Scorpion Deception Read online

  “Why not post it on Facebook while you’re at it?” Scorpion said. There was no way of going to the Norfolk, a luxury colonial hotel that went back to “Out of Africa” days, without attracting attention from every intelligence service and watcher in East Africa, from the Chinese Guoanbu to al Qaeda.

  Soames leaned forward, beefy forearms on his knees, motioning Scorpion closer. That was his style. Fellow jocks in a football huddle. Scorpion almost smiled, remembering Rabinowich’s poem about Soames that had gone viral inside the CIA.

  My name is Soames,

  I’ve no use for combs,

  Or clever little poems;

  I am Bob Harris’s bitchy-poo,

  Tell me fellow spook, whose bitch are you?

  “You heard about Switzerland?” Soames began.

  Scorpion sat up straight. It was a mission pitch. Except every time he had gone on an operation for Harris, he’d lived to regret it.

  “Tell Harris to go fuck himself.”

  Soames just smirked. Scorpion stared at him.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “He said you’d say that,” grinning widely. “He also said don’t take no for an answer.”

  “I’ll save you the trouble,” Scorpion said, getting up to leave. “I won’t even let you ask the question.”

  “Rabinowich said to tell you there’s something you need to hear.”

  Dave Rabinowich was acknowledged even by his enemies to be the most brilliant intelligence analyst within the CIA. A graduate of MIT when he was only eighteen, Rabinowich was on a track to win a Fields when he decided to join the CIA because, he explained, “real world mathematics is more interesting because everyone is always lying.” He was also one of only two people in the American intelligence community whose judgment Scorpion trusted.

  Scorpion sat back down, his arms folded over his chest.

  “I hope Rabinowich also told you that you better not be bullshitting me,” he said.

  Soames took a swig of the Tusker and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “This isn’t half bad,” he said about the beer. “About Bern. You saw the TV?”

  Scorpion nodded. It was on the drive to Nairobi, taking Sandrine to the airport.

  Sandrine had been packing when he got back from Somalia with the children. She had to go to Paris. Something about funding for the nonprofit she worked for.

  “I’m their show pony,” she said. “They tart me up à la dernière mode for these big charity affairs, and if I don’t do it, we can’t keep these children alive.”

  She helped triage the children he’d brought in. Despite the way he’d mucked it up and the bullets hitting the truck, all sixteen were still alive. Before he left them in the hospital tent, the boy, Ghedi, took his hand and wouldn’t let go.

  “Safa an’a weedu?” he asked. Will you come back? Sandrine watched them, her lion’s eyes unreadable.

  “I will, inshallah,” Scorpion said.

  “Everyone says this, but they don’t come,” the boy said.

  Scorpion knelt so he could look straight into Ghedi’s dark brown eyes. He already knew with Sandrine it was a coup de foudre. A lightning bolt. And now the Somali boy’s fingers clutching at his hand. He had never felt like this before. What was happening to him?

  “I’ll come back. I promise. Eeven ana o’whyish,” he added. If I’m still alive. Ghedi looked at him with his big dark eyes and nodded. A promise.

  Scorpion and Sandrine both had to leave for the airport. For him, there was no choice. He had to get away before the press got to Dowler. Already some of the aid workers were looking at him and talking among themselves. Just to make sure, under the excuse of treating Dowler for his burn wounds, Sandrine gave the Englishman a sedative that would knock him out for twenty-four hours.

  Sandrine gave Scorpion a long look when she saw how shot up the Toyota pickup was. It was riddled with bullet holes. Before they left for Nairobi, Cowell volunteered to come along to bring the truck back to Dadaab.

  “He just wants an excuse to go to Nairobi. Get at the whores on Koinange Street,” Sandrine whispered to Scorpion, inclining her head at Cowell as they bounced on the rough dirt track to Garissa that passed for a road. Scorpion kept the FAD assault rifle ready. The area between Dadaab and Garissa was rife with pirates and Al-Shabaab. Cowell’s and Sandrine’s eyes widened when they saw the FAD.

  “Is that for real?” Cowell asked.

