Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Deception

Whenever Van Zyl was around, she sensed his eyes on her. Not the normal way men looked at a woman, particularly if she was reaching or bending over to get something. She was a grown woman and understood that kind of a look. This was different. As if he was watching to see what she would do.

The boy, Ghedi, the one saved by the American she called David Cheyne, even though she knew it wasn’t his real name, noticed it too. When she had come back to Dadaab from Paris, the boy was gone. He disappeared after learning his little sister might still be alive in Mogadishu. God only knew how he’d made it through the war zone, but somehow he was here now, still looking for his sister.

“That mzungu ,” Ghedi said, using the Swahili slang word for a white man that he had picked up in Dadaab, “he watch you.”

“Yes,” she nodded, wiping her forehead with her forearm. Under the stretch of plastic tarps that served for a hospital tent, it was unbelievably hot, at least forty-five degrees Celsius. If her patients weren’t already dying, the heat and the flies only compounded the misery. But they never complained. Even though she could do so little for them, they were grateful. They were wonderful, and it was hopeless, and what was she doing here and where was the American and why couldn’t she get him out of her mind?

The Hawiye women in their beautiful direhs and graceful gestures would say she was bewitched. Maybe it was true, she thought. Why else was she here?

“Should I kill him, isuroon ?” the boy asked, using the Somali word for a woman deserving of respect, holding up the belawa knife he wore on a leather thong around his neck. He had seen her with the American and had appointed himself her protector till the American returned.

“ La ,” no, she said, touching his hand with the knife. “Not yet.”

“If you say, I will kill him,” he said, looking at her.

“I know,” she said. “But now you must go. This is for women. A ragol ,” a man, “may not be here.”

She felt him leave as she turned back to the patient, a little girl on a shred of blanket on the ground. Small, shriveled with a swollen belly, she looked barely four years old, though her mother said she was seven. The child was severely malnourished and dehydrated. Too malnourished to use an IV, which could overhydrate and kill her. And she was dangerously lethargic. It could be shock or sepsis, she thought, looking at the mother, whose face had so little flesh it was like looking at a skull.

“Voici.” She gestured to the mother, handing her one of the few Baggies of liquid ReSoMal she still had left and showing her how to give it to the girl orally, even as she debated with herself whether to use it or save it for another because this child was so far gone. Except she couldn’t do that, could she? she told herself. She raised the tiny torn direh and then saw it. The gaping bloody wound at the child’s genitals.

“Mada? Mana?” What? Who? she asked the mother, pointing at the wound and using two of the few words of Arabic she knew.

“Digil, Al-Shabaab,” the woman said. Al-Shabaab soldiers from the Digil clan.

It was rape, Sandrine thought, feeling nauseous. The thought of grown men with this tiny child made her try to swallow to keep from throwing up. I can’t do this anymore, she thought, looking at the girl’s wasted body. She took a breath. This petite didn’t do anything to have this happen to her, she thought, pulling out a thermometer strip to take the girl’s temperature: 40.2 degrees Celsius. High fever. Sepsis from the wound. She looked around despairingly. By rights she should order a CBC, start skin tear repair, but the only thing she had-and damn little of it-was penicillin. This wasn’t medicine, it was witch-doctoring!

She took out the ampule, gave her the injection, and bandaged the wound as best she could. The child barely reacted to the needle. She had to get out of here, Sandrine thought. She patted the mother on the arm and ran out into the blazing sun.

Van Zyl, in his ratty Kaizer Chiefs football T-shirt and shorts, was standing there. Not doing anything, just standing there.

“Stop watching me, you bloody son of a bitch!” she screamed at him. “So help me, I’ll have someone shoot you! And do something useful for once! Get the medicines I ordered!”

“Take it easy, bokkie . I’ll catch you later,” he said, holding up his hands in mock surrender and walking away.

She put her hands to her face. She wasn’t helping these people or herself. Why was she here? And an inner voice whispered: Because you know he’ll find you here .

She shook her head. Ce n’est pas moi , she told herself. It’s not me. She went back into the hospital tent. The heat and stench were overpowering.

“Merde,” she said aloud, and went back to work.

Gracia,

Barcelona, Spain

Marchena, the CNI agent who hadn’t showed at the RDV set up by Shaefer at the Placa Vicenc Martorell, was a tall balding man in a gray suit and dark shirt. He had the look of casual authority, like a professional soccer coach, Scorpion thought as he watched him get into his car, a bright red BMW Series 6 coupe in the office building’s underground garage. The Barcelona branch of the Spanish intelligence service, the Centro Nacional de Inteligencia, was headquartered in the building, using the cover of a construction machinery company, Grupo Puentas y Gracia. He treats himself well, this Marchena, Scorpion mused as he walked over and rapped on the driver’s window with the Walther pistol.

“Que diables!” Marchena exclaimed in Catalan. What the hell!

Scorpion motioned with the Walther for Marchena to unlock the passenger door. It took Marchena a second to figure it out that there wasn’t enough time to start the car and drive before the stranger with the gun and wearing a blond surfer boy wig could shoot. Marchena pressed the unlock button and Scorpion got in.

“Drive. I’ll tell you where,” Scorpion said in English.

“The hell I will. Who are you?” Marchena replied in good English, not moving.

“I’ll shoot you,” Scorpion said, pointing the Walther at Marchena’s head.

“No, you won’t,” Marchena said confidently, looking around. There were a few other people going to their cars in the garage.

Scorpion fired a shot, the bullet shattering a hole in the driver’s side window, just past the tip of Marchena’s nose. The sound of the shot echoed loudly in the garage, and two people who had been going to their cars froze and looked around.

“Last chance,” Scorpion said, shoving the muzzle against Marchena’s ribs. “Drive.”

Darting him a quick sideways glance, Marchena started the BMW and drove out of the garage into the bright sunlight. Both men put on their sunglasses as they drove on the broad Passeig de Gracia, past fashionable stores and office buildings.

“Where are we going?” Marchena asked.

“Just drive. Go someplace where I can shoot you if I don’t like what you say,” Scorpion said as they slid into the traffic circling the stone obelisk in the center of Placa de Juan Carlos I where the two broad boulevards, the Passeig and the Avinguda Diagonal, intersected.

“Why? Who are you? What do you want?”

“We had a date, remember?”

“Date? What the hell are you talking-” Marchena went suddenly pale. “Deu,” he breathed, glancing at the man beside him. “You’re Scorpion.”

“Why didn’t you show?” Scorpion asked.

Marchena took a deep breath. “How am I still alive?” he muttered, his eyes flicking sideways at Scorpion. “Was it you?” he asked. “It was, wasn’t it? You put five mossos d’esquadra into the hospital while handcuffed. Unbelievable,” shaking his head while watching traffic. “Did you kill Mohammad Karif?”