Scorpion Deception

by Andrew Kaplan

  “Tango” was military-speak for the letter T, the seventh letter from the end of the alphabet, so Scorpion knew that Rabinowich was referring to the seventh letter from the beginning of the alphabet, G, obviously meaning either Ghanbari or the Gardener. He assumed it stood for Ghanbari or there would have been more. ERSHAD was a Farsi acronym. It stood for the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, the Iranian ministry in charge of government censorship of media and the Internet. Combing through reams of data, Rabinowich had somehow uncovered that Ghanbari worked there as a cover for his al Quds activities; either that or someone at that particular ministry knew how to get to him.

  Scorpion knew that going through the ministry would be difficult. He had appointments with General Vahidi’s people in the IRGCAF, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force. It would be next to impossible to explain to VEVAK what business he had with the Islamic Guidance ministry, and in any case it didn’t matter. He was counting on Zahra, he thought, looking around at the stand of trees in the darkness.

  The silence was complete; no bird or animal stirrings, not even the faint patter of rain on the leaves. The rain was tapering off.

  Final wmz, when the three letters were numerically reversed alphabetically, stood for “final DNA.” Combining that with “expected” meant that the final DNA tests on the bodies of the terrorists in Bern had yielded the expected results they first talked about in Zug and that had since been broadcast all over the world. Except for the Kurdish girl, the dead terrorists in Bern had been Iranians.

  It was starting to look like that was enough for Washington. Arlington meant the Pentagon plus full-court press. It meant the generals were pressuring the pols, telling them that they couldn’t hold at this DEFCON level for too long without a security breach or losing mission readiness. He could feel the pressure coming from Harris, who was obviously trying to hold his finger in the dike. Unless they heard otherwise from him soon, the U.S. was seriously considering attacking Iran, even without the proof they needed. Except neither he nor anyone in Washington understood what was going on. Especially in this internal battle within Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. It could be a huge potential fiasco, he thought. And Harris was all he had. The DCIA, the head of the CIA, was a political appointee. He couldn’t stand up to the generals and the politicos forever.

  Message received, Bob, he thought, taking the SIM out of the cell phone, burying it in dirt at the base of a tree and covering the ground over it with sodden leaves. As he walked back on the path, he dropped the rest of the cell phone into a plastic trash can. Coming out of the park onto Keshavarz Boulevard, he saw that the rain had stopped. He closed the umbrella and kept walking. Ahead of him, to the east, a gray predawn light was visible behind the buildings. To his left loomed the Alborz mountain range, white with snow from the foothills to the peaks. The rain must have fallen as snow at the higher elevations, he thought.

  On the empty boulevard’s center island he listened for cars and footsteps and thought about the timing. They were closing the window. He had to find Ghanbari soon or leave Iran. Behind him, he heard a car. It had turned onto the boulevard from a side street.

  He ducked behind a shrub next to the water channel and watched as a white Saipa sedan completed the turn and crawled slowly along the boulevard. Through the leaves, he could see two policemen in the sedan scanning the empty sidewalks and center island. If they spotted him, he was blown. As he watched the car the alarm on the personal cell phone he’d used to swipe the data and eavesdrop on Zahra’s cell phone vibrated. He took it out and put it to his ear, never taking his eyes off the sedan.

  It was Zahra’s voice. She must have just woken up.

  “Someone’s been asking about you,” she said in Farsi. He checked the screen. The number she was calling wasn’t the number they had for Ghanbari. One of the policemen in the car ran his eyes over the shrubbery and for an instant Scorpion thought he had been seen. His hand slid to the gun in his pocket, but the policeman’s eyes didn’t react and continued scanning the trees and walkway. He let out his breath as the car drove slowly past, the sound of an Iranian pop song floating from its radio.

  “Who is it?” a man’s voice replied in Farsi on the cell phone. He was whispering and it was hard to hear him.

  “A foreigner. A Swiss,” she said.

  “Who is he? Where is this coming from?”

  “Are you crazy?!” she said. “We can’t talk like this.”

  “I know. If Sadeghi were to hear . . .”

