The Scorpio Illusion (25 page)

“If the proper situation were presented, I’m sure they’d be among the first, sir. The
barone di Ravello
is an astute international businessman who recognizes the value of loyalty as clearly as he does the satisfaction of charity.”

“You’re going to get a hell of a lot of phone calls,” said the heavyset reporter. “It’s not hard news by a long shot, but it could be.”

“I’m afraid that will be all, ladies and gentlemen. It’s been a trying morning and we have the rest of the day to go through.” Smiling and nodding graciously to the reporters, Bajaratt led her handsome charge from the room, delighted with the flattering comments about him. There would, indeed, be many phone calls, just as she had planned.

The Palm Beach social network operated with frightening efficiency. By four o’clock that afternoon they had received sixteen firm invitations and eleven inquiries as to when various hostesses might plan luncheons or dinner parties in honor of Dante Paolo,
barone-cadetto di Ravello
.

With equal efficiency Bajaratt went through her notebooks and selected five of the most prestigious invitations to accept, houses where the elite of politics and industry were most likely to attend the functions. She
then called the rejects and with profound apologies demurred, hoping with all her heart that they would meet at so-and-so’s and so-and-so’s, who had reached the young baron first. Cats stalk, considered the Baj, striking out with their claws only when a piece of the mouse is withheld from them. They would
all
be wherever she and Nicolo went.

Muerte a toda autoridad
!

It was only the beginning, but the journey would be swift. It was time to check London, Paris, and Jerusalem.
Death to the merchants of death at Ashkelon
.

“Ashkelon,” said the quiet male voice in London.

“It’s Bajaratt. Are you progressing?”

“Within a week we’ll have Downing Street covered. Men in police uniforms, refuse details in lovely garbage-spotted white overalls.
Vengeance
for Ashkelon!”

“It may take me more than a week, you understand that.”

“No matter,” said London. “We’ll be all the more entrenched, all the more familiar. We cannot fail!”

“Forever Ashkelon.”

“Ashkelon,” said the female voice in Paris.

“Bajaratt. How are things?”

“Sometimes I think too simple. The man comes and goes flanked by such nonchalant guards we would have them executed in the Baaka. The French are so arrogant, so careless of danger, it’s ludicrous. We’ve checked out the rooftops—they’re not even covered!”

“Beware the nonchalant French dandies, they can turn and strike like cobras. Remember the
Résistance
.”

“That’s
merde
, as they say. If they know about us, they’re not taking us seriously. Don’t they understand that we’re willing to
die
? Vengeance for
Ashkelon
!”

“Forever Ashkelon.”

*    *    *

“
Ashkelon
,” whispered the guttural voice in Jerusalem.

“You know who I am.”

“Of course. I led the prayers for you and your husband under the orange trees. He will be avenged, our cause avenged, believe me.”

“I’d rather hear about your progress.”

“Oh, you’re so cold, Baj, so cold.”

“My husband never thought so. Your
progress
?”

“Shit, we’re more Jew-like than the odious Jews! Our black hats and our black braids and our stupid white shawls all move rhythmically as we peck our heads at that fucking wall. We can blow that bastard away when he walks out of the Knesset. A few of us may even escape to fight again. We only wait for the news, for your signal.”

“It will take a while.”

“Take all the time you like, Baj. During the evenings we put on I.D.F. uniforms and climb upon hungry sabra women, each of us praying to Allah that an Arab will grow in their bellies.”

“Stick to business, my friend.”

“We
stick
it to the Jew whores!”

“Not at the expense of your mission!”

“Never. Vengeance for Ashkelon!”

“Forever Ashkelon.”

Amaya Bajaratt left the bank of public phones in the hotel lobby, having replaced in her purse the various credit cards supplied her by Bahrain. She took the elevator upstairs and walked down the elegant corridor to their suite. Inside, the dimly lit sitting room was empty, lonely. She crossed to the open door of the darkened bedroom. Young Nicolo was, as usual, naked and supine on the large bed; he was fast asleep, his magnificent body inviting. As she studied him, she could not help but think
of her husband, her so-brief husband. Both men had long, slender, muscular bodies, one far younger than the other, of course, but the similarity was there. She was drawn to such bodies, as she had been drawn to the naked Hawthorne barely two days earlier. Suddenly, she heard and felt her own breathing; she touched the swelling nipples of her breasts and was aware of the aching urgency of her groin. It made up for so much she could never have. Years before, a doctor in Madrid had performed a simple operation that would forever preclude conception—
this
was all she had.

