Scorpion Deception (9 page)

CHAPTER EIGHT

Schwamendingen,

Zurich, Switzerland

T
hey were driving into Zurich from the airport. Apple-cake, in the passenger seat, was an Iranian-American in a rumpled gray suit, no tie, and a smile that revealed a gold tooth in place of one of his canines. For this operation, Apple-cake's cover was that he was Hamid Baveghli, a Swiss-Iranian lawyer from Geneva.

“
Shoma Alemani beladid?
” Do you speak German? Scorpion asked in Farsi as he drove the rental car on the autoroute. Traffic was moving normally, the scenery monotonous; trees, power lines, and office parks.

“No, just Farsi and English. Some Swedish,” Apple-cake replied in Farsi.

“Swedish.” Scorpion frowned. “I need you to speak Schweizerdeutsch.” Swiss German. “And French.
Parlez-vous français, Monsieur Baveghli?
” he said, using Apple-cake's cover name.

“No, I don't
parlez-vous.
” Apple-cake grinned, flashing his gold tooth.

What the hell was Shaefer thinking? Scorpion wondered, starting to get a bad feeling. Shaefer must've been scrambling, but still, it was like pitching a Double A ball rookie in a World Series game.

“If you think this is a joke,” he growled, “trust me, I'll have you posted to Shit Hole, Alaska, to count rocks for the rest of your career.”

“Sorry, I just got pulled into this,” Apple-cake mumbled.

“All right. No German,” Scorpion said, taking a deep breath. Apple-cake wasn't much, but he was all they had. “We'll have to work something out for French. Ear receiver, maybe,” he added, slowing as he turned into the heavier traffic on the A1. “Let's go over the cover. Tell me about yourself, Hamid.”

“I'm a lawyer with the firm, Spalding and Cellini, SA. We're in Geneva,” Apple-cake said.

“In French, lawyer is
avocat
. Got it? What's the address?”

“Fourteen Rue du Rhône, Geneva.”

Bloody hell, Scorpion thought. “For God's sake, say
quatorze
not fourteen. And it's
Genève
in French—not Geneva,” he snapped.

“Genève,”
Apple-cake repeated.

“Your client's name is Hooshang Norouzi. Call him Monsieur Norouzi or Hooshang
agha
. You don't know who's holding him, but if he asks you, you can let it drop that you suspect it's the NDB, the Swiss federal intelligence service. You think they've taken him in at the behest of the CIA, though no one's talking. In fact, you don't want to mention CIA involvement specifically, but you can imply CIA all you want. He'll suspect it anyway. Who hired you to represent him?” Scorpion asked, moving into the right lane to exit the autoroute at Wallisellen. He took the exit onto a street of apartment buildings, spindly trees, and strip malls—the part of Zurich where the working people who couldn't afford to shop on Bahnhofstrasse lived.

“I was contacted through an intermediary—can't reveal who—from the Iranian Embassy.”

“What's their address?”

“Thunstrasse 68 in Bern.”

“Shoma dar Iran al-e koja hastid?”
Scorpion asked. Where in Iran are you from?

“I was born in the States—” Apple-cake began.

“Are you out of your mind?!” Scorpion snapped. This guy was pathetic, like a bad
American Idol
audition. He took a breath. “Look, where were your parents—your real parents—from?”

“Northern Tehran.”

“Where? What district?”

“Elahieh.”

Scorpion studied him out of the corner of his eye. Before the Iranian Revolution, Elahieh had been a Jewish neighborhood.

“You're Jewish, right?” he asked. “Your parents fled when the shah fell?”

Apple-cake looked taken aback. He nodded.

“What street did they live on?”

“I don't know,” he said. “It's before I was born.”

“All right, listen. Your parents still live in Elahieh, in a fancy high rise on Farzin Street, a block from Fereshteh Street. Everybody in Tehran knows Fereshteh Street. The Jews are long gone. It's all high rises now, very expensive. If he ever asks, it'll impress the shit out of him. And for God's sakes, you're not Jewish, understood?”

“Yes,” Apple-cake said, suddenly deadly serious.

