The Scorpio Illusion

by Robert Ludlum

  “But the man’s dead!” exclaimed Poole. “What about all those dead bodies? How the hell are they going to keep all that quiet?”

  “Fortunately, only one patrol car went out there, and Stevens reached police headquarters a few minutes before the two patrolmen called in. He put the clamps on all communications relative to Van Nostrand’s death, backing it up with something called an ‘alternating data-based security code’ forwarded by naval intelligence.”

  “Just like that?”

  “That, Lieutenant, is apparently the way things are done these days. You don’t say ‘keep it quiet’ anymore, computers do that. You can’t be in the spook business unless you’re a walking manual of high technology. No wonder I’m history.”

  “You’ve done pretty well so far,” said Cathy. “Better than anyone else.”

  “I’d like to, I’d really like to. If only somehow to give something back to Cooke and Ardisonne, two other ‘has-beens.’… God damn that bitch and everyone she deals with! I want those bastards!”

  “You’re gettin’ closer, Tye, close even.”

  Close, thought Hawthorne, taking off his cotton bush jacket now stained with sweat and dirt. Close …? Oh, yes, he had been close, so close he had held her in his arms, making love as if the fragments of a shattered dream had been pieced together, dark night turned into a glorious dawn, the sun bursting over the horizon permitting a new and wonderful day. God damn you, Dominique! Liar, liar, liar. All you ever said to me were lies. But I’ll find you, bitch, and blind you as you blinded me, make you feel the pain I feel. God damn you, Dominique, I spoke of love and felt love; you spoke of love and there was only deceit. Worse—far worse—at the roots there had to be hatred, the essential loathing the user has for the used.

  “But where is she, Jackson?” Tyrell asked out loud. “That’s the real question, isn’t it?”

  “I think you’re overlooking something that’s terribly important,” Neilsen interrupted. “You’ve established that she’s here, this close to Washington, so the President’s security measures will be raised to the zenith. How can she possibly penetrate that shield?”

  “Because the man can’t stop doing his job.”

  “I thought you said all appearances, even local trips, were called off. He’s isolated, quarantined, a prisoner in his own house.”

  “I know all that. What bothers me is that she knows it too, but it’s not stopping her.”

  “I see what you mean. The leaks, the killings—Charlie, Miami; even you on Saba and here with Van Nostrand. Who are these people who support her? For God’s sake, why?”

  “I wish I knew the answer—the answers to both questions.” Hawthorne sat down on the bed, then lay back on the pillow, his hands behind his head. “I have to go back, back to Amsterdam and all the goddamned stupid games that were played, the casualties that were never made public, no body counts there, pal.… A leans on B for one reason; B on C for another, seemingly unrelated; C on D for something off-the-wall with rearranged words, and finally D reaches E, who penetrates because he or she can, and it’s what A wanted in the first place. The chain is so convoluted, you can’t follow it.”

  “Apparently, you did,” said Neilsen, a touch of admiration in her voice. “Your service record made it quite clear: You were outstanding.”

  “Sometimes, not always, and mostly by accident.”

  Poole was sitting at the desk, running his hand through his light brown hair. “I wrote down what you just said about A, B, C, D and E, and since I was pretty alert in math, includin’ geometry, trigonometry, calculus, and a touch of nuclear physics, were you sayin’ that these people in Amsterdam were programmed in differently calibrated spheres? Like in disassociated quadrants?”

  “I haven’t the vaguest idea what you mean.”

  “But you just said it.”

  “Then I’ll stand by it. What did I say?”

  “That none of the letters knew exactly what was goin’ on except the first and the last.”

  “It’s oversimplified but essentially correct. It’s called using blinds, contacts who might sense something but have no specifics to reveal, and usually don’t suspect anything.”

  “What makes them do it?”

  “Greed, Lieutenant, ultimately money. Either up front or with information they can use for extortion and even more money.”

  “You think that’s who’s behind this Bajaratt?” asked Cathy.

