Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Winter

“But if she were to actually try to win an election, you’d see she’d lose?”

Harris threw a credit card down and motioned the waitress over. She came and took the card and the check.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“The asset is more important than the country.”

“Exactly.” Harris put his hand on Scorpion’s arm. Scorpion looked at it, and Harris removed his hand. “For what it’s worth, the President said it’s the hardest thing he’s ever had to do. To knowingly allow an American who is innocent and an absolute hero to be tortured and put to death in order to save a nasty son of a bitch because he’s too valuable to lose. He said he had to think long and hard. It challenged his sense of who he really is. He says he still thinks about it.”

Scorpion put his drink down.

“Yeah, well you can tell him for me to go-” He stopped. “I don’t give a damn what you tell him. So who’s running Gorobets? Not Kyiv Station? Too iffy.”

Harris nodded. “You’re right.” The waitress came. He signed the slip and retrieved his credit card. They waited till she left. “I’m sure a smart guy like you can figure it out.”

Scorpion snorted. It was in front of him all along and he hadn’t seen it.

“Shaefer,” he said. Bucharest was close enough, and yet not under the microscope like anything Gorobets did in Kyiv. He realized that was how Akhnetzov had gotten to him in the first place. Shaefer wanted to send in the best agent they could get, to aid and abet Gorobets while forestalling a Russian takeover. They needed someone who could stop a disaster from getting out of control and that might have led to the end of NATO or even war. Scorpion hated to admit it, but if he had been in Harris’s and Shaefer’s place, playing for the stakes they were playing for, he might have done the same thing.

“So are we done?” Harris said, pulling his things together to get ready to leave. “Nobody wants to kill anybody? All debts squared? I’m told Akhnetzov paid in full.”

“Where’s my quid pro quo?” Scorpion said.

Harris folded his arms across his chest.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“Yemen.”

“Christ. It’s a powder keg. I don’t suppose I could ask you not to-” Harris stopped.

“You could ask,” Scorpion said.

Amran

Yemen

The four young men danced in a line, their old-fashioned muskets slung on their shoulders, waving their curved jambiya knives to the beat of the drums. They chanted the words of a tribal melody played by the drummers, an old man with an oud, and a barefoot musician with a meter-long khallool flute. Others in the crowd sitting on the floor joined in, a chorus of harsh male voices.

“We are the Hashidi

Born of bitterness and hate

We are the nails driven into solid rock

We are the flames of Hell

He who defies us will be burnt.”

There were cheers and the sounds of men banging the butts of their AK-47s and other weapons on the stone floor to show their approval, and shots were fired in the air outside. If the implied threat of the display troubled the bulky man in the military uniform of a Yemeni colonel seated on a pillow next to the full-bearded Sheikh al-Ahmari of the Hashid, he didn’t show it. The colonel wore the shaal turban of a sayyid, a descendent of the Prophet, of the Bakil. The Bakil were deadly rivals of the Hashid tribe, a fact that had been noted by every man in the room. The colonel was also director of the CSO, the Yemeni government’s internal security force, and thus doubly powerful.

“It is well, ahwadi, my brothers. Inshallah,” God willing, “we can make a truce between the Hashid and we of the Bakil,” Colonel Sayed al-Zuhrahi said. “The current conflict between the tribes and the government is in no one’s interest.”

“ Inshallah, but we of the Hashid are secure here in Wadi Qa’a al-Bawn. What is offered?” Sheikh al-Ahmari said. He gestured as a naadil came in with a tray of ginger coffee in thimble-sized cups and little bint al sahn honey cakes. The naadil had dark skin, a bad overbite with rotted, yellowing teeth and strange gray eyes. The naadil placed the tray on the floor in front of them, but instead of leaving, squatted beside a group of Hashid tribesmen cradling their AK-47s by the open window, their cheeks bulging with qat.

“If the Hashid and the Bakil were to unite, Sana’a would be ours. We could rule Yemen,” Colonel al-Zuhrahi said. The alliance he was proposing would end a long-simmering conflict between the two tribes. It would also create the most powerful player in the cockpit of competing factions and lawlessness that Yemen had become.

“We-or al Qaeda? For whom do you speak, sayyid, my brother?” Sheikh al-Ahmari said, looking at his advisors seated cross-legged on the floor, who nodded approvingly. He was challenging Colonel al-Zuhrahi to acknowledge that the Bakil tribe, like the Abidah, had been so infiltrated by al Qaeda that the alliance he was proposing would, in effect, hand control of Yemen over to AQAP, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

“Truly, what difference, my brothers?” The colonel smiled. “Who would dare oppose us?”

“You will bring the Amerikayeena”-the Americans-“and their drones down upon us,” said one of the sheikh’s advisors, an older man with a white beard and a vertical scar from an old wound that seemed to split his face into two unmatched halves.

“We do not fear the Amerikayeena,” Colonel al-Zuhrahi said.

“We fear nothing. Not the Amerikayeena nor the AQAP either. But the Amerikayeena pay well,” making the sign for money. “What do you-or should one say AQAP-offer?” Sheikh al-Ahmari asked.

“We would give the Hashid an exclusive access to all the qat trade of Wadi Dar and the highlands. Together with AQAP, we would control all the qat trade in Yemen and Somalia.”

“ Inshallah, this is something to be considered,” al-Ahmari said, stroking his beard. “But let us drink, my brother,” and he picked up one of the cups and offered it to the colonel. As he did so, the gray-eyed naadil came over and whispered something into the colonel’s ear. The naadil did not serve the colonel as might be expected, but instead walked on out of the room.

Colonel al-Zuhrahi pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and looked at it. “ Wa’ alif’a afoo, a thousand pardons, brother, I have a call I must take,” he said, getting up. It’s the president’s office, he mouthed to Sheikh al-Ahmari, pointing at the phone. He walked quickly out of the room, followed by two of his soldiers, both wearing the turban shaals of the Bakil.

“What is this ibn himaar,” son of a donkey, “up to?” Sheikh al-Ahmari said as the colonel left the room, looking at his fellow tribesmen.

Two of the Hashid tribesmen who were near the window unslung their AK-47s and followed the colonel’s men out of the room. There was the sound of men running and shouting, and tribesmen standing by the window saw Colonel al-Zuhrahi and his men run out of the building to a waiting Humvee. The naadil was with them.

The Humvee started with a roar and soon was twisting through the narrow winding streets of the town, dirt streets without sidewalks designed for donkeys, not cars. They barreled down the road in a cloud of dust toward the Bab al-Kabeer gate in the city wall.

“Y ou’re sure of this?” Colonel al-Zuhrahi said to Scorpion, who was still wearing the shaal turban of a lowly naadil of the Hashid tribe.

“Cyanide. I saw the cook put it in. Was there not a scent of bitter almonds in the coffee?”

“I did smell something,” the colonel replied, and nodded.

“Another moment, sayyid,” Scorpion said, “and that cup of coffee would have been your last.”