  “How do you think I got out of Somalia?” Scorpion replied.

  For a long while, driving through an empty landscape, except for the occasional baobab tree in the distance, no one spoke. Crossing the bridge over the muddy Tana River, they passed a troop of baboons pawing through garbage from a manyatta slum on the outskirts of Garissa. Africa, Scorpion thought.

  Garissa was a border town on the human trafficking route between Somalia and Nairobi. Somalis and Luo tradesmen shared the streets with refugees, aid workers, bandits, thugs, herds of camels, and Kenyan soldiers in fatigues and red berets with HK assault rifles.

  They stopped for lunch at the Nomad Hotel, the local watering hole, where Scorpion saw the news about the Bern attack on the TV behind the bar. Nearly everyone at the embassy had been killed. Forty-eight dead. Three survived. A man and a young woman staffer who hid in a closet, and one of the Marines, in critical condition, were still alive.

  Al Qaeda claimed responsibility, but the TV announcer said that Swiss and American authorities were skeptical. A short video from an embassy security camera beamed worldwide showed ski-masked gunmen moving through the corridors, methodically tossing grenades and firing into offices.

  “Well, that’ll bloody gee things up,” Cowell said when they were back on a real road, the paved A3 to Nairobi.

  But neither Scorpion nor Sandrine responded. We’ll probably never see each other again, Scorpion thought, and wondered if she was thinking the same thing. They drove the long miles of low scrub and sand till the gridlock of Nairobi, under its endless haze of smog.

  At Jomo Kenyatta Airport, they only had a few seconds together at the curb, Cowell watching them from the truck. Her eyes searched his face.

  “I keep thinking you’re running from the police, but that’s not it, is it?” she asked. “And you’re not going to tell me, are you?”

  He didn’t say anything. The less she knew, the safer she’d be, he thought.

  “Au revoir, David,” she said, and turned away.

  “My name’s not David. It’s Nick,” he blurted out, not knowing why he told her. He hadn’t used his real name in so long, it didn’t feel like it belonged to him. She whirled around.

  “You bastard! Who the hell asked you to be honest?” Annoyed, frustrated, unbelievably beautiful.

  “You can’t tell anyone. It’s dangerous,” he said while slipping a strip of paper into her handbag without her noticing. On it he had written a Gmail address known to only two people in the world: Rabinowich and his closest friend in the CIA, Shaefer.

  “Alors quoi? Is this supposed to make me interested, this mystery? Thank God I’m leaving.” Shaking her head, her hair rippling like wheat.

  “I didn’t want to lie anymore,” he said.

  She looked at him with her lion’s eyes.

  “Then you’re a fool.” And as she turned to go: “C’est impossible. Adieu.”

  “Bon voyage,” he muttered. She said adieu, he thought, watching her walk away into the terminal like a kick in the gut. Not au revoir. It really is goodbye.

  After they left the airport, Cowell dropped him off downtown. Scorpion watched him drive away in the pickup, then caught a vividly-colored matatu minibus to an Internet café on Mama Ngina Street across from the Hilton. It only took a few minutes online for him to spot the “Flagstaff” e-mail from one of Rabinowich’s cover Hotmail accounts. Flagstaff was the CIA’s current emergency code. It meant Flash Critical, the highest level of operational urgency. It was only used when all hell had broken loose.

  “So the Co
mpany’s messed their diapers. What’s that got to do with me?” Scorpion said to Soames, his eyes restlessly checking Diamond Plaza through the store window.

  “If you mean are they shitting bricks in Washington, that’s the understatement of the century,” Soames said. “Congress is ready to bomb the hell out of somebody. They’re just waiting for us to tell them who.”

  “And?”

  Soames shifted uncomfortably. He leaned closer.

  “This is coming from the top. The Director of Central Intelligence himself wants you in on this. So does the National Security Advisor. They asked for you personally. It’s a mess.”

  Neither man spoke. From a radio somewhere came the sound of Kenyan hip hop; some song about “nothing to lose” heard over the street sounds and the calls of the Indian waiters to potential customers. Soames was wearing his sincere look like a merit badge.

