Scorpion Deception (3 page)

They just reached it when shots rang out behind them. Hadi boosted Scale, who perched atop the fence. Thirty meters away he could see the black BMW SUV waiting for them on Bruckenstrasse. Hadi was hit as he started to boost Maziar. He sagged down, clinging to the fence bars, as Maziar scrambled up, over the top, and down the other side like a monkey. Still at the top of the fence, Scale fired a long burst back at the polizei. Hadi looked desperately up at him, his eyes wide behind the ski mask.

“Give me your flash drives,” Scale said, reaching down, bullets ripping through the leaves of a nearby tree. Hadi managed to hand them up, then sank down again, collapsing on the grass. Scale could see a blood spot the size of his palm on Hadi's back. He kicked over and dropped to the other side. The polizei were charging, firing as they came. A bullet pinged on one of the iron bars next to him.

He looked back and fired a quick burst from the M4 at Hadi to make sure he was dead, then ran for the SUV. Danush was driving, and took off as soon as they were inside. They pulled off their ski masks, out of breath, their faces flushed. Scale took off his false nose and mustache. He would get rid of them later.

“Where are the others?” Danush asked.

Maziar shook his head. Scale checked the time. Nine minutes and forty-six seconds had elapsed. Danush drove across the bridge to the Kirchenfeld side of the river, his face grim.

“Give me your flash drives,” Scale ordered. Maziar handed them to him. “Stay with the plan,” he told them. “If you're stopped, you know what to do.” The SUV had been rigged with C4. If stopped by the polizei, they would detonate. There would be no live witnesses for the FIS or the CIA to interrogate, and as little as possible left as evidence.

They drove around, slowing to let the white Kantonspolizei patrol cars, their sirens blasting, race by. As soon as Scale got out in the Old City, Danush sped off. They would take the A1 autoroute, and if they made it, all of them would reconnect in Zurich.

He walked the cobblestoned Spitalgasse, stone-gray buildings around him and tram wires overhead. He took the tram near the Zytglogge—the city's landmark medieval clock tower, with its high pointed spire—to Gurtenbahn, where he caught the red funicular up the steep side of the Gurten, Bern's local mountain. He watched the scenery as they ascended, thick with trees, some still covered with snow.

It was cold at the top. Scale pulled up the zipper of his jacket and walked to the lookout. There were about twenty people, tourists and a few local families, enjoying the view. From there he could see across the city to the snow-covered Alps in the distance, though he couldn't see the American embassy. He took out the cell phone, the last time he would use this one, and called a number in Zurich. He was not surprised that no one answered, and waited for the beep for voice mail. It was a cutout. He had no idea who would pick up the message or how they would pass it along.

“Gol ghermez,”
he said in Farsi, and clicked off. Red rose; the signal for success.

He removed the SIM card from the phone, put on gloves, wiped both the phone and the SIM with a sterile wipe to remove any trace of fingerprints or DNA, then tossed the phone into a trash can. When he got down into the city, he would get rid of the SIM.

Scale took a deep breath then, enjoying the view. A little blond boy, perhaps two or three years old, looked up at him. After a moment the boy smiled. He smiled back, and the boy shyly pressed his face against his mother's leg. He'd done it, he thought. The flash drives would be sent via DHL to a post office box in Madrid. There would be two days of watching TV in the apartment on Gutenbergstrasse till things eased up, then a train and the next mission.

The Gardener would be pleased.

CHAPTER THREE

Nairobi,

Kenya

“W
hy here? Place stinks of curry,” Soames said. He was a big man with a linebacker's shoulders and short fair hair that didn't disguise a bald spot. Harris's pit bull, Rabinowich called him. Scorpion didn't think much of Blake Soames, All-American Boy, and he trusted his boss, Bob Harris, deputy director of the CIA's National Clandestine Service, even less. “And flies,” brushing one away. “I hate Indian food. We could've met at the Norfolk.”

