of the sharpshooters. He dodged under a window balcony overhang that screened him from above, but as he did so, crashed into an elderly diplomat, who cried out as he was slammed against an aide who had been guiding him to the entrance. The contact jarred Hassani, who dropped his cell phone. Scorpion dove for it as Hassani bent to pick it up and grabbed it.

He and Scorpion collided, and Hassani smashed at Scorpion’s face with his forearm. Scorpion parried and grabbed Hassani’s arm, his leg going under the arm, the two of them grappling desperately. Scorpion completed a Brazilian arm bar by putting his other leg around Hassani’s neck and pressing down with both legs to try to dislocate the parried arm’s elbow. Hassani screamed and let go of the cell phone. Scorpion had to release the arm bar to grope for the cell phone, managed to grab it just as Hassani smashed Scorpion’s head against the ground with his free hand, momentarily stunning him. Before Scorpion could respond, Hassani was up, quick as a cat, and running toward the entrance, staying close to the building so he was screened from the sharpshooters above. A polizia guard by the entrance was fumbling at his holster for his gun. Hassani shot him and ran into the palazzo.

Scorpion got up from the ground, the cell phone in his hand, more than twenty polizia running toward him and pulling their guns, since so far as they could see he had attacked a carabiniere. He had to make an instantaneous decision: disarm the bomb in the UniMOG or go after Hassani. The main threat was the bomb, but what if Hassani had another cell phone and could dial it in before he could deal with the polizia and disarm the bomb?

“Arresto! Non si muova!” one of the polizia shouted at him, snapping into a shooting position.

“E una bomba nel camion!” There’s a bomb in the truck, Scorpion shouted over his shoulder as he ducked and ran into the palazzo.

He entered into a long neo-Renaissance style hallway with an ornate marble stairway. The hallway and stairs were empty, though he could hear people shouting. Hassani was nowhere to be seen. Then he heard the shots on the second floor and ran for the stairway. He was halfway up the stairs when the polizia came in and started shooting at him, the bullets chipping pieces of marble from the stairs. Still running, Scorpion held up his badge toward them and yelled at the top of his lungs: “Sono Americano; Agenzia della Difesa!”

He raced along the second floor hallway. There was a body lying near a door, then a woman’s scream and shots farther down the hall. He ran toward the sound of shooting. He dove into a large conference room with a roll, snapping into a kneeling position firing stance as a shot cut through the air above him where he would have been had he come running in. The room was filled with delegates and aides standing in a frightened group at the side of a big mahogany conference table. Hassani was in a firing stance, his gun aimed at Scorpion, whose 9mm was aimed directly at Hassani. It was a Mexican standoff.

“Get out or I’ll start killing them,” Hassani said in English.

“Elif air ab tizak, Bassam,” Scorpion said, letting him know he knew his name and using the classic Arabic curse involving what a thousand penises would do to him. Then he dove to the side as he fired. Hassani moved at the same instant, the bullet missing him as he grabbed a blond woman and fired back, the bullet ripping through the table next to Scorpion.

There were sounds of automatic firing in the hallway, presumably from the polizia. Hassani shot a man standing near a doorway to another room and ran through it, pulling the blonde with him by her hair. Scorpion raced after him, but Hassani, beside the door, tripped him as he ran through the doorway, sending him flying. Scorpion’s hand banged against a chair, knocking the gun out of his hand. The blonde woman tried to pull away. Hassani shot her, then whirled to point the gun at Scorpion, who parried it with the back of his hand, going into the Krav Maga move, twisting Hassani’s wrist to take the gun away. Hassani countered with a Sambo counterwrist move combined with the start of a leg sweep to take Scorpion down, which Scorpion countered with a pullback heel kick to Hassani’s kidney as they grappled for the gun. Scorpion tried to point the gun at him, but another wristlock combined with a Sambo sidekick enabled Hassani to twist the gun away from him.

The Iranians had gotten their training from the Russians, Scorpion realized, which told him the style of countermoves he could expect. As Hassani turned the gun in his hand and aimed, Scorpion grabbed a laptop computer from a table nearby and smashed the edge of it into Hassani’s wrist, knocking the gun out of his hand, then smashing it into the side of his neck, knocking Hassani sideways. Scorpion combined it with a leg sweep that took him down.

