Scorpion Winter

by Andrew Kaplan

  “He wanted revenge?”

  “Big-time,” Harris said. “He was already the head of the SBU and a power in the Svoboda party. He wanted to do something dramatic, but we changed his mind. We convinced him he could hurt them more and be infinitely more valuable where he was and as he was.

  “Don’t you see what we had? He was the ultimate AOI,” meaning Agent of Influence. “The holy fucking grail of intelligence. Not only could he direct Ukraine, the largest country in Europe, in the direction we set, but he was a direct pipeline into the SBU, the SVR, and right to the very top of the Kremlin itself!” He looked at Scorpion. “Gorobets is the single most important asset, the most important secret, this country has. And you were about to destroy him by exposing him on YouTube and TV! We had no choice.”

  Scorpion looked around the bar. It was the in-between hour, between postlunch and happy hour, and except for Harris’s men by the doorway and one group by the fireplace, they were the last customers.

  “Why did Gorobets really save Iryna? Was that you?”

  Harris nodded. “After the election, Kozhanovskiy is history. Gorobets will trump up some charge against him—or maybe he won’t have to, Christ knows there’s more than enough corruption in Ukraine to go around—and put him into prison. We need a viable opposition. Iryna Shevchenko is perfect. Good-looking, idealistic, daughter of a national hero. You couldn’t order up better out of central casting. Maybe she goes to prison for a while, but if she didn’t exist, we’d have to invent her.”

  “But if she were to actually try to win an election, you’d see she’d lose?”

  Harris threw a credit card down and motioned the waitress over. She came and took the card and the check.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “The asset is more important than the country.”

  “Exactly.” Harris put his hand on Scorpion’s arm. Scorpion looked at it, and Harris removed his hand. “For what it’s worth, the President said it’s the hardest thing he’s ever had to do. To knowingly allow an American who is innocent and an absolute hero to be tortured and put to death in order to save a nasty son of a bitch because he’s too valuable to lose. He said he had to think long and hard. It challenged his sense of who he really is. He says he still thinks about it.”

  Scorpion put his drink down.

  “Yeah, well you can tell him for me to go—” He stopped. “I don’t give a damn what you tell him. So who’s running Gorobets? Not Kyiv Station? Too iffy.”

  Harris nodded. “You’re right.” The waitress came. He signed the slip and retrieved his credit card. They waited till she left. “I’m sure a smart guy like you can figure it out.”

  Scorpion snorted. It was in front of him all along and he hadn’t seen it.

  “Shaefer,” he said. Bucharest was close enough, and yet not under the microscope like anything Gorobets did in Kyiv. He realized that was how Akhnetzov had gotten to him in the first place. Shaefer wanted to send in the best agent they could get, to aid and abet Gorobets while forestalling a Russian takeover. They needed someone who could stop a disaster from getting out of control and that might have led to the end of NATO or even war. Scorpion hated to admit it, but if he had been in Harris’s and Shaefer’s place, playing for the stakes they were playing for, he might have done the same thing.

  “So are we done?” Harris said, pulling his things together to get ready to leave. “Nobody wants to kill anybody? All debts squared? I’m told Akhnetzov paid in full.”

  “Where’s my quid pro quo?” Scorpion said.

  Harris folded his arms across his chest.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “Yemen.”

  “Christ. It’s a powder keg. I don’t suppose I could ask you not to—” Harris stopped.

  “You could ask,” Scorpion said.

  Chapter Forty

  Amran

  Yemen

  The four young men danced in a line, their old-fashioned muskets slung on their shoulders, waving their curved jambiya knives to the beat of the drums. They chanted the words of a tribal melody played by the drummers, an old man with an oud, and a barefoot musician with a meter-long khallool flute. Others in the crowd sitting on the floor joined in, a chorus of harsh male voices.

  “We are the Hashidi

  Born of bitterness and hate

  We are the nails driven into solid rock

  We are the flames of Hell

  He who defies us will be burnt.”