  “Look,” Scorpion said. “I don’t know what Harris is cooking up, but what I said before goes. I’m not interested.” Soames put down his beer. He looked at Scorpion with pale unblinking eyes.

  “You really think we’re all bureaucratic assholes, don’t you?” he said. “That we don’t have a goddamn clue.”

  “The sad thing is, some of you do have a clue. But there’s too much politics. Anyway, let’s cut the foreplay, shall we?” Scorpion said. “You made your pitch and I’m not buying. What is it Rabinowich thinks I have to know?”

  “They got everything,” Soames growled.

  “Who?”

  “Those sons-a-bitches who attacked the embassy,” pushing the Tusker bottle away. “They got everything from the computers, from the ambassador and station chief on down. Everything! Everyone’s going nuts. State, DOD, NSA, the White House, us. Everyone!”

  Scorpion heard horns honking out on Masari Road and the klaxon of a police car. Another Nairobi smash-up, he thought. Shouting, bribes, and local Mungiki youths sneaking off with whatever in either car wasn’t locked down. It felt like a bad omen.

  He studied Soames’s posture. The man had a tell, rubbing his little finger. He was holding something back.

  “You don’t have a clue who did it, do you?” he said.

  Soames nodded. “AQAP,” he said, meaning Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, “claims they did it, but no one believes them. They wore ski masks, spoke little. Security monitors only picked up a few words. English, with indeterminate accents. They hardly spoke. Not enough voice data to nail it down. We’re dead in the water.”

  “What does Rabinowich think?”

  “Uh-uh, amigo.” Soames smirked. “You got to pay to play.” He sat there, a big man dwarfing the small plastic chair he was sitting in like an American Buddha.

  Scorpion picked up his bottle of Tusker by the neck. Something in the way he held it seemed to remind Soames that it could be used as a weapon.

  “I meant it. I’m not interested,” Scorpion said. “You jerks sent me a Flagstaff, so unless that doesn’t mean anything anymore, just say what you came to say and we’ll both get the hell out of here.”

  Soames shifted uncomfortably. “They got a list of all Company ops in Europe and the Middle East. Operations officers, Core collectors, joes, codes, the works,” he said.

  “Are you kidding?” Scorpion shook his head. “Somebody had all that on a computer in an embassy in Switzerland, where the only real business is visas and tax fraud, and you wonder why I think you clowns can’t be trusted?”

  “You still don’t get it, asshole,” Soames said, a nasty smile playing on his lips. “That’s not why I’m here. We’re doing you a favor, courtesy of Bob Harris and Dave Rabinowich. They think you deserve it because of past service and because maybe, just maybe, you’ll be of use again. But just between us girls, there’s some of us who would be happy to leave a prima donna like you hanging out in the cold.”

  “Meaning?”

  “They got your name too, Scorpion. You’re on the list.”

  Christ, he thought, looking out the window at people at outside tables, talking and eating, everything smelling of Tandoori and curry, as though the world was a rational place.

  “How bad?” he asked finally.

  “Remember the Kilbane cover?” On the Ukraine operation, the Company had supplied Scorpion with cover ID as a journalist named Michael Kilbane working for Reuters out of London. He had jettisoned the cover during the mission, but now, because of an entry on a computer in Bern, it was coming back to haunt him.

  “They got my picture? They know what I look like?” He felt a shiver go up his spine. When he was a child, the Bedouin said it meant someone was weeping over your grave.

  Soames nodded. “Just the cover and the code name, ‘Scorpion.’ Nothing else, except . . . ” He hesitated. “Langley checked the backup server. They got the Kilbane photo.”

  Scorpion stared coldly at him. Somebody who was good enough to take out a fortified U.S. embassy guarded by Marines and all the high tech in the world now had him on an enemies list, and they knew his code name and what he looked like. It was bad enough.

  “Just answer me one question,” he said through clenched teeth. “What the hell was it doing in an embassy file—in Switzerland!”