Scorpion exhaled. “Look. Here's the key: you're his friend, his best
dust
. You want to help. As an
avocat suisse
, a good Swiss lawyer and fellow Iranian, you are outraged at this violation of Swiss neutrality and at the NDB sucking at the CIA's teat. Be indignant. Cite Articles 173 and 185 of the Swiss Federal Constitution on Switzerland's neutrality to him and anybody who'll listen. Understood?”

Apple-cake nodded.

“And most important—and this is absolutely critical—don't ask him any questions. That's key to this movie,” he added, using the intelligence term to describe the creation of a scenario that was presented as real to a mark but in fact wasn't. “Remember, we don't want or need any information from him. We just want him to think we do. You're on his side, his
avocat
. That's it. At most, at the absolute most, you can ask him at the end if there's anything he knows or might have done that you as his lawyer should know about in case it comes up.”

“If he says, no . . . ?” Apple-cake asked.

“Good. You're happy,” Scorpion said.

“And if he says, yes . . . ?”

“Don't say a word. Just listen. Remember, he's not a joe. He's a client—and a fellow countryman in a place where you're surrounded by infidels and the walls have ears. You're his lawyer. Period. And a loyal supporter of the Iranian government and the Supreme Leader. You're a
baradar
of the Revolutionary Guards and a good Shiite Muslim, and you don't know what this is about. That's who you are,” Scorpion concluded, pulling into the parking lot for the office building on Winterthurerstrasse, where, if everything was going according to plan, they were currently putting Norouzi through what was politely called in CIA-speak “enhanced interrogation.”

“H
e doesn't speak French or German?” Schwegler said. They were in the bare office—just two chairs and a table, the windows shuttered and locked—that they would use for Homer to meet with Apple-cake. “
Sheisse
,” he muttered. Shit.

“And his suit looks like
sheisse
too,” Scorpion grimaced. “I sent Chrissie to get him something decent on Bahnhofstrasse.”

“What'll we do about the language?”

“They'll talk Farsi. The Gnomes will set him up with an ear receiver. I'll be on a microphone in case he needs French or I have to tell him what to do.”

“We'll use Dieter and Marco as the guards,” Schwegler said. “Only German speakers.”

“How's Homer doing?”

“Not bad. They beat him up; nothing that shows. Some really good smacks with a rubber baton in the testicles. He'll walk funny for a while. Stress positions. No food, water. Blasting Eurotrash music on earphones so he can't think. Naked. Always in the hood, so he can see nothing; no sense of time. They're waterboarding him now.”

“Said anything of interest?”

“Claims to be innocent. Knows nothing. Demands to be able to call his office. He's good,” Schwegler said with a touch of admiration.

“Cell phones?”

“He had two: a prepaid and an iPhone. The Gnomes are working on them now.”

Scorpion turned the laptop to the hidden camera in the basement room where they were interrogating Norouzi, his head covered by the black hood, hands tied behind his back.

With a flick of his wrist, one of Schwegler's men, Dieter, smacked Norouzi's groin hard with a truncheon.

“Sprechen Sie, du Stück Scheisse!”
Dieter shouted. Talk, you piece of shit!

“Ich weiss gar nichts,”
Norouzi gasped, his voice muffled by the hood. I don't know anything.

There was a knock at the door. Scorpion shut the laptop as Chrissie came in. She was holding an expensive men's blue suit and a shirt and tie on hangers, and carrying a shopping bag from Weinberg's on Bahnhofstrasse.

“What do you think?” she said. “The suit's a Zilli. Isn't it gorgeous?” wrinkling her nose. “The tie is Burberry.”

“Looks good. Thanks,” Scorpion told her, waving her away.

“Don't thank me. I wish I could dress men in expensive clothes all the time. It's the sexiest thing on the planet,” she said, flashing her perfect teeth as she left.

They watched her go.

“At least someone's happy,” Schwegler said.

“So long as it's not Homer,” Scorpion said.

E
leven hours later, at four in the morning, they brought Homer/Norouzi into the room. He was shackled and the hood was still on his head. They had put his shirt and trousers back on but his feet were still bare, and after hours of interrogation they had to support him to keep him upright as they sat him in the chair and ran a chain from his shackles through an eye bolt on the floor. Schwegler's men, Dieter and Marco, checked the room one last time to make sure there was nothing that could be used by Norouzi to orient himself as to who was holding him, what time it was, or where he was. The one window was shuttered and locked; the security cameras were in place.

