Scorpion Betrayal (51 page)

Vigenère Square Code.
The Vigenère Square was invented by Blaise de Vigenère, a sixteenth century French diplomat. Although old fashioned, Scorpion uses it as an expedient because it's a quick way to create a code that's difficult to break and that can be composed anywhere with just a pen and paper. The Vigenère Square was designed to foil the ability of code-breakers to break a code based on frequency analysis, which up to that time had been the Achilles' heel of secret codes. Medieval cryptanalysts were often able to break codes that substituted numbers, symbols, or letters of the alphabet for other letters based on the frequency that letters appear in a given language. For example, in English, the letter e is the most common letter, then t, and so on. Also, certain letters may appear as doubles or in combinations, such as qu, ee, ou, th, whereas certain other letters, such as ii, virtually never appear as doubles. The most famous example of breaking codes with frequency analysis was in the case of Mary, Queen of Scots, whose doom was sealed when her secret letters, written in code, were deciphered in this way.

The Vigenère Square limits the ability to decipher code in this way because a different row of the square is used to encrypt each letter, so that the letter a, for instance, can be encoded in one place in the message as D, in another place as a
Q,
and so on. The square consists of a plain text alphabet at the top and letters shifted one place over in each row, as shown here (there are numerous representations of the Vigenère Square from various sources on the Web; the following example was created by the author, Andrew Kaplan).

The way the square works to create a code is through the use of a keyword known only to the sender and the receiver of the code. In the example in this book, the keyword used was YANKES, for the New York Yankees baseball team without duplicate letters. To encrypt the phrase, “confirm agent,” the person creating the code would spell the keyword over the message, repeated as needed. For example:

Keyword:
YANKESYANKES

Plain Text:
CONFIRMAGENT

To code the message, go to the row corresponding to the keyword letter. For example, for the plain text letter c, the keyword letter above it is Y. The person creating the code would go to row 24, the row that starts with Y. At the top of the table find the plain text letter you want to encrypt, in this case c, and the letter in row 24 that corresponds to c is
A.
For the second plain text letter of the message, o, you would use the keyword letter A, which starts in row 26, where the plain text letter o happens to correspond to O. For the third letter of the message, n, go to row 13, which starts with keyword letter N, where the plain text letter n corresponds to A, and so on. The plain text message “confirm agent” would be sent as: AOAPMJKATOL. The code is resistant to frequency analysis, and without the keyword there are billions of possible combinations, enough to slow any code breaker down.

The Black House, NSA headquarters.
The National Security Agency/Central Security Service (NSA/CSS) is headquartered in the “Black House,” aka the Black Building, aka the Building, so-called because of the color of the rectangular building's window glass. The building is located on the grounds of the Fort Meade army base in Maryland. There are also facilities in Texas, Georgia, Utah, and elsewhere. The NSA is the U.S. intelligence agency primarily responsible for COMINT (see above), cryptanalysis, computer intelligence, and security. The NSA's partner agency, the Central Security Service (CSS) is responsible for coordinating cryptanalysis and related activities between the NSA and the Department of Defense agencies also engaged in such work. For many years the U.S. government refused to acknowledge NSA's existence, leading Washington insiders to quip that the letters NSA stood for “No Such Agency.”

SAIC.
Special Agent in Charge; the FBI designation for the agent in charge of a local FBI office. FBI Supervisory Special Agents typically head FBI HRTs (Hostage Rescue Teams).

The Point.
Also known as Harvey Point, aka Harvey Point Defense Testing Activity Facility; this is a CIA training facility near Hertford, North Carolina. As previously noted, only part of CIA training is conducted at the Farm (see above). The CIA's Directorate of Operations uses the Point for training in specialized covert operations and paramilitary skills (the so-called Black Arts), such as breaking into buildings, “snatch and grab” (recovery of friendly or hostile persons), CQB (Close Quarter Battle—fighting with weapons in close quarters), EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) and AET (Applied Explosive Techniques), etc. Other organizations, such as the DIA, the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives), the FBI, the U.S. Navy SEALs, and the U.S. Army's Delta Force sometimes do specialized covert training at the Point.

