“Salam. Are you all right, Sarkar khanom Ravanipour?” Sadeghi said sympathetically, not taking his dark eyes off her. “We were concerned about you.”
Zahra bit her lip. “Mersi, mersi. Khayli mamnun, jenab Sardar Sadeghi agha,” she whispered. Thank you. Thank you so much, General Sadeghi, sir, a tear glistening in the corner of her eye. “I was so frightened.”
“They forced you to go with them?” Sadeghi asked, lighting a cigarette. “Would you like chai?” gesturing for the young man to bring them tea, not waiting for her response.
“Mersi,” she said. “It was terrible. One minute we were prisoners being taken in the police van, and suddenly the Swiss, Westermann, somehow managed to get free and kill the two guards. I don’t know how. He is a demon, that one.”
“More than you know. You pretended to go along?” Sadeghi said, gesturing for her to go on.
“What choice did I have? Besides, I never thought we’d get away. He almost killed us!”
“How did you get away?”
“He stole a car and we came into the city and got on the Metro. I was alone with them. What was I to do? I thought you would follow us. I expected to be arrested again any second,” she said. She held her hands out. They were trembling. “Look at me. I thought I was going to die.”
“We followed your cell phone with GPS on the Metro. Some beshoor idiots had taken it and we had to waste time arresting them.” He grimaced. “They’ll never take anything again.”
The young man came back into the room with a tray of tea with a dish of nabat, candied sugar on a stick, with fried zoolbia pastries, which he placed on the table. Sadeghi took a glass of tea and poured one for her from a small silver samovar. Zahra bit into a sweet zoolbia and glanced at the window between the parted curtains, seeing only the light from the room reflected back at her.
“You know where they are now?” Sadeghi asked, stirring his tea with a nabat sugar stick.
“Of course,” she said, and gave him the address of the safe house apartment on Second Street. Sadeghi gestured to the young man, who immediately left. The safe house would be stormed within minutes, she assumed.
“Are you taking over the al Quds Force?” she asked, sipping her tea, not looking at him. “I can’t believe Muhammad jan is a traitor,” referring to Ghanbari. “Is he?”
“How is it they let you go out on your own, Zahra jan?” Sadeghi said, putting a black rubber truncheon on the table.
“What are you saying?” she asked, panicked. “I did everything you told me. I called you and set it up so you could capture him. I’m working for you, Farzan Sadeghi jan. Not VEVAK, not Ghanbari, not General Vahidi jenab. You! You know it!”
“Do you imagine I’m a child that you can deceive me, you jendeh?” Sadeghi snapped, coming around the table, grabbing her by her hair. “You were working with the Swiss, Westermann. He is CIA. Do you think we don’t know this? And then he just lets you walk out on your own so you can call us? What do you take me for?”
“Why wouldn’t they trust me?” she cried. “I was arrested with them. Handcuffed. Taken to Evin Prison with them. They sent me out to shop for food, that’s all. They’re probably wondering where I am this second.”
“Because this Westermann madar sag is not stupid like you, you gav,” he said. Cow. He picked up a rubber truncheon and pulled her by her hair so she was bent over. “Do you think he hasn’t asked himself how we caught him and Ghanbari in the cabin in Dizin? Do you?” he shouted, smashing the truncheon on the peroneal nerve on the back of her thigh, above the knee. “Do you?” hitting her again.
She screamed. Her leg collapsed under her and she fell to the floor. She clutched the back of her thigh, unable to move.
“Please!” she sobbed. “I did what you told me. I’ll do anything. Don’t hurt me anymore, ghorban.”
“Khob,” he said, okay, pulling her up and putting her, curled in agony, back in the chair. “This time you’ll tell me everything, won’t you?”
“Yes, ghorban,” she muttered, looking desperately past him toward the slice of window between the parted curtains. “Anything.”
From his perch on the roof of a ten-story apartment building two blocks away, Scorpion listened intently through ear buds. This was what he had wanted to find out, beyond flushing Sadeghi out, why he wanted her to see Sadeghi. To find out what Sadeghi knew and how he knew it. And to confirm that he was the Gardener.
