Scorpion Deception Read online

  “Bon. And the Ukrainian things, you naughty girl? referring to the same photo that had been used for Kilbane’s Ukrainian visa, now residing in Ukrainian Militsiya and SBU internal security databases in Kiev.

  That’s not so simple, my little wolf, Slavickas responded.

  He would need something; an internal password, Mendy69 responded. He said he knew someone inside. The good thing about ce pays primitif—this primitive country, Ukraine—he said, was from the president on down, there was no one you couldn’t bribe. Scorpion offered one thousand euros, and Mendy69 responded that it was too much for the Ukrainian piece of shit he would bribe. Two hundred would be plenty, and he, Mendy69, would keep the other eight hundred providing cher Max would spank him.

  Almost laughing out loud at that one, Scorpion gave Mendy69 a dummy Gmail account to let him know when it was done and he would Paypal him the money. Before he left, he checked the BBC Internet news site. He was stunned by an article headlined: AMERICAN AID WORKER SAVES SOMALI CHILDREN. In it, they quoted aid workers in Dadaab, Kenya, about a mysterious American aid worker, David Cheyne, who had saved twenty-eight children—Scorpion had no idea how the number had grown from sixteen to twenty-eight or where they could have gotten that from—who were trapped by the war in Somalia. Apparently, the aid worker “had no comment about his heroic act, but stated that without the help of a British aid worker, Ian Dowler, he wouldn’t have made it through.” So at least he knew who the source of the article was. That little prick, Dowler, who was now claiming credit for the rescue. Even worse, someone had taken a cell phone photo of him that accompanied the article. It was a bit fuzzy from a distance and caught him from the side, holding one of the children and talking with Sandrine, identified in the caption as Dr. Sandrine Delange of MPLM, Médecins Pour Le Monde; Doctors for the World.

  Bloody hell, he thought, glancing uneasily around the Internet café as if everyone might recognize him any second. The only good thing was that he didn’t think someone could identify him just from the sideways photo or could easily match it to the Kilbane cover ID photo. As for the Cheyne cover ID, he’d gotten rid of it as soon as he had left Africa.

  David Cheyne no longer existed, and outside the context of Africa, anyone would be hard-put to identify him as Cheyne. He was now using a Canadian passport in the name of Richard Cahill, an industrial engineer from Vaughan, north of Toronto.

  That evening, having a drink at the bar at the hotel, he got the modified photo from Lithuania on his iPhone. Mendy69 was right. Tiny changes in facial distance vectors between features used by facial recognition software, a microscopic thickening of the nose, an imperceptible narrowing of the distance between the eyes, a change of eye color and a pattern modification, and no one would call them the same person. His own mother wouldn’t know him.

  Not that she would anyway, Scorpion reflected as he stood on the deck of the ferry. She’d died when he was a toddler; tensing as he felt someone come up beside him. A Middle Eastern man with a beard, his hair wet from the drizzle.

  “Haben Sie einen Gletscher Eis Bonbon, bitte?” the man said, asking for a piece of a popular brand of candy.

  “I still prefer the ice cream at the White Tower on Pasdaran Avenue,” Scorpion replied in English, referencing the coffee shop in Tehran he had mentioned to establish his bona fides with the man next to him, Ahmad Harandi, the Mossad mole in the Hamburg Islamic Masjid, when they had first met during the Palestinian operation.

  “Scorpion,” Harandi said.

  Scorpion nodded. “Who’s your friend in the shadows at the back of the deck near the bridge?” he said.

  “He’s with me,” Harandi said. “We need to keep it short. This is dangerous.”

  “More than you know. Whoever hit the American embassy in Bern got CIA computer files on the Palestinian operation. That means you too.”

  “Sheisse!” Shit! “How could such a thing happen?!” Harandi exclaimed.

  “They got sheisse on me too. That’s why this,” Scorpion said, touching the three-day stubble on his face, then the rain-spattered glasses and the newsie cap to help change the image.

  “So I’m blown?”

  Scorpion nodded grimly.

  “Almost certainly. That’s why I had to see you personally. So you’d know it was real.”

  “Sheisse,” Harandi said again. “I have to leave Germany.” He looked sideways at Scorpion, his face wet from the rain. “This blows everything. Years down the drain. Herzliya will go crazy,” referring to the Tel Aviv suburb where the Mossad’s headquarters were located.