  There were cheers and the sounds of men banging the butts of their AK-47s and other weapons on the stone floor to show their approval, and shots were fired in the air outside. If the implied threat of the display troubled the bulky man in the military uniform of a Yemeni colonel seated on a pillow next to the full-bearded Sheikh al-Ahmari of the Hashid, he didn’t show it. The colonel wore the shaal turban of a sayyid, a descendent of the Prophet, of the Bakil. The Bakil were deadly rivals of the Hashid tribe, a fact that had been noted by every man in the room. The colonel was also director of the CSO, the Yemeni government’s internal security force, and thus doubly powerful.

  “It is well, ahwadi, my brothers. Inshallah,” God willing, “we can make a truce between the Hashid and we of the Bakil,” Colonel Sayed al-Zuhrahi said. “The current conflict between the tribes and the government is in no one’s interest.”

  “Inshallah, but we of the Hashid are secure here in Wadi Qa’a al-Bawn. What is offered?” Sheikh al-Ahmari said. He gestured as a naadil came in with a tray of ginger coffee in thimble-sized cups and little bint al sahn honey cakes. The naadil had dark skin, a bad overbite with rotted, yellowing teeth and strange gray eyes. The naadil placed the tray on the floor in front of them, but instead of leaving, squatted beside a group of Hashid tribesmen cradling their AK-47s by the open window, their cheeks bulging with qat.

  “If the Hashid and the Bakil were to unite, Sana’a would be ours. We could rule Yemen,” Colonel al-Zuhrahi said. The alliance he was proposing would end a long-simmering conflict between the two tribes. It would also create the most powerful player in the cockpit of competing factions and lawlessness that Yemen had become.

  “We—or al Qaeda? For whom do you speak, sayyid, my brother?” Sheikh al-Ahmari said, looking at his advisors seated cross-legged on the floor, who nodded approvingly. He was challenging Colonel al-Zuhrahi to acknowledge that the Bakil tribe, like the Abidah, had been so infiltrated by al Qaeda that the alliance he was proposing would, in effect, hand control of Yemen over to AQAP, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

  “Truly, what difference, my brothers?” The colonel smiled. “Who would dare oppose us?”

  “You will bring the Amerikayeena”—the Americans—“and their drones down upon us,” said one of the sheikh’s advisors, an older man with a white beard and a vertical scar from an old wound that seemed to split his face into two unmatched halves.

  “We do not fear the Amerikayeena,” Colonel al-Zuhrahi said.

  “We fear nothing. Not the Amerikayeena nor the AQAP either. But the Amerikayeena pay well,” making the sign for money. “What do you—or should one say AQAP—offer?” Sheikh al-Ahmari asked.

  “We would give the Hashid an exclusive access to all the qat trade of Wadi Dar and the highlands. Together with AQAP, we would control all the qat trade in Yemen and Somalia.”

  “Inshallah, this is something to be considered,” al-Ahmari said, stroking his beard. “But let us drink, my brother,” and he picked up one of the cups and offered it to the colonel. As he did so, the gray-eyed naadil came over and whispered something into the colonel’s ear. The naadil did not serve the colonel as might be expected, but instead walked on out of the room.

  Colonel al-Zuhrahi pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and looked at it. “Wa’ alif’a afoo, a thousand pardons, brother, I have a call I must take,” he said, getting up. It’s the president’s office, he mouthed to Sheikh al-Ahmari, pointing at the phone. He walked quickly out of the room, followed by two of his sol
diers, both wearing the turban shaals of the Bakil.

  “What is this ibn himaar,” son of a donkey, “up to?” Sheikh al-Ahmari said as the colonel left the room, looking at his fellow tribesmen.

  Two of the Hashid tribesmen who were near the window unslung their AK-47s and followed the colonel’s men out of the room. There was the sound of men running and shouting, and tribesmen standing by the window saw Colonel al-Zuhrahi and his men run out of the building to a waiting Humvee. The naadil was with them.

  The Humvee started with a roar and soon was twisting through the narrow winding streets of the town, dirt streets without sidewalks designed for donkeys, not cars. They barreled down the road in a cloud of dust toward the Bab al-Kabeer gate in the city wall.

  “You’re sure of this?” Colonel al-Zuhrahi said to Scorpion, who was still wearing the shaal turban of a lowly naadil of the Hashid tribe.

  “Cyanide. I saw the cook put it in. Was there not a scent of bitter almonds in the coffee?”

  “I did smell something,” the colonel replied, and nodded.

