The Scorpio Illusion (18 page)

“You don’t even need me for this one. The Department of Commerce would break their asses to accommodate your megabucks traveler.”

“Of course, but to remove such grand
nobiltà
from seeking such accommodations eliminates a degree of inconvenience, doesn’t it?… And they know who did it for them, no? So you do it for me,
capisci
?”

“It’s done. Cleared on arrival, no jerking chains. What’s the ETA and the equipment?”

“Seven o’clock tomorrow morning, and the plane is a Lear 25.”

“Check, I’ve got it.…
Hold
it, my red phone’s blowing off the hook. Stay there, Caribe.” A minute and forty-six seconds later, the
padrone’s
contact came back on the line. “You were right, we just got the word! Patrick’s AWAC II was blown up in St. Martin with a crewman on board! We’re on full alert. Do you want to discuss the situation?”

“There’s nothing to discuss, Scorpio Two. There
is
no situation, the crisis is over. As of this call, I am shut down, incommunicado. I have disappeared.”

Eighteen hundred miles northwest of the fortress island, a heavyset man with thinning red hair above a puffed, freckled face sat in his office at the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia. The cigar in his mouth had lobbed ashes on his blue polyester tie; he blew them off,
the spittle forming circles on the water-resistant fabric. He replaced the ultrasecure telephone in the steel drawer on the lower base of his desk. To the casual—even the attentive eye—it was no drawer at all, merely part of the desk next to the rug. He relit his cigar; life was good, really good. So who gave a shit.

8

T
he body was covered by a hospital sheet and driven away in an ambulance under the airport’s floodlights. Hawthorne had made the formal identification from what was left of the remains, insisting that Major Neilsen and Lieutenant Poole stay away while he did so. In the near distance, the smoldering hulk of the surveillance aircraft had been reduced to an ugly skeleton, twisted black struts protruding above the charred, smoking ruins of the disembodied fuselage, the metal sheets of its walls peeled back like the dismembered chest cavity of a huge, burning, upturned insect.

Jackson Poole wept openly, collapsing to the ground and vomiting in whatever shadows he could find. Tyrell knelt beside him; there was nothing else to do but put his arm around the lieutenant’s shoulders and hold him; words from a stranger about a dead friend held no meaning, only unwarranted intrusion. Tye looked over at Catherine Neilsen, Major, air-force-to-the-core, and saw that she was standing rigid, her features strained, holding back her tears. He slowly released Poole, got to his feet, and approached her.

“You know, it’s okay to cry,” he said gently, standing in front of her but offering no contact, his arms at his sides. “There’s nothing in the officer’s manual that says it’s prohibited. You lost someone close to you.”

“I know—both,” said the major, swallowing, tears appearing in her eyes, obviously reluctantly, as she began to tremble. “I feel so helpless, so inadequate,” she added.

“Why?”

“I’m not sure. I’m trained not to be.”

“No, you’re trained not to appear that way in the presence of your subordinates during moments of indecision, which everyone has. There’s a difference.”

“I… I’ve never been in combat.”

“You are now, Major. Maybe not ever again, but now you’ve seen it.”

“Seen it? Oh, my God, I’ve never even seen anyone killed … much less anyone I cared deeply for.”

“It’s not a requirement for flight training.”

“I should be stronger,
feel
stronger.”

“Then you’d be a fraud as well as a goddamned fool, and both make lousy officers. This isn’t a dumb movie, Cathy, it’s real. No one trusts a military superior who has no emotions in the face of personal loss. Do you know why?”

“I don’t know anything right now—”

“Let me tell you: He’ll get you killed.”

“I got Charlie killed.”

“No, you didn’t, I was there. He insisted on staying in that aircraft.”

“I should have ordered him not to.”

“You did, Major, I heard you. You went by the book, but he refused to obey your order.”

“What?” said Neilsen, her eyes barely focused as she stared at Hawthorne. “You’re trying to comfort me somehow, aren’t you?”

“Only in the most reasonable way, Major. If my purpose was to lessen your grief, I’d probably hold you and let you cry your eyes out, but I won’t do that. Number one, you’d despise me for it later; and number two, you’ve got to face the American consul general and several of his staff. They’ve been held at the gate, but they’re now screaming diplomatic privilege and will be allowed out here in about five minutes.”

“
You
did that?”

“So cry now, lady, let it out for Charlie now, then go
back to your rule book. It’s okay, I’ve been where you are and no one ever demoted me for it.”

“Oh, God,
Charlie
!” sobbed Neilsen, her head falling into Hawthorne’s chest. He held her, his arms soft, encompassing.

The minutes passed; her tears subsided and Tye tilted her chin up with an unobtrusive hand. “That’s all the time you’ve got, that’s another thing I learned. Dry your eyes as best you can, but in no way think you have to deny what you feel.… You can use the sleeve of my coveralls.”

“What … what are you talking about?”

“The consul and his men are driving out. I’m going over to see Poole; he’s on his feet now. I’ll be right back.” Hawthorne started away, stopped by Neilsen’s hand on his shoulder. “What is it?” he asked, turning.

“I don’t know,” she replied, shaking her head as the flag-bearing official car of the American consulate raced across the field toward them. “Thank you, I guess.… It’s government time,” she added. “I’ll deal with them. It’s up to Washington now.”

“Then shape up, Major … and you’re very welcome.” Tyrell reached Jackson Poole, who held on to the rail of a fire engine’s hose track, a handkerchief at his lips, his head sunken, his face conveying a terrible. sadness. “How are you doing, Lieutenant?”