She walked to the foot of the bed and undressed, now as naked as the body in front of her, below her.

“Nico,” she said gently. “Wake up, Nicolo.”

“What …?” stuttered the young man, blinking open his eyes.

“I am here for you … my darling.”
You must
, she thought.
It’s all I have left
!

“What’s the number in Paris?” asked Hawthorne, standing over the
padrone
but addressing Poole in the doorway.

“That I checked out,” answered the lieutenant. “It’s around ten o’clock in the morning there, so I figured I wasn’t going to put anybody into shock.”

“And
?”

“It doesn’t make sense, Tye. It’s a travel agency on the Champs-Élysées.”

“What happened when you called?”

“Sure as possumshit it was a private number. The lady said something in French, and when I said in English that I hoped I had the right number, she asked me in English if I was calling a French-sounding travel agency, and I said I sure as hell was and it was urgent.… That’s when she asked me what my color was, and naturally I said white, and she said ‘and,’ and I didn’t know what to say, so she hung up.”

“You didn’t have the code, Jackson; there’s no way you could have.”

“I guess I didn’t.”

“I’ll put Stevens on it, unless I can convince our
padrone
here to be more cooperative.”

“I know nothing of such things!” shouted the invalid.

“No, you probably don’t,” agreed Tyrell. “Those last calls, the undeleted calls, weren’t made by you, but by someone who didn’t know how to erase them. Shades of Rosemary Woods,
padrone
.”

“Nothing. I know nothing!”

“What about Palm Beach, Lieutenant?”

“Just as crazy, Commander. It’s the number of a very ritzy restaurant on Worth Avenue. They said I had to make a reservation two weeks in advance unless I was on their preferred list.”

“That’s not crazy at all, Jackson, it’s part of the mosaic, part of the pay dirt. The preferred list is just that, preferred by way of a name you couldn’t invent and followed by words you couldn’t know. I’ll turn that over to Stevens with the Paris conduit.” Tyrell looked down at the old man; the bleeding in his left cheek had ebbed, blotted by a wad of tissue that hung from his flesh. “You’re going on a trip,
paisan
,” said Hawthorne.

“I cannot leave this house.”

“Oh, you’re leaving, scungilli—”

“Then put a bullet in my head now, you might as well.”

“It’s tempting, but I don’t think so. I want you to meet some former associates of mine, from another life, you might say—”

“Everything is here to keep me alive! You want a dead man on your hands?”

“Not really, although it’s a moot point in your case,” replied Tyrell. “So I’d suggest you point out the specific equipment you need for a short flight, just the basic stuff. You’ll be in a mainland hospital in a few hours, and guess what? I’ll bet you’ll have a private room.”

“I cannot be moved!”

“Would you care to place a bet?” asked Hawthorne, reaching into his pouch as static erupted from the radio.

Neilsen’s words were spoken in a monotone, control imposed over anxiety. “We have a problem.”

“What
happened
?” barked Poole. “Are you in trouble?”

“What’s wrong?” asked Tyrell.

“The pilot of the seaplane radioed the Brit patrol boat—his left rudder snapped, then flew off! He went down roughly a hundred and twenty kilometers north of the hover’s fix. They’re going after him, assuming the poor guy survives.”

“Cathy, answer me as honestly as you can,” said Hawthorne. “From what you know about that aircraft, could it have been sabotage?”

“What do you think’s been busting my head for the last couple of minutes? I hadn’t even considered it and I should have! Good God, our AWAC was blown up—
Charlie
!”

“All right, calm down. Stay the course.
How
could it have been sabotage?”

“The cables, damn it to hell!” Rapidly, Cathy explained that every movable part of the plane was operated by dual steel cables. That both sets of cables could shard at once was inconceivable.

“Sabotage,” Tyrell concluded quietly.

“Both were shortened together so they’d snap at the same time,” said Neilsen, more controlled now. “And I never even considered the possibility.
Shit
!”