  “Not really, the core’s too organized, too powerful. But that core—the nucleus—has to use others for loose and not so loose ends; for things they don’t want traced, always careful so that if they are traced, those being used can’t lead back to the major players.”

  “Like a certain Alfred Simon in Puerto Rico?” suggested Poole.

  “And an air controller who was always there but whose name Simon didn’t know?” said Neilsen.

  “Both up to their necks in Little Girl Blood and her suppliers,” agreed Tyrell. “Each controlled, each expendable; and if Simon was an example, neither could offer anything of substance.”

  “But he did,” objected Cathy. “He gave you a name, two names.”

  “One a washout, a highly respected D.C. attorney who should put a psychiatrist on retainer, but other than that, zip … and the second was an accident, Major. I wasn’t kidding before; my ‘outstanding’ service record is filled with accidents, just like the majority of my more successful former colleagues. A word, a phrase, a casual remark that somehow stays with you, and somewhere down the road an image fits. There’s a click in your head—another accident—because the odds against your remembering are loaded dice not in your favor.”

  “That was Neptune, wasn’t it?” said Andrew Jackson Poole.

  “Yes, it was. Simon mentioned something to the effect that his manipulator, Mr. Neptune, looked like he stepped out of an ad in Gentleman’s Quarterly, or a magazine like that. By God, he was right. Van Nostrand, even when he was about to have someone killed in front of his eyes, was a fashion plate.”

  “I wouldn’t call your remembering an accident,” said Neilsen. “I’d call it training.”

  “I didn’t say I was an idiot, I was merely pointing out the odds. A short, garbled statement by a blindsided owner of a whorehouse so hung over he weaved like a spinnaker in half-dead air. It’s not the sort of thing you write home about. As I said, just chance.”

  Hawthorne lay down on the bed and closed his eyes. He was dead tired, his legs still fired with pain, his arms aching, his head throbbing. He was vaguely aware of Cathy and Poole’s good-natured squabbling over the room-service menu, but his thoughts were still focused on accidents. The accidents of his life, so many accidents, beginning with the one that had brought him into the navy. He was a college graduate who had switched majors so frequently he invariably forgot which one it was if questioned, finally ending up with astronomy. “Why not try single-stitch rug weaving?” his father, the professor, had asked. “Just stay away from my classes, son. Your mother would never understand my refusing to pass you.”

  Actually, the astronomy course wasn’t that stupid; he’d been sailing since he could climb aboard a boat, and came to refine celestial navigation to the point where a quick glance without a sextant could put him reasonably on course. He had been a relatively talented athlete, his size and build leading to varsity status, but his lack of commitment, as well as the company, precluded a suggested career in sports; he had no desire either to stay in training or have his body assaulted. After the University of Oregon (no tuition for offspring of tenured professors), he was at a loss; he had managed a respectable 3.2 average since the courses he chose were interesting to him, but few were interesting to the corporate employers who looked for business administration, economics, engineering, or computer science. Then came accident number one.

  On the streets of Eugene, two months after his mother had framed his essentially useless degree, he passed a navy recruiting office. Whether it was the attractive posters showing ships at
sea, or because he was restless to do something, or a combination of both, was a question he never analyzed, but he walked inside and enlisted.

  His mother had been appalled. “You’re not remotely the military type!” she had said.

  His younger brother, who was already a straight-A student in high school, as well as president of the honor society, added, “Tye, do you understand that you’ll have to follow orders?”

  His bemused father offered him a drink and was more trenchant than the other two. “Scratch a drifter with half a mind and you’ll usually find someone who wants a little structure in his life. Anchors aweigh, son, and as the proctors of Salem said when they unearthed a warlock, ‘God have mercy on your soul.’ ”

  Fortunately, the navy had practiced a certain self-serving mercy. After reviewing Hawthorne’s accomplishments as a young sailor, which were considerable, including the skippering of large sails and several dozen blue ribbons, he emerged from the San Diego training base as an ensign assigned to destroyer duty, which led to the second major accident.

