The Skorpion Directive

by David Stone

“Yes.”

  “No. You do not know Dhimmi. You never live under Dhimmi law. My people, my people, we live under that law. The Turks. The Moors. Six hundred years, we live under the boot. Since first battle of Kosovo. In Ottoman Empire, if you are infidel, there is no talking back to anyone Islam who insult you. No fight in court against anyone Islam. Wear markings to show you are dhimmi. Look away in street. No riding horses. Donkeys only. Islam man want your woman, he take her. You say nothing. Islam man want your house, he take it. You got business, Islam man want it, you say yes and look down at ground. Islam man strike you, you kneel and beg him stop. Islam man kill you, you die, say thank you. What is dhimmi ? Fear is dhimmi. Fear is on the face of every man and child of my people. What nation are you? Who are your people?”

  “My family came from Norway.”

  Vukov smiled as if confirmed in a theory.

  “Vikings. Good. Vikings never live under Islam boot. Macedonians, Serbs did. We were once rulers of earth. Alexander was Macedonian. Listen, Slick, you think there is peace with Islam? Only difference between al-Qaeda and ordinary Islam man? Al-Qaeda impatient. Ordinary Islam man, he can wait. They will never have peace with infidels. With Christians. Everywhere on earth where Islam man live near infidel is blood. It is in their book. Their Koran. Just like Hitler put his word in Mein Kampf. Is there for all to read. No peace until we kneel or die.”

  Vukov sat back, breathing a little hard. He spat the cigarette out onto the floor, shaking his head at the madness of it.

  “Then in Kosovo,” he continued, “where it all start, after six hundred years finally we Christians put fear on the faces of their wives, their children, their old men, their fathers and sons. That is what a Skorpion is. That is what I am. You. What are you, Slick?”

  “What am I?” repeated Dalton. “I face men in combat. I don’t rape and torture crippled old Jews. I don’t run from a firefight and leave young boys to die. Branislav Petrasevic didn’t run. He faced me in the middle of the road. Neither did the Medic kid or his friend. Only one man ran from that fight, Vukov. You did. And that is what you are.”

  Vukov looked down and became still.

  “I did not run. It was . . .”

  “Necessary?”

  Vukov looked up, his skin rippling as the muscles under his cheek worked, his eyes bright and black.

  “Yes. For the mission.”

  “So you say . . .” said Dalton, leaning back, lighting up another Sobranie and blowing the smoke toward Vukov. “Of course I couldn’t stay. The mission was too important. I had to run away to save the mission. It’s all about the mission. Horseshit, Vukov, just plain horseshit. There is no mission. You’re a petty thief, a criminal, a junkyard dog. Captain Davit will put you in his jail, and stronger men will use you like you used Galan. Because, you know, when it comes down to it, Vukov, you run. But when you run in a prison, you don’t get far. Sooner or later, they’ll corner you in a cellar or in the laundry, and you’ll do whatever it takes to stay alive. That will be your story. Vukov. The man who ran.”

  Vukov had gone somewhere else. His body was motionless, and he was not breathing. The scored wound on his temple, where Dalton’s bullet had glanced across the bone, had opened up and blood was running down the side of his face, a gleaming red snake under the overhead light. It was the only thing moving on the man.

  Dalton stood up, brushing the ashes off his jeans, staring down at Vukov, his expression one of disgust, dismissal.

  “The mission?” he said, smiling. “There is no mission.”

  He turned to go, but Vukov stirred, pulling at his chains, his boots scraping on the steel floor. He looked up at Dalton.

  “I need toilet.”

  “So piss yourself.”

  “No. Is not to piss, okay. Look. I give you something. You let me go to toilet. Is okay to bring guards. But I must to go.”

  “Give me something and you can go to the toilet.”

  Vukov was struggling with it.

  Dalton waited, still, patient.

  “You know Kirikoff ?”

  “What about him?” said Dalton, his hand on the latch.

  “We are to do something . . . something big.”

  “The mission?”

  “Yes. The mission.”

  “What is this mission, Vukov?”

  “I don’t know. Kirikoff keep it close. But I know where is Kirikoff.”

  “Good. Where is Kirikoff ?”

  “I can go to toilet, I tell you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Honor as soldier?”

  “I don’t give my honor to people who run.”

