Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Deception

This is how the crisis ends, he thought. A successful JSOC mission that killed all the Bravo Golfs responsible for the attack on the embassy in Bern. Medals all around and the U.S. administration gets a political plus on their report card, looking macho without having to go to war.

They hauled him into the helicopter, the sound of the rotor and the wash of wind so loud, he could barely hear.

“You are wearing red,” Shaefer said, shaking his head as they unhooked him and sat him down. “And blackface too.” Scorpion was suddenly conscious of Shaefer being African-American. “What’s that about?” Shaefer continued.

“I’ve been playing the fool,” Scorpion said.

Galata Bridge,

Istanbul, Turkey

The three men met on the Galata Bridge shortly after midnight. Scorpion, in a leather jacket against the cool evening wind, came from the Beyoglu side. Lights from buildings and ships on both sides of the Golden Horn reflected on the dark water. He walked toward the other two men, leaning on the pedestrian rail near the middle of the bridge. A quartet of men in the shadows a hundred meters in either direction, Soames was one of them, secured the area and kept watch. There was little traffic on the bridge at this hour; just the occasional car or taxi. Scorpion came over and leaned on the rail next to Bob Harris.

“For the record, this meeting never happened,” said Yuval, head of the Israeli Mossad. “No recordings, no notes, nothing. I will never tell anyone. Bob Harris and you, Scorpion, will not reveal anything no matter what. Not to the director of the CIA, the DCI, or the President of the United States. Not one of us will ever mention this again, not even among ourselves.”

They looked out over the water and the city, landmarks like the mosques on the hills and the Galata Tower lit up at night. Scorpion could smell the roast kabobs from the restaurants below that crammed the bridge’s lower deck and the apple-tobacco smoke from the nargileh cafes.

“Pretty,” Harris said. “Can you imagine what it must have been like for some officer on some Roman, what-do-you-call-’em, quinqueremes, warship, a couple of thousand years ago? Byzantium. A major posting; at anchor in the Golden Horn. Probably thought he was in the big-time, on his way up.”

“Or missing his wife or thinking it was a shit hole and the whores in Rome were prettier,” Scorpion said.

“We Jews had our own share of troubles with the Romans,” Yuval said, lighting a cigarette.

“You Jews have trouble with everyone. With you, it’s never easy,” Harris said.

“It’s true. We argue even with God.” Yuval looked at Scorpion. “So you know, we had somebody watching your Dr. Sandrine Delange. A South African Jew before he made aliyah to Israel. She knows him as Van Zyl, an official from UNHCR. She’s in the refugee camp in Dadaab. Apparently she’s acquired two Somali children, a boy and a girl, along the way. Anyway, she’s safe.”

“Good to know,” Scorpion said, feeling something lift inside, a weight he didn’t know he was carrying.

“The least we can do,” Yuval said, exhaling a stream of smoke. He glanced at Harris next to him. “You could have told us what you were planning. An AC-130U Spooky gunship. Impressive.”

“Why the hell should we tell you?”

“We’re supposed to be allies.”

“Never stopped us from stabbing each other in the back before,” Harris said. “This is about the strike on the nuclear facilities and missile sites in Iran, right?”

Yuval smiled. “Ah, that. You know, I’m almost tempted to let you believe you’re going to find out something you don’t think we know you know.” He flicked the ash from his cigarette, the tip glowing orange in the darkness. “No, this is something more. .” He groped for the word. “What I’m about to tell you is the most critical, most highly classified secret in the state of Israel. I can’t even begin to tell you how many rules and laws I’m violating, not to mention an oath I took on Masada when I was eighteen years old.”

“I’m listening,” Harris said. “And I’ve agreed to the terms, even though it might be breaking a few oaths of my own. As for Scorpion. .” He gestured.

“In a curious way, we trust Scorpion,” Yuval said. “He belongs to no one, certainly not to us, but what I’m about to tell, he needs to know. Also it’s in his interest to keep this to himself.”

“I know part of it,” Scorpion said. “The other piece is why I’m here.”

Harris looked at him curiously.

“Like what?”

“Just before I terminated Farzan Sadeghi of Kta’eb Hezbollah, he said something that stuck in my brain. He implied that the Bern attack was because of me. It made no sense. I’m not that important in the scheme of things.”

“What were his exact words?” Yuval asked.

“He mentioned my code name. Scorpion. Aqrab in Farsi. The woman, Zahra, asked him why this Scorpion was so important, and he said, ‘What do you think this is all about?’ ”

“Is that why you terminated him?” Harris asked.

Scorpion shook his head.

“There were only two possible candidates for the Gardener: Sadeghi and Ghanbari. The only way to be sure the Gardener was eliminated was to eliminate them both. Plus, he was about to kill Zahra.” He turned to Yuval. “But that doesn’t explain why they were after me in particular or why they attacked the embassy. That’s why I’m here.”

Yuval nodded. He took a drag from his cigarette and flipped it over the rail. They watched the glow of its burning tip as it fell down to the dark water. He leaned on his side to face them.

“He was the most extraordinary person I’ve ever met,” he began. “You have to understand, I’ve-let’s just say I’ve been around. I’ve known prime ministers, kings-eight U.S. Presidents-all kinds, mass murderers, some people who will live in history, but never anyone like him. And certainly never anyone who did what he did.”

Harris looked irritably at his watch.

“Come on, Yuval,” he said. “Skip the commercial. I’m impressed, all right? Who the hell is he?”

Yuval smiled. “You’re such an ass, Bob. Aren’t you the one who looked at the Golden Horn,” gesturing vaguely at the lights on the Eminonu side of the bridge, “and talked about the Romans? What I’m talking about,” he tapped the metal rail. “This is history. This is what’s about to happen.”

“All right.” Harris frowned. “I’m listening.”

“I first met him when he was seven years old. This was in the 1980s. Reagan was the U.S. President. The boy had come from Isfahan in Iran, where he had seen his parents murdered before his own eyes. His father had literally been torn apart by chains attached to trucks pulling in opposite directions. They made him watch. They raped his mother. Many times. They cut off her arms and legs, then poured gasoline over her and his little brother and set them on fire right in front of him. A child. Can you imagine?

“They sent him to the Iraqi front to die. He was about to be executed by a firing squad when an unknown Iranian woman helped him get away and some of the few Jews left in Iran smuggled him to Israel. We called him David.

“I was his trainer. His first and only case officer. In a way, he was my creation. You must understand,” he said, biting his lip, and to Scorpion it seemed he was trying to defend himself to an invisible jury, “we don’t train children. Ever. It was hard enough for him, dealing with what he had just gone through, being in a new country with a new language, customs, new everything, but it was his idea. He insisted.