Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Deception

On the empty boulevard’s center island he listened for cars and footsteps and thought about the timing. They were closing the window. He had to find Ghanbari soon or leave Iran. Behind him, he heard a car. It had turned onto the boulevard from a side street.

He ducked behind a shrub next to the water channel and watched as a white Saipa sedan completed the turn and crawled slowly along the boulevard. Through the leaves, he could see two policemen in the sedan scanning the empty sidewalks and center island. If they spotted him, he was blown. As he watched the car the alarm on the personal cell phone he’d used to swipe the data and eavesdrop on Zahra’s cell phone vibrated. He took it out and put it to his ear, never taking his eyes off the sedan.

It was Zahra’s voice. She must have just woken up.

“Someone’s been asking about you,” she said in Farsi. He checked the screen. The number she was calling wasn’t the number they had for Ghanbari. One of the policemen in the car ran his eyes over the shrubbery and for an instant Scorpion thought he had been seen. His hand slid to the gun in his pocket, but the policeman’s eyes didn’t react and continued scanning the trees and walkway. He let out his breath as the car drove slowly past, the sound of an Iranian pop song floating from its radio.

“Who is it?” a man’s voice replied in Farsi on the cell phone. He was whispering and it was hard to hear him.

“A foreigner. A Swiss,” she said.

“Who is he? Where is this coming from?”

“Are you crazy?!” she said. “We can’t talk like this.”

“I know. If Sadeghi were to hear. .”

Scorpion’s mind raced. Who the hell was Sadeghi? Was he the Gardener? Is that what Ghanbari was afraid of? According to Shaefer and the CIA, the U.S. was about to go to war and pin the attack in Bern on Ghanbari. What if they got it wrong? What was going on?

“You don’t think-” she started, then stopped.

“Khodaye man!” he said. My God! “Don’t even say it.”

“Where can we meet?”

“Tonight. The ski cabin,” he said, ending the call.

Scorpion’s mind raced as he stood and began walking rapidly back to the hotel. Two things were clear. Zahra knew Ghanbari well. Were they really related? Could they be lovers? She was embedded with General Vahidi, while Ghanbari was in al Quds and tied to the saw-scaled snake. Maybe one of them was running the other. But who ran whom?

More importantly, they were both afraid of someone else. This Sadeghi. So which one was the Gardener? Ghanbari or Sadeghi? Or someone else? And what was behind it? He had to find out and then get it to Shaefer and Rabinowich. And he had less than seventy-two hours to do it.

As he approached the hotel, people and cars began to appear on the street, the city beginning to wake up. A black BMW SUV was parked in front of the hotel, two men in suits sitting inside. VEVAK, he thought, taking a deep breath and pretending to ignore them as he walked by and up the front steps into the hotel. If they questioned him about where he had been so early in the morning, he would have to tell them about Zahra and make it about sex-possibly telling them that in some torture cell in Evin Prison.

The gleaming marble lobby was nearly empty except for a man in a suit sitting on a sofa, reading a copy of Abrar , a pro-government newspaper. The headline in Farsi read: PRESIDENT SAYS IRAN WILL FIGHT. As he walked to the elevator, he glanced at the front desk. The clerk behind the counter caught his glance and quickly looked away.

Shit, he thought, continuing to the elevator. He couldn’t go back to his room. VEVAK or al Quds or Kta’eb Hezbollah would be waiting for him there. He stepped into the elevator and pressed the button, not for his floor but two floors below it. As the elevator door closed, the man with the newspaper lowered it and looked directly at him.

Route 425,

Tehran, Iran

He turned from Lashgarak Road onto Route 425, a paved two-lane road into the mountains, bordered by a guardrail and trees. A place of incredible beauty, with waterfalls tumbling from rocks to a gorge beside the road. About five kilometers up and above the tree line, the snow got deep enough that he had to stop at a turnoff to put on chains even with the rented Toyota RAV4’s all-wheel drive. He looked around at the mountains, stark and covered with snow. No one was following him on the road and only the occasional car or truck came the other way, down the mountain from Shemshak. He didn’t expect a lot of traffic heading up. It was late afternoon and there was no night skiing at the resort; not to mention the crisis. He didn’t need to check his iPad again to see where Zahra was. She had left her cell phone on, and his tracking software on the iPad showed she was about ten kilometers ahead of him up toward the Dizin ski resort.

He had gotten away from the hotel that morning through the service entrance, after opening a locker in the employees’ room in the basement. Waiting till the room was empty, he had folded up his Burberry raincoat and packed it into his messenger bag, then pulled a hotel workman’s white coverall on over his clothes and simply walked out the service door. Only one person, a bearded young man in a windbreaker smoking a cigarette, had been watching the service exit from across the street, and with Scorpion changing his appearance with the coveralls, the man hadn’t given him a second look.

As soon as he had gone a few blocks, he stepped into an alley, pulled off the coveralls, and put the Burberry back on. He kept walking. What had changed, he thought, that the VEVAK or Kta’eb Hezbollah was now on to him? Was it just that he had slipped their leash? They had followed him in the Peugeot, so they knew he was with Zahra last night.

He’d thought to get in touch with Vahidi, if that door was still open to him, but he knew it was too early, and rubbing his unshaven cheek, that he had to clean up. An early morning cafe on Felestin Avenue was just opening. He went in and ordered breakfast: lavash bread, feta cheese, walnuts, jam, and tea served in a glass, Iranian-style. While he was eating, his cell phone rang.

“What happened last night?” Zahra had asked.

“Don’t you know?”

“I don’t understand. I remember leaving the party. Beyond that, my memory’s a complete blank.”

Ketamine, he thought, looking around to see if anyone in the cafe could overhear him. A waiter was sweeping the floor near the front door, too far away to hear.

“Too much Grey Goose,” he said. She had been drinking cosmos.

“Did we- ” she started, then stopped, obviously about to ask whether they’d had sex.

“No,” he said. “I put you to bed.”

“You left my clothes on. Don’t you like me?” she asked.

“It was tempting, but it wouldn’t have been. .” He hesitated. “ . . ta’arof. ”

“You’re a good person,” she said. “At first I didn’t think so, but you are.”

“No, I’m not,” he said seriously. “But I don’t take advantage of helpless people, especially women.”

“Never?” she whispered.

Just how kinky was she? he’d wondered. She was sexy, all right. But she wasn’t doing any of this for him. It was for Vahidi. Or Ghanbari. It wasn’t clear who she was working for.

“Only if they really want it,” he teased. “Maybe I should take you over my knee. Tonight?” Testing to see what she’d say. He knew she was meeting Ghanbari that night in the mountains.

“Not tonight,” she said. Of course not, he thought. “But tomorrow perhaps?” She left it hanging.

“That’s fine. I’ve got plenty to do,” he told her, then whispered into the cell, “We need to talk. The VEVAK were waiting for me at the hotel.”