Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Deception

He heard something behind him and whirled, ready to fire. Hadi and Maziar. He motioned them close.

“Quick. The flash drives. Start with the ambassador’s office on the fourth floor and work down. I’ll take this floor,” he whispered, moving to the laptop on Brand’s desk. Checking to make sure it was on, he plugged a flash drive into a USB port. It would automatically download every document and data file on the hard drive.

He didn’t wait, but went to the next office. Stepping over the bodies of a man and a woman, he plugged in another flash drive and repeated the process, going from office to office. In the sixth office, he peeked out the window at the street and grounds below. Two polizei vans were pulling up. Men in body armor armed with SIG assault rifles began setting up a perimeter.

Time to go.

He pressed a contact number on his cell phone and sent a call. Hadi and Maziar would know what it meant, he thought as he raced down the hallway, popping into each office, pulling the flash drives and dropping them in his pocket.

He ran down the stairs, Hadi and Maziar just ahead of him. They heard the sound of polizei from outside. It was going to be close. As they reached the landing of the second floor, they heard men come into the building. Scale pulled out the cell phone, selected the contact number and pressed Send. The three of them hit the floor as the IED he had left at the opening went off, deafening them and shaking the floor.

They got up and ran down the remaining stairs, the area filled with smoke and the screams of the wounded polizei hit by the IED. The three men went out the back. The embassy grounds were green with trees and lawns and a vegetable garden. They ran through the garden toward the spiked wrought iron fence at the back of the property, knocking over the wooden stakes along the way.

They just reached it when shots rang out behind them. Hadi boosted Scale, who perched atop the fence. Thirty meters away he could see the black BMW SUV waiting for them on Bruckenstrasse. Hadi was hit as he started to boost Maziar. He sagged down, clinging to the fence bars, as Maziar scrambled up, over the top, and down the other side like a monkey. Still at the top of the fence, Scale fired a long burst back at the polizei. Hadi looked desperately up at him, his eyes wide behind the ski mask.

“Give me your flash drives,” Scale said, reaching down, bullets ripping through the leaves of a nearby tree. Hadi managed to hand them up, then sank down again, collapsing on the grass. Scale could see a blood spot the size of his palm on Hadi’s back. He kicked over and dropped to the other side. The polizei were charging, firing as they came. A bullet pinged on one of the iron bars next to him.

He looked back and fired a quick burst from the M4 at Hadi to make sure he was dead, then ran for the SUV. Danush was driving, and took off as soon as they were inside. They pulled off their ski masks, out of breath, their faces flushed. Scale took off his false nose and mustache. He would get rid of them later.

“Where are the others?” Danush asked.

Maziar shook his head. Scale checked the time. Nine minutes and forty-six seconds had elapsed. Danush drove across the bridge to the Kirchenfeld side of the river, his face grim.

“Give me your flash drives,” Scale ordered. Maziar handed them to him. “Stay with the plan,” he told them. “If you’re stopped, you know what to do.” The SUV had been rigged with C4. If stopped by the polizei, they would detonate. There would be no live witnesses for the FIS or the CIA to interrogate, and as little as possible left as evidence.

They drove around, slowing to let the white Kantonspolizei patrol cars, their sirens blasting, race by. As soon as Scale got out in the Old City, Danush sped off. They would take the A1 autoroute, and if they made it, all of them would reconnect in Zurich.

He walked the cobblestoned Spitalgasse, stone-gray buildings around him and tram wires overhead. He took the tram near the Zytglogge-the city’s landmark medieval clock tower, with its high pointed spire-to Gurtenbahn, where he caught the red funicular up the steep side of the Gurten, Bern’s local mountain. He watched the scenery as they ascended, thick with trees, some still covered with snow.

It was cold at the top. Scale pulled up the zipper of his jacket and walked to the lookout. There were about twenty people, tourists and a few local families, enjoying the view. From there he could see across the city to the snow-covered Alps in the distance, though he couldn’t see the American embassy. He took out the cell phone, the last time he would use this one, and called a number in Zurich. He was not surprised that no one answered, and waited for the beep for voice mail. It was a cutout. He had no idea who would pick up the message or how they would pass it along.

“Gol ghermez,” he said in Farsi, and clicked off. Red rose; the signal for success.

He removed the SIM card from the phone, put on gloves, wiped both the phone and the SIM with a sterile wipe to remove any trace of fingerprints or DNA, then tossed the phone into a trash can. When he got down into the city, he would get rid of the SIM.

Scale took a deep breath then, enjoying the view. A little blond boy, perhaps two or three years old, looked up at him. After a moment the boy smiled. He smiled back, and the boy shyly pressed his face against his mother’s leg. He’d done it, he thought. The flash drives would be sent via DHL to a post office box in Madrid. There would be two days of watching TV in the apartment on Gutenbergstrasse till things eased up, then a train and the next mission.

The Gardener would be pleased.

Nairobi,

Kenya

“Why here? Place stinks of curry,” Soames said. He was a big man with a linebacker’s shoulders and short fair hair that didn’t disguise a bald spot. Harris’s pit bull, Rabinowich called him. Scorpion didn’t think much of Blake Soames, All-American Boy, and he trusted his boss, Bob Harris, deputy director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, even less. “And flies,” brushing one away. “I hate Indian food. We could’ve met at the Norfolk.”

They were sitting in the back of a small shop in the Diamond Plaza mall in the Parklands district. Before connecting, Scorpion had watched from across the street to make sure Soames hadn’t been followed. The shop sold pirated DVDs and video games, and Scorpion had bribed the owner to disappear for a half hour. A waiter from one of the chicken tikka restaurants-“Please welcome good sir, better than chowpatty,” grabbing at Scorpion when he first entered the open-air food court-had brought them cold bottles of Tusker beer. He kept trying to get them to order till Scorpion shoved a hundred shilling tipu in his hand and he left.

“Why not post it on Facebook while you’re at it?” Scorpion said. There was no way of going to the Norfolk, a luxury colonial hotel that went back to “Out of Africa” days, without attracting attention from every intelligence service and watcher in East Africa, from the Chinese Guoanbu to al Qaeda.

Soames leaned forward, beefy forearms on his knees, motioning Scorpion closer. That was his style. Fellow jocks in a football huddle. Scorpion almost smiled, remembering Rabinowich’s poem about Soames that had gone viral inside the CIA.

My name is Soames,

I’ve no use for combs,

Or clever little poems;

I am Bob Harris’s bitchy-poo,

Tell me fellow spook, whose bitch are you?

“You heard about Switzerland?” Soames began.

Scorpion sat up straight. It was a mission pitch. Except every time he had gone on an operation for Harris, he’d lived to regret it.