  “The Americans are ready to go to war,” Scorpion said. “They just haven’t figured out with whom.”

  “I know. It’s all anyone’s talking about on the TV. Madness.”

  Scorpion felt the ferry shudder as it pulled up to the Neumühlen-Övelgönne landing. There was damn little time before things blew, he thought, watching crewmen secure the ferry to the quay. Two passengers got off and several more got on.

  “What have you heard?” Scorpion asked. The Islamic Masjid in Hamburg’s Uhlenhorst district was a hotbed of Iranian Twelvers and intelligence activities, which was why the Israelis had planted Harandi there as a mole in the first place. If the Iranians had something going in Europe, it was likely that Harandi had heard something.

  “Nothing. Not a verdammte thing,” Harandi muttered, looking around furtively. The ferry’s engine throbbed as they pulled away from the landing. “It wasn’t the MOIS,”—the Iranian foreign intelligence service, the equivalent of the Iranian CIA—“or Hezbollah.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Harandi shrugged. “One never knows. But if it were, I would’ve heard something.”

  “So either it’s not the Iranians, or—” Scorpion stopped. “What about Niru-ye Quds?” The Quds Force, the Special Forces unit of the Revolutionary Guards; the Iranian equivalent of the U.S. Delta Force or Navy SEALs. “Or Kta’eb Hezbollah or Asaib al-Haq?” Factions within the Revolutionary Guards.

  “I don’t know. There’s been nothing.”

  Harandi looked like he was about to say something more but had held back. They stared out at the darkness. There were other ships and boats on the river, lights reflecting on the water. The ferry’s engine began to throb as it headed in toward the next river landing. The sign over the dock read: DOCKLAND FISCHEREIHAFEN. They were running out of time.

  Scorpion glanced up toward the bridge. A man in a seaman’s wool cap looked away as soon as he caught Scorpion looking up at him.

  Shit, he thought.

  “What else? This is me. What aren’t you telling me?” Scorpion asked.

  “Nothing. I’ve got to go as soon as we get to Sankt Pauli,” Harandi said, grabbing the rail for balance as the ferry bumped against the landing. He took out a handkerchief to wipe the rain from his face as the ferry unloaded passengers and a half-dozen more boarded. He’s holding something back, Scorpion thought, glancing at Harandi. Another couple of minutes and it would be too late.

  He had to resist the urge to look up at the bridge. If the man with the seaman’s cap worked there, how the hell could they have known about him meeting Harandi on the ferry? Unless the man had simply gone up to the bridge and either bribed or just requested that they let him stand there because of the rain. That could happen, he thought. Within a minute the ferry was again moving back out into the river. He couldn’t wait any longer.

  “C’mon, dust.” Farsi for friend, Scorpion said. “What is it?”

  Harandi shrugged. “Something someone said. An odd reference. It’s nothing.”

  “So now we’ll both know nothing. What was it?”

  “ ‘Saw-scale viper,’ something like that.”

  “You mean the mar?” The Farsi word for snake.

  Harandi nodded.

  “What’s it mean? Some kind of code?” Scorpion asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where’d you hear it?”

  “That’s what was so strange. A g
uest imam, an ayatollah from Qom, used it in a sermon at the Masjid the Friday before the attack in Switzerland. Something about doing evil and being bitten by a saw-scaled tirmar.” Viper. “Some kind of metaphor.” Harandi grimaced, as if to say he wasn’t responsible for what some religious idiot said.

  “He said ‘saw-scaled viper’? He used those words exactly?”

  “Possibly. I might have misheard.”

  “What was so strange about it?”

  “I don’t know. But it struck me as odd at the time. Not just saying ‘snake,’ but a specific type of very poisonous snake. It was too precise, if you know what I mean. Almost like he was sending a message. Probably nothing,” he said again, and shrugged. “You get paranoid in this business.”

  “This ayatollah, what was his name?”

  “Nihbakhti. Ayatollah Ali Nihbakhti,” he said, and looked around. The ferry was slowing, shuddering as it approached the Landungsbrücken landing. “I have to go. Thank you for warning me. Khoda hafez, dust.” Goodbye, friend, he said in Farsi.