“Will you please stop whipping yourself, Major?
I
didn’t consider it either. Someone in St. Martin slipped by the Deuxième, and if he or she could do that, we were stationary ducks.”

“The mechs!” yelled the pilot over the radio. “Bring in every goddamned mechanic on that island and burn his feet. It’s one of them!”

“Believe me, Cathy, whoever it was is gone. That’s the way it is.”

“I can’t stand it! The Brit flying that plane may be dead!”

“That’s the way it is,” repeated Hawthorne. “Maybe now you’ll understand why a lot of people in Washington, London, Paris, and Jerusalem are afraid to leave their desks, their phones. We’re not dealing with a single psychopathic terrorist, we’re dealing with an obsessed zealot who’s running a network of raging fanatics perfectly willing to die to make their kills.”

“Christ, what do we do?”

“Right now you beach the sub in the cove and come up to the house. We’ll raise the shutters so you can see it clearly.”

“I should stay in touch with the hovercraft—”

“Things won’t change whether you do or not,” interrupted Tyrell curtly. “I want you up here—”

“Where’s Poole?”

“Right now he’s wheeling our patient out into the hall. Beach the sub, Major, nothing’s going to happen here. That’s an order!”

But suddenly, without a decibel of noise, without a hint of impending devastation, everything happened. The explosions were everywhere, walls collapsing, marble columns breaking, crashing into the marble floors below; beyond the archway to the communications complex, the equipment began bursting apart, wires splattering against each other in shattering electric contact, short bolts of lightning shooting into the air. Tyrell raced into the foyer, rolling on the floor over and over to avoid the falling debris, his eyes focused on Poole, whose leg was caught beneath a shelving unit beyond another collapsing archway. Hawthorne sprang to his feet and ran to the lieutenant, pulling him out from under the attached shelves and dragging him toward the arch. It fell apart, heavy slabs of marble plummeting to the floor;
Tye yanked Poole back until there was a break in the collapse, then rushed through, hauling the lieutenant behind him as the arch fell, leaving a jagged wall of marble that would have crushed them both. Hawthorne looked above it, seeing only the
padrone
, laughing hysterically in his wheelchair as his entire surroundings crashed down upon him. With a final effort Tyrell looped his right arm around Poole’s chest, and angling his shoulder, burst through the heavy glass door and the hurricane shutters beyond. Together, they hit the trunk of an ersatz palm as the lieutenant screamed.

“Stop! My leg! I can’t
move
!”

“You damn well better. These palms are going to go up next!” With those words Hawthorne dragged Poole, zigzagging through the real and false foliage until they reached the dry grass.

“Lemme go, fer Christ’s sake! We’re flat and I’m hurting real bad!”

“I’ll tell you when you’re hurting enough,” cried Tyrell, his voice carrying over the fires and the continuous conflagrations within the once-châteaulike estate. The moment came barely thirty seconds later. The entire ring of ersatz palm trees exploded with the force of twenty tons of dynamite.

“I don’t believe it!” whispered Poole, nearly comatose as he and Hawthorne lay beside each other, prone in the dark, harsh, sun-parched field. “He blew the whole fuckin’ thing up!”

“He didn’t have a choice, Lieutenant,” Tye said grimly.

Poole, however, was not listening. “Oh, my God—Cathy!” he screamed. “Where’s Cathy?”

Across the field, a black-suited figure appeared, racing around the towering flames and screaming incoherently. Hawthorne got to his feet and ran forward, shouting at the top of his voice. “Cathy, we’re here! We’re okay!”

In the mountainous light of the fires, Major Catherine Neilsen raced into the dark, harsh field and fell into
the arms of Lieutenant Commander Tyrell Hawthorne (Retired). “Thank God, you’re all right! Where’s Jackson?”

“Over here, Cath!” Poole cried from the shadows beyond. “That Yankee son of a bitch and me are even now. He pulled me out of there!”

“Oh, my
darling
!” shouted the major in a most unmilitary fashion as she released the commander and ran to the lieutenant, falling down and embracing him.

“I’m really,
really
missing something,” said Hawthorne quietly to himself as he walked toward the two figures on the ground.

12