Scorpion Betrayal (34 page)

Watching the Italian morning TG1 news on the TV in the warehouse office where they shared a mattress on the floor, Liz said, “You were right. It's in the news. I'm so sorry, but it just kills me to see you near another woman.”

“I told you, except as a symbol, she doesn't matter to me,” the Palestinian told her. “But there is something else you can do for me,” he added, pulling her down, his arms around her as she began to smile.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Saxa Rubra, Rome, Italy

T
hey met in a trattoria in Trastevere on a side street near the Piazza di Santa Maria. The cobblestone street was shaded from the bright sun by a plane tree. From an outside table with his back to the wall, Scorpion could see anyone entering the narrow street from either direction. He had put a folded copy of the
Corriere della Sera
on the table as a signal that it was clear to approach.

Aldo Moretti was a short well-dressed man with round button eyes and a sharp Roman nose between them, under which a small mustache gave him the look of a somewhat cynical bird of prey. Moretti sat down, ordered a glass of the red
vino della casa,
and they nodded at each other before they drank.

The problem, Scorpion reflected, was that the bureaucrats had taken over. Rabinowich told him the DIA hadn't informed the AISE, Italy's CIA, about the missing U-235—intimating that this had come down from the DNI himself—so the Italians were treating it like a garden-variety threat, the kind that came once or twice a week and at every international conference. Security would be heavy for the conference venue, but that was normal.

“I see you as a courtesy to Signor Brooks,” Moretti said, using Rabinowich's cover name. “Try the pasta here. It is not so terrible,” he added, tucking his napkin in his shirt. The waiter came back with the wine and they ordered. Scorpion waited till the waiter left.

“What have you heard about the Palestinian?”

“Solo un po'.” Just
a little. “Of course, I hear of the Budawi assassination in Cairo and that everyone is looking. You think he is here in Roma for the
conferenza? Metterlo qui,”
put it over here, he told the waiter bringing him a plate of tortellini.

“Grazie.”
Scorpion nodded as the waiter put down his plate of spaghetti and replaced the bread basket with a jar of
grissini
bread sticks. The Italian was sharp as a tack. He'd picked up on the mention of the Palestinian and put it all together immediately. “I know he's here. I've been tracking him across Europe all the way from Damascus.”

“È così?
And yet your DIA,” glancing around to make sure he wasn't overheard, “they tell us nothing about this.”

“There's a lot they are not telling you. You're right,” Scorpion said, talking while eating.

“About?”

“The pasta here is good.”

“What else they don't tell?”

“On orders, a lot,
molto.
Here we get onto difficult ground.”

“We
italiani
have been good partnership. For the Company, the best.
Troppo buona.”

“D'accordo,
probably too good,” Scorpion agreed. He leaned forward. “The information I have is something you need to know. My problem is that I must tell it to someone who can do something with this information, but not tell anyone else in the AISE.”

“Perhaps because if everyone in the AISE knows, it gets back to your
padroni
in the DIA and CIA who do not wish to share with us.”

“It is good to talk to a man who understands how such things work. It would be better if we could imagine you and I were just private citizens sharing pasta and opinions.”

“Perhaps you overestimate the danger. Our security is of the best in the world.”

“That's what Budawi thought. We believe there will be multiple attacks coordinated by one man in a number of cities in Europe and the U.S. Why of all of these cities do you think I'm in Rome?”

Moretti straightened. He wiped the corner of his mouth with the napkin. “I should be hearing this through official channels. Except, of course, according to you, official channels will tell us nothing, will they?”

“You know Checkmate?”

“The Russian, Ivanov? Only by reputation. He is more your problem than ours,” Moretti said, taking some wine.

“Not always. Sometimes we have mutual interests.”

“Is this such a time?”

“So you have heard nothing about the missing Russian U-235?”

“Russians say many things. On very rare occasions, they are even true,” Moretti shrugged. “My dear Signor McDonald from South Africa, although our encounter has, how you say, American fingerprints all over it, I like your manner. You speak straight. In Italian we say
‘palare fuori dai denti,'
to speak outside one's teeth. But you are asking me to take everything on faith, like a priest. This I cannot do for many reasons, one of which is if only not to lose your respect, one professional to another.”

“Signor Aldo Moretti, who officially works in the Ministry of the Interior in something to do with immigration, but in fact is a deputy director in AISE,” Scorpion said, at which Moretti gestured as only Italians can and mouthed
Bravo,
“a week ago a Ukrainian ship, the
Zaina,
out of Odessa, convenience flagged in Belize, made an unscheduled stop in Genoa after her captain died under unexplained circumstances. Check it out for yourself. I would be most interested in the autopsy report of what killed her captain.”

