Scorpion Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF ANDREW KAPLAN

  War of the Raven

  “In a word, terrific … The pace is blistering, the atmosphere menacing and decadent, and author Andrew Kaplan is in marvelously smashing form.” —Daily News (New York)

  “The characters and locales are brilliantly etched … the plot riveting.” —The Times (London)

  “A smashing, sexy and unforgettable read.” —Publishers Weekly

  Scorpion

  “Pure dynamite … espionage laced with high-voltage Middle East adventure.” —The Washington Times

  “A fast-paced, supercharged debut thriller.” —Kirkus Reviews

  Dragonfire

  “A superb and original blending of Eastern mysticism with the shadowy world of espionage.” —Nelson DeMille, New York Times-bestselling author of Word of Honor

  “Electrifying … A searing, ultimately satisfying entertainment with energy, passion, and moral resonance.” —Kirkus Reviews

  Hour of the Assassins

  “An exciting, original suspense novel.” —Buffalo Evening News

  Scorpion

  A Novel

  Andrew Kaplan

  For Annie with love

  The center of the aspirations of the Soviet Union lies south of Batum and Baku in the general direction of the Persian Gulf.

  —SOVIET FOREIGN MINISTER V.M. MOLOTOV in conversation with the German ambassador, 1940.

  PROLOGUE

  The old man was dying at last. This time the doctors were certain. He wouldn’t survive the night. With a grim nod, Fyedorenko had settled down to wait outside the bedroom door, while the doctors gathered around the living corpse like ancient priests, rattling their tubes and oscilloscopes and oxygen tanks like gourds to celebrate the rite of death. Fyedorenko lit an English cigarette and inhaled deeply, trying to control his impatience. If his lifelong friend wasn’t dead by morning, he was tempted to strangle the old bastard himself.

  For months they had desperately propped the old man up like a scarecrow, allowing him out for rare public appearances under carefully orchestrated conditions, while the western press speculated over the rise and fall of his blood pressure as though it were the Dow Jones average. Periodically, someone would report that he had died, sending the currency markets into wild gyrations and diplomats scurrying like midnight mice into hurried conferences. Then they would have to trot the scarecrow out in one of those carefully-staged, public pantomimes to squelch the rumors. They had to keep him alive then, because they desperately needed the time. But now everything was ready and the sooner he died, the better. If the old man lingered much longer, Fyedorenko feared that his enemies in the Politburo might learn about his preparations and act first. Every minute that the old man lingered on increased his jeopardy. The Central Committee was thick with the old man’s appointees and there were plenty of those who still believed in the old man’s policies of coexistence with the West. Well, they would change their line when the time came and, once things settled down, they would be purged, one by one. If only the old man would die now!

  Yet, his hand did not tremble as he held the cigarette, and his face might have been carved from marble as he calmly waited for the doctors’ verdict. After all, Fyedorenko was not given to any outward display of emotion. If he had been, he would have disappeared long ago, like so many others. His coarse peasant’s face had long since acquired the bland and amiable expression of the polished diplomat. He was known for it. Once Bulgarov, who loved to drink and tell dirty jokes, had jeered at his impassivity.

  “You’re a damned bookkeeper. Do you have blood in your veins or what? You wouldn’t have lasted five minutes with those young hotheads who stormed the Winter Palace with us that cold morning,” Bulgarov had said, sloshing the vodka from his glass as he gestured with it towards Fyedorenko.

  “Fyedorenko has no emotions, didn’t you know?” the old man had remarked archly. “He is like a statue. Da, and like a statue he will survive us all,” the old man muttered and his gaze suddenly pierced Fyedorenko, turning his heart to ice.

  But that had been long ago, before Bulgarov had been sent to that labor camp in the Urals where they didn’t bother to put up a fence, because no one could make it across the snow without freezing to death anyway. The old man had been right about him. He had survived them all, even the old man.

