Scorpion Betrayal (29 page)

“None of that had to happen. We can't afford this. We only have seven days,” he said.

“What happens in seven days?”

“Nothing, if you do what I tell you.”

“I will. I swear,” she said. The taxi made a turn, causing her to lean. She let it bring her close enough to brush against him.

By the time they got to the airport, they had thirty minutes to catch the late night flight to Rome. They checked the luggage and were going through the passport control in separate lines, Najla in the EU queue, and Scorpion, with his South African passport, in the non-EU queue. He had just gotten through when he saw the immigration officer, a woman, signal, and two armed soldiers approach Najla. She turned to look at him as they led her away. He had to decide quickly whether to stay or go. The plane was already boarding.

After a moment's hesitation he jogged to the gate. He had no choice. The mission was entering the critical phase. Settling into his seat, he made a call with his cell phone to set up a follow-up call with Langley from Rome. There was a lot to talk about, including why the French DGSE intelligence—he was sure they had something to do with it—had taken Najla into custody.

The jet lifted high over the lights of Marseilles and made the turn over the dark Mediterranean toward Italy. Now that there was a good chance he might never see Najla again, he allowed himself to think of her sexually, the warmth of her body next to his in the bed in Amsterdam, the stunning contrast of her aquamarine blue eyes against her golden skin and dark hair. He was more attracted to her than he had been to any woman in a long time. It had taken all his willpower not to grab her, and when she'd brushed against him, she knew what she was doing to him, and he knew she wanted it too. But there had always been the chance that she was an enemy, and if it came to it, what if he had to kill her? In a way, going to Rome alone simplified things.

He looked out the window at the lights strung along the coastline of the Côte d'Azur below in the darkness. Somewhere in Italy, the Palestinian was getting ready. Out of habit, Scorpion glanced at his watch. It was after midnight. He had six days.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

New York, United States

T
he danger point was the U.S. Customs and Border booth at JFK Airport. If the border agent detained him, the Palestinian knew they would fail. This was something they had known from the beginning. The key to security for the entire operation was also its fatal flaw. He was the only one who knew all the pieces. The strategy provided perfect security so long as he was operational, but without him there was no operation. And he'd already had one close call too many, barely getting away in Utrecht.

He was traveling as a businessman, dressed in slacks and a jacket, no tie, with business cards and papers from his freight company in Hamburg, which they could contact and that would pass a superficial background check. His German passport was bulletproof, he told himself. Nothing Muslim about it, and the name he was using and RFID chip embedded in the front cover were in the German Auswärtiges Amt database.

As for Liz, she was female, good-looking, and British, which already lowered her profile, since Americans tended to trust the English, not realizing that some of the most radical jihadis in Europe were in the UK. He hadn't wanted to bring her, but it was too dangerous to leave her behind in Italy because she was still seething over Francesca, though she denied it. Women were always a complication, but he needed her for Rome, his throat going dry as he stepped up to the non-U.S. citizens booth in the crowded terminal hall and handed the border agent his passport and a filled-in U.S. Customs and Border Protection form. If they were to stop him, it would happen here.

The U.S. agent checked his face against the passport photo, looked up his preboarding screened data: name, digital fingerprint, and photograph against the Watch list on his computer. He checked the arrival form again.

“You here for business or pleasure, Mr. Groener?”

“Business,” the Palestinian said in English in his German persona accent, which hovered halfway over the Channel, somewhere between Hamburg and the BBC, sweat breaking out between his shoulder blades.

“What business are you in?”

“Material handling. Trucking. My card,” the Palestinian said, taking out one of his business cards, which the agent waved away.

“You came from Rome via Paris?”

“Yes, we do business with DHL and also with American companies throughout Europe,” he said, finding it hard to talk or swallow, his mouth was so dry.

“How long do you plan to be in the United States?”

“Just a few days,” attempting a smile. The agent didn't smile back. The agent checked his computer screen again. The two men waited.

“Welcome to the United States,” the agent said after a long moment, and stamped his passport.

Liz was waiting for him at the luggage carousel, and together they stood in line for a taxi that took them to a midtown hotel near Grand Central Station. They barely spoke in the taxi. At one point she started to say something and he glanced significantly at the driver. Heeding that warning, she made meaningless conversation about the cool weather as he looked out the window at the row houses along the Van Wyck Expressway, not seeing them because all he could think of was the critical pieces of the operation he had left behind in Turin and Rome, and whether by coming to America and bringing her he had jeopardized the whole thing. They checked into the hotel in separate rooms, and once his luggage was delivered, he went down two floors to her room and she let him in.

“Why the bloody hell couldn't we be together, you bastard. I had to fend off some palmy Belgian asshole who thought my tits were the business class bloody hors d'oeuvres,” she began, and never finished because he kissed her and started pulling off her clothes.

He had first met Liz two years ago in Mykonos. She was topless on the beach, with her mini-breasts and leggy post-Oxonian body, and within an hour they were going at it like rabbits in his room overlooking the port and the sea. Afterward, the two of them sharing a cigarette, she told him about joining the Oxford Movement for Palestinian Justice, her eyes gleaming with conviction, and he had alerted Utrecht to see what they could do about recruiting her. He visited her several times in London, a budding
shaheedah
she-wolf in Sloane Ranger guise, all boho short skirts and Hermès scarves and meetings to ban Israeli professors from British universities. He went shopping with her on Beauchamp Place, and at night they kept her flatmates awake while they went at it nonstop, as if Knightsbridge was Mykonos North, till one of the other girls wanted to join in. Then Liz's jealousy flared up.