  “Another moment, sayyid,” Scorpion said, “and that cup of coffee would have been your last.”

  “The Hashid are all lying khaneeth queers,” the soldier in the front passenger seat said. “Sooner or later they would have betrayed us.”

  “Of course,” Colonel al-Zuhrahi snapped. “We expected no less. But we will put it out that they have agreed to join the Bakil, just to see who or what crawls out from under the rocks.” He turned to Scorpion. “You are not Hashidi. Your Arabic is of the Peninsula,” he said, meaning Arabia.

  Scorpion nodded. “Of the Mutayr.”

  “You are of AQAP? Who sent you?”

  “You know who sent me, sayyid,” Scorpion said, his eyes boring into al-Zuhrahi, suggesting it was Qasim bin Jameel, the leader of AQAP. “It was to protect you. If I hadn’t risked my life, you would be with the virgins even now.”

  “So you say,” Colonel al-Zuhrahi said.

  Scorpion nodded again, his eyes scanning the road ahead. They were approaching the checkpoint. Hashid tribesmen with rifles were in and around a pickup truck parked across the middle of the road as a roadblock. They must have been alerted, Scorpion thought.

  “Don’t stop,” Colonel al-Zuhrahi ordered.

  The Humvee raced directly at the pickup. As soon as the Hashid realized it wasn’t going to stop, they started shooting at it as it came toward them. At the last second the Humvee swerved around the pickup, bullets pinging off the metal and nicking the bulletproof glass. The Humvee was armored. That hadn’t been part of the intel, Scorpion thought, as they raced out of the town and down the road toward Sana’a. The soldier in the passenger seat leaned out the window and fired his M-4 rifle back at the checkpoint to slow them down. Looking back, Scorpion saw the tribesmen jumping into the pickup.

  Abruptly, the Humvee slewed to a stop. The soldier with the M-4 jumped out and placed a small IED in the middle of the road. He got back into the Humvee and they drove on. Scorpion looked back as the pickup approached that place in the road. The soldier pressed his cell phone and the IED exploded, sending the pickup flying and in flames. They drove on.

  For several minutes no one spoke, then Colonel al-Zuhrahi turned toward Scorpion. “If you indeed saved me, you will be rewarded. But first we’ll check you out with Qasim when we get back to Sana’a. If you are not who you say, better for you not to have been born.”

  Scorpion nodded. He spotted an outcrop of rock ahead and looked around quickly. There was no one following them. The desert stretched empty in every direction to the distant barren hills.

  “If you doubt me, sayyid, stop the Humvee here,” he said, indicating the rocks, his hand slipping unobtrusively down to his calf, where his Glock was holstered. “Those Hashidi dogs know now I am not one of them. Let me out and leave me. I’ll be dead within the hour.”

  “Pull over there,” Colonel al-Zuhrahi ordered, gesturing toward the rocks. “We won’t wait till Sana’a. Let’s find out now.”

  As the Humvee rolled to a stop, Scorpion whipped out the Glock and fired twice, killing the driver with a shot in the head and the soldier through the back of the front seat. He pointed the gun at Colonel al-Zuhrahi.

  “El’ churmuzh!” he said. Get out! He motioned to the colonel with the gun. Al-Zuhrahi got slowly out of the Humvee. Scorpion followed, shoving him toward the outcropping of rocks to a spot where they were no longer visible from the road.

  He looked around once again. There was only desert. He didn’t have much time. The Hashidi would be coming any moment now. He fired a bullet into the colonel’s knee. Al-Zuhrahi screamed and fell on his side. Scorpion bent over, put the muzzle of the gun against the other knee and fired again. Al-Zuhrahi moaned. Scorpion pulled the colonel’s jambiya knife from his belt and took it out of its sheath.

  “What is this? Who are you?” al-Zuhrahi asked.

  “Do you remember the American, McElroy? The one whose skin they undressed?”

  “I had nothing to do with it. That was bin Jameel! You know how they are!” al-Zuhrahi said.

  “And what you are, sayyid.”

  Al-Zuhrahi looked angrily at Scorpion from where he lay curled on the ground.

  “There was no cyanide, was there?” he asked.

  “Only paranoia.”

  “What did I smell?”