He checked the range finder again. It showed he was 450 meters from the office where Zahra and Sadeghi were on Baghestan 5. The length of about five football fields. Through the sniper scope he could make out the lighted interior of the room in the space between the parted curtains. He had only a glimpse of Zahra and only part of the back of a tall man in a dark shirt. He could take the shot now, he thought, settling the Nakhir rifle on top of his backpack, making sure it was secure for stability. He looked around. From this distance at night and wearing a dark jacket, he was virtually invisible, though that wasn’t why he had selected this building for the hit.
The key to any lethal operation, he knew, wasn’t the setup, but the exit. Finding a spot, say in an empty apartment across the street from the target, would make the shot trivially easy. Lee Harvey Oswald killed President Kennedy with an old 6.5mm Mannlicher-Carcano rifle with a 4x scope at a maximum distance of eighty-eight yards—as a Marine sharpshooter, Oswald had routinely received high scores on head-sized targets at two hundred yards—with Kennedy’s car a slow-moving target heading away from the shooter at a steady rate of approximately eleven miles per hour. Great shooting wasn’t the issue. Getting away was.
On a single residential street in a neighborhood with plenty of local security, given the opposition’s ability to seal the street and nearby streets almost immediately, it would make escape next to impossible. Odds were, within 120 seconds of firing the shot he’d be dead or on his way to the torture cells in Evin Prison.
Firing from the roof of a tall building two blocks away meant there would be no direct visual by anyone or any security camera of the shot or its trajectory or the muzzle flash. Anyone on the scene would have a much more difficult time calculating the trajectory and source of the shot. There would be a half dozen or more full city blocks facing the target house that would have to be shut down and searched. Scorpion had timed the elevator and stairs in the building he was in and determined he could be down from the roof, out of the building, and on Pesyan Avenue in less than seventy seconds. And from there by foot to Vali Asr, one of the busiest streets in the city, in another two minutes or less.
At 450 meters, the shot wasn’t especially difficult. The real issue was calculating the elevation and windage correctly for the mil-dot scope. Elevation, because a bullet starts slowing and dropping the instant it leaves the barrel; windage, because a single mil in diameter off at a distance of 450 meters would result in a gap of about eighteen inches at the target. The sniper scope had a dial with 0.1 mil increments. After checking and calculating twice, he set it for fourteen clicks elevation. As for windage, he could feel just the barest touch of wind on his face at about a forty-five degree angle coming toward him. There were no flags or clothes on lines to check, but holding a strip of cloth in front of him, it barely stirred. He estimated a three mph wind, which at forty-five degrees gave a value of seventy percent on a 4.5 MOA, or Minute of Angle. It wasn’t worth a horizontal adjustment in the scope. At 450 meters the shot would be off by two inches at most to the right. He would simply aim a hair to the left to compensate.
At this point, when he aimed, he should be dead on.
The only other concern was the sound of the shot, which might alert the target in the event of a miss about a second after he fired. But the urban setting would make the sound reverberate, and thus harder to alert the target or identify the shooting source. Also, he didn’t intend to miss.
The downside was that from his location, if Zahra got into trouble, he would be too far away to help her. And then he heard one of Sadeghi’s me
n come in and say something.
“Hold her,” he heard Sadeghi respond, followed by a slap. “You jendeh!” Sadeghi shouted. “The safe house! They weren’t there!”
“Of course they weren’t there,” Zahra said. “Did you think they would wait around for you? They’re probably halfway out of the country.”
“No. Ghanbari wouldn’t just leave. He’d fight me. But it won’t work.”
“Why not?”
“Let’s just say his closest associates are no longer in a position to help him,” Sadeghi said.
“Dead?”
“Forget about them. It’s the Swiss, Westermann, that concerns me.”
“You keep saying he’s CIA. What makes you so sure?” she asked.
What Sadeghi said next riveted Scorpion, sending a chill down his spine.
