Scorpion Deception s-4

by Andrew Kaplan

  Scorpion got the text from Glenn half an hour later.

  Stopped. Rudenplatz. Hair salon. The girlfriend, Oksana, had parked in or near the Rudenplatz in Zurich’s Old Town and gone into a hair salon.

  Send Chrissie in after her, he texted back.

  She’s already on it, Glenn responded. Good girl, Scorpion thought.

  It didn’t take long. Oksana made a call from the ladies’ room in the hair salon. She spoke the single sentence in German that had whole departments at both the CIA and NSA working overtime, then hung up. Fortunately, Chrissie had been at the sink outside the stall and done a swipe, technology that enabled you to hack someone’s cell phone with an appropriately configured cell phone just by coming within a few meters of them. Once she had the message, Chrissie linked it with NSA-based SIGINT; it was “slaved,” to be able to eavesdrop on everything said or done with that person’s cell phone.

  Within minutes the MP3 file of Oksana’s call in German had been forwarded via satellite to the Black House, the NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. Ten minutes later both Scorpion and Shaefer had the original message in German and the translation. Shaefer texted Scorpion that she had made the call to a cell phone in Barcelona, Spain.

  The business heard on the cell phone about cutting the grass was probably their equivalent of a Flagstaff-type message, indicating to whomever was running Norouzi that he’d been taken in for questioning on the Bern attack. Or maybe Norouzi was pulling the pilot eject handle, telling them to pull him out. He’d leave that to the cryptologists, Scorpion thought. Bottom line, it was a distress call. The key was the Gardener, whoever or whatever that was. Shaefer had indicated that according to Rabinowich, Langley had never heard of the Gardener.

  Shaefer had texted that pikl @ ful boyle, the Pickle Factory, insider slang for the CIA, was at full boil, running around like crazy trying to come up with something.

  Rabinowich indicated that Harris suspected the Gardener-presumed to be a previously unknown spymaster-was the person behind the Bern attack. Scorpion could already see where Harris was going with that. If he could pin the blame for Bern on the Gardener-and if he, Scorpion, could identify who this Gardener was, preferably someone in the Iranian government-the generals and the hawks would be able to bomb Iran, and no one at the UN or anywhere else would raise a finger against it.

  “Find the Gardener,” was the Company’s new imperative. Their top priority, Shaefer had told him.

  “Maybe he didn’t do it. Maybe it’s a cover and there is no Gardener,” Scorpion said. That wasn’t the least of what was troubling him.

  “Find him anyway,” Shaefer replied.

  At Zurich Airport, waiting for his flight to Barcelona, Scorpion watched a TV monitor showing a U.S. aircraft carrier moving into the Persian Gulf. The announcer looked meaningfully into the camera and pronounced: “Iranische DNA. Heist das, Krieg?”

  He had just enough German to know he was saying: Iranian DNA. Does this mean war?

  War, he thought. The Iranians had to be feeling it too. He had to talk to Shaefer. As the gate loudspeaker announced his flight, he held back, taking out his L-3 SME PED device and dialing. Shaefer picked up at the first ring.

  “Mendelssohn,” Shaefer, a music lover, answered, using the agreed-upon code name. His voice was faintly slurred by the encryption on the line.

  “Flagstaff,” Scorpion said. “Listen. We need to pull the Gnomes. Just use COMINT.”

  “Negative,” Shaefer said in such a way that Scorpion sensed he had already been arguing with Langley about it. “Soames says no.”

  “Soames? How the hell did he get into this?”

  “Harris had to deal with- Never mind. There’s a pissing contest going on with the alphabet soups.” Scorpion could only imagine the turf wars as the different agencies, the CIA, the DIA, SOCOM, the State Department’s INR, and for all he knew, the Girl Scouts, fought over the operation.

  “I don’t give a damn,” he said through clenched teeth, glancing around to make sure he wasn’t overheard. “Pull ’em. It isn’t going to take whoever’s behind this two minutes to figure out that the Iranian Embassy never sent a lawyer to free Homer.” As it was, they were damn lucky Apple-cake was safely on a flight back to Stockholm.

