Scorpion Betrayal Read online

  “Is okay, da?” Khmelnitsky said.

  “I’ll let you know after I’ve had a look,” the Palestinian said.

  Khmelnitsky gestured, and one of his men got up and opened the freight car door. The car was filled with steel drums, with ALUMINUM INGOTS painted on the sides in Russian Cyrillic lettering and seals from the VOLGOGRAD ALUMINUM FACTORY.

  The Palestinian climbed up and approached one of the two drums marked SPECIAL ORDER 101 in Russian and removed the top, which hadn’t been welded shut yet. He turned on his handheld Geiger counter and it immediately began clicking, the needle spiking, but well within safe limits for alpha, beta, and gamma radiation levels. If it had been Cesium-137 or Plutonium-239, it would’ve been too radioactive to safely approach, not to mention the difficulty of handling something so radioactive, and which would burst into intense flames at the drop of a hat, like plutonium. He picked up the small beer-can-sized ingot of Uranium-235 and held it in the palm of his hand. It was a dull gray, cool and dry to the touch and very heavy for its size. That was the beauty of U-235, he thought. It was easy to work with, the radiation level safe enough so you could sleep with it under your pillow, and if it was pure enough, it would change the world. He put it back, opened the second drum and measured the second ingot.

  “What you think?” Khmelnitsky said. “Uranium-235. Twenty-one kilos. High enriched. Yuri say seventy-six percent, but who knows. Not make nuclear bomb,” he cautioned, “but you do nothing in Russia, I don’t care govno shit what you do. No bomb in Russia, FSB don’t care govno shit what you do.”

  The Palestinian finished his measurements and looked up. Without converting a microscopic amount to uranium hexafluoride by mixing it with fluorine gas—tricky enough because it was poisonous—and then testing for U-235, there was no way of accurately determining the exact enrichment level, but he knew it had to be more than seventy-six percent. It was just too easy to go from seventy-six percent to over ninety. Why would you stop?

  “What about the RDX?”

  “Here. One hundred eighty kilos,” Khmelnitsky said, taking the top off another steel drum marked SPECIAL ORDER 102.

  The Palestinian moved aside a layer of aluminum pellets, there to disguise it as an aluminum shipment, and opened a wooden box still marked with the Russian Army seal and markings and filled with a white crystalline solid. He cut off a small piece with his pocketknife and took out a set of vials that he mixed it with. He would be using RDX as the powerful secondary and tertiary explosives, and exploding bridge-wire blasting caps with PETN as the primary to set it off. It was all so elegant, he thought. So perfect and easy to work with and mathematical. He liked the neatness.

  He inspected the remaining steel drums and indicated to Khmelnitsky to seal them up. As Khmelnitsky’s men worked, the Palestinian stood outside on the ground beside the freight car. Khmelnitsky smoked a cigarette beside him.

  “Is kharasho, good, da?” Khmelnitsky said. “Fifteen million U.S. dollar. Very nice.”

  “We agreed ten,” the Palestinian said, tensing. He’d expected this. They had discussed it in Damascus, what to do if the Russians made trouble. This was one of the danger points.

  “Kanyeshna.” We agree. “Was ten. Now fifteen,” Khmelnitsky said, squinting through the smoke from the cigarette dangling from his lips.

  “Suppose I don’t agree?”

  “We kill you. Keep down payment.” Khmelnitsky shrugged. “You die. Next one pays.”

  “That would be a mistake,” the Palestinian said quietly. “You want a war?”

  “Listen, druk. One time people come to Ekaterinburg for tourism; see Urals, see house where Bolshiviki kill tsar and family. Chto zahuy! Now people come see cemetery for Uralmash mafia. Big stones for graves with big fatagrafira picture of mafia guy, life size, with Mercedes behind him, guy in nice suit. Some graves with laser, kill enemy after you dead. No kidding. Is big tourism. So what you do? Kill me? What I give fuck? My fatagrafira all ready. I am still young guy. Look good forever on stone. This good business. You get bomb, fuck your enemy. Fifteen million and you, me, we stay druks. Get drunk. Everything kharasho.”

  The Palestinian looked at the railroad cars and the flat sky, the color of stones. A Russian at his hotel had said millions died right where he stood, although he never believed the Russians about anything, except that they knew how to die.

