Andrew Kaplan: Scorpion Deception

He felt her come up beside him, her lithe body naked under a sheer nightgown. It was all he could do not to grab her as tightly as he could. Instead, he handed her the glass and she drank.

“Where’d you go just now?” she asked.

“Just a drink,” he said.

“No. I mean in your mind.”

He didn’t answer.

“It isn’t simple, is it?” she said.

“No, it isn’t.”

“It’s beautiful,” she said, gazing out at the acacia tree and the endless African plain under the moon and the stars. She slipped her arm around him and leaned against him. “What are we going to do?”

“We’ll think of something,” he said.

Baharestan Square,

Tehran, Iran

It was late, well past midnight. He got up from his desk in his office on the secure third floor of the Ministry of Islamic Guidance and went over to the window. His was the only window still lit in any of the office buildings around Baharestan Square. He looked down at the grassy oval and trees under the street lamps, nearly empty of traffic at this hour. It looked lonely, deserted. It was hard to believe that massive public demonstrations in this square had threatened to topple the regime. His role in the brutal suppression and elimination of the opposition leadership during the demonstrations had been key in advancing his position with both Expediency Council chairman Beikzadeh and the Supreme Leader. Of course, that was before he married the chairman’s daughter, Afareen, thereby cementing his position in the leadership’s inner circle.

He went over the voice mail from Colonel Jamshid Moharami, the commandant of Evin Prison, confirming that the witnesses were being held in complete isolation in the sealed-off section of the prison reserved for special activities. A farmer, his wife, and another villager from Piranshahr. Kurds, of course. They each independently confirmed that they had seen a foreign helicopter over the site of the battle where the Revolutionary Guards force had been wiped out and that a man dressed like Haji Firuz was raised by a rescue line into the helicopter.

Scorpion, he thought.

The Americans had found a way out of the crisis without having to go to war. At first, after learning from the Bern CIA files that it was Scorpion who terminated his protege, Bassam Hassani, the Palestinian, the best recruit he’d ever trained, in the Rome operation, he wanted to eliminate him. But when Scorpion survived in Paris and again on the Costa Brava, it confirmed how good the American really was and gave him a better idea. He used Spain to lure Scorpion to Tehran, where those fools, Sadeghi and Ghanbari, might think they had the advantage of the Swiss, Westermann, on their home terrain, never imagining who they were dealing with.

Especially Ghanbari, who had been quietly investigating around Mashhad, going into his-Qassen Jafari’s-childhood school records. That’s why he had cut off communication with the Mossad; with Ghanbari sniffing around, it was getting too dangerous. But with Scorpion, he had managed to get rid of both Ghanbari and Sadeghi, his only other rival, without any possibility of suspicion falling on him.

It was just a matter of cleaning up loose ends.

He went back to his desk and picked up the hard copy Scorpion file. It had the original photograph of Scorpion as Michael Kilbane from the CIA file in Bern, then the phony photograph in all the Iranian computer files, MOIS, VEVAK, al Quds, border security, that had been modified by some virus software-no doubt from the Americans or the Israelis-that made Kilbane’s face unrecognizable, and the visa photograph of the Swiss businessman, Laurent Westermann, which clearly matched the original Kilbane photograph.

He studied the Kilbane and Westermann photographs. In a way, they were alike, this Scorpion and him. They were like World War One flying aces, enemies who tried to kill each other but who would afterwards salute, one airman to another, in their open cockpits.

Scorpion had stopped the American war, for the moment. Barikallah! Bravo! Even better, thanks to Scorpion, the CIA now believed that he, the Gardener, was dead. Perhaps we’ll meet again someday, he thought, getting up and putting the file in his high security office safe, with multiple locks and fingerprint recognition pad, hidden in the floor beneath his desk.

He went back to his computer and sent a Highest Expediency Level Secret e-mail to Shahab Dejagadeh, head of his IT special attack team, to permanently delete all the files and photographs on Kilbane and Westermann from all Iranian databases and computer networks. It would leave his hardcopy photographs as the only recognizable image of Scorpion. When he was done, the Gardener picked up his secure phone and called Moharami at the prison.

“Have the villagers confessed?” he asked.

“To what, baradar ? We only questioned them about the helicopter and the Swiss,” Moharami said.

“They’re Kurdish spies. Members of PJAK,” the Gardener said.

Moharami didn’t hesitate for a second.

“Of course, baradar . Give us a day or two. We’ll get them to confess to everything.”

“You have twenty-four hours. Then execute them. No public announcement. Nothing. I want their confessions on my desk by noon tomorrow.”

“It’s not much time, baradar ,” Moharami said. The Gardener could sense his hesitation. “They’re simple villagers.”

“Do you have any idea who this is coming from, Jamshid jan ?” the Gardener said quietly, suggesting the orders came from the Supreme Leader himself. “This is a matter of state security in a time of national crisis. They are spies.”

“Of course, baradar ,” Moharami said.

“Ta farda.” Till tomorrow, the Gardener said, and ended the call.

He leaned back in his chair. For the moment, his position was unassailable. As for those Pasdaran who had killed his parents and brother, he had arranged their deaths years earlier, making sure he was there in person to watch every second of their execution.

To complete his revenge would take more waiting. That’s all right, he thought. He was good at it.