Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Deception

“What else did Harandi say?” Harris said to Scorpion. “This thing about a snake?”

“The saw-scaled viper. It’s the most poisonous snake in the Middle East.”

“Nice,” Shaefer said, and to Rabinowich: “Have we heard anything, Dave?”

“Absolutely nothing. Zero. Bit of an outlier,” Rabinowich said.

“What about this ayatollah? What’s his name?” Harris demanded, turning to Shaefer and Scorpion.

“Ayatollah Ali Nihbakhti. From Qom,” Shaefer said, glancing at Scorpion as if to confirm he had it right.

“What do we know about him?” Harris asked.

“It’s a cover ID. He doesn’t exist,” Rabinowich said, wiping his glasses. Without them, his eyes looked softer, more vulnerable.

“Or the Iranians don’t want us to know about him,” Harris said, pursing his lips. He turned to Shaefer. “What are we getting from the Swiss?”

“You won’t like it,” Shaefer said, uncrossing his legs.

“They’re Swiss. I know I won’t like it. What?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s impossible. There must be something.”

“None of the dead attackers had any ID or any papers, anything of any kind,” Shaefer said. “There’s no record of them ever staying at a hotel or pension or anyplace in Switzerland. Their clothes were cheap, bought locally for cash. No credit cards, debits, anything. According to the Kantonspolizei, it’s as if until the day of the attack these guys never existed.”

“This is bullshit,” Harris said. “There must be something. Dental work, Immigration control photos, a check of Swiss drivers’ licenses, Interpol records, something. They didn’t just materialize out of thin air.”

“They knew we’d be looking,” Rabinowich said. “This attack was very carefully planned.”

“Impossible. There’s always something,” Harris said. “Come on, guys. What is it?”

“DNA,” Rabinowich said. “On the attackers in Bern. Just preliminary, of course. One of the four bodies from the attack is an Arab. Possibly Iraqi. DNA from the female bomber’s foot suggests she may have been Kurdish, possibly a Syrian Kurd; we need more markers before we can nail it down. The other three bodies are Persian. Give us a couple more days and we can say with 99.999 percent certainty that they’re Iranians.”

“So that’s what we go to war on?” Harris snapped. “Iranians are everywhere. They could’ve come from England, Turkey, Sweden, even California. We could bomb Beverly Hills. There’s not one damn thing to prove they came from Iran.”

For a moment no one spoke. Scorpion sipped his coffee and looked out at the view, the trees and fields, the town below, the blue lake and mountains. Thinking the female Kurd was an anomaly, but three Iranians and an Iraqi, ten-to-one a Shiite, wasn’t a coincidence. Neither was the Russian VKS rifle of the sniper in Paris, the al Quds Force’s sniper rifle of choice. Proving it to the UN and the media on a world stage, though, was something else.

“Red rose,” Rabinowich said, pursing his lips and looking more like a horned owl than ever.

“What?”

“Gol ghermez,” Rabinowich said. “In Farsi it means red rose. According to cell tracking coordinates, someone made a mobile call from Gerten Mountain in Bern to Zurich approximately forty minutes after the attack. All they said was ‘Gol ghermez,’ and hung up.”

“Could be anything. A guy calling his girlfriend. A florist,” Shaefer said facetiously.

“It could be a completion code,” Scorpion said. “Maybe signaling success after the attack.”

“That’s what NSA thinks,” Rabinowich said. “They’re the ones who picked it up. It just took them a while to sort through all the COMINT traffic in God-knows-how-many-languages in Switzerland.

“And the number in Zurich?”

“Prepaid cell phone purchased with a phony ID.”

“Of course. What was the ID?” Shaefer asked.

“According to Swisscom phone records,” Rabinowich said, “the purchaser was Ferka Chergari. The name is of Roma origin, obviously. Domiciled in Biasca, southern Switzerland,” he added.

“So do we have watchers crawling up this Gypsy’s ass even as we speak?” Harris said, his blue eyes glittering.

Rabinowich shrugged. “Difficult, seeing he died in 2007.”

“Is that it?” Harris said. “Is that everything we’ve got? Because I’m beginning to love going back to square one. I may take out a mortgage on it. Come on, guys. Is this the best we’ve got?” He regarded them defiantly. It made him look older, Scorpion thought, noticing wrinkles at the corners of his eyes in the light from the windows.

“Zurich,” Scorpion said.

“What about it?” Harris snapped.

“It was a cutout.”

“Of course! Nice one,” Rabinowich said, slapping the desk, his head rising up, grinning from ear to ear.

“You two girlfriends want to let the rest of us in on it?” Harris said, suddenly interested.

“Put it together,” Scorpion said. “ Gol ghermez , red rose in Farsi, means the cutout is an Iranian in Zurich. What’ll you bet the cutout’s a trader doing business for the Revolutionary Guards or one of the factions? Right out in the open, because Switzerland’ll do business with Satan himself as long as it ends up in Swiss francs on the Bahnhofstrasse. Can’t be that many Iranian trading companies paying the kind of astronomical prices they charge in Zurich’s high-rent district.”

For the first time, Harris smiled. He rubbed his hands together.

“All right, boys and girls, we are live. You make the approach,” he said, pointing at Scorpion. “And let’s not alternate this operation with the Ring Cycle. We don’t have a lot of time.”

“He might have to go to Iran,” Shaefer put in. “They’re prepping for war over there. The minute somebody climbs over the fence, they’ll pop him.”

“He’s a big boy. He’ll just have to watch himself, won’t he?” Harris said, looking at Scorpion.

Scorpion got up. He walked over to the plate glass and looked out at the view. Switzerland was like a picture postcard, he thought. So different from Africa, from Sandrine, from everything he cared about. He turned around.

“How much time do we have?”

“None,” Harris said. “Things are moving fast. Right now this is our op, but in a little while people with bigger dicks take control.”

“For once, he’s telling the truth,” Shaefer said. “We’re talking days, hours.”

“I need at least a couple of weeks. Maybe more,” Scorpion said. “This isn’t some 24 type bullshit where you smack a joe in the mouth and he tells you everything he knows. If it is Iran, penetrating them when they’re already paranoid as hell is going to take resources and time.”

Harris got up.

“I’ll talk to the Director, try to buy you ten days. He’ll have to get the President to approve it. After that. .” He shrugged.

“Three weeks,” Scorpion said.

“Ten days. But you better come up with something fast.” Harris looked at Shaefer, Scorpion, and Rabinowich on the screen. “As of right now, you three are a special task force. Special Access Program Critical. No one outside us knows anything. Shaefer,” he said, nodding at the lanky African-American, “will coordinate. He will speak with not just my authority, but the DCIA’s. The Director’s already on board, by the way. Use any assets you deem necessary. The entire U.S. military if we have to. Dave,” Harris said, turning to the laptop screen. “This is your full-time assignment. And talk to no one inside Langley but me, understood? Anyone gives you shit, send them to me.”

Harris looked at all of them.

“We’re back in business, guys. Just like old times,” he said, winking.