  “The latest re-org. We’re all supposed to share information. Hold hands and play nice. No more 9/11s. All very Kumbaya. Total crapola. Welcome to the new improved, better-than-ever Washington,” raising his Tusker in a mock toast and taking a long swig. “Where the hell’s that waiter? I want another of these—or . . .” He squinted suspiciously at the bottle. “ . . . is it going to give me the Nairobi runs?”

  Scorpion got ready to go. Soames looked at him.

  “What do I tell Bob Harris?” he asked.

  “Tell him to kiss off.”

  “The administration’s going to take it to the U.N. Security Council, as if it matters what those jerk-offs do,” Soames murmured, not looking at him. “There’s gonna be a war.”

  “With whom?”

  “We’ll find out who did it. Trust me. And when we do . . .” Soames said, balling his fist.

  “Go ahead. Knock yourselves out. It’s got nothing to do with me.”

  “They’re talking about going to Congress for a declaration of war. Nobody’s done that since Roosevelt. Pentagon’s gearing up, but it isn’t just about finding out who did it. We need proof for the whole world. No more screw-ups. Bob really needs you on this one,” Soames said, putting on his best win one for the Gipper expression.

  “Tell Harris he’s a big boy. He needs to learn how to cross the street by himself for a change,” Scorpion said, getting up.

  “What will you do?” Soames said, staring blankly at the floor as though he wasn’t relishing reporting a wasted trip to Harris. “About Kilbane and all?”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  “How?” Looking like a kid who had lost his lunch money. “They’ll ask.”

  “Yeah,” Scorpion said over his shoulder. “But I don’t have to answer.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Hamburg,

  Germany

  The ferry left the Finkenwender dock precisely at 9:00 P.M., heading upriver to the next stop on the Elbe River. The night was cool, drizzly, the outside deck wet and deserted except for a lone man wearing glasses and a newsie cap at the bow rail. Because of the weather, the other passengers stayed inside the cabin on the deck below. Scorpion turned up his collar against the rain, the lights along the shore shimmery reflections on the dark surface of the river.

  Almost done, he thought. He had checked into The George, a boutique hotel in the St. Georg district that was like a private English men’s club improbably dropped in the middle of Germany. On the TV, all the news was about the crisis in Switzerland. There were reports of a worldwide manhunt for information on the Bern attackers. The Americans had called an emergency NATO meeting. The media was speculating wildly. Al Jazeera had reported from an “unnamed” source in the Gulf region that an al Qaeda leader, Tamer al-Warafi, had provided a tape claim
ing responsibility for the attack. But al Jazeera had not yet released the tape.

  In New Delhi, a government source implied that it had been an operation by Pakistan’s covert ISI’s SS division as a reprisal for U.S. drone attacks in northern Pakistan. Israel’s foreign minister, Shalom Goldman, claimed it was the Iranians. Which the Iranian foreign minister, Hamid Gayeghrani, angrily denied, declaring that such a charge was just what one could expect from a “regime of devils spawned in hell.”

  Scorpion had spent the afternoon at an Internet café on Kleiner Schäferkamp across from a wooded park. He used a European singles chat room to contact Mendy69 in Vilnius, Lithuania. A little man in a wheelchair born with a child’s twisted tiny legs that never grew, Aldis Slavickas aka Mendy69—after Mendeleev, the inventor of the Periodic Table, and the sex position—was a born criminal and the most brilliant computer hacker Scorpion knew. He had first used Slavickas to bulletproof his French cover ID, the identity he used for his home base in Sardinia. Slavickas had been able to penetrate the presumably impregnable firewalls and databases in the French Ministry of the Interior, as well as the DST and the DGSE, the French foreign intelligence service.

  In the chat room, Mendy69 posed as Giedre, a sexy nineteen-year-old female blonde with a fetish for leather. Scorpion was an aging French businessman named Max, because no matter what cover name he used, Mendy69 insisted on calling him Max anyway. They corresponded in French.

  The first part of the job Scorpion wanted was to change his photo in the Reuters personnel database at their Canary Wharf office in London for the Michael Kilbane journalist credentials he had used in Ukraine, so it no longer resembled his face.

  Mendy69 typed: pas de problème, mon chéri Max. No problem, my darling Max. I will make it so your own mother wouldn’t know you.