Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Betrayal

“So why kill Budawi?”

Harris shrugged. “Maybe as a gesture from Hezbollah to the Brothers. A bowl of figs to seal the deal.”

“Or as you said, to send a message.”

“But to whom? The Egyptians, the Israelis, or us?”

“The other Arab regimes. Letting them know there’s a new player in the game.”

“Interesting, that’s what Rabinowich said,” Harris said.

“I thought you didn’t like Rabinowich.”

Harris grimaced. “I don’t. He’s not a team player. Neither are you.”

“No, I’m not,” Scorpion said. Now it was out in the open between them. “What do you want, Bob?”

“You’re a smart boy. You tell me,” Harris said, leaning back, his arms folded across his chest.

“Rabinowich is right. And if he is, it’s your ass on the line, which doesn’t bother me in the least. Not after Arabia.”

“Except it’s not about us, is it?” Harris said.

For a moment neither of them spoke. Scorpion took a sip of the beer and put the bottle down.

“Does Rabinowich think it’s a Palestinian? What about Hamas?”

“We don’t know. The consensus is, probably not. It’s probably a cover name to throw us off. Truth is, we have nothing. A voice. That’s it.”

“And that bothers you more than anything else, doesn’t it?” Scorpion paused. From somewhere in the ship there was a clang of steel banging against steel, a container, hitting the side of the hatch. It was like an omen, he thought. Things go wrong. He had been lucky for a long time, but you couldn’t be lucky forever. Something inside him tightened, telling him not to do it. He watched Harris take a sip of beer, pretending they were colleagues instead of men who hated each other’s guts. Harris hadn’t wanted to come all this way. He did it because he had no choice. Scorpion took a deep breath. “What’s the mission?” he asked.

“This is a Special Access Critical operation. We’re coordinating with NSA, DIA, FBI, State, and every foreign intelligence service in the world, including the ones that according to Congress we’re not supposed to talk to. I’m personally running it. Foley’s coordinating for Langley. Anderson for the FBI. General Massey for the Defense Intelligence Agency. Security will be tightened in every major U.S. city and every capital in the world. We’ve already launched the most massive worldwide manhunt anybody’s ever heard of. Every agency and DOD department is running 24/7 shifts to handle all the data streaming in.”

“All this because of Budawi? This is bullshit. What aren’t you telling me?”

“Nothing,” Harris said, inspecting his nails. If it were possible for someone as deceitful as Harris to reveal true emotion, Scorpion would have said that he was running scared.

“I’m not a virgin, Bob. I don’t need foreplay. What is it?”

Harris shook his head. “Need to know.” Scorpion knew that the deputy director was within his rights to withhold information. The rule was “no excess baggage.” You only told a field agent what he absolutely needed to know. Except he was getting a bad feeling about this one. He stared at the cabin porthole, the Arabian Sea a distant blue beyond the breakwater while Springsteen went dancing in the dark. Neither man spoke.

“You’ve got plenty of firepower on this. What’s the problem?” Scorpion asked finally.

“It won’t work. I have a feeling about this Palestinian. He’s good. Too good and absolutely ruthless. No matter what we do, he’ll find a way. That’s where you come in. I want you on your own, running your own operation, completely separate from everything and anyone else in the Agency. You’ll have unlimited access to anything we have anytime you want it. Spend as much money as you have to. If you want, I’ll give you the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs’ private cell number. Call out the goddamn Marines. You have one job. Stop the Palestinian. However you have to do it. No questions asked.”

“It’ll get dirty. You know what we’re dealing with.”

“Whatever it takes.”

Scorpion waited. He picked up the Beck’s but didn’t drink. The only sounds besides Springsteen were those of the port machinery and someone on the dock shouting in Urdu. As an independent agent, for Scorpion there was always the matter of payment. Finally, Harris said it.

“Double the usual fee plus a triple bonus when the Palestinian is-” He hesitated. “-no longer an issue. The first half’ll be in the Luxembourg account in an hour.”

Christ, they were scared shitless, Scorpion thought. Harris didn’t even bat an eye at so much money. What the hell was this?

“Hezbollah means Lebanon. I don’t trust Beirut station,” Scorpion said, putting down the beer.

“Rabinowich agrees. Keep it separate. Do it any way you like. There’s a backpack with a dozen passports, credit cards, money, contacts, some gear, the usual. Get it at the drop on 13th Street.” Then Harris told him the website they’d be using and the emergency password and countersign, what Scorpion’s old mentor, Koenig, used to call the pilot eject button. “Anything else?” he asked.

Scorpion stood up. “I have a plane to catch.”

“You have two weeks; probably less,” Harris said.

Beirut, Lebanon

Fouad was sitting by the window over a cafe au lait at an inside table at the Cafe de Paris. He was pretending to read a copy of Special magazine, a sexy Lebanese actress in a low-cut dress on the cover, as Scorpion entered the cafe. It was the signal that he was clean. If there had been any opposition, any one of the dozen different Lebanese factions opposed to his group, the March 14 Druze, the magazine would have been lying closed on the table.

Scorpion sat down across from Fouad and looked around. The cafe, with its orange awnings and multicolored chairs, was a Rue Hamra institution, and most of the clientele, he noted, was older. Gray-haired men who still wore suit jackets and en vogue women of a “certain age” who had kept their shapes. They looked like they dated from the nineties, when the cafe had been a hotbed of politicians, journalists, and spies.

“Salaam aleikem,” Fouad said, limply shaking Scorpion’s hand, passing a small plug-in flash drive as he did so.

“Wa aleikem es-salaam. This place is still here,” Scorpion said. “Un cafe turc, s’il vous plait,” he said to the waiter.

“The students all hang out at Starbucks now. The old Lebanon is dead,” Fouad said, lighting a cigarette. He spoke a Druze-style Arabic distinguished by the qaf, the guttural k sound. “The photo is on the flash drive,” he whispered, leaning closer and opening his cell phone to show Scorpion the image of a man in Western clothes and a checkered kaffiyeh draped around his neck, talking on a cell phone on an apartment balcony.

“Salim?” Scorpion said.

Fouad nodded. “It’s him.”

“How do I know it’s him? Man on a balcony with a long distance lens. Could be anybody.”

“You know Choueifat?”

“Druze village. East of the airport,” Scorpion said.

“Hezbollah came at night. They took four boys. One of them was my brother’s son, Badi. Before they killed him, they cut out his eyes. This is Salim,” Fouad said, tapping the cell phone. “How many will you need?” He stopped and they waited until the waiter served Scorpion the thick coffee and left.

“Depends. Does he ever leave?”

“Sometimes.” Fouad looked around. “He has a woman in Ashrafieh.”

“How do you know?”

“She is one of us.” Scorpion raised his eyebrows and didn’t say anything. “Her mother was Druze,” Fouad explained.

“And he trusts her enough to visit her?”

“You should see her. Dark-haired, dark-eyed…” Fouad tried to find the words, his hands in front of him as if to touch something exquisite. “A beauty.”