Poole suddenly lurched from the rail and grabbed Hawthorne by the front of his coveralls. “What the hell is this all
about
, goddamn you to
hell
,” he shouted. “You killed Charlie, you fucker!”

“No, Poole, I didn’t kill Charlie,” said Tye, making no attempt to interfere with the lieutenant’s hands. “Others did, but I didn’t.”

“You called my buddy a large pain in the ass!”

“That had nothing to do with his death or with the plane having been blown up, and you know that.”

“Yeah, I guess I do,” said Poole quietly, releasing the
bunched cloth of Hawthorne’s coveralls. “It’s just that before you came along it was Cathy, Sal, Charlie, and me, and we had a good thing goin’. Now we’ve got no Charlie, and Sal’s disappeared, and Big Lady’s a pile of Beirut garbage.”

“Big Lady?”

“Our AWAC. We named it for Cathy.… Why the hell did you come into our lives?”

“It wasn’t my option, Jackson. Actually, you came into mine. I didn’t even know you existed.”

“Yeah, well, everything’s just so screwed up, I can’t figure anymore, and let me tell ya’, I figure things out better than most anybody I know!”

“With computers and laser beams and access codes and squeaks the rest of us don’t understand,” said Hawthorne sharply, harshly. “But let me tell
you
something, Lieutenant. There’s another world out there, and you haven’t got a clue about it. It’s called the human quotient, and it hasn’t a goddamned thing to do with your machines and your electronic wizardry. It’s what people like me have had to deal with on a day-to-day basis for years—not blips on a printout but men and women who may be our friends or may want to kill us. Try factoring those equations into your steel whirligigs!”

“Christ, you’re really pissed off.”

“You’re goddamned right I am. I heard what I just said to you a couple of days ago from one of the best undercover men I ever knew, and I told him he was crazy. Oh, boy, do I take it back!”

“Maybe we both should cool it,” said the subdued lieutenant as the consulate vehicle sped back across the field. “Cathy just got finished with the government boys and looks a tad unhappy.”

Neilsen approached, frowning, uncertainty mixed with bewilderment and sadness. “They’re heading back to their scramblers and some specific instructions,” she said. Then she looked hard at the former officer of naval
intelligence. “What have you really gotten us into, Hawthorne?”

“I wish I could give you an answer, Major. All I know is that it’s a hell of a lot more than I bargained for. Tonight proved it. Charlie proved it.”

“Oh, God,
Charlie
…!”

“Stop it, Cathy,” said Jackson Poole suddenly, firmly. “We’ve got work to do, and by the Lord Jesus I want to do it. For Charlie!”

It was not an easy decision, but it was reluctantly made by the furious command at the air force base in Cocoa, Florida, beaten into submission by the combined powers of the Department of the Navy, the Central Intelligence Agency, and finally, irrevocably, the subterranean strategy rooms at the White House. The sabotage of the AWAC II was to be kept under wraps, a cover story put out to the effect that a faulty fuel line caused the explosion of a Patrick training aircraft that had landed in the French territory for emergency repairs. Fortunately, there were no casualties. Relatives of the unmarried Master Sergeant Charles O’Brian were brought to Washington and briefed separately by the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, whose orders to the team of investigators were to “run silent but run deep.”

“Little Girl Blood,” as the search was labeled in the most secret circles, was red line, the ultimate concern of the combined services. Every international flight from all points of the compass was scrutinized, passengers detained, some for hours as each targeted traveler or travelers, together or apart, were placed in isolation, their papers put under computer scans, checked, and rechecked for flaws of origin. The number of detainees reached hundreds, then more than a thousand.
The New York Times
called it “excessive harassment without foundation,” while the
International Herald Tribune
reported
it as “American paranoia, not a single weapon or illegal substance found.” Yet no answers, much less explanations, came from London, Paris, or Washington. The name Bajaratt was never to be mentioned, the scenario never revealed.… Look for a woman traveling with a young man, a teenager, nationality unknown.

And while they searched, the Lear 25 flew into Fort Lauderdale, the pilot a man who had flown the route several hundred times, the copilot a heavyset woman, formerly of the Israeli Air Command, her dark hair swept up under her visored cap; in the rear seat was a tall young man. Among the customs personnel recruited for the occasion was a pleasant official who greeted them in Italian and swiftly processed their immigration papers. Amaya Bajaratt and Nicolo Montavi of Portici had landed on American soil.

“I swear to God I don’t know how come you can reach so high,” said Jackson Poole as he entered the hotel room on St. Martin where Hawthorne and Catherine Neilsen were studying the lieutenant’s printouts, “but it sure as hell doesn’t exceed your grasp.”

“In a Minnesota farm girl’s vocabulary, does that mean we’re cleared?” asked Cathy.

“Hell, Major, this Yankee charter pirate just adopted us, with or without our consent.”

“I also run a slave ship,” said Tyrell softly, returning to the computerized charts, employing a hastily supplied magnified micro-ruler under the glare of a table lamp.

“Clarification, please, Lieutenant?”

“He owns us, Cath.”

“I can assure you not totally,” Major Neilsen said.

“Well, we kinda volunteered too. The orders are not to use any pilot here because someone
here
blew up Big Lady and everything stays in a blackout. Since you’re checked out in seagoing props, you elected yourself, Cath. And since I’m a lot younger than he is, probably
stronger too, Patrick kinda threw up its hands and said ‘whatever he needs.’ ”