  “Ahmad, don’t go back to your house. Leave now,” Scorpion said. “The needle’s off the chart on this one.”

  “You too. We must both be careful, dust. Viel glück.” Good luck, Harandi said, heading for the ladder down to the main deck. The man from the shadows followed him down the ladder. The ferry had docked and the passengers began to crowd off.

  Scorpion watched Harandi walk onto the covered walkway to the landing, followed by the bodyguard. He glanced up at the bridge. The man in the seaman’s cap was watching the passengers debark, talking on a cell phone.

  Scorpion went down to the main deck as if to debark, but stepped into the main cabin instead. A minute later the man in the seaman’s cap came down to the main deck, carrying a satchel. Looking around once, he stepped onto the covered walkway to the shore.

  Shit. Scorpion took out his latest disposable cell phone and called Harandi’s cell. There was no answer; the call went to voice mail. Following protocol, Harandi had turned his cell phone off. Only now there was no way to warn him. If anyone got their hands on Harandi’s cell phone, Scorpion thought, they’d get the number of his disposable cell phone too.

  Making sure no one saw him, he took the SIM card out of his cell phone and dropped it over the side. He watched it sink into the dark water, then crossed to the other side, tossed the empty cell phone into the river, and followed the last passengers to the walkway.

  Coming out on the street, he saw Harandi and his bodyguard get into a dark VW sedan. The man in the seaman’s cap went over to a parked BMW motorcycle, pulled on a helmet and followed. Scorpion ran to the taxi stand and jumped into the first one in line. The driver looked like a Moroccan.

  “Follow the motorbike,” he said in bad German. The taxi driver started and turned on the meter. Taking a chance on Arabic, Scorpion added, “Man aiyan ta’in ta?” Where are you from?

  “Algeria, sayid,” the driver said, looking at him in the rearview mirror.

  “Stay with the motorbike, but don’t get too close,” Scorpion added as they turned up Davidstrasse, its wet cobblestones glistening from the street lamps. They passed the wide Reeperbahn, with its Burger Kings, sex shops, and prostitutes, crowded this time of night despite the rain. The motorcycle maintained a constant distance from Harandi’s VW, and Scorpion’s driver stayed back but kept the motorcycle in sight.

  “Where are we going, sayid?” the taxi driver asked.

  “Just follow,” Scorpion said, checking the rearview mirror to make sure they were the caboose on this train. He wasn’t sure where Harandi was headed or if he had spotted the motorcycle, and he cursed inwardly at not being able to warn him. He would have loved to make a move on the motorcycle, but he wasn’t driving and there was no way to do it without getting the taxi driver killed.

  The VW went up Hein-Hoyerstrasse, then turned at Paulinenplatz, a small tree-filled park; they appeared to be looking for a parking place. Harandi must’ve decided to go back to his apartment to clean things up, Scorpion reflected, knowing that once he left, Iranians from the Masjid would go over it with a fine-tooth comb. You idiot, he thought, feeling helpless to do anything. Whatever happened now, it was too late.

  The VW stopped to pull into a parking space. The motorcycle came up beside the VW, slowed as the rider leaned over and attached something black to the car door, then suddenly revving the engine, sped off. The motorcycle raced down the street in a roar.

  “Bess! Waqif! Bombela!” Stop! Stop! Bomb! Scorpion screamed to his driver. The driver just had time to slam on the brakes, the taxi screeching to a stop an instant before the VW exploded in an orange fireball that rocked the street. The powerful blast cast a fiery glare across the buildings, the shock wave buffeting the taxi like a toy shaken by a dog. Fragments from the VW peppered the taxi like hail as Scorpion dived flat onto the backseat.

  When he looked up, the driver was staring wide-eyed through his windshield, chipped and cracked from the explosion. His face was bleeding from broken glass cuts but he didn’t appear seriously hurt. The burning wreck of the chassis was all that remained of the VW. Scorpion jumped out into the street, where a man’s severed hand lay next to an overturned café table. He couldn’t tell if it was Harandi’s. He felt sick, stumbled over to a tree to brace himself and looked up. The motorcycle was nowhere to be seen.

