Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Deception

“Does it mean what I think it means?” she asked.

“It means war,” Ghanbari said.

Haft-e Tir Square,

Tehran, Iran

They bought new prepaid cell phones for each of them at an electronics shop next to the bus station in Tajrish Square. They went down the stairs to the Metro platform and waited for the Line 1 train. Scorpion and Ghanbari boarded a middle car; Zahra rode in the front car, reserved for women. As they rode, Scorpion captured Zahra’s and Ghanbari’s contacts from their phones and enslaved their new phones to his with the NSA software from his flash drive.

“What will we do with the old phones?” Ghanbari asked.

“They’re GPS tracking yours and Zahra’s,” Scorpion said. “That’s why I wanted the Metro.”

“Clever. We leave them on the train,” Ghanbari nodded approvingly. “You’re an interesting man, Westermann agha .”

Scorpion nodded. “Call me Laurent, Muhammad jan . By the time they find the old phones, we’ll have gone to ground.”

“But then what? We’ll be wanted men. Everyone, the police, the Basiji, the VEVAK, Kta’eb Hezbollah, will be after us. And then there’s the crisis. And in the middle of Nowruz!”

Scorpion’s mind was already at warp speed. He had to get the intel to Langley about Sadeghi possibly being the Gardener and that the call from Begur hadn’t been made to Ghanbari. All hell would break loose if they went public using such misinformation as a basis for war.

Langley would ask for his assessment. Best guess: Sadeghi and Kta’eb Hezbollah were behind the hit on Bern. As to why, maybe Rabinowich could figure it out. Clearly, it was, as Vahidi had suggested, part of a power struggle for control of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

Another problem: he wasn’t sure if he could even get the intel out. One of the first things the Iranians would likely do would be to quarantine access to the Internet outside Iran, if they hadn’t done it already.

As the train pulled into the Haft-e Tir station, Scorpion let his arm hang down and quietly deposited Zahra’s and Ghanbari’s old cell phones on the floor beside the bench, as out of sight as possible. With any luck, they wouldn’t be noticed. And if someone did take them, all the better. It would take that much longer for Scale and his men to track down the old cell phones.

When they got off the train, Zahra joined them on the platform. They came up out of the Metro into a wide well-lit square. This was an older, poorer part of town. Even at night, the smog was thicker here. It smelled of trash and diesel fumes. Many of the women in the streets were dressed in head-to-foot chadors like black-robed ghosts, instead of Western clothes. People were shopping at market stalls in the square. Vendors called out, hawking flowers, goldfish in bowls, and green plants in clay containers shaped like animals.

“Why the goldfish?” Scorpion asked.

“Vay Khoda!” Zahra slapped her forehead. “It’s Monday.”

“Goldfish Monday?” he asked.

“No, beshoor. ” Idiot. Then he understood. “Tomorrow is Tuesday; tomorrow night’s the eve of Red Wednesday.”

“The last Wednesday before Nowruz, the Persian New Year,” Ghanbari explained.

“They don’t seem very festive,” Scorpion said.

“No, they don’t. It’s the crisis,” she said thoughtfully, walking with them out of the square down Karimkhan Zand, a wide boulevard with plane trees on both sides, crowded with cars and yellow buses. Despite the crisis, people were out with their families, shopping for the holiday.

“I’ve never seen it like this. It’s not like any Nowruz ever.” She looked around. “Where are we going?” she asked.

“We keep an apartment. I’ll show you,” Ghanbari said.

“We being al Quds?” Scorpion asked.

“We have many of these,” Ghanbari nodded. “But this is one only I and two of my closest people know about.”

“Except in a very short time they’re going to be told you’re a traitor,” Scorpion said.

“They won’t believe it,” Ghanbari said. “I’m not the only one who will realize what’s happening, that Sadeghi and the Kta’eb Hezbollah are trying to take over.”

“So Scale works for Sadeghi?”

Ghanbari shook his head.

“Scale works for the Gardener. In this case, he seems to be acting for Sadeghi. That would suggest. .” He stopped, leaving Scorpion to draw his own conclusions.

“Sadeghi’s the Gardener. It must be,” Zahra said. “It all makes sense.”

“How long do you think before Sadeghi gets to your people?”

“We should be all right for tonight. They can’t check everywhere and there’s a lot going on,” Ghanbari said, turning off the boulevard. He led them to an apartment building on Second Street. “This is an interesting neighborhood. Lots of Armenians and Assyrians.”

“Stop talking nonsense,” Zahra snapped as they went in and began walking up the four floors to the apartment. “What are we going to do?”

“We counterattack,” Scorpion said. “It’s our only chance.”

“Just the three of us? And the entire country mobilizing for war. How do we do that?”

“Wait!” Scorpion said when they reached the door, stopping Ghanbari before he unlocked it. He checked for any signs of intruders, electronic monitoring or explosives, getting down and peeking at the crack between the door and the doorstep, then signaling Ghanbari to open the door. They went inside.

The apartment was Scorpion’s kind of place. Half a dozen bunk beds, tables for desks, floor-to-ceiling shelves stocked with computers and electronics and weapons, black curtains over the windows. It could have come from a CIA catalogue labeled “Safe house.” Zahra stood in the middle of the living room.

“How?” she insisted. “What are we going to do?”

“Not we,” Scorpion said. “You.”

For weapons, he chose a Nakhir sniper rifle, an Iranian version of the Russian Dragunov, chambered for 7.62x54mm rounds. Effective range eight hundred meters, but with a 4x scope, the maximum range was 1,300 meters; eight-tenths of a mile. Plus a handful of ten-round mags. For a handgun he took another PC9 ZOAF. Ghanbari selected an MPT-9 submachine gun.

“They might let you go. It might just be Muhammad jan ,” Scorpion said to Zahra, indicating Ghanbari, “and me they’re after. If they do take you somewhere, try to stay visible. In public, or near a window. It’s the best way I can protect you.”

“Maybe I don’t want protecting,” she said, looking in a mirror to put on lipstick and mascara, her weaponry. “Maybe they just want you and Muhammad jan. ”

“You’d give us up?” Ghanbari asked.

“In a heartbeat. I want to be safe. I want to go home,” she said. Turning to Scorpion: “You’ve been in this country one day and you’ve already ruined my life. I knew you were trouble.” Going back to the mirror: “All men are trouble, but you’re something extra special, Westermann agha . You should come with a warning label.”

Scorpion smiled ironically.

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

“You’re not the first person to say that,” he said.

“It must be true,” she said. “What do I tell them when they take me?”

“You’re giving us up. You alerted Sadeghi to the meeting. You’re working for him but we forced you to come with us on the assumption you’re on our side. Tell him where we’re hiding out, this apartment. Hopefully, he’ll believe you.”

She lit a cigarette and exhaled thoughtfully.

“And if he doesn’t?”

“Stay visible,” he said again.