Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Deception

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 guest 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 Landungsbrucken 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 gluck .” 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 cafe 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: