Scorpion Betrayal (20 page)

Rabinowich's voice got lower and more confidential, and Scorpion involuntarily looked around the park to see if anyone was watching, but there was no one except a few small children and their mothers heading toward the playground area.

“Our sleepy amigo,”
Rabinowich continued,
“dropped a bombshell that even woke up the assholes who run this place. It seems our vodka-loving friends
had a version of the bacillus that was not only airborne transmittable, but resistant to virtually every antibiotic known, including every member of the streptomycin, gentamicin, chloramphenicol, and tetracycline families. Now we were nervous, but again we couldn't confirm until Damascus. Kudos to you for that one. I finally got our old buddy Bob to okay me telling you. You need to know what you're up against. Oh
—
and I know you'll do it anyway, but I'm supposed to remind you to delete this as soon as you've heard it.”

So that was what Harris hadn't wanted to tell him in Karachi, Scorpion thought as he deleted the iPod file. It wasn't just the Budawi assassination that had the DCIA's drawers in a knot. It was the possibility that Hezbollah had been the buyer the Russian sleeper was talking about. No wonder Harris had come all the way to Karachi to rope him in. Except, he thought, there was something wrong. This was background data. It explained a lot, including the urgency, but it wasn't an operational emergency. It would never have been the reason for a Venice signal. He handed the iPod back to Peters, who slipped it hurriedly into his pocket as though it were contaminated.

“Harris risked the operation for this meeting,” Scorpion said. “We probably have Hezbollah agents combing the city right this second looking for both of us. What is it you haven't told me?”

“We received a Special Access CRITIC from Harris. He was in Tallinn,” Peters said.

Again Russia, Scorpion thought grimly. Since the end of the Cold War, Tallinn had become spy central for trading information outside Moscow, so like the bioweapon, it undoubtedly involved the Russians.

“What was he doing in Estonia?”

“To meet with Checkmate.”

“Ivanov himself.” Scorpion whistled silently. Checkmate was the code name for Vladimir Ivanov, head of the FSB's Counterintelligence Directorate and a legendary spymaster. “What brought that about?”

“Rabinowich found something. An NSA thread. Some MOD colonel from some shithole called Mayak got a promotion to Moscow. Two weeks later Checkmate picks him up and takes him to Adult's World.”

“So why Venice?” Scorpion asked, his thoughts racing. MOD was the Russian internal security agency for atomic weapons. Although he wasn't sure if Peters had connected the dots, Mayak was the Russian cover name for the city of Ozersk. The whole oblast around the city of Ekaterinburg in Russia was filled with atomic labs and atomic weapons facilities and stockpiles, but Ozersk was the bull's-eye, the dead center of the Russian atomic universe. “Adult's World” was CIA-speak for Lubyanka, FSB headquarters in Moscow, so-called with a touch of spook humor because it stood across the way from a famous Moscow toy store called “Children's World.” If Ivanov had arrested this MOD colonel from Ozersk, it could mean there was a serious security breach. They wouldn't have interrupted his operation unless there was a connection. “Come on, Peters. What does Harris want to tell me?”

“Checkmate told him they're missing twenty-one kilos of highly enriched U-235.”

“Jesus,” Scorpion said, realizing he'd stopped breathing. “How highly?”

“They don't know exactly. Checkmate said seventy-six percent. Harris said to tell you that Rabinowich said it could be more.”

“Rabinowich is right. The Russians know exactly. If Checkmate admitted to seventy-six percent and was willing to talk to Harris in Tallinn, it could definitely be more. Christ! Anything else?”

“Harris said one more thing to pass along from Rabinowich.”

“Yeah?”

“He said the Russians are all over Ekaterinburg and he's getting ‘subtexture' from Volgograd. Also, he thinks someone took a couple of hundred kilos of RDX from GUMO.”

Scorpion took a deep breath. It was a cool, sunny day. The trees near the edge of the pond were reflected in the water, and a fountain in the center sprayed up water that caught the sunlight in a rainbow. So much beauty, he thought, and then it hit him. This wasn't terrorism; it was total war.

“Any more good news?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Peters said. “Rabinowich said to tell you to hurry.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Westerpark, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Z
eedorf, the detective from Amsterdam, was a big man with a round belly. He and Scorpion met in a café near the Dom Tower, the fourteenth century church tower that dominated the picturesque center of Utrecht. The café smelled of Pilsener beer and cigarette smoke and was nearly empty. They sat at a table in a back corner so they could both watch the door.

“His name is Abdelhakim Ouaddane, age thirty-four. I have his address and telephone along with photographs for you here,” Zeedorf said, tapping the pocket of his surprisingly expensive sport jacket. “Also a copy of his
identiteitsbewijs
—identity card—his SOFI tax form, and a utility bill from REMU, the gas company. He has a wife and two children, both boys, ages six and three, also living with him. He completed VMBO technical high school, average grades, after which he worked as an auto mechanic at a Peugeot dealership in Hoograven. He lost his job there four years ago. It is not clear why. There seems to have been a problem, but we haven't had time to find out more. For the past several years, as you know, he has been the night security guard at the Masjid al Islamia Ibrahim Mosque in Kanaleneiland. Two years ago he applied for a gun license as a hunter under the Wet Wapens en Munitie law, but it was denied. We are not sure why. He has never been arrested or had trouble with the police. He pays his bills, keeps to himself, although he has been heard to express strong anti-Israel comments and to deny the Holocaust, but that is hardly unusual among Muslims.” Zeedorf shrugged.

“Here is his contact information along with photographs of him, his wife, and children, as you asked,” he said, taking an envelope out of his jacket pocket and sliding it over to Scorpion.

“What about vices? Gambling? Drugs? Women? Boys?”

“Women. Once every few weeks or so he goes to De Rode Brug, you know, the houseboat women. Other than that, nothing. Except, he stops every day before going to work at a coffee shop on Beneluxlaan.”

“Hashish?”

“Coffee and a little hashish. Nothing more. He is a quiet one. He reads.”

“What does he read?”

“Islamic religious books mostly.”

“Do you know any of the titles?”

“Does it matter? If you like, I can find out. We only had a limited amount of time,” Zeedorf wheezed, a note of apology combined with frustration in his voice.

“Any friends at the coffee shop?” Scorpion asked.

“No one. I watched him sit alone for nearly an hour. He smokes; he reads his Islamic books; he has a coffee and leaves. That's all.”

“Do you have the name and address of the shop?”

“It's in the envelope.”

“What time is he usually there?”

“He'll be there in two hours. We don't know about Friday. His schedule may change for the Friday prayer. Is there anything else,
meneer
?”

“You've done well for such short notice,” Scorpion said, passing him the cash on the table. Zeedorf scooped up the money and pocketed it in his jacket with a surprisingly quick and graceful move for such a big man.

“Can I be of any further service,
meneer
?” he wheezed.

“Yes. Do the same thing for the imam at the mosque where he works. I want everything you can get by midday tomorrow. And keep even farther away from the target. Keep it very long distance. Talk to no one,” Scorpion added, getting up. He left the big Dutchman finishing his beer and ordering an almond pastry to go with it.

Later, he met Anika, the call girl from Amsterdam at the hotel bar. She was blond and very pretty in a short red dress that had the businessmen in the bar glancing sideways at her, no matter who they were with, to check her out. The bar was dark, intimate, located in a medieval arched vault on a lower level in a spaciously landscaped hotel popular with expense account types. When Scorpion nodded to her and she came over to his table, most of the businessmen realized she was a high-paid prostitute, and there were knowing leers and whispers as she sat down.

“Do I look like my picture?” she asked. Her English was accented but not bad.

“You're very pretty. You attract a lot of attention,” he said, glancing at the businessmen at the bar who kept looking over at them.

She shrugged. “I'm used to it. I drove from Amsterdam. It's eight hundred euros for six hours, a thousand for the night. Do you want to go to your room now or have a drink first?”

“Let's talk,” he said, motioning the waitress over.

“I'll have a
jenever, zeer koud,”
very cold, she told the waitress.

“The same,” he said.

“So what business do you do?” she asked as the waitress left.

“Is that what most men want to talk about? Their work?”

“Most men want to talk about themselves. Usually business. Sometimes they try to impress me—with their cars, their houses,
elegante
restaurants. If you get to know them, they'll talk about their jobs, their wives and kids. They talk about their kids and then they want to fuck you. Don't get me started on men.”

“What about you? What do you like?”

“I like money. You pay me well, I will make you very happy.”

“Don't,” he said.

“Don't what?”

“The whore talk,” he said. “We don't need it.”

She sat up, momentarily less sure of herself. She watched him carefully as though not sure what he might do next. The waitress brought the drinks and left.

“Santé!”
she toasted and drank.

“Santé,”
he said, taking a sip and leaning closer. “It isn't me you need to make happy. I'll need you for a few days, maybe a week. I'll pay you fifteen hundred a day. Cash. If it's a full week, ten thousand. Up front. I'll pay you as soon as we leave here. But for someone else, not me.”

She looked at him suspiciously.

“What is this? Is this some kind of
zwendel?
I don't do this.”

“This man,” he said, sliding the photograph of the night security guard, Ouaddane, toward her. “You need to make him fall in love with you. Can you do it?”

“He looks like an Arab,” she said, frowning as she picked up the photograph.

“He is. Can you do it?”

“Sometimes men fall in love with me. Given how we meet, it seems strange to me. Sometimes I think it has nothing to do with me. I'm not in the love business,” she said.

“Make him want you enough to come with you and I'll pay you the ten thousand even if you don't work a full week.”

“What is this for?” She took a pair of glasses out of her handbag to look at Ouaddane's photograph, then put them back in her bag. “Is he rich? He doesn't look rich.”

“He's poor. It's not about that.”

She looked sharply at Scorpion.

“You don't kill him? I don't want any part of anything like this.”

“If I wanted him dead, I wouldn't need you. He works as a security guard in a place where I need information. That's all. You take care of him; I get the information; I take care of you. Everyone is happy.”

“That's all, just information? Nobody gets hurt?” she said, looking at him from behind her drink.

“Nobody gets hurt. Not this man, not you. Come, let's walk,” he said, standing up. As they walked out together, his hand lightly touching her waist, he was conscious that the eyes of every man in the bar were on them. They walked outside the hotel to the landscaped garden lawns. Night was falling. Lights were lit along the path, giving the hotel with its Dutch farmhouse architecture the quiet feel of being out in the country instead of in the center of the city. It was getting cold, and she pulled a pashmina shawl out of her handbag. He put it around her shoulders and handed her a wad of euros as they walked around the grounds.