Sabra and Shatila massacre.
The massacre of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in West Beirut in September 1982 was carried out by the Lebanese Forces Christian Phalangist militia following the assassination of the Christian Phalangist leader and president-elect of Lebanon, Bashir Gemayel. The number of persons killed, as with much about this event, has been disputed, with estimates ranging from 328 to 3,500 dead. Although the actual killing was carried out by Lebanese Christians, many in the international community placed much of the blame for the massacre on Israel. It was claimed that the Israeli leadership and the Israeli Defense Force, whose soldiers surrounded the camps after the expulsion of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from Lebanon, should have foreseen what the Phalangists would do when the Israelis allowed them into the camps after Gemayel's assassination, and that once the massacre started, the Israelis were slow to act to stop the killing. Within Israel, massive street demonstrations demanding an inquiry led to the creation of the Kahan Commission, whose report concluded that while no Israelis participated in the massacre, Israel bore an indirect responsibility for not acting sooner to end the massacre. The report placed “personal responsibility” on Ariel Sharon, who was forced to resign as Minister of Defense.

In August 1983, Israeli Prime Minister Menahem Begin retired from political life. The story of the brother and sister and the account of the massacre from a child's point of view was part of the author's conception of this novel from the very beginning.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

N
o work exists in a vacuum. This book would not have seen the light of day were it not for the exceptional efforts of my agent, Dominick Abel, the best I've ever known, and my editor, David Highfill, who went the extra mile. Thank you both for your belief in this book and in me. I must also acknowledge my wife, Anne, and son, Justin, without whose help, support, and honest criticism the outcome would not have been nearly as positive. Thank you all.

ANDREW KAPLAN
is a former journalist and war correspondent who has covered events around the world. He served in both the U.S. Army and in the Israeli Army during the Six Day War and later provided military intelligence analysis for the Israel Defense Force. He has consulted with groups that advise a number of government agencies, and as president of a technical communications company, performed contract work for major U.S. corporations and government agencies. He is the author of four internationally bestselling novels:
Hour of the Assassins, Scorpion, Dragonfire,
and
War of the Raven.
He was also in the running to complete Robert Ludlum's Bourne franchise and was one of the writers of the James Bond film
GoldenEye.
He lives with his family in Southern California and is currently working on
Scorpion Winter
, the next Scorpion novel.

www.andrewkaplan.com

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“Do this: Read the first two pages of
Scorpion Betrayal
right now. See what I mean? It just gets better from there. Kaplan has written one of the smartest, swiftest and most compelling spy novels I've read in years.”

Harlan Coben, author of
Live Wire

“Wow!
Scorpion Betrayal,
with two brilliantly unique protagonists, delivers more heart-thumping twists and turns, beliefs and betrayals, than
The Day of the Jackal
and
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
rolled into one.
Scorpion Betrayal
breaks the mold. As a penetrating and fascinating look into the dark underbelly of those tightly-interwoven worlds—global terrorism and international espionage—it is almost a textbook example of how to write a great thriller that today's readers will love.”

Katherine Neville, author of
The Eight
and
The Fire

“Andrew Kaplan is back with a vengeance in this lightning-swift tale of espionage that opens with a shocking assassination in a Cairo café and then races through the capitals of Europe as Scorpion—a legendary ex-CIA now freelance spy—runs his quarry to ground before it's too late. The authenticity is palpable. I love this novel. Andrew Kaplan represents a gold standard in thriller writing.”

David Morrell, author of
The Brotherhood of the Rose

“Andrew Kaplan has a masterful grasp of the inner workings of intelligence agencies and their fight against terror that he weaves through this suspenseful tale of espionage.”

Reza Kahlili, author of
A Time to Betray: The Astonishing Double Life of a CIA Agent Inside the Revolutionary Guards of Iran

“The ending is both logical and refreshingly unexpected. It's a great read, filled with fabulous facts and frequent flashes that are surprising, but completely believable. I hate to use the cliché, but it's true: I couldn't put it down!”