They were sitting in the back of a small shop in the Diamond Plaza mall in the Parklands district. Before connecting, Scorpion had watched from across the street to make sure Soames hadn't been followed. The shop sold pirated DVDs and video games, and Scorpion had bribed the owner to disappear for a half hour. A waiter from one of the chicken tikka restaurants—“Please welcome good sir, better than chowpatty,” grabbing at Scorpion when he first entered the open-air food court—had brought them cold bottles of Tusker beer. He kept trying to get them to order till Scorpion shoved a hundred shilling
tipu
in his hand and he left.

“Why not post it on Facebook while you're at it?” Scorpion said. There was no way of going to the Norfolk, a luxury colonial hotel that went back to “Out of Africa” days, without attracting attention from every intelligence service and watcher in East Africa, from the Chinese Guoanbu to al Qaeda.

Soames leaned forward, beefy forearms on his knees, motioning Scorpion closer. That was his style. Fellow jocks in a football huddle. Scorpion almost smiled, remembering Rabinowich's poem about Soames that had gone viral inside the CIA.

My name is Soames,

I've no use for combs,

Or clever little poems;

I am Bob Harris's bitchy-poo,

Tell me fellow spook, whose bitch are you?

“You heard about Switzerland?” Soames began.

Scorpion sat up straight. It was a mission pitch. Except every time he had gone on an operation for Harris, he'd lived to regret it.

“Tell Harris to go fuck himself.”

Soames just smirked. Scorpion stared at him.

“What's so funny?”

“He said you'd say that,” grinning widely. “He also said don't take no for an answer.”

“I'll save you the trouble,” Scorpion said, getting up to leave. “I won't even let you ask the question.”

“Rabinowich said to tell you there's something you need to hear.”

Dave Rabinowich was acknowledged even by his enemies to be the most brilliant intelligence analyst within the CIA. A graduate of MIT when he was only eighteen, Rabinowich was on a track to win a Fields when he decided to join the CIA because, he explained, “real world mathematics is more interesting because everyone is always lying.” He was also one of only two people in the American intelligence community whose judgment Scorpion trusted.

Scorpion sat back down, his arms folded over his chest.

“I hope Rabinowich also told you that you better not be bullshitting me,” he said.

Soames took a swig of the Tusker and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“This isn't half bad,” he said about the beer. “About Bern. You saw the TV?”

Scorpion nodded. It was on the drive to Nairobi, taking Sandrine to the airport.

S
andrine had been packing when he got back from Somalia with the children. She had to go to Paris. Something about funding for the nonprofit she worked for.

“I'm their show pony,” she said. “They tart me up
à la dernière mode
for these big charity affairs, and if I don't do it, we can't keep these children alive.”

She helped triage the children he'd brought in. Despite the way he'd mucked it up and the bullets hitting the truck, all sixteen were still alive. Before he left them in the hospital tent, the boy, Ghedi, took his hand and wouldn't let go.

“Safa an'a weedu?”
he asked. Will you come back? Sandrine watched them, her lion's eyes unreadable.

“I will,
inshallah
,” Scorpion said.

“Everyone says this, but they don't come,” the boy said.

Scorpion knelt so he could look straight into Ghedi's dark brown eyes. He already knew with Sandrine it was a
coup de foudre
. A lightning bolt. And now the Somali boy's fingers clutching at his hand. He had never felt like this before. What was happening to him?

“I'll come back. I promise.
Eeven ana o'whyish
,” he added. If I'm still alive. Ghedi looked at him with his big dark eyes and nodded. A promise.

Scorpion and Sandrine both had to leave for the airport. For him, there was no choice. He had to get away before the press got to Dowler. Already some of the aid workers were looking at him and talking among themselves. Just to make sure, under the excuse of treating Dowler for his burn wounds, Sandrine gave the Englishman a sedative that would knock him out for twenty-four hours.