  “That point’s been raised,” Shaefer said evenly, and Scorpion sensed the battle behind the scenes. He imagined Shaefer sitting in front of his computer in his office in Bucharest, or maybe he was still at the safe house in Zug, staring out at the view of the hills and the town and the lake. “Soames says what if Barcelona’s a feint?”

  “Is he completely insane?” Scorpion growled. “Homey’s so scared shitless he has to send his girlfriend to broadcast an SOS from a hair salon in the Rudenplatz, and this idiot thinks it’s a feint?”

  “Politics. He’s covering his ass. He wants the Gnomes here so whatever happens, it won’t come back to bite the great you-know-who,” and Scorpion knew he was talking about Harris. In the background, he heard the gate loudspeaker announce the final boarding call for his flight.

  “Jesus,” Scorpion breathed. “Didn’t that jerk go to high school? Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Listen, there’s some protocol here. I’m the field op, the one who requested them in the first place. This is an order. Pull them out now!”

  “They don’t want to be pulled. What if someone contacts Homey?” Shaefer said. It sounded like Shaefer wasn’t sure. He was being pulled in two directions.

  “Do it,” Scorpion said, ending the call, and immediately calling Mathias Schwegler.

  There were street sounds in the background when Schwegler answered. He must be walking, Scorpion thought.

  “Flagstaff,” he said. “There’s a storm coming. I told Shaefer to pull the Gnomes.”

  “It appears there is confusion on this,” Schwegler said carefully, clearly aware of the disagreement going on back at Langley.

  “I’m the field op. You don’t want your people walking in a mine field.” In the background, he could hear the final boarding call for his flight.

  “My feelings also. Ein genuss, my friend,” Schwegler said. It’s been a pleasure.

  “See you around,” Scorpion said, ending the call and slipping onto the boarding bridge as they were about to close the gate.

  Flying into Barcelona at dusk, he could see the strings of lights on the boulevards and along the line of the shore, the spires of the Sagrada Familia church and the phallic shape of the Agbar Tower lit up like gold against a pink and purple sky.

  He had a bad feeling about leaving the Gnomes behind in Zurich. Soames didn’t get it. They were doing 24/7 surveillance on Norouzi, which made them easy to spot. And they were so obviously Americans, they stuck out like African-Americans at a Mormon convention. They couldn’t even speak German. It made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. All he could do was hope to God he was wrong and that Shaefer was able to change Soames’s mind, or even better, get to Harris and pull them out.

  The mission was getting to him. He thought about pulling out himself. It was all too improvised, too catch as can. Too much could go bad very fast-and no time to fix it. Think of something else, he told himself. Think of something good.

  He leaned back in his seat and thought about Sandrine. He pictured her back in Africa outside the hospital tent at dusk, the refugee families around cooking fires, an acacia tree in the distance. A fantasy, he thought. She could be anywhere. For all he knew, she had gone back to her millionaire fiance. Be a damned sight more sensible than waiting around for him. Except he didn’t think she had. That wasn’t her.

  The flight attendant announced on the intercom in Spanish, German, and English to prepare for landing. The plane made a wide turn as it descended to approach the airport. Through the window, he could see lights of the islands of Menorca and Mallorca against the darkening sky. Out of habit, he glanced at his watch: 6:14 P.M. local time.

  He had at most eight or nine days, probably less.

  CHAPTER
TEN

  Zurich-Hongg,

  Switzerland

  For Scale, the problem was the twenty-four-hour surveillance. They-he assumed it was the Swiss NDB, although for all he knew it was the CIA-were watching Norouzi so closely that, as the Persian saying went, they had eyes in their asses.

  During a drive-by earlier that day, Scale had spotted not only the parked VW with watchers, but security cameras set up for complete coverage of the apartment house in the Leimbach quarter where Norouzi was holed up with his Ukrainian whore. They also likely had surveillance equipment and maybe even a watcher hiding on the hill behind the apartment house.

  Problem one: Norouzi had sent them a message. So how were they to get a message back to him? They were not only watching him round-the-clock, he had to assume they had an invisible net over him to bug all electronic communications. The Swiss and the Americans were good at that sort of thing, he acknowledged. Any kind of call, e-mail, text, anything electronic was impossible.

  Problem two: even if they did get a message through, would Norouzi show up? And if he did, what to do about the watchers?

