This time he didn’t have to say anything; it was Rabinowich who brought up the fact that Najla was also from Germany. Scorpion didn’t respond, and for a moment the only sound was that of the car speeding on the autobahn.
“I know,” he said finally. They briefly discussed operational details, then Scorpion hung up. He glanced down at the speedometer. He was doing over 150 kilometers per hour. With any luck he’d reach Frankfurt in time to catch the next flight and be back in Rome that night, where somewhere, in a city preparing for the EU Conference, the Palestinian was making his final preparations.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Stazione Termini, Rome, Italy
The protesters came up the Via Umbria from the direction of the Piazza della Republica. There were thousands of them, a roaring surge of street theatre sweeping past stores and cafes, crowding out traffic, waving signs and shouting demands. They were a motley collection: PCI leftists; anarchists from the Gruppo Libertario carrying signs that read, “No States, No Capital, Direct Action”; young men and women from the Green Party, their faces painted green and carrying a float that showed the Earth in a cooking pot with a sign in English declaring, “Global Warming Is Killing Earth.” Skinheads threw cans of beer at shop windows, and neo-Nazis marched with posters that read, “Europe Is Not for Sale-Stop Immigration.” Anti-Israel groups chanted
and carried signs, many adorned with swastikas: ISRAEL = TERRORIST STATE, ISRAEL NAZI APARTHEID, and PALESTINE WILL BE FREE FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA.
Even though the U.S. wasn’t involved in the conference, someone had hung a store mannequin dressed like Uncle Sam from a traffic light, where it burned in effigy. Nearby, a cardboard caricature of an Israeli soldier with a long Jewish nose hung by a noose around its neck from a lamppost. Most of the signs were in English. As with most street demonstrations, the targets of the demonstrators were not the conference attendees, but the international media, some of whom were climbing on top of their SUVs to film the crowd as it surged toward the police barriers. A massive phalanx of Polizia di Stato in full riot gear, faceless in dark blue helmets with plastic visors, had lined up to block the street. Behind them were the Carabinieri wearing body armor and carrying automatic weapons. The Carabinieri had blocked off the streets approaching the Palazzo delle Finanze from any direction.
Liz and the Palestinian, going by his Algerian cover name Mejdan, had fallen in with a bunch of Oxfam demonstrators she had met at a cheap dormlike hotel near the Stazione Termini before he came back to Rome from California. The Oxfam demonstrators carried signs about hunger in Africa and Gaza, featuring photos of big-eyed, big-bellied children. Some of the Oxfamers were dressed like wraiths, black cloth draped over their heads. They wore faceless white masks with narrow holes for eyes, and carried signs that read: “Global Warming, Global Death.”
The demonstrators surged toward the police lines, and one of them, a tall redheaded Italian anarchist screaming, “Morte al governo!” picked up a section of the metal barricade and hurled it at the polizia, a number of whom moved forward and smashed at him with their batons. At this, the horde of demonstrators exploded with a roar of screams and shouts, throwing rocks and cans at the police, who began pushing the demonstrators back, beating them with batons and shields. Several demonstrators went down. The police rushed them away to waiting vans. Everyone in the crowd was screaming and looking for things to throw. A long-haired Italian, his shirt torn, screamed up at a TV camera, “Stanno uccidendo i vostri bambini!” They are killing your children!
A group of Oxfam demonstrators were pressed forward against the barricades by skinheads behind them, and Liz’s friend, Alicia, a pretty dark-haired college girl from Wales, screamed, “Don’t touch me, you bastard!” as a helmeted guardia shoved her back with his shield.
“You are beating a woman!” Liz screamed at the guardia, who just looked at her with his blank face visor. The Palestinian hung back, letting the Oxfam wraiths and the skinheads surge past him toward Alicia and Liz and the polizia. He’d forbidden the Moroccans back at the warehouse from joining the demonstrations. They could not afford for any of them to be arrested. The main thing he had to ensure was that there were demonstrations like this when the conference started in three days.
One of the skinheads managed to grab a baton away from a guardia and began swinging it wildly, opening a gap in the line of police. A dozen or so protesters poured through it, shouting and shoving as a rain of rocks, shoes, and cans sailed into the ranks of the police. In response, a squad of Carabinieri moved rapidly through the police ranks. As they quickly rounded up the demonstrators who had broken through and hustled them away, enabling the police to close the gap in their line, the Palestinian pulled Liz and Alicia back and forced his way through the crowd, now retreating from the advancing police line. Alicia’s Italian boyfriend, a member of the Continual Struggle student movement, dressed in a black T-shirt with the insult CHE CAZZO, You Dick, in white gothic lettering, joined them as they ducked around the corner and caught their breath.
Later, they refought the skirmish over beer and pizza at a pizzeria near the train station. Liz was still furious over how the police had beaten Alicia.
“It’s unconscionable. She’s a defenseless young woman. No threat to anyone, the bloody fascists. How dare they?”
“He didn’t really do any damage. I managed to get out of the way,” Alicia said.
“No thanks to him. The bastard wanted to hurt you. If they beat women, what’s next, babies?”
“There’s a way to turn it to our advantage, but it takes courage,” the Palestinian said.
Cristiano, Alicia’s boyfriend, said, “What are you saying?” and the others leaned closer to the Palestinian.
“A picture is worth a million words,” he told them. “We need a face. A beautiful young woman’s face would be perfect. That is, if you really mean what you say about the starving children in Africa and Gaza?”
Alicia looked at him sharply. “Those children break my heart.”
“What are you suggesting?” Liz asked.
“We bloody you up,” he said to Alicia, “and get you in front of a TV camera. You tell them it was the polizia.”
“We’d be lying,” she replied.
“Only about the details. They did rough you up, didn’t they? You’d become the face of the protest. It could go viral on the Internet in an hour. You could single-handedly stop the Israelis and the EU.”
“What about me?” Liz said, her eyes darting back and forth between him and Alicia. “You could bloody me.”
“We need you for other things,” he said, patting her arm, which she pulled away.
“Where will we get the blood?” Cristiano asked.
“From all of us.”
“Won’t they test it for DNA?” Liz said, looking troubled.
“That’ll take days. By then the conference will be over. It’ll be old news.” The Palestinian shrugged. “No one will care.”
They went back to the hotel after stopping off in a children’s toy store in the Piazza Navona, to buy balloons they would use to hold the blood. The two young women ran around and played like children among the stuffed animals. They stopped and took “Before” photographs of Alicia outside the toy store, to post on the Web and to TV stations. Afterward, they went up to Alicia and Cristiano’s dormlike hotel room. They talked about how they would do the blood the next day, then Liz and Cristiano left, leaving Alicia sitting on the bed, the Palestinian pulling on a pair of latex gloves.
“You’re very brave,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder, then slapped her, and before she could even gasp, punched her in the ribs and backhanded her across the other cheek. He smacked her around a few more times, blackening her eyes, then punched her hard in the face, breaking her nose.
“I’m sorry. So sorry,” he said, putting his arms around her.
“The children,” she managed to say, looking up at him, tears in her eyes. He leaned forward, and as he did so, his hand cupped her breast. She looked at him questioningly as he pushed her down on the bed, his lips about to brush hers, when the door burst open and Liz rushed in.
“You bastard!” she screamed. “You just wanted to fuck her! I hate you!”