  “I ground some almonds and put it in the coffee. From so little a thing is a conspiracy made.”

  “I’m hurt, you son of a donkey,” al-Zuhrahi gasped. “What is this about?”

  “You’re the director of the CSO, aren’t you?”

  “Why ask if you know?”

  “I was in the room just now. I heard you myself, Colonel. So whose side are you on? The government? The Bakil? Al Qaeda? All three? Or maybe just yourself?”

  “As is everyone,” al-Zuhrahi said. “Why are you doing this?” he groaned.

  “There was another American. Peterman. You tracked someone to a meeting with him, didn’t you?”

  “Umka sharmota,” al-Zuhrahi growled, cursing Scorpion’s mother for a whore.

  “Who’d you track?”

  “Someone from Jebel Nuqum. I don’t know who.”

  “Who was it?”

  “If you are going to kill me, do it. I know nothing,” al-Zuhrahi said.

  Scorpion kicked his knee. Al-Zuhrahi screamed.

  “Who was it?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Was it someone new?”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  Scorpion kicked his knee again.

  “Was it?”

  “Of course someone new,” al-Zuhrahi snapped. “Another American. That was of immediate interest.”

  Ramis, Scorpion thought.

  “You had someone put the Trojan horse software on Peterman’s laptop. Then after the ambush in Ma’rib failed, you had him killed.”

  “So you say.”

  “How did you know Peterman was CIA? His laptop?”

  “You’ll never know,” al-Zuhrahi said grimly. The realization that he was not going to survive had hit him. His expression was set.

  “It was your men who killed him, wasn’t it?” Scorpion said. “One last thing. What do you know about Scorpion?”

  “A jinn. A name to frighten children. He doesn’t exist.”

  “You knew Peterman had met with Scorpion?” Scorpion said, kicking al-Zuhrahi’s knee again, causing him to gasp in agony.

  “We knew it was on his laptop! That’s all, inshallah!”

  “This Scorpion, what does he look like?” Scorpion said, putting the Glock back in his calf holster and taking the prosthesis with the bad teeth out of his mouth. He took out a packet of makeup remover wipes and began removing the dark skin coloring from his face.

  “I don’t know,” al-Zuhrahi said, staring wide-eyed as Scorpion wiped the makeup off. There was no flicker of recognition in his eyes, Scorpion thought excitedly. Al-Zuhrahi didn’t know what Scorpion looked
like. His identity was safe.

  He finished removing the color from his face and hands and put the used wipes and prosthesis in his pocket. Then he moved behind al-Zuhrahi and knelt on his knees. After knocking al-Zuhrahi’s shaal off, he pulled his head up by his hair, the jambiya knife in his other hand. The steel blade gleamed in the sun.

  “Wait,” al-Zuhrahi said desperately. From his voice, it was clear he knew he was about to die. “Who are you doing this for?”

  “Myself,” Scorpion said.

  “What are you talking about? I’ve never seen you before.”

  “I had to be sure of that. But there’s something else.” Scorpion hesitated. He had never put it into words before. In a way, the fact that he was telling someone who was about to die made being honest imperative. “When someone on your team is lost, even if you didn’t know him or even if you couldn’t stand him, you can’t just let it go. It’s why men seek Allah. Because things need to be made right.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” Scorpion said, thinking, This is for McElroy. And Peterman. And Alyona. And me, drawing the curved edge of the blade across al-Zuhrahi’s throat.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Constanta

  Romania

  The two men approached from opposite directions on the promenade by the Casino, a massive art nouveau building on a promontory overlooking the Black Sea. The promenade was along the seafront with nothing else around, so it was easy to spot if there were any watchers or tails. The two men were alone as they walked toward each other. The wind blew off the choppy waves, sending a chill spray over the deserted seawall. Shaefer wore an overcoat and a black sheepskin hat, Scorpion a Burberry raincoat. For a moment they stood facing each other.

  “Are we still friends?” Shaefer said.

  “Let’s walk,” Scorpion said.

  They walked side by side around the curve of the promontory, past hotels and palm trees swaying in the wind. It was cold and there were no sailboats out on the water, only the distant silhouette of a freighter on the horizon. In summer, Constanta was a crowded resort town, but in winter the city had the deserted feel of a carnival that had closed.