  Problem three: what to do about the Ukrainian whore?

  He thought about the apartment house. They were holed up in there. Did either of them go out at all? Of course. The whore went to the Migros supermarket every day to shop.

  Scale smiled to himself as he looked up the hill through binoculars toward Norouzi’s apartment house on Maneggpromenade and took out his cell phone. He had the solution. All he needed was a junkie, preferably female; less threatening.

  He picked the girl up on Langstrasse, the main street of Zurich’s red light district. At night it was filled with the lights of bars, clubs, passing trams, and men of all nationalities crowding the sidewalks, but the morning belonged to the junkies and prostitutes too desperate for a fix to wait for nighttime. She was thin, a Brazilian with long dark hair and coffee-colored skin, arms scarred by needle marks, and if she hadn’t been desperate, she wouldn’t have been working the street at eleven in the morning for a quick forty Swiss francs.

  Scale offered her a hundred.

  “For a hundred I do anything you want, schatz,” she said, inclining her head toward a nearby hotel with a neon sign, pale in the morning light, that read THE VEGAS. “Whatever you want. Mouth, anal, I’ll let you hit me,” she whispered, pressing her thin body against him.

  “I need you to come with me,” he said in English. “Only for a few hours.”

  “What is this?” she said, drawing back. “Are you a bulle?” German slang for cop.

  “Look at me,” Scale said, standing there. Small, wiry, Middle Eastern. “I’m not even Swiss.”

  “What do you want?” she said, her eyes narrow with suspicion.

  “I need you just to give something to someone. A woman.”

  “Give what?”

  He showed her. A chocolate candy bar called “Tourist” he had spent a quarter hour rewrapping carefully so it looked like it had never been opened. He put it back in his pocket.

  “Just that? A hundred?” she said.

  He nodded.

  “I can’t wait, schatz. Give me the money now,” she said, her pink tongue darting between her lips. Scale knew if he gave her any money, he’d never see her again.

  “Get your-” He hesitated. “You get whatever you need, but I come with you. Then you come with me and I’ll give you the rest of the money.”

  “You don’t know these jungs,” she said, holding out her hand, implying the guys she was talking about were dangerous. “Give me the money. I’ll be right back. I’ll give you a blasen,” meaning a blowjob. “No charge, schatz,” her hand caressing and squeezing his crotch. He grabbed her wrist and started to twist and apply pressure. She cried out and tried to pull away, but he held her hand imprisoned in his powerful oversized hand like a vise.

  “A hundred and fifty,” he said. “Fifty now-we go wherever you need to, but together-and a hundred after you give her the candy.”

  An hour later, after she’d had her shot of heroin in the unisex bathroom of a Langstrasse bar lit by blue light so it would be easy for junkies to find their vein, they were in a Migros supermarket in the Leimbach district pretending to shop. Maziar had called him to let him know the Ukrainian woman, Norouzi’s mistress, was on the way.

  He watched in the overhead aisle mirrors as the Brazilian girl-Yara, she said her name was-walked by the canned vegetables section for the third time, her hand in her handbag holding the candy bar. He had told her to pretend she didn’t know him.

  Norouzi’s blond whore, Oksana, entered the supermarket, and he had to force himself to ignore her. His nerves felt tight as violin strings. He watched her go to the produce section. Yara paid no attention to the blond woman. Stupid junkie whore, he thought. Get her before she leaves.

  He just started toward Yara when she turned and walked over to the mistress, Oksana. He watched them out of the corner of his eye in the aisle mirror. Two whores, he thought, watching Yara take the candy bar out of her handbag and hold it out to give to the Ukrainian.

  Make it fast, you stupid whore, he thought, as a big man wearing a Burberry came into the supermarket and picked up a shopping basket. An American, by his shoes and crew cut, Scale thought. CIA madar sag son of a bitch. So they were the ones who had arrested Norouzi. It wasn’t the NDB; it was the CIA after them because of Bern. He would have to alert the Gardener.

  He watched Yara in the mirror say in German what he had told her to say:

  “A friend says Hooshang likes chocolate.”