  “I do not run! Is for mission!”

  “I still need you to give me something.”

  “Okay. Piotr Kirikoff. He is in Athens.”

  DALTON called in three hard-looking sailors and told them that Vukov needed to go to the toilet.

  “Don’t take the shackles off. Just enough for him to get his business done. And you stay with him, follow? He is never alone.”

  The oldest man there, a petty officer with lean, grizzled cheeks and tobacco-stained teeth, grinned at Dalton.

  “Uri here can wipe his ass. Right, Uri?”

  Uri shuffled his feet, his face reddening.

  They gathered around Vukov while the petty officer keyed the lock holding the chain to the ringbolt. Dalton cleared the door as the chain gang shuffled down the narrow corridor toward the heads. He went back into the little storeroom, sat down on the bench, put his feet on Vukov’s chair, and lit another Sobranie, feeling reasonably pleased with himself. Military pride was a tender thing, even with a man like Vukov. Three minutes passed in this pleasant way. After five minutes, Dalton, suddenly feeling uneasy, got up and walked down the hallway to the head, where he opened the door and found three dead men. They searched the entire ship, from truck to kelson. They were sixteen klicks out of Kerch Harbor, in the middle of a night as dark as a dragon’s colon, the hull slicing through muddy chop, two white wings curling away from the cutwater, and Aleksandr Vukov had gone over the side. Dalton leaned on the taffrail for thirty minutes as Davit’s men played searchlights on the surging waves. Mandy stood nearby, intending to comfort but knowing there was none to be had. Finally he pushed himself upright and walked back into the cabin with Mandy, no longer feeling quite so pleased with himself.

  Athens

  FLISVOS MARINA, PORT OF ATHENS, NOON LOCAL TIME

  If spring had come late to Prague, it was long gone in Athens. The sprawling white city, terra-cotta-roofed, spread itself out across the huge valley, from the mountains to the sea, in a crazy maze of circular streets, hexagonal blocks, squares, grids, arches, highways, byways, alleys, dead ends, all piled up around the limestone Acropolis and Parthenon, with fluttering palms along the coast and cypress spikes marching down the hillsides. Today, Athens was baking and shimmering under a noonday sun that blazed down from a sky so light it looked like glass. A single contrail moved slowly across the blue, the jet itself a diamond sparkle at the tip, trailing a line of snow-white lace, like the blade of a glass cutter moving over a crystal bowl, catching the sun and glowing like pale fire even as it spread slowly out and faded away into wisps of cloud.

  Nikki, shading her eyes from the knife-edged glitter off the sea, watched the contrail as it cut its path slowly into the west. She thought briefly of her home in Seven Oaks, her cats and her plants, and—this thought, uncalled, unwelcome, breaking through her defenses—of Hank Brocius, in the early winter of last year, on a roof deck overlooking the parking lot at Crypto City, the winter light shining on the unscarred side of his face, his gentle eyes on her as she wrapped a gold-and-blue scarf around his neck and kissed him on the lips for the first time.

  The memory stung, bit deep, brought down all her defenses, and the Flisvos Marina in Athens dissolved at once into a blur of white and blue and yellow limestone. Her throat closing up, her chest tight, she looked down at her hands, a watery blur, folded around the stem of a glass of chi
lled white wine. She picked up a pink linen napkin, lifted her sunglasses, and dabbed at her eyes. There was someone at her shoulder, a soft male voice, warm, caring. “Miss Gandolfo, are you okay?”

  She set her sunglasses back in place, adjusted them, and only then turned to smile brightly up at the lean brown boy in the crisp white mess jacket and creased black slacks who was hovering over her, his handsome face full of concern.

  “I am fine, Tomás,” she said, “just the glare off the water.”

  “Let me fix the umbrella,” he said, leaning in to move the shaft, swinging the heavy shade around to shield her from the reflections in the harbor. As he did so, he cut her off from the long window of the Serenitas Restaurant. There, alone at a table for four, Piotr Kirikoff sat, all in baggy, shapeless white, with a large bib spread over his spinnaker belly. He was leaning forward and ripping a large lobster apart with his bare hands, stuffing gobbets and bits into his mouth, his greasy purple lips working, juices dripping from his sausage fingers, oblivious to the nauseated stares of a tourist party across the aisle.