  “After the shipment is on board the ship,” he said.

  “Sure.” Khmelnitsky smiled. “We go, you and me, drink Dovgan vodka, go to Ukraina, Donbas oblast region. We go Donetsk city. Put on truck. First make payment. Five million U.S. dollar now. Ten million when this govno shit on ship.”

  The Palestinian nodded. He turned on his laptop and made the electronic bank transfer.

  “Check your account now,” he said.

  “Sure thing.” Khmelnitsky grinned. “I come back. Money kharasho, we go. If not, we kill you.”

  They took the Aeroflot flight to Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, a coal mining and industrial city on the Kalmius River. They flew over the vast steppes, one city and town merging into the forests, grasslands, and suburbs of another. Khmelnitsky got drunk on the flight, and every time the blond airline hostess walked by, he would slide his hand up her skirt between her legs.

  “Piristan!” stop it, she’d say, pushing his hand away and almost running toward the cockpit.

  “Come sit here. I give you something instead of hand,” Khmelnitsky laughed, grabbing himself. “She’s nice, da?” he said to the Palestinian. “Nice ones,” molding his hands like breasts.

  “What if she tells someone?” the Palestinian said. “We don’t want trouble now.”

  “No trouble. They see this,” touching his Hawaiian shirt, “they know is Uralmash. They say nothing.”

  The next time the hostess came down the aisle, she handed him a glass of vodka. “Compliments of the captain,” she said, smiling but with frightened eyes. She let Khmelnitsky fondle her breasts as she bent over to serve the drinks, her smile like the smile on a doll’s face.

  “See, druk. I say she nice girl,” Khmelnitsky smiled. “No trouble.”

  They landed in Donetsk and were met by four tough-looking Ukrainian men in suits with open shirts and no ties.

  “Dobryaky mafia,” Khmelnitsky explained as they walked toward them. “They get percents from me. You pay nothing.”

  The Ukrainians drove them to the railroad yard. They watched a gantry crane load the railroad container with the steel drums onto the bed of a long haul container truck. One of the Ukrainians passed money to an inspector as it was loaded and watched as he stamped and initialed the shipping manifest. Once the rig was loaded and checked through the gate, they drove Khmelnitsky and the Palestinian back to the airport, where, after a vodka toast, the two of them boarded an Aerosvit flight to Odessa. Three hours later they were having lunch at the largest of the eight commercial terminals in the Odessa port. Through the window, they could see gantry cranes loading ships along the quay.

  “Dobryaky mafia same like Uralmash,” Khmelnitsky said. “All time, we do business, but Ukraina truly stupid huesos. Best thing about whole Ukraina country is that Dobryaky is same as Verkhovna Rada—how you say, Ukraina government. Whole country is corrupt. You do business at one counter.”

  “Good for business,” the Palestinian agreed.

  “Listen, druk, you—me, we do kharasho business. You tell me what you need: guns, bombs, drugs, women. We do business. Come through Ukraina. No problem customs, militsiya police, SBU. Everything taken care of.”

  “If this works out, why not?” the Palestinian said.

  After lunch they followed the Ukrainian freight forwarder as he handled the paperwork for the port and the ship. They walked out to the berth to inspect the MV Zaina, a mid-size Ukrainian 26,000 ton cargo vessel flying a Belize flag of convenience. The Palestinian knew she was owned by FIMAX Shipping, a legitimate Ukrainian company, and member of FIATA, that could stand up to scrutiny by the Ukrainian SBU, the Rus
sian FSB, or the CIA.

  The paperwork took most of the day. At one point the freight forwarder—Khmelnitsky called him Mikhailo—came to them.

  “The customs man, that one,” glancing toward an agent behind the counter in a blue uniform, “wants another fifty thousand hryvnia,” Mikhailo said. The Palestinian did a quick mental calculation. It was about five thousand euros.

  “Hooy tebe v zhopu! I cut his huesos eyes out!” Khmelnitsky cursed. The Palestinian put a hand on his arm.

  “This customs huesos,” he said to Mikhailo, using the slang. “Is he reliable or does he always ask for more?”

  “Always.”

  “What you want to do?” Khmelnitsky said to the Palestinian.