He jumped on top of Hassani then, smashed the edge of the laptop down into Hassani’s face, breaking his nose and knocking out teeth. Hassani’s mouth was bleeding, but he managed to grab the side of the laptop and twist it, putting his left leg behind Scorpion’s neck then bringing his right leg up to the front of Scorpion’s neck in a Sambo leg chokehold.

Unable to breathe, Scorpion knew he had to do something quickly or he’d be unconscious in about ten seconds. He tried to countertwist the laptop while hammering his fist into Hassani’s groin. Hassani screamed but was strong enough to hold on with his leg chokehold. Scorpion felt himself starting to black out. He groped with his hand, at first missing, then grabbed Hassani’s testicles and squeezed, ripping at them as hard as he could. An unearthly animal scream came from Hassani and suddenly the chokehold was broken. As Scorpion pulled back, gasping for air, Hassani somehow managed to roll away and stagger to his feet, bent over in agony.

“Khara Yahud!” he gasped, calling Scorpion a dirty Jew and groaning in pain as he picked up a wooden chair. Scorpion realized that Hassani assumed Scorpion was what he most feared: Israeli Mossad.

“Ana min Amreeka, ibn el metanaka,” Scorpion said as Hassani smashed the chair at him. I’m an American, you son of a bitch. He tried to block the chair with his forearms, but it knocked him back. He stumbled on a ripple in the carpet and fell backward, his head banging against the side of a marble fireplace. The world began to tilt. Dazed, Scorpion managed to roll to the side as Hassani lifted the chair and smashed it onto the marble fireplace base, cracking it. He ripped away one of the wooden legs. Using it as a club, Hassani pounded down at Scorpion’s head. Scorpion tried to block him, grunting as each blow stunned his arms with agonizing pain. He knew he couldn’t use his arms much longer.

Hassani dropped down on top of Scorpion and jabbed the chair leg at his eyes. Scorpion just managed to parry it and grab Hassani’s wrist, holding on to try to go into a Kimura. Hassani, face contorted in agony and rage, understood what Scorpion was trying to do and put his hand around Scorpion’s back, his knuckle digging into Scorpion’s kidney. Gasping in pain, Scorpion countered by going into the Brazilian move, sitting up as best he could, sliding his right arm to the side and around the back of Hassani’s neck and into a guillotine chokehold that he secured with his left hand grabbing his right and squeezing Hassani’s neck. He completed the move by crossing his feet around Hassani’s torso and pressing down with his crossed feet while pulling up with his arms, tightening the choke.

Hassani struggled furiously, his left hand pounding at Scorpion’s face and banging his head against the marble as Scorpion tightened the chokehold on his neck with every fiber of his strength. For a second Scorpion almost blacked out, and then he felt Hassani weaken. Hassani punched him in the eye, but it was weak, almost a push, and then Scorpion felt Hassani go slack. Tightening his grip with his last bit of strength, he hung on, counting to thirty, and then let go, utterly exhausted.

Putting his fingers to Hassani’s neck, he checked for a pulse. There was none. He’d thought he would feel some sense of triumph, but he was so exhausted he could feel nothing.

He rolled over, his legs still around Hassani, then got up and went through Hassani’s pockets, finding another cell phone, a contact number on the screen. It had been damn close, he thought. His hands shaking, he just had time to remove the SIM chips from both cell phones so they couldn’t be used, when a heavily armed squad of real Carabinieri came into the room and placed him under arrest.

L ate that night, his face and clothes still stained with Hassani’s blood, Scorpion was taken in handcuffs from his jail cell and put into a windowless police van. When the van stopped, they led him out to a piazza bordered by a large multistory building, lit ghostly white by floodlights. The area was surrounded by armed Carabinieri, their hands on their guns as the polizia led him toward the building.

“What place is this?” he asked one of the policemen.