  Scorpion’s mind raced. Who the hell was Sadeghi? Was he the Gardener? Is that what Ghanbari was afraid of? According to Shaefer and the CIA, the U.S. was about to go to war and pin the attack in Bern on Ghanbari. What if they got it wrong? What was going on?

  “You don’t think—” she started, then stopped.

  “Khodaye man!” he said. My God! “Don’t even say it.”

  “Where can we meet?”

  “Tonight. The ski cabin,” he said, ending the call.

  Scorpion’s mind raced as he stood and began walking rapidly back to the hotel. Two things were clear. Zahra knew Ghanbari well. Were they really related? Could they be lovers? She was embedded with General Vahidi, while Ghanbari was in al Quds and tied to the saw-scaled snake. Maybe one of them was running the other. But who ran whom?

  More importantly, they were both afraid of someone else. This Sadeghi. So which one was the Gardener? Ghanbari or Sadeghi? Or someone else? And what was behind it? He had to find out and then get it to Shaefer and Rabinowich. And he had less than seventy-two hours to do it.

  As he approached the hotel, people and cars began to appear on the street, the city beginning to wake up. A black BMW SUV was parked in front of the hotel, two men in suits sitting inside. VEVAK, he thought, taking a deep breath and pretending to ignore them as he walked by and up the front steps into the hotel. If they questioned him about where he had been so early in the morning, he would have to tell them about Zahra and make it about sex—possibly telling them that in some torture cell in Evin Prison.

  The gleaming marble lobby was nearly empty except for a man in a suit sitting on a sofa, reading a copy of Abrar, a pro-government newspaper. The headline in Farsi read: PRESIDENT SAYS IRAN WILL FIGHT. As he walked to the elevator, he glanced at the front desk. The clerk behind the counter caught his glance and quickly looked away.

  Shit, he thought, continuing to the elevator. He couldn’t go back to his room. VEVAK or al Quds or Kta’eb Hezbollah would be waiting for him there. He stepped into the elevator and pressed the button, not for his floor but two floors below it. As the elevator door closed, the man with the newspaper lowered it and looked directly at him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Route 425,

  Tehran, Iran

  He turned from Lashgarak Road onto Route 425, a paved two-lane road into the mountains, bordered by a guardrail and trees. A place of incredible beauty, with waterfalls tumbling from rocks to a gorge beside the road. About five kilometers up and above the tree line, the snow got deep enough that he had to stop at a turnoff to put on chains even with the rented Toyota RAV4’s all-wheel drive. He looked around at the mountains, stark and covered with snow. No one was following him on the road and only the occasional car or truck came the other way, down the mountain from Shemshak. He didn’t expect a lot of traffic heading up. It was late afternoon and there was no night skiing at the resort; not to mention the crisis. He didn’t need to check his iPad again to see where Zahra was. She had left her cell phone on, and his tracking software on the iPad showed she was about ten kilometers ahead of him up toward the Dizin ski resort.

  He had gotten away from the hotel that morning through the service entrance, after opening a locker in the employees’ room in the basement. Waiting till the room was empty, he had folded up his Burberry raincoat and packed it into his messenger bag, then pulled a hotel workman’s white coverall on over his clothes and simply walked out the service door. Only one person, a bearded young
man in a windbreaker smoking a cigarette, had been watching the service exit from across the street, and with Scorpion changing his appearance with the coveralls, the man hadn’t given him a second look.

  As soon as he had gone a few blocks, he stepped into an alley, pulled off the coveralls, and put the Burberry back on. He kept walking. What had changed, he thought, that the VEVAK or Kta’eb Hezbollah was now on to him? Was it just that he had slipped their leash? They had followed him in the Peugeot, so they knew he was with Zahra last night.

  He’d thought to get in touch with Vahidi, if that door was still open to him, but he knew it was too early, and rubbing his unshaven cheek, that he had to clean up. An early morning café on Felestin Avenue was just opening. He went in and ordered breakfast: lavash bread, feta cheese, walnuts, jam, and tea served in a glass, Iranian-style. While he was eating, his cell phone rang.