  Nikki thanked Tomás and, when he was gone, shifted her chair to the left to regain her view. It had taken a while for Kirikoff to surface, and her station here at the Serenitas, after a full day, an evening, and the morning of the second day, was becoming obvious, if only to Tomás, who was sure this stunning Italian girl was falling madly for . . . him. But of course. How could she not?

  But Kirikoff had finally made an appearance, less than an hour ago, arriving on a long gleaming-white motor yacht that proceeded into Flisvos Marina like a swan. It glided regally past rows and rows of other equally magnificent yachts, many of them larger, all of them just as sleek, finally making a ponderous swing into a berth halfway up the mole. The yacht, the Dansante, would have been a sensation in Bar Harbor or Newport. Here among the riches of Athens it was, if not ordinary, then at least unremarkable.

  Tomás, watching it arrive, informed Nikki in a careful aside that the yacht was owned by some large corporation. Many of the yachts at Flisvos were corporate. But as they watched the mountainous figure of Piotr Kirikoff waddle along the quay toward them, Tomás’s expression altered into one of guarded hostility, and he pulled back into his more formal pose as the solicitous waiter. Kirikoff rumbled past the table, his small hooded eyes fixed on the glass doors, his thighs shaking under the thin linen of his pleated slacks, his leather flip-flops shuffling across the tiles, his great dimpled ass visibly vibrating with every step.

  “Peter Christian,” said Tomás in an over-the-shoulder whisper as he stepped briskly over to open the door for Kirikoff, “he is part owner of this place.” Kirikoff sailed past Tomás without so much as a sideways glance and disappeared into the cool shadows behind the tinted glass, only to emerge a few seconds later and take his place at the table where he now sat, dismembering a crustacean with the fixed attention of a seasoned glutton.

  Nikki went back to her lunch, a wonderful tomato-and-olive salad that had suddenly become dust and ashes. She pushed the plate away, calmed herself, and dialed a number on her cell phone. The line rang three times, and then Fyke picked up.

  “He’s there?”

  “About an hour,” she said, speaking softly, very aware of the tourists that were gradually filling up the tables all around her, all talking cheerfully in several different languages—Greek, German, Italian, Swiss—their voices combining into one goose-and-gander barnyard gabble, getting louder by the second.

  “You see a car?”

  “No. he came in a boat. Eighty-foot at least. Called Dansante. He’s going by the name of Peter Christian.”

  “What’s he look like?”

  “Moby-Dick in a leisure suit.”

  “You’re sure it’s him?”

  “It’s him. Micah Dalton found a video of him on the Subito. There can’t be two of him in the world. The planet would tip over. Where are you?”

  “I’m over in Piraeus. The harbor—”

  As if to validate this, Nikki heard a huge, blaring blast from Fyke’s end of the line, one of the cruise ships casting off. A moment later, the sound of it came across the water and echoed off the hills to the south.

  “As you can hear,” said Fyke after the deep bass tones had died away, “I’m at the harbor. I’m supposed to be interested in renting a warehouse. I’ve got a list of businesses operating down here. There’s no Cobalt Hydraulic Systems listed anywhere in Athens—anywhere in Greece, for that matter—but there is a warehouse on Kondyli, right across from the main wharf, leased to a company called Northstar Container Logistics, which is a subsidiary of Arc Light Engineering. They own a fleet of cargo tankers, a worldwide outfit. Own something like forty hulls, tankers, containerships, even a couple of yacht transporters—”

  “What’s a yacht transporter?”

  “It’s special hull that can sink below the waterline. They have a big gate at the rear. The owners just drive their yachts through the gate, like entering a lock, then the transporter rises up again under the yacht, and off they go. They used a huge one on the USS Cole. Anyway, something interesting in the records here. Guess what investment bank has a stake in both Northstar Logistics and Cobalt Hydraulic Systems?”

  “Ray. Please.”

  “Okay. Hold on to your garters, my child. Burke and Single.”

  “Burke and Single? That’s . . .”

  “A CIA front, started up by Porter Naumann ten years ago. Still in operation, run out of London. Mikey used to work directly for them, along with Mandy Pownall. Mandy Pownall and Porter Naumann used to be an item.”

  “I . . . I don’t think I understand any of this. Is Kirikoff a double? Is he working for both sides? It makes no sense.”