“I’m going to ask you something,” Sadeghi said. “It’s the most important question you have ever been asked. I’m only going to ask it once. Have you ever heard of ‘Scorpion’?” He used the Farsi word, aqrab. It was unmistakable. Scorpion.
He took his prone shooting position and sighted in, taking deep breaths to calm the sudden rapid beating of his heart. My God, what was this about? Through the scope he could see Sadeghi’s back. It blocked his view of Zahra, but he could just make out part of the face of one of Sadeghi’s men behind her, holding her arms.
But it confirmed that Sadeghi was the Gardener. Only the Gardener would know about Scorpion from the Bern CIA files.
“I don’t understand. Scorpion. No. Never,” she stammered. “Why?”
“Are you protecting him, jendeh?” Sadeghi demanded. “Did you sleep with him?” using the vulgarity.
“No!” she cried. “I would have. It’s what VEVAK and General Vahidi jenab wanted, but I fell asleep. I think he put something in my drink.”
“Too late,” Sadeghi said. Through the scope, Scorpion saw him holding a pistol. “You’re tainted. And you haven’t told us where you are supposed to meet him.”
“I don’t know!” she pleaded. “Please, I don’t know where he is. I’d tell you if I did. I swear.”
“Don’t blaspheme, you jendeh whore. No one can trust you now. And the war coming,” Sadeghi said, aiming his pistol.
Scorpion aimed as well, held his breath and tightening his finger on the trigger.
“I don’t understand . . .” she wailed. She knelt before him, grabbing at his knees. “I’ll find out. I’ll get him for you. I will. ”
“We need to know who this Westermann is. This is his visa photo. This is him, correct?” He showed her something.
“Yes,” she said.
“Is it possible he’s American, not Swiss?”
“I don’t know. He speaks French and English. And Farsi. I’ll find out for you,” she whispered.
“You’re wasting my time! You either know or you don’t,” Sadeghi said.
Scorpion took a long deep breath and held it; all his focus in the scope was on top of Sadeghi’s back. Sadeghi was going to kill her. He couldn’t hold off any longer.
“But why?” Zahra wailed. “Who is this Scorpion? Why is he so important?”
“You little fool! What do you think this is all about?” Sadeghi said, aiming at her head.
Scorpion fired.
The crack of the shot echoed over the buildings. A squadron of pigeons flew up from a distant roof. Through the scope, he saw Sadeghi jerk up for an instant and then he was gone. There was the briefest glimpse of Zahra’s terrified blood-splattered face looking up toward the window, the young man next to her moving forward, and then nothing, because Scorpion was already moving.
Even as he cleaned the gun with an antiseptic wipe and left it there, grabbing his pack and already running for the roof door, he felt his stomach heave. Zahra was on her own. He hoped she’d run and get away, but there was nothing he could do to help her. Worse, the entire universe had just shifted, and as he got into the elevator and rode down to the building lobby, Sadeghi’s statement blotted everything else out of his mind.
What do you think this is all about?
CHAPTER THIRTY
Bakaara Market,
Mogadishu, Somalia
“Will you come?” Ghedi asked her, tucking a belawa knife in the waist of his ma’awis.
“How do you know it’s her?” Sandrine asked. She was in her tent, getting ready for what had to be the most dangerous thing she had ever done. Shadows from passersby flickered past on the canvas siding from the blazing sunlight outside. “What do you know of this boy?”
“This boy. He is Labaan. Of Buur Hakuba. I know this place. It is not far from Baidoa.”
“But he is not of your clan. Turn around,” she ordered.
He complied. She fished inside a pair of Bensimon sneakers she kept inside her carry-on next to the cot and pulled out a thick wad of five hundred shilling bills. About 100,000 Somali shillings; sixty U.S. dollars. Plus three fifty-dollar bills. Total $210 U.S. It would have to be enough. It was all she had. She turned Ghedi back around and sat on the bunk so she could look levelly into his eyes.
“What makes him think it’s your sister? Did he know her?”
“He says her name. Amina. Six years old. This is right name, age. He say Al-Shabaab is bringing her to Mogadishu from Baidoa to be in the House of Flowers,” using the name for the children’s brothel. “Right time when she disappear. It must be Amina.”