  “What happened last night?” Zahra had asked.

  “Don’t you know?”

  “I don’t understand. I remember leaving the party. Beyond that, my memory’s a complete blank.”

  Ketamine, he thought, looking around to see if anyone in the café could overhear him. A waiter was sweeping the floor near the front door, too far away to hear.

  “Too much Grey Goose,” he said. She had been drinking cosmos.

  “Did we— ” she started, then stopped, obviously about to ask whether they’d had sex.

  “No,” he said. “I put you to bed.”

  “You left my clothes on. Don’t you like me?” she asked.

  “It was tempting, but it wouldn’t have been . . .” He hesitated. “ . . . ta’arof.”

  “You’re a good person,” she said. “At first I didn’t think so, but you are.”

  “No, I’m not,” he said seriously. “But I don’t take advantage of helpless people, especially women.”

  “Never?” she whispered.

  Just how kinky was she? he’d wondered. She was sexy, all right. But she wasn’t doing any of this for him. It was for Vahidi. Or Ghanbari. It wasn’t clear who she was working for.

  “Only if they really want it,” he teased. “Maybe I should take you over my knee. Tonight?” Testing to see what she’d say. He knew she was meeting Ghanbari that night in the mountains.

  “Not tonight,” she said. Of course not, he thought. “But tomorrow perhaps?” She left it hanging.

  “That’s fine. I’ve got plenty to do,” he told her, then whispered into the cell, “We need to talk. The VEVAK were waiting for me at the hotel.”

  “You’re an important man. They’re there to protect you.”

  “No, they’re there to watch me—and that means watch us. Call General Vahidi. Tell him to make them go away.”

  “I’m not sure he can do that,” she had said, and he could hear the fear in her voice. It wasn’t the VEVAK she was afraid of. But she was afraid of someone. Of course, that could be said of almost everyone in Iran. There were two Irans, Vahidi had said. On the surface it was a normal modern society, but underneath you could feel the fear. It permeated everything, like the smog.

  “If he can’t, I’ll go away. That means Glenco-Deladier and Rosoboronexport go away. Iran will have to deal with the Americans without us,” he said sharply, and hung up. He took a sip of hot sweet tea and for the first time began to eat with a relish. He was hungry.

  After that, the rest of the day had been a blur. Renting the SUV, having his suit cleaned and pressed while he waited and getting new clothes, including ski clothes, at the Tandis Center shopping mall, all glass and gleaming brass and indoor palm trees. Later, a meeting with senior missile engineers in General Vahidi’s Revolutionary Guards AFAGIR missile command offices. They went over SS-27 specifications. Fortunately, Rabinowich had prepared his materials well. Authentic documents with Russian RVSN and Rosoboronexport letterheads and watermarks, plus a summary of facts he had memorized on the flight in from Dubai.

  General Vahidi came in during the meeting and pulled him aside into a small private office off the conference room. Through the window he could see the dense traffic below; the nearby buildings vaguely indistinct in the hazy yellow-brown smog.

  “You went back to the hotel early this morning, but left without ever going to your room,” Vahidi said. “For a person new to Tehran, you do get around, Westermann agha.”

  So Vahidi knew. Were they his men in the Peugeot and at the hotel or was he just that well informed? Scorpion wondered.

  “I don’t like all these people watching me,” he said. “It makes me nervous. This isn’t how I do business, General. Who were they?”

  “What you are really asking is, are they VEVAK?”

  “Are they?”

  Vahidi looked at him, an eyebrow raised.

  “Something new: a direct question. I’ll answer with one of my own. Are you a spy, Westermann agha?”

  “If I were, would I tell you? You’ve checked my credentials. You know who I am—and you know where I spent last night,” he said.

  “A beautiful woman, Zahra,” Vahidi said. “But you shouldn’t go wandering around Tehran on your own. Not on the eve of a war. Or any other time, come to that.” He stepped closer to Scorpion. “Did you find what you were looking for?” Meaning information on Ghanbari.

  “She wouldn’t tell me. She passed out. I fell asleep, then left.” Scorpion shrugged. “Ask her yourself.” He assumed she had already reported all of that to Vahidi.