  “Pay him now,” the Palestinian said. “I’ll give you the money in the men’s toilet. After the ship sails, kill him. I’ll give you another thousand euros.”

  “I kill him,” Khmelnitsky said. “But for only one euro. This is all this huesos is worth.”

  By late afternoon the big rig arrived carrying the steel drums and ingots. Before they loaded the cargo, the Palestinian inspected the steel drums marked SPECIAL ORDER for the hairs from his head he had glued from the tops to the sides. They were unbroken. They hadn’t been tampered with. He used his laptop to send the authorization for the bank transfer and waited till Khmelnitsky came back after checking it out.

  “Money kharasho. Everything kharasho. You see, we do kharasho good business,” the Russian said, clapping the Palestinian on the shoulder.

  “Da svidaniya,” the Palestinian replied, shaking Khmelnitsky’s hand. The Russian was smiling so broadly, he thought, you could almost forget he was called “Kolbasa.”

  The Palestinian walked up the gangplank onto the ship, pulling his carry-on behind him. A Turkish crewman pointed him to the bridge, where he showed his papers to a man named Chernovetsky, a bearded Ukrainian in a soiled white captain’s cap. The papers identified him as a Moroccan seaman named Hassan Lababi. The captain squinted closely at the photograph on his papers then handed them back.

  “New crewman takes midnight watch,” Chernovetsky said in a heavily accented English.

  “Oui, Capitaine,” the Palestinian replied, using French to reinforce his Moroccan nationality.

  The Palestinian went below and stowed his gear in the crew’s quarters, then went out on deck. He watched the crewmen toss the hawsers and felt the shudder of the engines as the ship left its berth. The Zaina cleared the breakwater and began an easy pitching as it headed out into the deeper water of the Black Sea. The ship was bound through the Bosphorus and the Dardenelles for its next port, Marseilles, where the steel drums were to be unloaded. The Palestinian leaned on the rail and smoked a cigarette and watched the sun as it set behind the western hills of Odessa, the sky a vivid purple and red. As the lights of the city receded in the darkness, he smiled in the knowledge that the Zaina would never reach Marseilles.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Amsterdam, Netherlands

  “Now that you have me, what are you going to do with me?” she asked. They were sitting in a brown bar just off the Prinsengracht, not far from the Anne Frank House.

  “Why were you following me?” he said, poking at a fritte mayonnaise.

  “I told you, I’m following a story,” she said, putting down her witte beer and lighting a cigarette. It gave her a chance to study his face. It was a strong face, with dark tousled hair and shadows under gray eyes that gave nothing away. There was a scar over one of his eyes that she suspected wasn’t a sports injury. His hands looked strong enough that she knew if he wanted to, he could tear her apart, and it made something shiver inside her.

  “You’re doing it again,” he said.

  “Doing what?”

  “Lying when you don’t have to. Whatever you were following me for, it wasn’t for the TV news.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You’re Najla Kafoury, a one-name talking head on TV. You’re national in Deutschland. You don’t do local breaking-and-entering stories, and nobody stakes out a mosque at night on the off chance the alarm’ll go off. Why were you there and why did you follow me?”

  She exhaled cigarette smoke at him and didn’t say anything.

  “Last chance,” he said.

  “Or else what? What’ll you do if I don’t say? Tie me up? Spank me?”

  “I wish I could. Sounds like fun,” he said, sipping his pils beer.

  “What will you do?” she said, suddenly serious.

  “Introduce you to people less willing to let you lie than I am. Trust me, you won’t like it.”

  “I believe you,” she said. She exhaled a stream of smoke and looked around the bar. It was dark, crowded, and noisy, and a number of football fans were arguing loudly about the upcoming match between the leading Dutch rivals, Ajax and Feyenoord. “I could make a scene.”

  “Not a good idea.”

  She looked into his gray eyes, and whatever she saw made her go cold inside.

  “You’re right,” she said. “It wasn’t a story. Islamic extremism is my enemy. You know that. You were at the demonstration, weren’t you?”

  He nodded.

  “I thought I had seen you,” she said. “There was something going on at the mosque. For weeks I’d been getting hints, e-mails, tweets, Muslims not from Hamburg coming and going. Something was about to happen. I could feel it. I was thinking maybe a terroristischen attack. Then tonight the alarm went off and you came out and I decided to follow. I thought you were a terrorist. When you first grabbed me, I thought you were going to kill me. Maybe you still are,” she added softly.

