Scorpion Betrayal

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

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.

Scorpion looked at the names and notations on some of the other males and one caught his eye. A Moroccan male named Issam Badoui, aged thirty-two, originally from Tangier. Apparently, he had been very religious and involved with the mosque until about a month ago. Suddenly, he stopped going and had not been back, not even for Friday services. He had been at work during the week before and during the Rome attack and was not considered a suspect. The guardia who interviewed him noted that when asked why he no longer went to services at the mosque, Badoui said that his wife “did not like him going to that masjid.”

Scorpion heard a whirring sound and looked out the caffe window. A tram was going by, its windows lit like a ship in the night. He glanced at his watch. It was after midnight. This man was devout, and all of a sudden it all changed? Because his wife was worried about something that was going on at the mosque? How the hell had the Carabinieri let that remark slip by? He decided to pay Badoui a visit.

Badoui’s apartment was in a run-down section of the Porta Palazzo district. The outer door to the apartment house was locked, but it only took Scorpion a second with a credit card to open it. He stepped into the entryway and using a little LED flashlight found Badoui’s handwritten name and apartment number on the wall next to one of the mailboxes. Scorpion went up the narrow stairs and stood outside the door to Badoui’s apartment, where he could hear a baby crying inside. He knocked on the door. There was no answer. He knocked again, harder, and when no one came, knocked again. Then he heard footsteps and the sound of the baby crying approaching the door.

“Chi e la? Che cosa volete?” Who’s there? What do you want, a woman asked, sounding frightened.

“E il Carabinieri. Apra il portello,” Scorpion said. It’s the Carabinieri. Open the door. He heard the woman whispering to someone and pounded on the door. The door opened suddenly and the woman stood there in a nightdress, winding a hijab on her head with one hand and holding the baby, still crying, with the other.

“Gia ho parlato con la polizia,” a thin, bearded man in pajama bottoms and an undershirt said, coming forward. Scorpion showed him his badge.

“I have just a few more questions. You are Issam Badoui?” Scorpion asked in Fusha Arabic.

“I have told the polizia everything I have to say,” the man answered in Arabic.

“No, you haven’t. Tell your wife to go into the next room.”

“I don’t know who you are, but I have nothing to say,” Badoui said.

“Tell her to take the baby and go into the next room,” Scorpion said, in a tone that in Arabic implied the whole issue of male-female relations and a man’s ability to be master in his own house.

“Go into the bedroom and close the door, and keep the baby quiet,” Badoui told the woman.

“You see what happens with that mosque. I told you this would happen,” she said fiercely.

“You told me nothing! Escoot! Shut up! Go inside and keep the baby quiet!” he snapped.

“I told you, but you would not listen,” she said, and went into the next room and closed the door behind her.

“The Carabinieri don’t come in the middle of the night. Who are you?” Badoui asked.

“You know this man?” Scorpion asked, showing Badoui the photograph of the Palestinian on his cell phone. Badoui pretended not to look at it and didn’t say anything. “I can see that you have seen him before.”

“I don’t know him. I told the guardia.”

“You lied to the guardia. Don’t be afraid of this man. He’s dead.”

“I’m not afraid. I don’t know him. Now get out. I have to go to work in the morning.”

“Does not the Sura, the Cow, say: ‘Be steadfast in prayer; practice regular charity; and bow down your heads with those who bow down,’” Scorpion said, quoting from the Qu’ran. “Yet you haven’t been to salat at the mosque in a month. What happened a month ago? It was this man, wasn’t it?” He tapped Hassani’s face on the cell phone screen.

“No, it wasn’t,” Badoui said in a strangled voice.

“What happened a month ago?”

“Nothing. My wife, she doesn’t like that mosque.”

“Why not? Should we call her in?”

“Leave her out of this,” Badoui said.

“He wanted shaheedin to commit terrorism,” Scorpion said, tapping the cell phone, “and you didn’t want to. Isn’t that right? He warned you to tell no one or he’d kill you. Did he threaten your family as well?”

“I don’t want any part of this.”

“You won’t be. I promise. And I will keep my word, as is the hadith of the Prophet, rasul sallahu alayhi wassalam, peace be upon him, ‘The Prophet ordered us to help others to fulfill oaths.’ What did you see? Did he kill someone?”