  “They weren’t VEVAK,” Vahidi said. “The men at the hotel.”

  VEVAK was bad; not VEVAK was even worse, Scorpion thought. At least VEVAK was answerable to the government. In the Iranian Revolutionary Guards structure, secret units like Asaib al-Haq and Kta’eb Hezbollah were answerable only to themselves.

  “Who are they?”

  “I don’t know. But if I were you, Westermann agha, honored guest though you are, I would be very careful.” He motioned Scorpion closer. “It hasn’t been made public yet, but there’s been another incident in the Gulf,” he whispered. “One of our patrol planes, a MiG-29, was shot down by an American F/A-18 off a carrier. The Expediency Council is holding a secret meeting right now. If we’re going to do this deal, we don’t have much time.”

  “You sound like you’d like to avoid this war.”

  “Only an idiot would take on the Americans head upon head. There’s an old Persian saying: ‘If fortune turns against you, even jelly breaks your tooth.’ ” He looked sharply at Scorpion. “Where is the Kremlin in all this?”

  “I wouldn’t know. We Swiss are neutrals. Boring businessmen. Nothing more.”

  “Khob, my friend. I don’t believe you, but khob,” Vahidi said, nodding. Okay. “But I would conclude my business quickly if I were you. It’s funny,” glancing out the window at the traffic in Fatimi Square. “It’s March, almost Nowruz, our Persian New Year. This is supposed to be a good time for us; a funny time.”

  “Well, it’s a funny world,” Scorpion said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Dizin Ski Resort,

  Shemshak, Iran

  It was getting dark. The sunset formed a rim of golden light along the tops of the snow-covered peaks. The air was cold and thin. The resort’s ski lifts were at 3,600 meters, higher than any ski resort in Europe, and he zipped up his ski jacket against the chill. The road grew steeper and full of curves and he had to follow the truck ruts in the snow to get through. Ahead were the lights of Shemshak village, a cluster of houses and a few buildings six or seven stories high. Like Dizin, Shemshak was a ski resort, and from the road he could see the chair lifts going up the mountain; one of them was still going. He was tempted to stop and get some tea and a bite to eat, but something pushed him on.

  Ghanbari or the other person, Sadeghi? Which one was the Gardener? And why had they risked war with the United States to attack the embassy? In a sense, the answer might have been staring them in the face all along, he thought. The CIA files. What if the attackers didn’t get lucky grabbing the CIA files? What if
the files had been the object of the attack all along?

  If so, what in the files were they after? What was so important that it was worth risking a war?

  He left the town behind and headed farther up the winding mountain road, his headlights shining against the white snow. He turned the heater up; it was getting colder. Stopping in the middle of the road, he checked his iPad. The tracking software showed Zahra had stopped moving. She had gotten to her destination. He put the RAV4 in gear and moved on.

  Coming around a curve, he saw the lights of the ski resort, the hotel at the base of the slope outlined by lights on the ski lifts. There were a number of chairlifts and several gondolas that could be seen from the road, but none of them were moving. There were only a few cars parked in the snow by the hotel. One of them was Zahra’s Mercedes.

  Two rows of wooden cabins, more than a dozen of them, stretched up the slope behind the hotel. The cabins had pitched roofs, vaguely suggesting ultra-utilitarian Alpine chalets. Only two of them had lights on, one in the middle and the last cabin at the end of the row. The last cabin would be where she was meeting Ghanbari, he thought, parking the Toyota around the side of the hotel, next to another SUV.

  He checked the windows of the hotel and the other structures before getting out of the Toyota but could see no one watching. It was a shame he didn’t have his night vision goggles, he thought, but bringing them through Iranian customs would have been a dead give-away. The Iranians were all over him as it was. He took out the ZOAF pistol, attached the sound suppressor, put it in his ski jacket pocket and got out of the SUV. The night was cloudy. He couldn’t see the stars. A cold wind filled with tiny snow particles blew down from the peak. He walked through the snow behind the first cabin, then higher up and across the slope behind the cabins so he could approach the last cabin from the rear.