“Il Palazzo Chigi,” the guardia replied. “That is the Colonna of Marcus Aurelius,” he said, pointing to a marble column in the center of the piazza. They led him past the towering column, into the palazzo building and up to the Italian prime minister’s office.

“Buona sera! The man of the hour, lo Scorpione,” said a tanned middle-aged man in shirtsleeves and tie, seated behind the desk. Moretti and Bob Harris and another man in a dark suit, who looked like an aide to the prime minister, were also in the room.

“Take the handcuffs off him,” Moretti said in Italian to the two policemen who had come in with Scorpion. One of the guardia fumbled for a moment and then unlocked the cuffs. Moretti gestured for them to go, and they both immediately left the large ornate room.

“Please, sit,” the prime minister said, gesturing to Scorpion. “You like cigar? It is Cubano.” He nodded to his aide, who held out an open box of expensive cigars from the prime minister’s desk.

“Grazie,” Scorpion said, picking out one of them. He waited while the aide lit it for him. “Didn’t know you were in Rome, Bob.” Seeing Harris gave him a bad feeling. All through this mission, there had been the thought in the back of his mind that, as always, Harris was dealing from the bottom of the deck, and that he would be the one to pay the tab.

“I was in London coordinating with MI6, the AISE,” Harris said, gesturing to Moretti, “and some of the other services, when I heard what happened. I want you to know, the DNI is very pleased. He’s approved your bonus. He’s convinced keeping you under deep cover on the Palestinian op was his idea and is citing this success as a result of cooperation between the DIA, NSA, and CIA that he implemented.”

“In Italy, it is the same. The big fish takes the credit,” Moretti said.

“As it should be,” the prime minister said. “But we in this room know the truth. This man,” pointing at Scorpion, “saved many lives-and the honor of the Italian nation. I am curious. How did you know that the Palestino was coming in a truck disguised as a camion di Carabinieri?”

“You had to look at it from Hassani’s point of view,” Scorpion said. “His problem was how to get past the barriers of the polizia in order to attack the conference. When I recognized him on the TV with la donna inglese, I couldn’t figure out why he would risk his entire operation just to attend a street demonstration. And then it hit me. He needed a symbol, like a female victim of the polizia, to ensure that there would be violent demonstrations the day of the conference, so the polizia at the barricades wouldn’t question the necessity of a Carabinieri truck coming through with reinforcements.”

“Why didn’t you give us the photograph and let the AISE and the Carabinieri try to find him?” the aide asked.

“It would have alerted him. He could have detonated the bomb remotely anytime. We had to get him and the bomb together,” Scorpion said.

“Generale Lombardi of the Carabinieri and I came to the same conclusion,” Moretti put in. “The only place where both the Palestino and the bomb would be at the same time was at the Congresso.”

“A dangerous strategy,” the prime minister said, looking at Moretti.

“Ours is a dangerous business, Prime Minister,” Harris said. “Happily, there’s more good news. Thanks to the lead on the English girl-Welsh, actually-and you won’t be surprised to learn that the photograph of her covered with blood and beaten by the Italian police was a fake.”

“Of course. This I knew all the time,” the prime minister snapped.

“We were able to round up most of the Islamic Resistance network. The young woman was a pawn. She didn’t know she was being used by the Palestinian.”

“She lied about the beatings. We must investigate. Arturo, make a note,” the prime minister said to his aide.

“Of course, Prime Minister,” Harris said. “You’ll have to work that out with the British, although you may want to wait till after Scotland Yard is done. She is cooperating with them. She gave them the lead that her girlfriend-English, named Liz-was Hassani’s girlfriend, and that before they came to Rome, Liz and Hassani had been staying with jihadis in Turin. After that, it was just a matter of tracking down all the foreigners and Muslim jihadi types who had been in Turin at that time, with I must say a great deal of help from the AISE and the Carabinieri.” He gestured to include the prime minister and Moretti. “Also, the NSA, tracking down all the cell phone messages with the phrase ‘al Jabbar.’

“We now know that in Europe, in addition to Rome, there were four additional attacks planned: London, Brussels, Paris, and Madrid. Thanks to the leads from Turin, we were able to stop three of the four. The only one who slipped through the net and wasn’t picked up in time was a young Tunisian student in Madrid, who managed to detonate his suicide vest at a bus stop-prematurely, we think-killing two and injuring a young girl.”

