Scorpion Betrayal (11 page)

She was not a true
shaheedah
martyr. She liked America and her job in Manhattan, but her brother was a coward. He owed money to a Bangladeshi gang, had sworn himself to jihad and martyrdom to get the money and then backed out because of his fear, trying to use his two small children as an excuse. She was doing it to keep the Bangladeshi gang members from killing her brother and leaving his children fatherless. She would never do it for herself or for the brother, but would do it for the children, and also because the way she looked at him when she made the video made him think she was attracted to him. Her martyrdom was a gift for him, he thought, glancing now at the American girl talking and laughing with her friends. The waiter came with the Campari and soda he'd ordered and he was about to tell him to give Camparis to everyone at her table when just like that, he had the solution.

The American girl raised her wineglass toward him, her eyes crinkling at the corners, confident of herself and her looks. Instead of responding, the Palestinian stood up, tossed some money on the table, and left in a hurry, the girl never knowing how close to death she had come.

He went back to his hotel near the top of the Spanish Steps, packed and got the rented Mercedes coupe from the underground parking garage. Once on the A1 and out of Rome, he drove through the darkness on the autostrada at over a hundred miles per hour, the radio blasting music by Euro groups like Tokio Hotel and Fettes Brot. Near Florence, he called ahead and made a late reservation. By midnight he was checking into the Principe di Savoia Hotel in Milan. In the morning he went to the San Vittore prison in the center of the city.

C
armine Bartolo came into the visitors' area and sat across the glass partition from him with a swagger, despite his shackles. Although he was of medium height, he looked bigger, almost hulking. His thick hair and heavy brows made his eyes seem small and dangerous. Inside the Naples Camorra, the mafia gang that virtually ran that city, Bartolo was known as “Il Brutto” for his perpetually nasty sneer and his legendary use of a butcher's cleaver as his preferred form of intimidation. He said something in a rapid slang Italian that the Palestinian didn't understand.

“Non capisco. Parla inglese? Français? Deutsch
?” the Palestinian asked.

“English,” Bartolo said, pronouncing it “Eengleesee.” He leaned closer toward the glass. “What are you?
Turco
?
Musulmano
? Muslim boy?”

“Businessman. I'm here to buy something.”

“You want buy, go to Rinacente store. This is
prigione. Capisce
?” Bartolo said, glancing sideways at the guard standing by the wall to see if his humor was being properly appreciated. The guard looked away, bored. He was paid to look away and not to hear.

The Palestinian motioned Bartolo closer. “I'll pay you a hundred thousand euros cash for what I want.”

Bartolo's eyes narrowed under his heavy brows. He looked like the brute killer he was, the Palestinian thought.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Someone who can pay,” the Palestinian said, and covering his mouth so a camera couldn't pick it up, whispered what he wanted.

Bartolo's eyebrows came together, forming a single ridge across his forehead, making him look almost like a Neanderthal.

“What you want for? A job, sì?”

“None of your business. Part of what I'm paying for is no questions.”

“Figlio di puttana!”
Bartolo said, standing up, hunching over slightly because of the shackles. “I don't
fare affare
with Turco I don't know.”

“A hundred thousand. I can always try the Zaza brothers or the Nuova Famiglia,” the Palestinian said quietly.

“You go Zaza, do business with those
busones? Me ne infischio,”
Bartolo said, jerking his chin at the Palestinian in lieu of the usual obscene gesture, because of his shackles. The Palestinian beckoned him closer to the glass.

“A hundred twenty thousand cash. Half now, half on delivery.”

Bartolo sat down again.

“Plus forty
per cento
what job you doing,” he said.

“Twenty-five percent—and no questions.”

“Trenta.
Thirty. You talk my wife,” Bartolo said. He took a small pencil stub and wrote something on a scrap of paper. He slapped the paper against the glass so the Palestinian could read the telephone number he had written on it. Then Bartolo crumpled the paper up in his hand, spit on it, chewed and swallowed it, and stood up.

“You don't pay, maybe you don't look so good. Maybe don't feel so good, Turco,” Bartolo said, shuffling toward the door, his shackles clanking.

“Andiamo,”
the guard said, unlocking the door.

“Vaffanculo!”
Bartolo cursed, shuffling out.

The Palestinian left the prison and drove the Mercedes out of town, heading for Turin. Along the way he bought two disposable cell phones and called a number in Turin from an Autogrill rest stop on the autostrada.

“Fee ay fis sinima il layla di
?” he asked in Arabic. What's playing at the movie tonight?

“Piazza della Republica, Porta Palazzo Nord,” a man replied, and hung up. The Palestinian used the second phone to call a number in Holland.

“Bitnazaam gawalaat
?” he asked in Arabic. Do you arrange tours?

“Abu Faraj is dead. In his home in Damascus,” the voice at the other end said, using the nom de guerre of Dr. Abadi. The Palestinian watched the traffic on the A4 go by. Suddenly, it seemed as if every car was a potential danger. Impossible, he told himself. They couldn't be on to him so quickly after Cairo. “Also his wife and three guards.”

“Who was it?” he asked.

“We don't know. The Jews or the Americans. Pick one. Whoever, the dog got away,” the voice said.

“He was good enough to get past all the guards and alarms. That house was like a fortress.”

“Khalli baalak,”
the voice said. Be careful. “Whoever it was is very dangerous. He also took a folder and may have accessed his computer. Is there anything on it of you?”

“Wala haaga.”
Nothing, he said, his thoughts racing. This plus the near capture of Salim Kassem in Beirut meant they were after him. Even if they didn't know who or where he was, someone was getting closer.

“Are you sure?”