Watching from an office two offices away on laptops showing multiple security camera views of the room were Scorpion, Schwegler, Apple-cake, and the Gnomes. Scorpion turned to Schwegler.

“How long does he think he's been here?” Scorpion asked. He wore earphones and a microphone set to transmit to an invisible earpiece in Apple-cake's ear. Apple-cake stood next to him, nervously tapping his hand on his thigh.

“Two days. He asked how many days he's been here. Of course, they hit him for asking,” Schwegler whispered, even though they had soundproofed the office.

On the screen, they watched Marco leave the room. Dieter was alone with Norouzi. They watched as Dieter removed Norouzi's hood.

“Ihr Büro muss jemand kontaktiert haben.”
Your office must have contacted someone, Dieter said, going to the door. “Your lawyer is here.”

Scorpion tapped Apple-cake's arm.

“You're up,” he said. He heard Apple-cake take a deep breath, hesitate for a second, then leave. He watched him walk into the office next door on the monitor, Dieter opening the door for him and then closing it, leaving the two of them, Apple-cake and Norouzi, alone. Apple-cake, looking surprisingly sharp in his new suit, sat across from Norouzi. Around him, Scorpion felt everyone hold their breath.

“Hooshang Norouzi
agha, esm-e man
Hamid Baveghli
ast
,” Apple-cake said, sitting down at the table, saying in Farsi, Mr. Hooshang Norouzi, my name is Hamid Baveghli. “I'm a lawyer. I was contacted by the Iranian Embassy. They are concerned. Are you all right?”

Norouzi looked at him. Despite being the worse for wear, his hair disheveled and needing a shave, his eyes were clear.

“Where am I?” he asked in Farsi.

“You're in an office in District 12,” Apple-cake said. He glanced around and leaned closer. “I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to tell you. My main concern is getting you out,” he whispered.

“Who's holding me?” Norouzi asked.

On the laptop screen, Apple-cake looked blank. Christ, Scorpion thought. Apple-cake swallowed; a deer in the headlights.

“You don't know,” Scorpion whispered into the microphone in Farsi. “But it's not the
cantonale
. Your office checked.”

Apple-cake repeated what Scorpion had said in Farsi, using the French phrase for the canton police. Norouzi stared at him, his face tight.

“Who's holding me?” he repeated.

Apple-cake leaned forward conspiratorially.

“No one's talking. But we suspect the NDB, the Swiss intelligence service. What did they want?”

“What the
goh
is this?” Norouzi growled suspiciously. “Who are you? What company did you say you were from?”

Apple-cake straightened up as if he'd been slapped.

“I told you, Norouzi
agha
. My name is Hamid Baveghli. I'm a lawyer with the law firm Spalding and Cellini, SA of Gen—” Shit, Scorpion thought, thinking he was going to say Geneva. But Apple-cake caught himself:
“–nève.”

“How'd you find me?”

“It wasn't easy,” Apple-cake started, looking around and leaning forward to whisper as Scorpion scrambled to open another window on his laptop and pull up the relevant Swiss legal section. He whispered it into the microphone. “We had to file a writ of habeas corpus under Title 2, Article 31 of the Swiss Federal Constitution. We had to call in favors to find you.”

Apple-cake ad-libbed what he'd been told in Farsi, and Scorpion thought, Good. Finally, he's actually thinking.

“Do you have any idea why they brought you in?” Apple-cake asked.

“The attack on the American embassy,” Norouzi said. “They think I know something.”

Apple-cake nodded. “No wonder all the secrecy. Any idea why they thought you might know something?”

“I know nothing. I had nothing to do with it. I told them,” Norouzi said, staring at him without expression.

“Of course. It's because we're Muslims,
jenab
Norouzi
agha
,” Apple-cake said sympathetically, using the honorific,
jenab
. “I'll bet it's not just the NDB,” he whispered, implying the CIA might be behind it.

Scorpion nudged Schwegler.

“Your cue,” he murmured.

Schwegler nodded and took an official-looking writ out of his suit jacket pocket. He went into the next room followed by Dieter and Marco, who carried the rest of Norouzi's clothes.