Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Deception

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.

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.