Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Deception

There was no need. Karif was lying on the carpet next to the bed. He recognized the young man immediately from his photos and video. His throat had been slashed from ear to ear, and the carpet where he lay was soaked with blood. Scorpion backed away, trying to keep the blood off his shoes.

What the hell was going on? Did the Israelis set him up? He didn’t think so, but he couldn’t exclude the possibility. Or was Kta’eb Hezbollah, the saw-scaled snake maybe, shutting down the network? The call Norouzi’s girlfriend had made about the Gardener was proving fatal for everyone involved, so it was more urgent than ever that Shaefer pull the Gnomes off Norouzi. He would demand it or call Harris at Langley direct himself, he thought. So if it wasn’t the Israelis, then it was unbelievable timing that he had knocked on Karif’s door just after he was killed, before the murderer could get away. If so, why had the murderer left him alive?

From outside he heard the wail of a police siren. More than one. He ran to the living room window and pulled back the edge of the curtain. Two white bullet-shaped police cars had just pulled up in front of the building and police were getting out of the cars. Scorpion stepped back. Either he had been set up or the murderer himself had called it in to cover his tracks. Realizing he only had seconds to get away, he started toward the door, then stopped.

The knife! His fingerprints were on it. He ran to the sink, grabbed the knife and dropped it into his pocket. What else had he touched? The dishwashing liquid. He rubbed it down with the liquid soap and toilet paper and flushed it down the toilet. Had he touched the door handle? No, the killer had opened the door, he thought, as he opened the apartment door with toilet paper.

Scorpion started for the stairs and heard men’s voices and panting as they came up. In a few seconds he’d either be arrested or dead. He ran up the stairs on the tips of his toes. The roof door was locked, but he frantically managed to open it with the Peterson universal key. He stepped out onto the roof, closed the door as quietly as he could behind him, and ran to the edge. The roof of the building next to this one was just a few feet lower. He jumped down and raced across it to the next building. There was a narrow alleyway, perhaps two meters, between the buildings. If he missed, it was a seven-story drop. No other way, he thought, backing up five or six meters.

From behind, he heard sounds and glanced over his shoulder. Two policemen had run out on the roof of Karif’s building, guns drawn. They spotted him.

“Policia! Detente!” one of them shouted in Spanish, telling him to stop, then going into shooting position.

Don’t think about it, he told himself. If he thought about it, he wouldn’t do it. Just as he neared the edge he leaped off his right foot as hard and high as he could, and as he did so, heard a shot and sensed something whiz by his flailing arm.

He sailed over the alleyway, having only the briefest glimpse of the concrete and trash cans far below, and then he landed on the other roof, stumbling and waving his arms for balance. Even before he could right himself he scrambled to the roof door.

It was locked. He felt in his pocket for the Peterson key, glancing back at the other roof, where the two policemen were running across toward the gap between that building and his. He darted a glance over the parapet at the street below. There were at least a half-dozen policemen, hands on guns, watching the front door of Karif’s apartment building, one of them saying something to bystanders, who were starting to gather across the street.

The burly man with the mustache, the one who had clobbered him and had no doubt murdered Karif, was standing with the people on the sidewalk, watching the police. There was still had a chance to get him, he thought, pulling the Peterson key out of his pocket and going to the roof door. He tried the key, giving it a tap to jump the lock. He felt it click but the door still didn’t open. It was jammed. He turned the key and handle and slammed against it with his shoulder. It made a cracking sound but was still jammed. He looked back over at the other roof. There was no more time. Both policemen were lining up to shoot him.

He tried the lock again, slamming against the door with all his might, heard something crack, and then the door banged open with a loud snap. Anyone on the floor below would have heard it. Bullets cracked into the doorpost behind him as he dove through and raced down the staircase, no longer bothering about making noise.

An apartment door near one of the landings popped open and a woman in a robe, her hair up in curlers, popped out. One look at his face and she dived back into her apartment, shutting the door and shouting for her husband. Scorpion jumped down the last few stairs to the ground floor, where the hallway was dark. He left it that way and peered out the glass in the front door, the Glock in his hand inside his jacket pocket.

The crowd of spectators across the street from Karif’s building had grown larger, but he couldn’t spot the mustache guy. Someone upstairs in his building was shouting something. He couldn’t stay there any longer, he realized, and still had the murder weapon in his pocket. For the moment, no one among the spectators and police outside seemed to be looking at this building. They were all looking up at the other roof, where the shots had been fired. Heart pounding, he opened the door and walked slowly, carefully, across the street to the edge of the crowd.

Mustache guy was no longer standing among the spectators. Peering over the heads of other spectators, Scorpion saw the back of a burly man in a tan-colored windbreaker walking toward the corner. One of the police mossos glanced at the burly man but otherwise didn’t react. The mosso looked back toward the crowd and then up at the roof of the building, like the other spectators.

He only had a few seconds to decide. If he tried to push through the crowd to follow, he’d be sure to attract attention. That mosso might be too dumb to do anything now, but if he was to chase Mustache, even the mosso would be able to figure it out. He watched out of the corner of his eye as Mustache turned the corner. Probably headed toward Avinguda Diagonal, he thought, one of the main streets.

Edging away from the crowd, Scorpion walked in the opposite direction, toward the next corner. Checking the reflection in a store window, he saw no one following him and began to believe he might get away when he heard shouts. The police mossos on the roof were pointing at him, and several mossos and spectators on the street were now chasing him. He turned the corner to a street parallel to the one Mustache had gone and ran toward Avinguda Diagonal.

People in the street stared curiously at him as he ran by. He looked around, feeling conspicuous. It was a one-way street of brick apartment houses with shops on the ground floor. There were lights on some of the balconies, where people were eating or drinking despite the cool evening. There was nowhere to get rid of the bloody, incriminating knife. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that no one chasing him had turned the corner yet, but that would change any second and then people on this street would start chasing him as well. He had to change the equation-and fast.

A yellow Seat Mii, a tiny three-door subcompact car, emerged from an apartment building underground parking garage, a young woman at the wheel. As she stopped to check the street traffic, Scorpion ran over and rapped on the driver’s window with the Glock. For an instant, the woman froze. He pointed the gun at her, motioning for her to roll down the window. She hesitated, then complied. Out of the corner of his eye he could see a mosso round the corner and shout, followed by a dozen or more men and mossos .