Sandrine gave Scorpion a long look when she saw how shot up the Toyota pickup was. It was riddled with bullet holes. Before they left for Nairobi, Cowell volunteered to come along to bring the truck back to Dadaab.

“He just wants an excuse to go to Nairobi. Get at the whores on Koinange Street,” Sandrine whispered to Scorpion, inclining her head at Cowell as they bounced on the rough dirt track to Garissa that passed for a road. Scorpion kept the FAD assault rifle ready. The area between Dadaab and Garissa was rife with pirates and Al-Shabaab. Cowell's and Sandrine's eyes widened when they saw the FAD.

“Is that for real?” Cowell asked.

“How do you think I got out of Somalia?” Scorpion replied.

For a long while, driving through an empty landscape, except for the occasional baobab tree in the distance, no one spoke. Crossing the bridge over the muddy Tana River, they passed a troop of baboons pawing through garbage from a
manyatta
slum on the outskirts of Garissa. Africa, Scorpion thought.

Garissa was a border town on the human trafficking route between Somalia and Nairobi. Somalis and Luo tradesmen shared the streets with refugees, aid workers, bandits, thugs, herds of camels, and Kenyan soldiers in fatigues and red berets with HK assault rifles.

They stopped for lunch at the Nomad Hotel, the local watering hole, where Scorpion saw the news about the Bern attack on the TV behind the bar. Nearly everyone at the embassy had been killed. Forty-eight dead. Three survived. A man and a young woman staffer who hid in a closet, and one of the Marines, in critical condition, were still alive.

Al Qaeda claimed responsibility, but the TV announcer said that Swiss and American authorities were skeptical. A short video from an embassy security camera beamed worldwide showed ski-masked gunmen moving through the corridors, methodically tossing grenades and firing into offices.

“Well, that'll bloody gee things up,” Cowell said when they were back on a real road, the paved A3 to Nairobi.

But neither Scorpion nor Sandrine responded. We'll probably never see each other again, Scorpion thought, and wondered if she was thinking the same thing. They drove the long miles of low scrub and sand till the gridlock of Nairobi, under its endless haze of smog.

At Jomo Kenyatta Airport, they only had a few seconds together at the curb, Cowell watching them from the truck. Her eyes searched his face.

“I keep thinking you're running from the police, but that's not it, is it?” she asked. “And you're not going to tell me, are you?”

He didn't say anything. The less she knew, the safer she'd be, he thought.

“
Au revoir
, David,” she said, and turned away.

“My name's not David. It's Nick,” he blurted out, not knowing why he told her. He hadn't used his real name in so long, it didn't feel like it belonged to him. She whirled around.

“You bastard! Who the hell asked you to be honest?” Annoyed, frustrated, unbelievably beautiful.

“You can't tell anyone. It's dangerous,” he said while slipping a strip of paper into her handbag without her noticing. On it he had written a Gmail address known to only two people in the world: Rabinowich and his closest friend in the CIA, Shaefer.

“
Alors quoi?
Is this supposed to make me interested, this mystery? Thank God I'm leaving.” Shaking her head, her hair rippling like wheat.

“I didn't want to lie anymore,” he said.

She looked at him with her lion's eyes.

“Then you're a fool.” And as she turned to go:
“C'est impossible. Adieu.”

“Bon voyage,”
he muttered. She said
adieu
, he thought, watching her walk away into the terminal like a kick in the gut. Not
au revoir
. It really is goodbye.

After they left the airport, Cowell dropped him off downtown. Scorpion watched him drive away in the pickup, then caught a vividly-colored
matatu
minibus to an Internet café on Mama Ngina Street across from the Hilton. It only took a few minutes online for him to spot the “Flagstaff” e-mail from one of Rabinowich's cover Hotmail accounts.
Flagstaff
was the CIA's current emergency code. It meant Flash Critical, the highest level of operational urgency. It was only used when all hell had broken loose.

“S
o the Company's messed their diapers. What's that got to do with me?” Scorpion said to Soames, his eyes restlessly checking Diamond Plaza through the store window.