  But the old man had grown soft in his dotage. “Since nuclear war is unthinkable, our only alternative is coexistence with the West,” he used to say. When the Old Guard purists objected, the old man had responded, “We will nibble away at the West, bit by bit. The fat capitalist capon is more easily devoured by an army of mice than a single gulp of the bear.”

  Fyedorenko had something else entirely in mind.

  If only the old man would die now, Fyedorenko thought, and found himself clenching his fists. He guiltily looked around the salon. The room was located in the old Arsenal building in the Kremlin and was a part of the apartment the old man had taken when he had suffered his first heart attack. It was decorated in the massive marble style filled with the overstuffed furniture favored by senior Party officials. Now it seemed still and empty, so early in the morning. The only sound was the quiet ticking of the old Regency clock, covered with the gilt of the period. Once it had belonged to Alexandra, the last Tsarina. Fyedorenko carefully wiped his damp palms on his trousers. Imagine if any of the others waiting in the antechamber outside had seen it, he mused wryly. Comrade Fyedorenko clenching his fists! Unheard of! They would be gossiping about it for days. It was the waiting, making him nervous.

  He stood up and walked over to the window, his reflection blurred by the double-glazed glass. The reflection in the window showed a paunchy middle-aged man in the gray suit that is the uniform of the eastern European bureaucrat. With his small dark eyes and jowly cheeks he looked like an intelligent bulldog. But those dark eyes showed nothing. They could have been made of glass.

  He leaned closer to the window, his breath frosting its surface. Outside the inky blackness of night was broken only by a single lamp in the Alexandrovsky Gardens down below. Thick wet snowflakes fell through the feeble yellow lamplight, the wind swarming them like moths around the light. A black winter’s night, the wind howling around the cupolas of the Kremlin like … what was Mayakovsky’s line? “… as though the gargoyles of Notre Dame were howling.” Snowflakes wove a shroud of icy lace across the window. “Ice flowers,” his mother had called it, when he was still a boy and snow was something to play in.

  He stared at his reflection. It looked like a ghost against the darkness of the winter night. Perhaps the earth itself would be a ghost when this was all over. He remembered how the frozen bodies were stacked like cordwood in the snow during the Great Patriotic War and an unaccustomed shudder trickled down his spine like a bead of sweat. Perhaps they were making a mistake. There was still time to call it off, he thought, knowing he wouldn’t.

  He remembered when Svetlov first outlined the operation to him. They sat in front of the fireplace in Fyedorenko’s country dacha near Zhukovka, southwest of Moscow. Outside, birds chirped in the birch trees, as the dappled sunlight glittered off the icicles hanging from the branches. For a long moment, Fyedorenko didn’t say anything. They listened to the music of a pine log burning in the fireplace. The operation was characteristic of Svetlov, brilliant and ruthless. Svetlov played chess the same way. Although Fyedorenko was the best player at the Moscow Metropolitan Chess Club, Svetlov was the one man who could beat him consistently.

  “Suppose something goes wrong,” Fyedorenko said at last.

  “It makes no difference. All options lead to checkmate,” Svetlov said.

  Fyedorenko peered curiously at Svetlov.

  “It could mean nuclear war,” he said.

&nb
sp; “Better sooner than later,” Svetlov smiled complacently.

  Svetlov had an almost pathological hatred of the West, Fyedorenko remembered. Svetlov’s father, mother and twin brother had been wiped out by a shell from a British warship, covering the evacuation of Denikin’s army from Novorossisk during the last days of the Cossack revolt. An infant still in diapers, Svetlov had been staying with his grandmother at the time and she had raised him on the story.

  But they had to act soon, Fyedorenko thought with sudden urgency. Anything so drastic was bound to terrify the fat sheep of the Old Guard who waited in the antechamber, like pigs at the trough. He turned away from the window and began to walk towards the bedroom, when the door opened and the two doctors came out, fatigue and a sort of lugubrious solemnity painted on their faces. They faced each other across the room, all of them swollen with a sense of their parts in this tableau. It was a historical moment and they all knew it.

