Andrew Kaplan: Scorpion Betrayal

“I don’t think you should stay,” he said. “I can give you asylum in America, but you have to come right now.”

She shook her head, her long dark hair a mane on the pillow, the movement making him aware of her superb, nearly naked body. “This is my country,” she said softly.

“They’ll have to suspect you. Once I leave this room, no one can protect you.”

“Ana fahim.” I understand. She smiled wistfully, wincing as she did, and despite the swelling and bruises, he could see how attractive she was. “I don’t want to go anywhere. Let Hezbollah and the Syrians leave.”

Scorpion heard a terrible muffled high-pitched squeal in the next room, almost like an animal’s. He replaced her gag and hurried into the dining area. Fouad was grinding the red-hot saucepan onto Kassem’s privates. Scorpion pulled him away, then put a choke hold on Kassem, cutting off the carotid artery and rendering him unconscious.

“We have to go. Did he say anything?”

“He said it wasn’t the Central Committee. He didn’t know the ‘Palestinian’. He said Cairo was the work of the Al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya.”

“The Islamic Resistance? Who are they?”

“A secret cell within Hezbollah. More radical than Nasrullah. We’ve heard only whispers. No one knows anything about it, or if they do, no one speaks. Do we kill him now?” Fouad asked, taking out his gun.

Scorpion saw Kassem starting to stir. Whatever he did, he would have to do it quickly.

“He has to escape,” he whispered into Fouad’s ear. “That was the plan.”

Fouad shook his head. “You don’t understand Lebanon,” he said, and pointed his gun at Kassem.

As Fouad started to squeeze the trigger, Scorpion reached over and, with a Krav Maga maneuver, twisted the gun away from Fouad and fired it at him three times, killing him instantly. From another apartment he heard a scream, and then gunshots from below. Kassem’s men had heard the shots and were no doubt already on their way.

Scorpion ran into the bedroom, untied the woman and pulled her with him back into the next room. He grabbed one of the AK-47s from the floor, fired it at Fouad’s body, opened the balcony door, stepped out and fired the gun at it from outside, shattering the glass, then ran back in and handed the AK-47 to the woman. Lights were going on in apartments in buildings all around, and he could hear shouting and gunshots and dogs barking. He only had seconds.

“You freed yourself and killed him,” he said, indicating Fouad. “You saved Kassem. I ran away. Understand?”

“I understand,” she said, pushing him. “Go with Allah.”

“Stay away from the door. They’ll come in shooting,” he said as he grabbed the backpack.

Running out to the balcony, he hooked up to Fouad’s rappelling line from the roof and leaped over the rail as the apartment door was shredded with AK-47 fire, shots ripping into the apartment wall. He rappelled wildly down the side of the building, not daring to take a second to look up. The instant his feet touched the concrete of the alleyway, he detached from the line and ran into the shadows.

Behind him, Scorpion heard the sound of bullets pinging off the concrete. As he ran he pulled off his ski mask, stuffed it into the backpack, and pressed his cell phone to alert the Druze getaway drivers. He raced down the alley to the side street. Just as he got to the sidewalk, the SUV screeched to a stop. He jumped in and they sped into the darkness.

“Where’s Fouad?” one of the Druze asked in Arabic.

Scorpion shook his head. “Keep driving,” he said. “I’ll tell you where to stop.”

The two Druze gunmen drove around to make sure they weren’t followed and dropped him off on Avenue Clemenceau. He waited till they drove away, cautioning them to say nothing and not to go home. Once Hezbollah discovered Fouad’s identity, there would be retaliations against the Druze. He was walking the few blocks to the apartment on Omar Daouk, the streets still active with pedestrians and traffic despite the late hour, the streetlights spaced like lonely sentinels in the darkness, when Kassem’s call came.

“You shouldn’t have called,” a voice said. Scorpion’s cell phone screen showed the phone number of a Dr. Samir Abadi in Damascus, Syria.

“They wanted to know about the Palestinian,” he heard Kassem say, his voice sounding surprisingly normal, despite the pain he had to be in.

“And?”

“I told them nothing.” There was a pause. “They know of Al-Muqawama.”

The phone in Damascus clicked off.

Scorpion took the elevator to the apartment and within minutes had uploaded the contents of Kassem’s cell phone to Rabinowich via the Corn Association website from his laptop. He cleared out anything in the apartment that might identify him, wiping down whatever he’d touched with antiseptic wipes. At the bus station near the port, he caught a night Service taxi to Damascus that he shared with a Syrian businessman who had come to Beirut to see his dentist and a Shi’ite woman who was going to visit her sister. They drove through the city and up the winding mountain roads in the darkness to the Syrian border.

Scorpion hadn’t wanted to do this at night, but Hezbollah would already be mobilizing, and he knew it would be harder to cross the border if he waited till morning. As it was, there was a chance of Hezbollah gunmen stopping them anywhere in the Bekaa Valley or in one of the Shi’ite villages in the mountains. As for the border, the Syrians would soon be alerted. His best chance was to get through before they were all over the border station. The Service stopped at the border and they were ordered out of the taxi. He handed the Lebanese border officer a French passport and a press pass that identified him as Adrien Leveque, a journalist from Le Figaro.

News about the killing was on a television on the wall behind the officer. A reporter standing outside the building on Baroudi Street said that two bodies had been found in the apartment, a man and the nude body of a woman. There was no mention on the TV of the two gunmen Scorpion had killed or Hezbollah. The police assumed the female body was the woman who had rented the apartment, but identification would take time because she’d been badly tortured and mutilated before she died. The reporter said police were focusing on the sex angle, with speculation about a sadomasochistic game between two lovers that had gotten out of control.

The officer looked at Scorpion’s passport and press pass photos, then at him and typed something into the computer.

“Etes-vous ecrit une histoire sur la Syrie?” the officer asked.

“Sur l’effet de la crise financiere sur le commerce libanais et syriens,” Scorpion said. He was concerned that they were doing a computer check. The credentials from the CIA were supposed to be rock solid, so it wasn’t that, and Le Figaro often featured financial stories, such as the one on the financial crisis he claimed he was covering. That usually made people less interested, which was why he had chosen it. The officer glanced at the television screen behind him, then at Scorpion while they waited for the computer. Scorpion felt a bead of sweat slide down his back. Every second increased his danger. The Lebanese border police were staffed with Shi’a, often from either Amal or Hezbollah. And crossing the border into Syria didn’t mean anything. They were on both sides of the border.

The officer checked the computer, then with a blank expression handed him back his passport. It was the time of night that had made him suspicious, Scorpion thought. But he’d had no choice. Sooner or later someone would remember seeing someone who looked like him with Fouad. The police wouldn’t put him together with Fouad and the woman, but Hezbollah might.