Badoui stared at him, his eyes wide.

“You saw it, didn’t you?”

Badoui nodded. “I saw him kill two men. One was only a boy. It meant nothing to him, like swatting a fly. He let me go and told me never to come back and to say nothing.”

“You were afraid. I understand. This was at the warehouse, wasn’t it? Did you ever go back?”

Badoui hesitated, then said, “No.”

“You went back, didn’t you?” Scorpion asked. Badoui didn’t say anything. Scorpion took out money and counted out ten hundred-euro notes and put them on the coffee table.

“What’s that?” Badoui asked.

“I want to help you, min fadlak, please. You have a baby. Keep the money. No one will know. In a minute I’ll go and you will never see me again. What happened?”

Badoui didn’t answer. He looked at the money and at Scorpion. Then he took the money. “My wife,” he said. “She is a friend of the wife of Jamal, one of those who was with this man. We called the man ‘Mejdan.’ Jamal hadn’t come home or called in days and she was worried. My wife was pestering me, as she does, talking about how maybe Jamal had a woman and was thinking of divorce. She was making me crazy, so I took an hour away from work and went to the warehouse last week. It was very strange.”

“What did you see?”

“Jamal was there with Hicham, another of the group. He is a sanitation worker. They were with a woman and they had a metal coffin. I thought it was to get rid of the body of one of the men Mejdan killed.”

Scorpion sat up. An aluminum coffin could be used to transport a uranium bomb. It would be perfect to house the gun mechanism that Professor Groesbeck had described to him in Utrecht. As for the woman, even before he asked the question, he knew what Badoui would say.

“Describe the woman.”

“Beautiful, like a supermodel. She was wearing a suit with a skirt. It looked expensive.”

“Was she an Arab?”

“Yes. Her hair was blond, but she was an Arab. If you saw her, believe me, you would remember her.” I believe you, Scorpion thought. I can’t get her out of my mind. The only change was that Najla had dyed her hair blond.

“Did they say anything?”

“They were startled when they saw me. I told Jamal to call or go see his wife because my wife was driving me crazy, and they laughed. I left quickly. I don’t think they wanted me there.”

“No, of course,” Scorpion said, getting up. “Shokran and don’t be afraid. Mejdan is dead. He was one of those killed in Rome. I’m sure you’ve seen it on the television. As for my visit tonight, this conversation never happened. I was never here.”

“Tell that to my wife,” Badoui said, walking Scorpion to the door.

In the taxi back to his hotel Scorpion called the Carabinieri lieutenant, Giorgio. He told Giorgio what he needed and to call him when they had something.

In the morning, after working out and cleaning up, he was having breakfast in the hotel, near a window overlooking the red-tiled roofs and the imposing spire of the Mole, the city’s landmark, when Giorgio called.

“E Giorgio. You must to come at once.”

“Where are you?” Scorpion asked.

“The airport.”

“I’m on my way,” Scorpion said. Within an hour he was sitting with Giorgio and two of his men, looking at videos from airport security cameras on a closed circuit monitor.

“We do as you suggest,” Giorgio said. “We get the videos of the woman from the German television. We take into account what you said, that she become a blond,” he explained as they sped through a video, people moving in a blur till one of the Carabinieri said something and they slowed it down.

Scorpion studied the screen intently. He watched people standing in lines and going by and then saw her at the Lufthansa ticket counter, only as Badoui had said, she was a long-haired blonde, and he wasn’t sure it was her. Then she turned and headed toward the security check, and as soon as he saw her face, he was certain. It was Najla.

“The video is from three nights ago,” Giorgio said. “She was taking a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt, traveling on a German passport in the name of ‘Brynna Escher.’”

“Was Frankfurt the final destination?” Scorpion asked, keeping his voice calm, trying to ignore what the sight of her stirred up in him.

Giorgio shook his head. “In transit. Frankfurt to Saint Petersburg, and she wasn’t alone.”

“Oh?”

“She was traveling with a body. Claimed it was her brother, Pyotr. Had all the correct paperwork. They X-ray it of course. There was definitely a body inside. Have no idea who. Nobody open it. People don’t like to disturb coffins.”