“Call me Aldo,” Moretti said. “And let me also speak straight, outside my teeth. You think the Palestinian killed the
capitano
and used the ship to bring highly enriched Uranium into Italy?”

Scorpion nodded. “Another curious thing,” he added. “While the
Zaina
was in port, she unloaded only three containers. They went through your
dogana
inspection in less than four hours.”

“That, I confess, is not
normale.
If Italy would ever be so efficient, we would be richer than America. You think the Palestinian bribed the Camorra?”

“It's been known.”

“He is like your Superman, this Palestinian. If I believe what you are saying, he can do anything,
non è così
?”

“The more I learn about him, the more dangerous he becomes. There's more.”

“What you tell me is already bad enough,” Moretti said, motioning the waiter over and ordering
espresso
and cannoli for both of them. Scorpion shook his head no.
“Per piacere,
they make it good here. You will like. Besides, you are paying.”

Scorpion motioned Moretti closer. “Five days ago an Iranian ship, the
Shiraz Se
out of Bushehr, transited the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean. No one knows what happened to her or her cargo.”

“Is too much. Now you are trying to disturb me. I thought that for you and I, like Mr. Humphrey Bogart and Signor Claude Raines in the movie
Casablanca,
this would be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. But this I do not like,” Moretti said, wagging his finger.

“I ask you again,
il mio amico
Aldo. Ask yourself one question: of all the cities in the world where we believe something is going to happen, why is the Palestinian in Rome? Why am I here?”

“I see,” Moretti said. He took a bite of the cannoli, then put down his fork. “It's good, but you've killed my appetite. I did not know that was possible with cannoli.” Moretti got up. “You give me things to do. We will talk again.
Subito,
very soon,” he said, and began to walk away.

“You say something about ‘in the wolf's mouth'?” Scorpion called after him.

Moretti stopped and pivoted with a small man's grace. “For good luck,
sí.
And the proper response is,
‘Crepi il lupo.'
May the wolf die.”

T
hat morning, Scorpion checked the DIA's security arrangements for the conference. Thanks to Moretti, he had acquired a badge that allowed him access through all police checkpoints. He explored the Palazzo delle Finanze venue for the conference and the
polizia
lines and reviewed the security operations. The DIA had set up sharpshooters at all locations approaching the venue and on the approaches and roof of the palazzo, and together with the AISE and the police were tapping all telephone and cell phone communications in Rome. At Moretti's insistence the Italians had pushed the
polizia
barriers out another block from the venue and had doubled the police and Carabinieri presence, along with helicopters flying overhead nonstop not only at the conference site, but at all hotels and foreign embassies where delegates were staying. Police checkpoints were set up on the A90 Ring Road around the city. Two Italian F-16s were fueled and standing by on the runway at the Italian Pratica di Mare air force base outside Rome, ready to take off at a moment's notice.

Scorpion contacted Rabinowich from an Internet café off the Piazza Barberini near the Trevi Fountain. The café was loud and noisy. It was filled with tourists and people from the demonstrations, many of them young and carrying backpacks. A flat-screen TV near the front of the café showed the Italian TG1 television news. The TV announcer, a handsome man in a striped Armani suit who obviously liked his pasta, was talking again about the beautiful young Englishwoman who had been reportedly beaten by the police during the demonstrations. The screen showed side-by-side photos of her, the pretty smiling brunette before the attack and then after, with her battered face covered in blood. The images had been displayed repeatedly around the world, to the point where they had almost become iconic. There were dark allegations that the woman had not only been beaten, but raped by the
polizia,
the announcer said, lowering his voice to imply the gravity of the charge. Known only as
“la donna inglese,”
she had reportedly gone into hiding.

“What do you think?” one blond long-haired backpacker with a British accent said to his friend, watching the TV.

“Beats me,” his friend, an American said. “She's pretty. That's why they're playing it up.”

“Not anymore,” the Brit said, and his friend laughed as they wandered away.

The TV cut to a police
assistente capo
who was shown strenuously denying that the young woman had ever been taken into police custody. He pointed to a somewhat jerky security camera video that Scorpion had seen on the news that morning in his hotel room. It showed someone in the crowd who might possibly be the young woman—it was difficult to tell from the video—being pushed back by a policeman's shield at a street barrier. Something in the video this time caught Scorpion's attention, but it was gone too fast. He needed to see it again, frame by frame.

He sat down at an open computer, called Rabinowich using his latest disposable cell phone, and hung up the second he answered, then set up a real-time online chat session, using slang and abbreviations he knew Rabinowich would understand.

u ‘ve any idea time here? 5 in f-ing am,
Rabinowich typed.

wakey, sleeping beauty
. Need new HA pix,
Scorpion typed back, referring to Hearing Aid, their code name for the Palestinian.