“If you mean are they shitting bricks in Washington, that's the understatement of the century,” Soames said. “Congress is ready to bomb the hell out of somebody. They're just waiting for us to tell them who.”

“And?”

Soames shifted uncomfortably. He leaned closer.

“This is coming from the top. The Director of Central Intelligence himself wants you in on this. So does the National Security Advisor. They asked for you personally. It's a mess.”

Neither man spoke. From a radio somewhere came the sound of Kenyan hip hop; some song about “nothing to lose” heard over the street sounds and the calls of the Indian waiters to potential customers. Soames was wearing his sincere look like a merit badge.

“Look,” Scorpion said. “I don't know what Harris is cooking up, but what I said before goes. I'm not interested.” Soames put down his beer. He looked at Scorpion with pale unblinking eyes.

“You really think we're all bureaucratic assholes, don't you?” he said. “That we don't have a goddamn clue.”

“The sad thing is, some of you do have a clue. But there's too much politics. Anyway, let's cut the foreplay, shall we?” Scorpion said. “You made your pitch and I'm not buying. What is it Rabinowich thinks I have to know?”

“They got everything,” Soames growled.

“Who?”

“Those sons-a-bitches who attacked the embassy,” pushing the Tusker bottle away. “They got everything from the computers, from the ambassador and station chief on down. Everything! Everyone's going nuts. State, DOD, NSA, the White House, us. Everyone!”

Scorpion heard horns honking out on Masari Road and the klaxon of a police car. Another Nairobi smash-up, he thought. Shouting, bribes, and local Mungiki youths sneaking off with whatever in either car wasn't locked down. It felt like a bad omen.

He studied Soames's posture. The man had a tell, rubbing his little finger. He was holding something back.

“You don't have a clue who did it, do you?” he said.

Soames nodded. “AQAP,” he said, meaning Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, “claims they did it, but no one believes them. They wore ski masks, spoke little. Security monitors only picked up a few words. English, with indeterminate accents. They hardly spoke. Not enough voice data to nail it down. We're dead in the water.”

“What does Rabinowich think?”

“Uh-uh, amigo.” Soames smirked. “You got to pay to play.” He sat there, a big man dwarfing the small plastic chair he was sitting in like an American Buddha.

Scorpion picked up his bottle of Tusker by the neck. Something in the way he held it seemed to remind Soames that it could be used as a weapon.

“I meant it. I'm not interested,” Scorpion said. “You jerks sent me a Flagstaff, so unless that doesn't mean anything anymore, just say what you came to say and we'll both get the hell out of here.”

Soames shifted uncomfortably. “They got a list of all Company ops in Europe and the Middle East. Operations officers, Core collectors, joes, codes, the works,” he said.

“Are you kidding?” Scorpion shook his head. “Somebody had all that on a computer in an embassy in Switzerland, where the only real business is visas and tax fraud, and you wonder why I think you clowns can't be trusted?”

“You still don't get it, asshole,” Soames said, a nasty smile playing on his lips. “That's not why I'm here. We're doing you a favor, courtesy of Bob Harris and Dave Rabinowich. They think you deserve it because of past service and because maybe, just maybe, you'll be of use again. But just between us girls, there's some of us who would be happy to leave a prima donna like you hanging out in the cold.”

“Meaning?”

“They got your name too, Scorpion. You're on the list.”

Christ, he thought, looking out the window at people at outside tables, talking and eating, everything smelling of Tandoori and curry, as though the world was a rational place.

“How bad?” he asked finally.

“Remember the Kilbane cover?” On the Ukraine operation, the Company had supplied Scorpion with cover ID as a journalist named Michael Kilbane working for Reuters out of London. He had jettisoned the cover during the mission, but now, because of an entry on a computer in Bern, it was coming back to haunt him.

“They got my picture? They know what I look like?” He felt a shiver go up his spine. When he was a child, the Bedouin said it meant someone was weeping over your grave.