“Did they scan it for radiation?”

“No. You think it have-” Scorpion pulled him aside, looking at the other two Carabinieri, before Giorgio could say more.

“Whatever you’re thinking, stop,” he whispered. “Say nothing to no one except Moretti. No one else, capisce?”

“You go to Saint Petersburg?” Giorgio whispered back. Scorpion nodded. “I wish I could go with you.”

“Grazie — a tutti,” Scorpion said to all of them.

He went to the Lufthansa counter and booked the next flight via Frankfurt to Saint Petersburg. What the hell was going on? he wondered, waiting for his flight. It made no sense. He didn’t need the ship, the Shiraz Se, to see this thing had Iranian fingerprints all over it. Someone with very deep pockets had spent a lot of money to fund the Palestinian’s operation. Just the cost of the enriched uranium could have cost millions. So of all the places in the world, why would the Islamic Resistance, which, like the rest of Hezbollah, had to be funded by Iran, want to attack the Russians, their primary supplier for nuclear material, technology, and missiles? He had the sense he’d had much earlier in the mission, of being in the middle of a battle while in a fog, not knowing who or where the different opponents were or even what game they were playing. The only thing he knew was that Najla was in Saint Petersburg, and for a moment he could almost feel her body next to his, as though back in that hotel room in Amsterdam.

He was sitting in the transit lounge in Frankfurt when the text message came in. He didn’t recognize the phone number it came from, but it was a scrambled text so he knew it was Rabinowich using the Vigenere code. He drew a Vigenere Square on a piece of paper he got from the lounge bartender and it didn’t take long to unscramble the text. After decryption, it read in clear text: gondolashirazsest-peteonetwoimam. “Gondola” meant Venice, so the message was urgent. The Iranian ship, the Shiraz Se, was in Saint Petersburg, stpete, and again he wondered why on earth Iran would want to attack Russia. It was crazy. The answer had to be the last thing Rabinowich had sent, because onetwoimam was another matter, and it was apocalyptic.

The “one-two” or the “Twelfth Imam,” was Muhammad al-Mahdi, the “Mahdi,” or Messiah. According to the Shi’a Muslims, he was born in 869 AD and supposedly never died. When he comes out of hiding, he’s supposed to wield the Sword of God and kill the unbelievers on Judgment Day. There were many among the top leadership in Tehran who were “Twelvers,” as believers in the Twelfth Imam were called, and the Iranian government had even built special new boulevards in Tehran and in the holy city of Qom for the Mahdi to enter the city. Still, he wondered if Rabinowich had lost it, because it made no sense. Unless he was suggesting that somehow blowing up Saint Petersburg was to fulfill the prophecy.

Then it hit him. Saint Petersburg was Russia’s main port. It was where the Iranian ship came in, but that didn’t mean it was the final destination. What about Moscow? What would happen if they smuggled the bomb from Saint Petersburg to Moscow?

Russia was a top-down society. Always had been. If the head were decapitated, what was left might retaliate against the U.S. or Europe, unless the Russians knew it was the Iranians. They certainly wouldn’t believe anything the Americans would say. It was insane, but those conditions would exactly fulfill the Twelfth Imam prophecy. And even if it didn’t, there would be a free-for-all in the Ekaterinburg oblast. Whoever had guns and money could get anything they wanted, including the nuclear weapons and missiles. It would be a game changer. Except it was crazy, he thought. Even most Shi’ites didn’t believe the Twelfth Imam was on his way. Except he could almost hear Rabinowich saying, “Sure, it’s wacky, but remember, a lot of otherwise perfectly rational people believe Jesus is coming back any day now too.”

On the airport lounge TV, the German news announcer was talking about terrorist actions in the United States. The two killed in New York. No mention of bioweapons. In Chicago, a Pakistani college student had been taken into custody. It was suspected that an explosion in Los Angeles was related to a terrorist group linked to al-Qaida. After all he had supplied, alerting the NSA to the al Jabbar code, how in hell could an explosion have happened in L.A.?

Watching the German TV news made him think with a pang of Najla, and he returned to the main question: Who was she working for? For Harris on an op that Harris didn’t want him to know about, or for the Iranians? And why?

Whatever was going on, the answer was in Saint Petersburg.