“And how does this boy know of the House of Flowers? Does he work there?” she asked, going outside the tent. The camp was crowded, dusty and trash strewn. The heat was intense and she could smell the open ditch used as a public toilet. The South African, Van Zyl, was waiting near the road with a white Toyota SUV with the UNHCR decal painted on the side.
“His brother is oday,” Ghedi said, using the Somali word for elder or boss.
“You mean his brother is a maquereau for children,” she said, a pimp, covering her head with a hijab, both for the sun and to appear less threatening to Somali men. “How can you trust this boy?”
“I don’t trust,” Ghedi said, touching the handle of his belawa knife. “I trust you, isuroon.”
“If it is your sister, Amina, there’s no guarantee we can get her out. All I can offer is money—not very much. If they say no, we might have to leave her.”
“If Amina is in this place, I will not leave her. Better to die,” he said, looking up at her.
She nodded. His mind was made up. If she didn’t come, it was almost certain they would kill him. As they reached the road, she stopped for a moment at a roadside stall, where two women were selling kashaato, squares of white coconut candy, one of them waving her hand to brush away the flies.
“For the children,” she said, paying the women, who counted out forty pieces of candy into a big plastic bag.
“This is a bloody stupid idea,” Van Zyl growled, getting into the SUV. She noticed he was wearing a pistol in a holster on his hip. “Have you any idea how dangerous this is?”
“You don’t need come, mzungu,” Ghedi said to Van Zyl, climbing in. “Isuroon and I, we can do this.”
“Don’t get your broekies in a knot, kid,” Van Zyl said, starting the SUV. And to Sandrine: “He’s worse than you, this one.” He looked back over his shoulder. “Which way?”
“Bakaara Market. Then I show,” Ghedi said.
“Christ,” Van Zyl breathed. “Bakaara’s the worst shit hole in this whole godforsaken arsehole of the universe.”
Sandrine looked at him.
“So I should leave his sister there to be a whore, where the best she can hope for is to get AIDS and die? Is that the best idea you’ve got, Monsieur Van Zyl?” she said.
“I said I’d take you,” he mumbled, shaking his head. “It’s all going to hell here anyway. We’re losing what little funding we have. Bloody Americans. This thing with Iran. And now the Israelis.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The news on the BBC world service, luv. Looks like the American
s and the Iranians are about to have at it. Now it seems the Israelis have ordered a partial mobilization too. The whole bloody Middle East is about to explode. No one’s paying piss-all attention to Africa.”
For some reason, she and Ghedi looked at each other as if they had both thought of the American at the same instant. Nick, his real name was. Not David. He’d told her that in Nairobi like it was a gift. She didn’t know why she thought he was involved in whatever was happening with the Americans and Iran, but there it was. The boy Ghedi sensed it too. He took her hand.
They sat there as Van Zyl drove through the hot dusty streets packed with battered trucks and cars, cinder-block houses pockmarked with bullet holes and jagged tears in the concrete from earlier fighting. Traffic slowed as they approached the Bakaara Market, a giant space under plastic tarps filled with men armed to the teeth, women in candy-colored direhs, vendors in stalls selling AK-47s, M-4 carbines, large piles of ammunition and RPGs stacked like fruit, bundles of qat leaves, and prostitutes, women, girls, teenage boys, tugging at male passersby under the watchful eyes of tribesmen with guns.
“Go right,” Ghedi said, pointing toward a street off the square. The street was narrow, full of potholes a foot deep, with laundry hanging on lines strung between the houses and half-naked children playing on the trash-strewn asphalt, broiling in the sun. “Here is the house,” pointing at a three-story concrete house in the middle of the block.
Two bearded men in koofiyud caps holding AK-47s kept guard under ragged umbrellas in front, the door painted sky blue. A line of tin-roofed sheds nestled against the building’s walls. The bearded men chewed qat, cheeks bulging like chipmunks, and watched the street. They paid little attention as Sandrine, Van Zyl, and the boy got out and went inside.
Scorpion Deception Page 24