“What about America?” the prime minister asked.

“There were three attacks planned,” Harris replied. “We stopped two, the big one, the bioweapon attack in New York and one in Chicago; a Pakistani college student who was planning to blow up a train. There were three deaths: the Bangladeshi woman and a Pakistani helicopter pilot in New York, and an incident in Los Angeles. So far we’ve been able to angle the media so the public has been reassured that they were all under surveillance and that the major threat was stopped. Nothing about the bio threat has been given to the press.”

“So many attacks. This time we were lucky,” the prime minister said.

“We were good,” Harris said.

“Thanks to lo Scorpione. Tell him,” the prime minister gestured at Moretti, “what we found in the camion di Carabinieri.”

“One hundred and sixty-five kilos of RDX, plus more than twelve hundred kilos of fertilizer and diesel fuel and three kilos of Cesium-137,” Moretti said.

“A dirty bomb. It would have been a total disaster,” the prime minister said, shaking his head.

“What are you talking about? What about the uranium?” Scorpion asked.

“What uranium?” the prime minister said, looking at Scorpion and Harris.

“The twenty-one kilos of highly enriched U-235 missing from Russia. That uranium!”

“There was nothing in the camion,” Moretti said. “Only the cesium. That would have been bad enough. Cesium-137 has a half-life of thirty years and it bonds with everything-walls, paint, metal, dirt, trees, air. Much of Rome might have been made uninhabitable.”

“The uranium was a false alarm,” Harris said. “It may have been disinformation from the Russians.”

“This is bullshit!” Scorpion said, standing up. He stubbed the cigar out in an ashtray on the prime minister’s desk, a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Where’s Dave Rabinowich? Get him on the line now.”

“Take it easy,” Harris said, glancing over at the prime minister. “Remember where you are.”

“Get Rabinowich now,” Scorpion said through clenched teeth. Two Italian agents stepped into the room, their hands inside their suit jackets, but the prime minister waved them off, indicating that they should leave.

“Dave’s been reassigned,” Harris said, standing up. “He’s not on this operation anymore. Neither are you. This case is closed. Prime Minister, I’m afraid we’ve taken up enough of your time.”

“Where’s Dave?” Scorpion said, not moving.

“He’s on vacation. Hawaii, I think. He said he’d be incommunicado. No e-mails, no cell phones. His fat ass is probably in a beach chair right now, ogling girls in bikinis,” Harris said, walking to the door.

The prime minister stood up and extended his hand for Scorpion to shake. “Arrivederci, Scorpione. We owe you much.”

“Prego, but this is merda,” Scorpion said again, shaking the prime minister’s hand but looking at Moretti.

“You should clean your face. It still has dried blood on it, il mio amico,” Moretti said, his eyes sympathetic. “There is a restroom down the hall.”

Harris was waiting for Scorpion in the hallway outside the office.

“What the hell did you think you were doing in there? You don’t work for the Italians, you work for us. Although maybe not anymore,” he said.

“What was I doing?” Scorpion snapped. “How about twenty-one kilos of bullshit from Ozersk that supposedly doesn’t exist? Or an Iranian ship from Bushehr that disappeared into thin air? Did I imagine that too or did I hear it from you, you son of a bitch? And now all of a sudden Rabinowich has disappeared too? This isn’t an intelligence operation, it’s the Bermuda Triangle.”

“Keep your voice down,” Harris said. “You know the rules. You tell the runner just what he needs to know. That’s all.”

“Yeah, but what you tell him is supposed to be good,” Scorpion said. “So what operation was I on, Bob, old buddy?”

“Your job was to terminate the Palestinian. You did it. He’s dead. You saved Rome-and a lot of other people too. You’ve been paid in full plus the bonus. Case closed,” Harris said, adjusting his suit jacket cuffs as he headed for the elevator. The door opened and Harris stepped in. Scorpion watched him from the hallway. “You coming?” Harris said.

“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.