Scorpion Deception (8 page)

“It was a cutout.”

“Of course! Nice one,” Rabinowich said, slapping the desk, his head rising up, grinning from ear to ear.

“You two girlfriends want to let the rest of us in on it?” Harris said, suddenly interested.

“Put it together,” Scorpion said. “
Gol ghermez
, red rose in Farsi, means the cutout is an Iranian in Zurich. What'll you bet the cutout's a trader doing business for the Revolutionary Guards or one of the factions? Right out in the open, because Switzerland'll do business with Satan himself as long as it ends up in Swiss francs on the Bahnhofstrasse. Can't be that many Iranian trading companies paying the kind of astronomical prices they charge in Zurich's high-rent district.”

For the first time, Harris smiled. He rubbed his hands together.

“All right, boys and girls, we are live. You make the approach,” he said, pointing at Scorpion. “And let's not alternate this operation with the Ring Cycle. We don't have a lot of time.”

“He might have to go to Iran,” Shaefer put in. “They're prepping for war over there. The minute somebody climbs over the fence, they'll pop him.”

“He's a big boy. He'll just have to watch himself, won't he?” Harris said, looking at Scorpion.

Scorpion got up. He walked over to the plate glass and looked out at the view. Switzerland was like a picture postcard, he thought. So different from Africa, from Sandrine, from everything he cared about. He turned around.

“How much time do we have?”

“None,” Harris said. “Things are moving fast. Right now this is our op, but in a little while people with bigger dicks take control.”

“For once, he's telling the truth,” Shaefer said. “We're talking days, hours.”

“I need at least a couple of weeks. Maybe more,” Scorpion said. “This isn't some
24
type bullshit where you smack a joe in the mouth and he tells you everything he knows. If it is Iran, penetrating them when they're already paranoid as hell is going to take resources and time.”

Harris got up.

“I'll talk to the Director, try to buy you ten days. He'll have to get the President to approve it. After that . . .” He shrugged.

“Three weeks,” Scorpion said.

“Ten days. But you better come up with something fast.” Harris looked at Shaefer, Scorpion, and Rabinowich on the screen. “As of right now, you three are a special task force. Special Access Program Critical. No one outside us knows anything. Shaefer,” he said, nodding at the lanky African-American, “will coordinate. He will speak with not just my authority, but the DCIA's. The Director's already on board, by the way. Use any assets you deem necessary. The entire U.S. military if we have to. Dave,” Harris said, turning to the laptop screen. “This is your full-time assignment. And talk to no one inside Langley but me, understood? Anyone gives you shit, send them to me.”

Harris looked at all of them.

“We're back in business, guys. Just like old times,” he said, winking.

“Better not be,” Scorpion said, remembering Rome and St. Petersburg and Kiev.

“You've got the easy job.” Harris grinned, the smile that had gotten half the female interns in Washington to drop their pants. “I've got to convince the President to slow-dance with the Washington press corps for ten days in the middle of a crisis.”

Harris's L-3 phone chimed. It was a Secure Mobile Environment Portable Electronic Device, a combination cell phone and PDA for Top Secret calls, texts, e-mails and surfing via JWICS. He took the call, holding up his hand to indicate that they should wait.

“Shit!” he said tersely into the phone, then: “Tell 'em do nothing till I get back to Washington tonight,” and ended the call. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” he snarled, and looked at them. “Senator Russell got hold of the DNA data indicating it's the Iranians. He's leaked it. It'll be all over tomorrow's
New York Times.
”

“That's torn it,” Shaefer said disgustedly, getting up. He was supposed to be headed for Bern to dig up what he could from the Swiss federal and cantonal police. “They'll be wanting to declare war before the week is out.”

“That's not the only problem,” Harris said. “The real problem is not just who wants to pick a fight with the most powerful country in the world. Has it occurred to anyone to ask why? And who in Iran—if it is Iran? And if we don't figure it out, we could be playing right into their hands. There's something going on here that, unless we get it right, is going to come back and bite us in the ass.”

“Unbelievable,” Rabinowich said.

“What is?” Shaefer asked.

“First time I ever agreed with Bob,” Rabinowich said.

Scorpion looked at Harris with his cold, gray eyes.

“Ten days,” he said.