  “Well then—” Fyedorenko said, just to get it started.

  “I regret to inform you of the death of the party secretary, Comrade—” the taller of the doctors began.

  “All over is it?” Fyedorenko prompted.

  “It is a great loss to all of us,” the other doctor pronounced solemnly.

  “Of course, of course,” Fyedorenko said and thanked them as he guided them to the door. “Ask the others to give me a moment alone with him. We were so close you see.” His voice broke.

  The doctors looked at each other in astonishment. Imagine how everyone would react when they heard of how broken up the famous stone-faced Fyedorenko was over the death of his mentor. They nodded understandingly as they stepped from the salon into the crowded antechamber to make the announcement. As they did so, the quiet murmur of conversation abruptly stopped.

  Fyedorenko went into the bedroom and closed the door behind him. He could see the body still connected by tubes and wires to the ineffectual tools of this world. The electrocardiograph was still on, a single blip racing across the screen, endlessly repeating itself.

  He glanced at the old man’s face, but it had already begun to acquire the waxy expression common to all corpses which proclaimed so clearly that whatever was human no longer inhabited that shriveled old body with its shrewd homely features. Fyedorenko wasted no time looking at the face of the man he had followed for over forty years. He had more important things to do.

  He crossed over to the phone on the night stand and dialed Svetlov’s private number. He knew Svetlov would be awake and was not surprised when the receiver was picked up before the first ring was completed. Out of habit, Fyedorenko glanced at his watch. It was 3:15 a.m. He took a slight breath, because once he spoke, there was no stopping, no going back, no matter what.

  “It has begun,” he said.

  PART ONE

  You should never beat a woman, not even with a flower.

  —The Prophet Mohammed

  Paris

  IT WAS AN OLD nightmare, as terrifyingly familiar as the darkness of sleep itself. She was running for her life down the dark empty streets of the Latin Quarter, the sound of her footsteps echoing in the silent night. The streetlights reflected wetly on the pavement, still damp from the afternoon rain. The cafés and shops were closed and shuttered as firmly as the eyelids on a corpse. There was no help anywhere. As in a dream, there was that nameless terror of the shadowy man relentlessly pursuing her. Dreamlike too was that horrible feeling that flight was useless. Sooner or later he would catch her and kill her. Except that it wasn’t a dream.

  At the corner of the rue de Seine, Kelly paused to catch her breath in the shadow of a kiosk plastered with posters advertising the Théâtre Odéon. Her breath came in great, heaving sobs and she wondered whether if she screamed it would bring lighted windows and help, or whether it would just make it easier for him to find her. Her chest heaved and she tried to scream, but nothing came out. Her throat was blocked by a burning lump, as though she had swallowed hot wax. She sucked in desperate gasps of night air and tried to think of what to do, but nothing came. The air tasted of the night and fear. It smelled like wet clothes.

  A wave of nausea rippled through her and she was sick again. When she stopped heaving, she found herself on all fours, moaning softly like an animal. She gagged at the smell and from somewhere came the irrelevant thought that her dress and stockings were ruined. Imagine worrying about that now, she thought wildly. A hysterical laugh began to bubble out of her and then she froze at the soft purr of the Mercedes, its lights out, as it slowly prowled next to the curb. Her beautiful eyes went flat with terror, like a rabbit caught by a car’s headlights, and there was nothing but the fear.

  Then the Mercedes stopped and she heard the sound of the car door opening and then being carefully closed. The sounds of his footsteps came closer and she pressed her face against the hard embrace of the kiosk, curling her body into a tight ball, wishing she could shrivel away and disappear in the shadows. The footsteps stopped nearby and she could hear his breathing as he stood there, listening. Without realizing it, she was making soft whimpering sounds, like a whipped puppy. He came closer and his teeth glowed in his dark face as though they were phosphorescent. A ray of streetlight glowed with a pearly sheen from the metal as he motioned with the gun for her to get up. She shook her head, her long blond hair rippling with the movement.

  “Please,” she whimpered.

