“Malissimo, I’m afraid.” Badly. “What have you found?”
“Much. Let me show you.” He led Scorpion to the small warehouse office, and once they were inside, turned off the light. It took a moment for Scorpion’s eyes to get accustomed to the darkness. Then he saw it. On the floor, two blood spatter patterns glowed a luminescent blue. “These were sprayed with Luminol,” Giorgio said, turning the light back on. When looked at in the light, the floors were spotless. “They try to clean it up, but of course microscopic particles are always missed.”
“What did they do with the bodies?”
“Come, I show you,” he said, and led Scorpion to a refrigeration locker at the back of the warehouse. He turned off the overhead light and lifted the lid in the darkness. Two smudges of blue glowed in the blackness at the bottom of the locker. He turned the light back on. “You can see, there were two bodies they stuffed in the armadio. When the poliziotti come, they find one body only.”
“Where’s the other one?”
“Chi sa?” Who knows? The lieutenant shrugged. “Now I show you something fantastico,” and he led him to a kitchen area near the office. The lieutenant opened a large duffel bag lying on the floor and pulled out a radiation protection suit and handed it to Scorpion, then took out another suit and started to put it on.
“Is this necessary?” Scorpion asked.
“I told you. Is fantastico.” The lieutenant gestured with his hand.
Scorpion took off his jacket and shoes and put the outfit on, zipping it closed so he was completely encased head to foot, with only a plexiglass visor to see through. When they were both suited up, the lieutenant checked their air supply connections, then took out two handheld radiation detectors. He left one on top of the duffel bag and picked up the other and they walked clumsily in the suits across the warehouse to a partitioned area with a door that had been locked by a padlock someone broke off. The lieutenant opened the door and they went inside and turned on the light. The area was filled with a large worktable and electric tools, rags, empty wooden crates, and flattened cartons strewn on the floor. He motioned Scorpion closer, turned on the radiation detector and ran it over a wooden box in the corner, then pointed at the LED screen that began rapidly registering numbers.
“You see. This is Cesio uno-tre-sette,” the lieutenant said. Cesium-137.
“How can you be sure?”
“The beta particle and gamma radiation levels and patterns are unmistakable. It’s all over this area,” he said, showing Scorpion on the LED as he walked around the room. “No one can use this warehouse anymore.”
“Is that it?” Scorpion asked.
“No. Here is what is fantastico. Look.” He passed the wand of the handheld detector over one side of the worktable. They watched the LED screen numbers. “You see, is alpha, not beta. The pattern is from sette, seven alpha emitters. Is not cesium. Can be only one thing.”
“Uranium?”
“Uranio due-tre-cinque.” Uranium-235. “The rates from Uranio-234 and 238 are different. Come. We must go out. Too long with cesium is not good,” the lieutenant said, leading Scorpion outside the partitioned area.
They walked back toward the front of the warehouse and took off their protective suits. The lieutenant and he went to the kitchen and washed their hands and face in the sink. The lieutenant ran the other detector over them. The LED registered only a fraction of what it had registered inside the partitioned area.
Scorpion looked around at the shadowed interior of the warehouse.
“What will they do with this place?” he asked.
“Non so.” I don’t know. “Maybe seal it up with concrete because of the cesium,” the lieutenant said as he put away his gear.
“I have to go, tenente. Per piacere, put your cell phone number in my phone and I’ll call you. I may need your help again,” Scorpion said, handing him the cell phone. He had to think. Moretti had confirmed there had been U-235 on the Zaina when it berthed in Genoa. Now the lieutenant had shown that the Palestinian brought it here to Turin. What Harris had said about the twenty-one kilos from Russia being disinformation was a lie. Whatever was running, the clock was ticking.
“Per piacere, call to me any hour. To do something besides technical is good for me.” The lieutenant smiled.
Scorpion had a late night snack of little tramezzini sandwiches and Chianti at a caffe on the Via Po. While he ate, he went over the report from the Carabinieri antiterrorism unit that Moretti had e-mailed to him. It listed all the male members between the ages of sixteen and forty-five belonging to the small garage mosque in Torino to which all three Moroccans killed at the Palazzo delle Finanze had belonged. The report noted that more than a dozen of them, in addition to the three who were killed, had stopped coming to Friday services at the mosque during the week prior to the Rome attack, and when questioned, some of their family had indicated that they didn’t know where they were. During the month before that final week, a number of them had told their families that they were doing something speciale for the mosque, but the imam told the polizia that, except for Friday services, they were rarely there.
Scorpion looked at the names and notations on some of the other males and one caught his eye. A Moroccan male named Issam Badoui, aged thirty-two, originally from Tangier. Apparently, he had been very religious and involved with the mosque until about a month ago. Suddenly, he stopped going and had not been back, not even for Friday services. He had been at work during the week before and during the Rome attack and was not considered a suspect. The guardia who interviewed him noted that when asked why he no longer went to services at the mosque, Badoui said that his wife “did not like him going to that masjid.”
Scorpion heard a whirring sound and looked out the caffe window. A tram was going by, its windows lit like a ship in the night. He glanced at his watch. It was after midnight. This man was devout, and all of a sudden it all changed? Because his wife was worried about something that was going on at the mosque? How the hell had the Carabinieri let that remark slip by? He decided to pay Badoui a visit.
Badoui’s apartment was in a run-down section of the Porta Palazzo district. The outer door to the apartment house was locked, but it only took Scorpion a second with a credit card to open it. He stepped into the entryway and using a little LED flashlight found Badoui’s handwritten name and apartment number on the wall next to one of the mailboxes. Scorpion went up the narrow stairs and stood outside the door to Badoui’s apartment, where he could hear a baby crying inside. He knocked on the door. There was no answer. He knocked again, harder, and when no one came, knocked again. Then he heard footsteps and the sound of the baby crying approaching the door.
“Chi e la? Che cosa volete?” Who’s there? What do you want, a woman asked, sounding frightened.
“E il Carabinieri. Apra il portello,” Scorpion said. It’s the Carabinieri. Open the door. He heard the woman whispering to someone and pounded on the door. The door opened suddenly and the woman stood there in a nightdress, winding a hijab on her head with one hand and holding the baby, still crying, with the other.
“Gia ho parlato con la polizia,” a thin, bearded man in pajama bottoms and an undershirt said, coming forward. Scorpion showed him his badge.
“I have just a few more questions. You are Issam Badoui?” Scorpion asked in Fusha Arabic.
“I have told the polizia everything I have to say,” the man answered in Arabic.
“No, you haven’t. Tell your wife to go into the next room.”
“I don’t know who you are, but I have nothing to say,” Badoui said.
“Tell her to take the baby and go into the next room,” Scorpion said, in a tone that in Arabic implied the whole issue of male-female relations and a man’s ability to be master in his own house.
“Go into the bedroom and close the door, and keep the baby quiet,” Badoui told the woman.
“You see what happens with that mosque. I told you this would happen,” she said fiercely.
“You told me nothing! Escoot! Shut up! Go inside and keep the baby quiet!” he snapped.
“I told you, but you would not listen,” she said, and went into the next room and closed the door behind her.
“The Carabinieri don’t come in the middle of the night. Who are you?” Badoui asked.
“You know this man?” Scorpion asked, showing Badoui the photograph of the Palestinian on his cell phone. Badoui pretended not to look at it and didn’t say anything. “I can see that you have seen him before.”
“I don’t know him. I told the guardia.”
“You lied to the guardia. Don’t be afraid of this man. He’s dead.”
“I’m not afraid. I don’t know him. Now get out. I have to go to work in the morning.”