“Did you not hear what I said? That asshole Russell just changed the equation. It'll be a miracle if I can get us five,” Harris said, heading for the door, then stopping. A nerve in his jaw throbbed. “And Scorpion, they murdered our people in cold blood. No prisoners.”

“I wasn't planning on it,” Scorpion said.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Altstadt,

Zurich, Switzerland

T
he two men sat in a corner restaurant near the Schwamendinger-Platz. It was a small place where locals stopped by for a quick lunch or for dinner and a beer after work. Scorpion sat with his back to the wall, facing the street door. Opposite him, Mathias Schwegler, the CIA's man in Zurich, had opened his Armani suit jacket and taken off his Prada tie—as being out of place in the working-class restaurant—and was tearing into an
eintopf
, a veal and vegetable hot pot.

“He's a good guy. You'll like him,” Shaefer had said of Schwegler.

“I don't have to like him,” Scorpion had replied.

Schwegler was a good-looking man, the kind you'd spot in the first-class lounge of an airline terminal, a sleek blonde beside him. They had chosen this place because it was across the street from the office building on Winterthurerstrasse, where the “Gnomes”—Harris's joke name for the people he had left behind to help out, including Chrissie, she of the perfect teeth and the Beretta, plus two of Schwegler's men—were setting up for the sting. Through the window Scorpion saw that the rain had stopped, the tram wires like black lines drawn on the gray sky.

He leaned forward, holding a green bottle of Feldschlösschen beer close to his mouth, and whispered, “Who put Rabinowich onto Homer? You?” he asked. Named after the Homer Simpson cartoon character, Homer was the code name they'd assigned to Hooshang Norouzi, an Iranian businessman with offices in the Seefeld neighborhood in Zurich's District 8.

“The other way around,” Schwegler said, glancing around to make sure they weren't overheard, even though they were speaking English. “About eight months ago, Dave spotted a COMINT from No Such,” using the Company slang term for the National Security Agency, known on Capitol Hill as “No Such Agency,” because its existence had been denied for years. “A contact code he tied to K.H.”

“Good catch,” Scorpion murmured. K.H. was Kta'eb Hezbollah, the ultrasecret paramilitary faction within the Iranian Revolutionary Guards he had asked Harandi about that night on the ferry.

“We already had our eyes on this guy because his company, Jamaran Trading International, SA, was negotiating deals for missile components with Rosoboronexport,” Schwegler said. “We immediately started full-time COMINT monitoring.”

“Surveillance?” Scorpion said, asking if they put a twenty-four-hour watch on Norouzi, his mind going a mile a minute. No wonder Rabinowich had targeted Norouzi as their best bet for the cutout. Rosoboronexport was the big Russian missile company. They made some of the most advanced missiles in the world, including the kind of antiaircraft and antimissile systems Iran was desperate to get its hands on. If Norouzi was negotiating with Rosoboronexport, he had to be tied to the Revolutionary Guards.

“Who has budget for surveillance these days?” Schwegler sighed. “The
dummen
accountants run the world now.”

Even more intriguing, Scorpion thought, Jamaran was the neighborhood in northern Tehran where Ayatollah Khomeini, father of the Iranian Revolution, had lived. It could mean that Homer was a true believer or had connections with the Khomeini family.

He leaned in closer.

“Dave's a mathematician,” he murmured. “He wouldn't've bet the bank on a pair of deuces. What aren't you telling me?”

Schwegler took a swig of his Eichhof beer and leaned closer as well.

“Gol ghermez,”
he whispered. “The call was received by a cell phone somewhere in or around the Kreuzplatz in District 8.”

“So?”

“Homer's office is on Kreuzstrasse,” Schwegler said. “You can walk to the square.”

Bingo, Scorpion thought. “But it's still thin,” he said aloud, nibbling halfheartedly at a salad, then pushing it away.

“I am more worrying about Apple-cake. This is the most difficult,” Schwegler said. “What happens if Homer finds out?”

“You double him,” Scorpion said, wiping his mouth with a napkin, getting ready to leave. “We should have had weeks to set this up, not hours.” He leaned in. “Are your men tough enough?” asking would they be physical enough and believable enough to fool Norouzi.

“Two of them, Dieter and Marco, are veterans of Einsatzgruppe TIGRIS, Federal,” Schwegler whispered. Scorpion took his meaning. Einsatzgruppe TIGRIS was a special tactical unit of the Swiss Federal Police. The Swiss media had dubbed them “supercops.” He added, “What about the Gnomes?”