  After two years he was afflicted with battleship-gray claustrophobia. He looked around for something more expansive. A few land-based assignments opened up, but they were logistic jobs—desk work, which he wasn’t interested in, but there was one that sounded like fun, if he could get it: protocol officer in The Hague.

  He got it, as well as another stripe, a lieutenant (j.g.), and he hadn’t the slightest idea that protocol was an observation ground for potential naval intelligence personnel. All the fun and games and embassy receptions and tours for the fat cats, civilian and military, were part of the course. Then one morning, after six months, he was called in to the chargé d’affaires’ office, praised beyond his minor contributions, and told he was elevated to lieutenant, senior grade.

  “And by the way, Lieutenant,” the embassy executive had said. “We’d like you to do a little favor for us.” Accident number three. He said yes.

  Tyrell’s counterpart at the French embassy was suspected of passing Franco-American intelligence to the Soviets. On the pretext of an upcoming dinner party, would Lieutenant Hawthorne take the man out for some heavy sympathetic drinking, pump him, and learn what he could? “Incidentally,” the chargé d’affaires had said, handing him a tiny plastic bottle of Murine eye drops. “Two dabs of this in a drink will loosen the tongue of a mute.”

  Accident number four. Hawthorne never had a chance to use the ersatz eye drops. Unlucky Pierre was at the end of his rope and, filled with wine, spelled out his terrible confession, claiming to be both heavily in debt and having an affair with a Soviet mole who could expose their relationship and destroy him.

  Accident number five. Probably due to several bourbons, Tyrell suggested that if the distraught Frenchman gave him the names of his KGB contacts, he could say that his patriotic counterpart was actually working for NATO because he suspected that there were leaks in his own embassy. Hawthorne’s cheeks were sore for a week from the Frenchman’s kisses of gratitude. The man became a valuable double agent, his turning credited to the protocol officer. Which led to accident six.

  The commanding general of NATO summoned him, a man Hawthorne truly respected because he wasn’t a debutant brass ass, but a straight-talking boss in shirtsleeves. “I want to send you on, Lieutenant, because you not only have the qualifications, but, more important, you don’t advertise them. I’m sick to death of the egos around here. Things get done with quiet people, observing people. Okay with you?”

  Okay what? Certainly, General, whatever you say, sir. Tyrell was so much in awe of the man that certain specifics were either glossed over or delivered in such subtle militarese that the flattered Hawthorne enthusiastically agreed to his new horizons. Accident six had him flying back to Georgia for an exhausting twelve-week stay, an officer officially assigned to naval intelligence.

  Upon his return to The Hague, presumably to resume his duties, the accidents came one after the other, some more accidental than others. He was becoming good at his real job. Fueled by the widespread hypocrisy and corruption that were rampant throughout NATO, Amsterdam had become the hub of the underground networks where money took the place of commitments, major and minor. He ran assets throughout the Netherlands, with side trips all over Europe, tracking down the despicable who brokered death along with payoffs. It was the mounting deaths, the useless killings, that finally caused him to break in his own way.

  Suddenly, Tyrell was aware that Cathy was standing at the foot of the bed, looking down at him. He raised his head. “Where’s our lieutenant?” he asked.

  “He’s using the phone in my room. He remembered he had a date tonight—four hours ago.”

  “I’d like to hear how he explains that away.”

  “You probably wouldn’t. He’s no doubt telling her he’s been testing an experimental aircraft, very hush-hush, and sustained a neck injury during a thirty-eight-thousand-foot dive.”

  “He’s a piece of work, that kid.”

  “He certainly is.… What were you doing? Having one of your eyes-open naps?”

  “Hardly. Just one of those brief spells when you ask yourself why you’re where you are—even why you’re who you are, maybe.”

  “I know the answer to the first. You’re here hunting down this Bajaratt woman because you were one of the finest intelligence officers in the navy.”

  “That’s not true,” said Hawthorne, sitting up against a pillow as Neilsen sat down in a chair several feet from the side of the bed.