  “Ja—and if Ajax loses Suarez as striker?! Then what?” a red-faced Dutchman at the bar wearing the Ajax team colors, red and white, demanded loudly.

  “That call I made before,” Scorpion said, referring to a cell phone call he had made earlier, while they were still driving to Amsterdam. “I’m waiting to hear.”

  “You’ll let me go?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll have to see.”

  “You could let me go right now. You could let me just stand up and walk out the door and no harm. You could do it,” she said, her hand resting on her handbag as if she were getting ready to leave.

  “Drink your beer. Don’t do anything stupid,” he said.

  “You’re scaring me. I thought you liked me.”

  “Flirting too. You’re putting on quite a show. Too bad we both know this isn’t personal,” he said. “What were you doing outside the Islamisches Masjid in the middle of the night—and please don’t tell me again you were waiting for a story to drop into your lap. We’re past the Girl Journalist Makes Good phase.”

  “I told you. They’re up to something. I thought you were one of them. I’m beginning to think you really are.”

  “Let’s go,” he said, standing.

  She looked up. “Where are we going?”

  “To get a room,” he said, grabbing her arm and pulling her close.

  “Is that what this is?” she asked, looking into his eyes.

  “I need to sleep. So do you. By morning we’ll know more,” he said, helping her into her Burberry.

  Holding her by the arm, they left the bar. He hailed a taxi and told the driver to take them to the Rosseburt; the Red Light District. The driver dropped them off on a walking street with thinning groups of men and a few lingering tourists viewing the rows of red-lit windows filled with women in sexy lingerie and stockings. The windows cast a neon-red glow into the street. It was late. The night was cool and smelled of beer and hashish. Street hustlers selling drugs approached them and Scorpion shook them off.

  “You already have me. How many women do you need?” Najla said as they walked by the windows where young women posed and beckoned male passersby.

  “For the moment, none. You’re a complication, not an asset,” he said, pulling her into a sex shop. They went to the S&M section, where he picked out handcuffs, restraints, a leather gag, and a roll of duct tape.
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br />   “You are getting stranger by the minute.” She looked around at the leather restraints, masks, and whips. “In case you’re wondering, I’m not into this,” she said.

  “Well, we don’t know what kind of a girl you really are, do we?” he said, paying for what he had picked out and then grabbing a taxi that took them to an inexpensive hotel near the Dam Square parking structure where he’d left the BMW. He checked them in using a Canadian passport that identified him as an engineer from Toronto named John Crane.

  “Is that what I call you? Herr Crane?” she said as they stepped into the small hotel room smelling faintly of disinfectant. “Or maybe John. Like I am the prostitute and you are the john, ja?”

  “Take off your clothes. Down to your underthings,” he ordered, tossing the sex paraphernalia on the bed.

  “Why?” She stood in the middle of the room, her raincoat open, looking trapped.

  “Because you don’t want your clothes wrinkled. You don’t have a change,” he said, taking off his jacket.

  “You see. We play our roles. You are the john and I … Who am I in this little schauspiel? I am not Frau Crane, am I?” she said, tossing her raincoat on the chair before unzipping and taking off her dress and shoes, till she was down to panties and bra. “Now I look like one of those girls in the windows. Is this what you wanted?” she asked, striking a provocative pose.

  In spite of himself, Scorpion felt his body respond. She was petite and lovely and she didn’t have to pose in order to look incredibly sexy. “Turn around,” he said, and pulling her hands behind her, put the handcuffs on.

  “Bitte, you don’t have to do this,” she told him, turning her head.

  “I can’t trust you,” he said. He put the leather gag in her mouth and secured it. “And I need the sleep.”

  He helped her into the bed and under the covers, then took off his clothes down to his undershorts, got in next to her and turned out the light. The room was dark, except for light coming in the window from a streetlight outside. He could feel the warmth of her next to him, and it was difficult not to think about sex. It was going to be hard to fall asleep. He was about to close his eyes when he felt her moving against him. At first he wasn’t sure what was happening, and then he understood and turned and looked at her. Her eyes above the gag were wide and luminous from the light reflected from the window. He removed the gag.