Looking for him, she had arrived in Turin the night before the move to Rome, making a big entrance at the warehouse, only to learn he wasn't there. Mourad, whom he had left in charge, wouldn't tell her where he was. In fact he was in Milan, in Francesca's suite at the Savoia Hotel, making the final payment after the delivery in Turin that morning.

“So, what more can I do for you,
caro
?” Francesca had whispered, kissing him after he had given her the money.

“Let's say I need to get rid of something.”

“Disposal,” she said, nibbling on his ear, “is a Camorra specialty.”

“I think,” he said, his arm around her waist, “we should continue this conversation in the bedroom.”

When he got back to Turin, Liz found a long dark hair on his shirt and smelled Francesca, sniffing at him like a cat and letting him know about it till he slapped her in the face and explained it to her. She got up and started to leave and he showed her the gun. He called Jamal in then and had him show her the bodies in the refrigeration locker, and when Jamal brought her back, she was quieter. Afterward they made love and she cried and told him she still loved him and how much she hated the Israelis. But he knew he couldn't trust her, and decided to take her with him to New York after the migration from Turin to Rome in a big rig with
COMPAGNIA BOLOGNA PARTES DI CAMIONS ALL'INGROSSO
on the sides and the rest of the team making the trip down the autostrada in separate vans and cars.

Now, their first stop after leaving the hotel in midtown was at the office he had rented in the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn. They went there to pick up the package he had FedExed from Calexico. From Brooklyn, they took the subway to the 169th Street station in Jamaica, Queens, exiting on Hillside Avenue. The street was lined with small East Asian stores and curry restaurants with signs in Bangla and English. They walked a few blocks to the apartment he had rented six months earlier at the same time he set up the office in Brooklyn. He unlocked the door and turned on the air-conditioner units. The apartment was almost completely bare of furniture, except for a large freezer and, in the bedroom, a few shopping bags of supplies. He gave Liz the address where the girl lived with her brother and told her to wait for him there.

“I want to stay,” she said.

“It's dangerous,” he said. “Once I start making it, it could explode any second. This mixture, HMTD, is the most volatile thing you can imagine. The slightest jar, ordinary room temperature, anything can set it off.”

“I want to be part of this,” she said, putting her hand on his shoulder, looking at him like a soldier with Palestine her flag, and the two of them kissed, her tongue darting into his mouth, a portable Mykonos.

While they waited for the apartment to cool, he put on latex gloves and took the backpack out of the FedEx box, tearing up and flushing any identifying labels from the box down the toilet. He took the spray equipment stamped
APASNAST
!—Danger!—in Cyrillic lettering out of the backpack and made sure it was ready. When the apartment was cold enough, Liz helped him carry the shopping bags from the other room to the bathtub along with a big mixing bowl and other implements.

“Here we go,” he said, opening the first jar. He took a deep breath before pouring the liquid into the bowl. “This is a very bad explosive. I hate it.”

“If it's so bad, why do you use it?”

“It's terrible to work with, but it has one enormous advantage. We don't have to take it through customs. You can make it anywhere from ordinary household ingredients: hair bleach, a food flavoring, and something you can buy at any camping or sporting goods store. It's powerful, completely legal, and the authorities never know a thing until it blows up,” he said, and despite the coldness of the bathroom, which was making her shiver, he wiped a bead of sweat from his brow.

When he was done, he had about a dozen pounds of solid HMTD, which he set with a detonator connected to leads from a cell phone, before putting it in a plastic bag. He placed the bag in the backpack surrounded with pellets of dry ice to keep it cold. Then he put the spray equipment back into the backpack on a piece of canvas on top of the dry ice. He put the backpack on, turned everything off in the apartment, locked it, and they walked the four blocks to the apartment of the young Bangladeshi woman and her brother, careful not to jar the backpack and calling first to make sure the brother and sister were both home from work.

Bharati opened the door and let them in. Her brother, a small dark man with longish hair, who called the Palestinian “Bahadur” and Liz “Begum,” led them toward the kitchen. The Palestinian took off the backpack and carried it like a priest with a chalice of holy wine to the kitchen, but there wasn't enough room in the refrigerator and he had them empty food out to put the backpack in.

They sat in the living room and the young woman, her large dark eyes glancing first at Liz and then at the Palestinian, served them tea. After they had sipped the tea, the brother blurted: “About the money?”

“Do you have a computer?” the Palestinian asked. The brother nodded. “Check your account.”

While they waited, the Palestinian asked the young woman if she was ready. She looked down, glancing shyly at him from under her lashes, and nodded.

“I have two children. My sister loves them. She will do what is needed,” the brother said, coming back in.

The Palestinian told him to leave.

“She is my sister. I should be here,” the brother said.

“In that case, I'll have to kill you,” the Palestinian said, taking out a gun. The brother blanched. “We need to talk of operational matters. Afterward, the police may come to you. You can't tell them what you don't know.”