“Nothing,” he said, remembering the long walk he had taken with Dr. Abadi in the Bekaa Valley after the 2006 July war with the Israelis.
You do not exist. It is the only way,
Dr. Abadi had said. There would be nothing of him on Abadi's computer, or anywhere for that matter. He was certain of it. He waited, and when the voice did not continue, finally said it: “Do we go on?”

“Allahu akhbar!”
the voice said. God is great.

“Allahu akhbar!”
the Palestinian replied and hung up. It was as they had agreed. No matter what, there would be no turning back.

Making sure he wasn't watched, he pulled out the SIM cards, placed the two cell phones and SIMs just behind his front tire, and backed the Mercedes over them. He jumped out, picked up what was left of the phones and tossed the pieces at intervals into the brush along the autostrada to Turin.

It was getting warm, the sun glittering on the Po River and on the mountains as he drove into Turin and parked in a structure near the Porta Palazzo. It was a working-class area, and he passed warehouses and cheap couscous restaurants as he walked to the piazza and waited on the sidewalk near a cluster of market stalls. Within minutes a van pulled up. Two Moroccan men jumped out and shoved him into the back. One of the Moroccans started to put a hood on his head.

“U'af!”
Stop! “No hood. I want to study the area,” the Palestinian said sharply in Arabic. One Moroccan looked at the other, who didn't say anything. He kept the hood in his hand. “Where are we going?” the Palestinian asked the driver.

“Across the river. Make sure no one is following,” the driver said, weaving through the traffic, mostly Fiats, of course, from the big Fiat factory in the suburbs of the city, past the lush green of the Royal Gardens and the towering four-sided dome of the Mole Antonelliana, Turin's signature landmark. Designed to be a synagogue, the Mole was now Italy's National Movie Museum, and was said to be the tallest museum in the world. They drove across the bridge over the Po River, then cut illegally across the oncoming lane to a side street, turning back on the Via Bologna and recrossing to the western side of the river. After another ten minutes going back and forth on side streets to make sure no one was following, the driver pulled up to the loading dock of a small warehouse a few doors down from a garage that had been converted into a mosque. They got out and went inside the warehouse.

There were six young Moroccan and Albanian men in work clothes, two of them wearing the green coveralls of Italian sanitation workers, and two women in
hijabs.
They stood around or sat on metal chairs near a stack of crates in a corner of the warehouse. A bearded young Moroccan man sat behind a folding table in the front of the group, sipping a bottle of Orange Fanta. An older man in an embroidered
taqiyah
cap, who the Palestinian assumed was the imam, sat beside the bearded Moroccan.

“Salaam aleikem,”
the imam said.

“Wa aleikem es-salaam,”
the Palestinian replied, taking a seat and turning the chair sideways so he could see the two men at the table and the rest of the group. The bearded man put a Beretta pistol on the table.

“You are welcome, Brother,” the imam continued in Arabic. “We have been instructed to assist you in all possible ways.”

“Assist, yes. But in Torino we lead,” the bearded man said, his hand touching the gun.

“You are GICM?” the Palestinian asked, naming the terrorist Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group responsible for a series of deadly bombings and kidnappings across northern Italy.

The bearded man nodded.

“Give me your gun,” the Palestinian ordered, standing and holding out his hand. The bearded man picked up the pistol and pointed it at him.

“I give the orders here,” he said.

“Do you submit to Allah? Have you said the Shahadah?” the Palestinian demanded, his eyes burning. “We are the Al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya. Do you know there is a
fatwa
against any who would lift a hand against me because of my work in our holy cause?” He stepped closer to the table and held out his hand. “Either kill me now and burn forever in
jahannam
or give me the gun, Brother.”

The bearded man's eyes darted around, looking at his friends and followers. Everyone was riveted on the confrontation. One of the Moroccans from the van started to pull his gun out of a shoulder holster, then stopped halfway. From outside the warehouse came the sound of a car honking in traffic. No one moved. The bearded man's fingers tightened on the gun. The Palestinian could see specks of dust floating in the shafts of sunlight coming through the high warehouse window, and he wondered if it would be the last thing he ever saw. At last the bearded man exhaled. Without a word, he pushed the gun on the table toward the Palestinian.

“Allahu akbar,”
God is great, the Palestinian said, picking up the gun. The others started to echo
“Allahu akbar”
when the Palestinian aimed the gun and shot the bearded man in the head, the shot ringing unbelievably loud in the silence. One of the women gave out a muffled cry as the body slumped to the side of the chair.

The Palestinian turned on the group and stared at them. “Our moment of truth has come. There can be only one leader here,” he said, and told them what he wanted them to do.

“W
here do you want the delivery?” Francesca said, tossing her long blond hair, her dark roots showing only at the part. They were having dinner in a small exclusive restaurant in Milan, near Sempione Park.

“In Torino,” the Palestinian said, and told her the name of the street. He was eating the best Piedmontese veal
battutu
he'd ever tasted, washed down with an excellent Sagrantino wine. “Just deliver it and walk away.”

“And the money?”

“Before your men go two meters, they will have the rest of the money.”

“You understand with the Camorra, you don't get two chances?” she said.

“You aren't afraid to talk about the Camorra here?” he said, looking around at the well-dressed diners at nearby tables.

“Why not? I own this place.” She had a rough contralto laugh. “Many others too. You are surprised to find a woman
capa,
yes? Of the Camorra, it is the custom when the husband dies or is in the
prigione,
for the wife to take over. Good custom. We hold it close,” she said, touching her chest. “But you were surprised. I see it in your eyes.”

“Only at how attractive you were.” She was in her forties, her skin tan, with a good shape shown off by the red designer dress she wore, her breasts so perfect that only a world-class surgeon who was half in love with her could have done them.