  “Not yet. But it will. I’m standing down the street from their warehouse right now, and there’s a large tanker truck parked outside with the name Cobalt Hydraulic Systems on the side. So I’d say we’re in the right neighborhood anyway.”

  Nikki looked up as Kirikoff pushed his plate away and lifted a large pink flipper that he waved at someone out of sight.

  “I think our man has company—”

  “Is it Vukov?”

  “No . . . I can’t see . . . Wait a minute . . .”

  She watched as a tall, tanned well-groomed man walked into the dining area. He was gray-haired with a trimmed gray beard, slender, dressed in a lightweight tan suit. He extended a hand and allowed it to be enveloped in Kirikoff ’s greasy flipper with a shiver of distaste.

  “Someone I don’t know. Looks Middle Eastern. They’re ordering . . . coffee. How do you want to handle this?”

  “Has Kirikoff ever seen you?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Can you get any closer?”

  “I can. There are tables inside. But I’ve already had lunch. I’m going to stand out, won’t I?”

  “I don’t want you to sit anywhere near them, but if you can get a cell-phone shot of them together maybe we can figure out who the guy is. Could be totally unrelated, but it’s worth it. But, Nikki, please don’t get caught.”

  “I just love it when you’re stunningly obvious, Ray.”

  FYKE flipped the cell phone shut, stepped out of the crowded side lane where he had been standing, and walked across the large concourse toward the wharf area. The entire harbor, the third-largest port in Europe, was lined with freighters and tankers and containerships, all either taking on or off-loading cargo, derricks whining in the diesel haze. The tarmac under his feet was soft and sticky. Push-carts and trolleys and forklifts hummed around the ships. Thousands of people—some tourists but mainly locals with jobs at the port—milled around, some with purpose, some without, no one showing any interest in the large sunburned man with long black hair and green eyes who was moving through the crowded docklands.

  He took a position across the deck from the entrance to Northstar Container Logistics, where he could see the door and keep an eye on the tanker truck. It was a large stainless-steel tube, glittering and bra
nd-new, with COBALT HYDRAULIC SYSTEMS on the side. He stepped back into the shadows again and lit up a cigarette. Five minutes later, his cell phone buzzed in his shirt pocket.

  UNKNOWN NUMBER

  “Nikki . . . ?”

  “Ray?”

  “Joko?”

  “Yeah. Joko. Where the fuck are you?”

  “Well, I’m not in Tel Aviv.”

  “Good fucking thing. You break my ear bone with fucking champagne bottle. Still can’t hear right. The boys send you kiss.”

  “They out of the hospital?”

  “Jona is but can’t walk yet because his balls all swollen up like cantaloupes. Levi still has to get pins put in, and his collarbone is not so good. Daniel is okay, but he wants his tooth back.”

  “Found it stuck in my knuckle, Joko. Dropped it on the beach somewhere. To what do I owe—”

  “Parcel service drops a box off at Mossad HQ downtown this morning. Inside is this videotape. Not fun to watch.”

  “Jesus. Not Mikey?”

  “No. Galan. Is long tape, my friend. They cut out some bits. Not so much fun, dull stuff. Just Galan dying. But most is here.”

  “You see any faces?”

  “Yeah. Four of them. Two guys, sort of young-looking, wearing black uniforms. They looking pale, and one is sick in corner. Big laugh. Another guy with a Mohawk, older, also in black uniform. But one guy, very bad burns all over his upper body, no face left, only slits, he has his shirt off—big, strong guy—he is doing something to Galan I do not want to talk about. On wall behind him is black flag with green scorpion on it.”

  “Serbs.”

  “Yes.”

  “So it wasn’t Mikey, then?”

  A long pause.

  “Doesn’t look like it. Tape was faked, we think,”

  “You guys aren’t usually so gullible.”

  “Us guys aren’t usually getting fucked over by old comrades either. CIA all of a sudden is cold to us. U.S. is cold. Sucks up to Arabs, bleeds for Palestine, sign statement endorsing Goldstone Report that we commit war crimes in Gaza. Even join fucking Human Rights panel at UN. We feel the cold, we resent this. Makes us cranky. But about Micah, yes, I am sorry. I was wrong. I should have known better.”