  The woman, Oksana, looked around nervously then took the candy bar and slipped it into her pocket. The two women walked away from each other. Scale didn’t think the American, still on the canned goods aisle, had spotted the exchange. They were all over Norouzi, he thought. It was going to be difficult, watching as Yara, throwing him a sideways glance, walked out of the store. For a second he thought the American might go after her. Scale moved over and bumped into him as if by accident.

  “Entschuldigen Sie, mein Herr,” Scale muttered, and paying for a pack of cigarettes, headed out the door. He waited a minute in case the American followed, but the idiot stayed as he had been taught with his primary target-the Ukrainian woman-inside the supermarket. When Scale was sure the American wasn’t coming out yet, he went around the corner where Yara was waiting, hugging herself although it wasn’t cold. He wondered if she needed another fix so soon. She held out her hand for the money and he handed it to her, then watched her count it.

  “Do you want blasen now? A quick one. No extra charge,” she said, pocketing the money and eyeing a doorway near the parking area behind the supermarket.

  “I need you to forget you ever saw me,” Scale said.

  “This is easy, schatz,” she said, already walking toward the tram stop. “I never look at your faces anyway.”

  From his position behind a fallen log at the edge of a clearing, Scale scanned the approaches through his night vision goggles. There had been a brief drizzle earlier that afternoon and the log was still wet. He could smell the damp leaves and earth. He studied the small reflector he had set on a stake in the ground in the center of the clearing for distance sighting for their weapons. Then he verified the cell phone numbers for each of the three IEDs he had set, planted in brush beside the hiking trails. Done. He pulled his sleeve back to check his watch. Twelve minutes to go.

  The meet was for ten that night. Scale had written a message to Norouzi in Farsi on a slip of tissue-thin, water-soluble paper, so it could easily be disposed of or swallowed in seconds. He’d put it inside the Tourist candy bar wrapper:

  Park-e Bergholz. 300m shomal Kappenbuhlstr; Sa’at 22-e. B.

  Bergholz Park. 300 meters north of Kappenbuhlstrasse; 2200 hours-10:00 P.M.-and the Farsi letter be, B, for Baghban, suggesting it was coming from the Gardener himself. If that didn’t make Norouzi want to shit himself and ensure that he would show, nothing would. The park was a large wooded area of bike
and hiking trails in Hongg, a western suburb in Zurich’s District 10, south of the A1 motorway.

  Scale knew he would have to deal with the CIA watchers. Norouzi would probably try to lose them in a shopping mall or movie theater, but he didn’t know how good Norouzi was and had to assume they would still be on Norouzi when he tried to make the meet. The question was, how many? Best guess was a front and back box, four watchers, but he would plan for more. There was also the matter of Norouzi’s whore, Oksana. She would have to be dealt with at the same time, though there was virtually no chance she would be at the meet.

  Scale took off his goggles and checked the sensors he had placed on the approach trails. He guessed that Norouzi would be taking the tram, not his car, which meant his most likely approach would be to get off at the tram stop on Michelstrasse and walk to Kappenbuhlstrasse, where the entrance to the hiking trail was located.

  Scale knew that if he-or the CIA seyyedan bastard agents-took another route, his plan wouldn’t work and within the hour he would most likely be dead. Nothing he could do about that, he thought. He had four men in place-plus himself, the IEDs, and the element of surprise. And he had sent Danush to take care of the whore. It should be sufficient, he decided. It would have to be.

  His cell phone vibrated. One-word text messages from Maziar, then Armin, then Ebrahim, saying yes, meaning they were in position. Nothing from Mohammad. He texted a question mark to Mohammad. No answer. He was about to text Ebrahim to check on him when Mohammad texted back that he was in position on the opposite side of the clearing. Scale scanned the trees on that side through his night goggles. At first he saw nothing. Then he spotted the sound suppressor mounted on the HK G36K assault rifle muzzle peering out of the foliage. Inshallah, God willing, he said to himself.

  He opened the laptop and saw them. The sensors were working. There were indications of someone, a dot on the screen, coming up the trail from Kappenbuhlstrasse, followed a hundred meters behind on the trail by two more moving dots. If there were more, there was no sign of them. He closed the laptop and adjusted the night goggles, his HK rifle, and Beretta with the sound suppressor ready. Idiot, he thought, wondering if Norouzi could really be so stupid as to not know he had CIA agents trailing him.