“None of them speaks German,” Scorpion said. “They've been told to keep their stupid mouths shut and stay out of sight as much as possible. Where's the extraction?”

“This you will like.” Schwegler grinned like he had won the lottery. “Something irresistible. Homer thinks he's hit it big.” He whispered the location to Scorpion.

“You're right. I like it.” Scorpion smiled as he got up. But all he could think of were the million things that could go wrong.

“And you?” Schwegler asked, meaning what was Scorpion's next move.

“Apfelkuchen,”
Scorpion said, tossing down a twenty CHF note. Apple-cake.

T
here are private clubs all over the world. Country clubs, golf and tennis clubs, men's clubs, places behind guarded gates or in high rises where celebrities and movie stars go for privacy, knowing the only people they'll run into are other celebrities. And then there's the Club Baur au Lac.

Located in a private mansion across a narrow canal from Zurich's famous Baur au Lac Hotel, the club was a place for business lunches for faceless men in bespoke suits in private yellow salons with yellow awnings on windows overlooking a private garden and the gray waters of Lake Zurich. Members can also repair to the wood-paneled English bar for drinks and Cuban cigars served by silent, efficient Swiss bar men and waiters whose most important skill is their discretion. Membership was by invitation only, and mere millionaires, celebrities, sports stars, and women need not apply.

The men who lunch there are billionaires and the CEOs of major international banks and corporations who value privacy above all else. Most of the world's commodities are represented. Deals worth billions are negotiated over brandy, and a casual nod at the club is considered as binding as the most iron-clad contract.

As he lay flat on the roof of the office building peering through binoculars at the gated driveway to the club across the street, Scorpion mused that when Homer received the luncheon invitation from Herr Matthäus, of the big Swiss arms trading company IWT, SA, he must have thought he had died and gone to Jannah, the Muslim heaven.

The location of the Club Baur au Lac for the grab was to get around the fact that Homer traveled with bodyguards in an armored limousine. An armed confrontation in the middle of Zurich would have made the plan impossible. Scorpion checked his watch. He should have had more time to put this together, he fretted for the twentieth time. It wasn't solid planning, just a last minute, thrown-together improvisation. In a half hour he would have to head to Kloten to pick up Apple-cake at the airport.

Through the binoculars, he spotted Schwegler and three of his men going into the club. They had shown their federal Bundesamt für Polizei badges to the gate guards, parked the BMW SUV, and were now waiting unseen inside the entrance hall. He looked at his watch again. Where the hell was the mark?

His cell phone vibrated. He had a text.

Das Wetter ist heute bewölkt, hoch von 12 Grad

It read: “The weather today is cloudy, high of twelve degrees Celsius.” It was from one of Schwegler's watchers on General Guisan-Quai, paralleling the promenade along Lake Zurich. Homer was due any second.

He watched the black armored Mercedes turn in on Claridenstrasse and stop at the gated driveway. The private guards at the club would not allow armed bodyguards on the grounds, and he could see a guard talking to the driver, explaining club rules that they were to stay with the limousine in the parking lot. Only club members and invited male guests would be allowed anywhere inside or near the front entrance. A dark-haired Middle Eastern man in a gray business suit—Scorpion assumed it was Norouzi—got out of the Mercedes, walked by himself to the club entrance and went inside. The limo drove to the lot around the back from the entrance and parked. The bodyguards stayed inside the limo, and Scorpion started breathing again.

If it happened the way it was supposed to, it would happen quickly, he told himself, watching through the binoculars. He was counting on that, and on the fact that the Swiss running the club prized discretion above all else. That, more than anything, was the key to the plan—that they would not call the Kantonspolizei.

Schwegler and his men came out of the club. They were around Norouzi, hustling him into the waiting SUV. A moment later Scorpion watched the SUV come out onto the street, heading toward Dreikönigstrasse. He didn't have to see inside the darkened windows to know they would have handcuffed Norouzi and thrown a black hood over his head. He turned the binoculars to Norouzi's limousine in the parking lot. It didn't move; no one got out. From where they were, they couldn't see the front driveway and what had just happened. Scorpion checked his watch again. Apple-cake time.