  He grabbed her hair and harshly pulled her to her feet. His smile had more in common with an animal baring its teeth than a human expression. He twisted her face to his and put the muzzle to her temple, gripping her hair as if he wanted to pull it out by the roots. They stood there like lovers, close enough to kiss.

  “Let’s not have any more of this nonsense, chérie,” he whispered.

  She nodded dumbly and walked stiffly beside him to the Mercedes. He shoved her in from the driver’s side and told her to cross her wrists behind her. Then he tied her hands and started the car. The cords were too tight and it was very painful. She could feel the knots digging into her skin and told him so.

  “Ça m’est égal,” he shrugged with icy indifference, but there was a harsh note in his voice and a gleam in his eye that might have been hatred, or perhaps just the greenish reflection of the dash lights. He was enjoying her pain, she thought, and began to feel queasy again. It reminded her of the ferocious resentment she had once heard in her father’s voice after a quarrel with her mother. The ice cubes in his highball tinkled like wind chimes as he stared at her, damning her for the irrevocable crime of being female. That was when he first got into politics. Her parents had quarreled a lot in those days.

  “A woman’s main purpose in life is showing men how noble women are compared to the male beast,” her father had said, that bitter edge in his voice.

  She thought he meant that he didn’t love her.

  They sped down the Porte Maillot and headed out towards the périphérique, the autoroute almost empty in the three o’clock darkness. Every once in a while, he glanced over at her, a thin curious kind of smile on his handsome face. But there was nothing sexual in the smile and she shuddered. She kept thinking that he was certainly going to a lot of trouble if all he wanted to do was to rape her and then the bitter taste of bile was at the back of her throat, because she didn’t think that he would be satisfied with just raping her. Tears stung her eyes and she tried to think over the pounding in her temples. Perhaps if she seduced him, let him think that he could have her now and any time he wanted, he would let her live. If she could just survive tonight, she’d make it somehow, she told herself.

  “You don’t have to do this, you know,” she said, surprised at how calm, even seductive her voice sounded. Inside, she was quivering like a leaf in a high wind. “I’m terribly attracted to you. I’ll do things for you no woman ever has,” she whispered.

  He looked at her with contempt, as if she were the sleaziest whore in Pigalle. She recoiled, her face flushed with embarrassment. Again, for some bizarre reason it reminde
d her of her father and the time she had worn make-up for the first time on a date. When she had walked into the living room, he had called her “a cheap slut” in front of Brad and sent her back upstairs to wash it all off. She ran up the stairs, humiliated, knowing it would be all over the school the next day. That night, when Brad parked the car, she let him take her panties off for the first time. And when he put his hand between her thighs, all she could think of was not sex, but how much she hated her father.

  “You don’t have to force me. I want to,” she whispered, her eyes dry and calculating. His lip curled with disgust.

  “Shut up,” Gerard snapped, his eyes gleaming in the dashboard light.

  The taste of bile burned the back of her throat and she thought she was going to throw up again. Her stomach heaved and she begged him to please pull over for a minute.

  “So you can run away again, pas encore,” he growled.

  “I’m sick, can’t you see?”

  “Tant pis,” he shrugged and it came with a rush that he was really going to kill her. She was going to be one of those articles in the paper, the details of her body described in humiliating detail, something people glance at for a moment over their morning coffee and mutter some pious platitude about the crime rate before going on to the crossword.

  She glanced down at the door and thought about jumping, but the car was going too fast and it was locked anyway. There was absolutely nothing she could do and she felt like crying, except that it seemed silly because she couldn’t believe it was happening. That sense of unreality, as if it was all a bad dream, had returned. It couldn’t be happening to her. None of it was real, except for the cool vibrating surface of the car window as she rested her head against it. Soon she would wake up and tell Lori about this horrible dream she’d had. It would be all right, this was happening to her dream self, not her. Except that she had fallen down a macabre rabbit hole, flying through the tunnel of light carved by the car’s headlights, and she wasn’t even sure who she was any more.