  “Stevens allowed that you were, even if he may have done so reluctantly.”

  “He was trying to calm your fears, that’s all.”

  “I don’t think so. I’ve watched you in action, Commander. Why deny it?”

  “Because, Major, I may have been passably effective for a few years, but then something happened and whether my superiors realized it or not, I became the worst man in the field. You see, I didn’t care anymore who won or lost the stupid games. I cared about something else.”

  “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  “I don’t think you’d want to hear it. Besides, it’s pretty personal—I’ve never told anyone.”

  “I’ll trade off with you, Tye. I have something personal, too, that I’ve never told anybody, not even Jackson, much less my parents. I’d like to tell somebody. Maybe we can help each other, since we’ll probably never see each other when all this is over. Do you want to hear it?”

  “Yes,” said Tyrell, studying her somewhat anxious, perhaps slightly pleading, expression. “What is it, Cathy?”

  “Poole and my folks think I was born to be military, born to be a top-gun air force pilot and all that goes with it.”

  “If you’ll forgive me,” said Hawthorne, smiling gently. “I think Jackson believes you were issued, not merely born to it.”

  “Wrong on every count,” countered Major Catherine Neilsen. “Until I was accepted to the Point and a free education, all I ever wanted to be was an anthropologist. Someone like Margaret Mead, traveling all over the world, studying cultures no one knew about, discovering things about primitive people who in so many ways are better off than we are. Sometimes that dream still comes back to me.… I sound foolish, don’t I?”

  “Not at all. Why don’t you go for it?… I always wanted my own sloop, to make a living sailing under my own flag, as it were. So I got sidetracked for a decade, so what?”

  “The circumstances are vastly different, Tye. You started being trained for what you’re doing now when you were practically a kid. I’d have to go back to school for God knows how long.”

  “What, a couple of years? It’s not brain surgery. Then you can learn on the job.”

  “What?”

  “You can do what ninety percent of all anthropologists can’t do. You’re a pilot; you can fly them wherever they want to go.”

  “This is crazy talk,” said Cathy quietly, pensively. Then she sat upright and cleared her throat. “I’ve told you my secret, Tye. What’s
yours? Fair’s fair.”

  “We sound like a couple of kids, but all right.… Every now and then it comes back to me, and I suppose it’s my crutch, my rationalization.… One night I went to meet a Soviet, a KGB man pretty much like me, a sailor from the Black Sea. We both knew things were getting out of hand, the corpses in the canals insane. For what? The summits couldn’t care less about us, and he and I were going to cool down the craziness. When I found him, he was still alive, but his face was carved up by a razor, no less than a hamburger. I understood what he wanted me to do, so I… relieved him of his misery, his excruciating pain. It was then that I knew what I really had to do. It wasn’t simply to go after the corrupt who made fortunes out of nothing, or the misguided moles or bureaucrats who were brought up to oppose us ideologically, it was to go after the fanatics, the maniacs who could do this to one of their own. All in the name of some unwavering, unblemished loyalty that didn’t mean a goddamn thing in the changing super bowls of history.”

  “That’s heavy, Commander,” said Cathy softly. “Was that when you met Stevens, Captain Stevens?”

  “Henry the Horrible?”

  “Was he … is he?”

  “Sometimes. Let’s say he’s aggressively dedicated. Actually, I knew his wife better than I knew him. They had no children, so she worked for the embassy. She was in the transport division, coordinating all personnel travel arrangements, and I had my share of bouncing around. Nice lady, and I suspect she curbed his excesses more than she’d ever admit.”

  “A few minutes ago you asked him about your wife—” Tyrell snapped his head to his left, his eyes locked with the major’s. “Sorry,” she said, looking away.

  “I knew the answer, but it was a question that had to be asked,” he said calmly. “Van Nostrand made a crude remark—to provoke me, throw me off guard.”

  “And Stevens put the lie to it,” completed Cathy. “You believed him, of course.”