  A hundred-to-one the motorcyclist had videoed his meeting with Harandi, he thought. Hopefully, all they got were his back and cap, with maybe a glimpse of his glasses, spotted with raindrops. Not enough to ID him, and he would immediately get rid of the glasses and cap to change the image. Whoever they were, it was clear they were already using the Bern data. That was the only way they could’ve gotten on to Harandi.

  His regular iPhone vibrated and he answered. It was an e-mail from the Gmail account known only to Rabinowich and Schaefer. Only it wasn’t either of them. It read:

  Vendredi. la marée. 8è. 20h. Urgent.

  Friday, the La Marée restaurant in the 8th Arrondissement in Paris at 8:00 P.M. Urgent.

  It was Sandrine, he thought. It couldn’t be anyone else. She was the only other person who knew that e-mail account. She wanted to see him. And it didn’t sound like she’d e-mailed because she actually wanted to see him. Something had happened. Hence the “urgent.”

  God, what insane timing, he thought as he stared at the smoldering frame of the VW and the wreckage-strewn street filling with people, windows opening in buildings around the park, spectators peering out. He had to get away, he thought, climbing back into the taxi and patting the stunned driver on the shoulder.

  One thing was clear: his turn was coming.

  And now he had put her in danger too.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Paris,

  France

  “I wasn’t sure you would come,” she said. It was the first time he had seen her wearing makeup, and in a green sheath dress and bronze eye shadow that brought out the gold in her lion’s eyes, she took his breath away. “I wasn’t so nice the last time.”

  “You knew I’d come,” Scorpion said. “You didn’t dress like that for the chef de cuisine.”

  They were sitting at a table at La Marée, a clubby restaurant with Tudor-style leaded windows on the Right Bank not far from the Arc de Triomphe. They were the only ones speaking English in the crowded restaurant, sharing a superb Montrachet white wine along with the freshest fines de claire oysters he’d ever tasted. The restaurant was famous for its seafood.

  “Alors,” she smiled. “There are two occasions when a woman must look absolutely fabulous. When she’s going to see a man she’s interested in and when she’s getting rid of a man, so he can properly appreciate what he’s lost.”

  “And which is this?”

  “Allez au diable,” she laughed, her laughter clear as a bell. Go to hell. “Impossible man.”

  The waiter came over and they ordered. Around them, well-dressed French couples were doing what the French did best, eating and tal
king. The evening sparkled, and looking at her, Africa and what had happened in Switzerland and Hamburg seemed far away. Except for the brown Peugeot 308 he had spotted following his taxi in from the airport.

  Who could have made him at De Gaulle? he had wondered, watching as the Peugeot followed them in on the A1, past the Périphérique and into the city, making the turn from the Boulevard de la Chapelle onto Boulevard de Magenta. And then it hit him like the persistent beep-beep-beep of an alarm.

  They didn’t know who he was in Hamburg, and in any case, he had gotten rid of the glasses, cap, and shaved the stubble to change his image. It had to be either Bern, the photo ID from the Kilbane cover, or that stupid article from Africa. Or worse, something else. Something he didn’t know about.

  Except how had they gotten onto him in Paris? And so quickly? He’d watched the brown Peugeot in the taxi’s rearview mirror, not relaxing even when it didn’t follow their turn onto Rue Saint-Martin. Either he was being paranoid or they had switched off and someone else was following now.

  “You said it was urgent,” he began, as they sat in the restaurant.

  She nodded. “I was at a charity spectacle, très chic, at the Grand Palais for les MPLM. This man came up to me. Said he was a journalist. He was asking about you.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That you were an American. That I hardly knew you, which of course is true.” The waiter brought them chilled langoustines for an appetizer and refilled their glasses. She waited till he left. “He wanted to know if I knew where you were.”

  “And?”

  “I told him I had no idea, and if I did, I certainly wouldn’t tell him.” She smiled wryly.

  “That doesn’t sound terribly urgent,” he said, sipping the wine.

  “It was his manner,” she said. “I had a bad feeling. There was something about him.”

  “Describe him.”

  “Middle Eastern. Arab or Iranian. Small man. His hands were very big, like they belonged to a much bigger man. And his journalist’s carte. It looked cheap, phony. His clothes too. He gave me, in French we say, la chair de poule?”