The Skorpion Directive

by David Stone

  “Ma’am again. If you’re not in the gummint, young lady, I’m Hillary Rodham Clinton,” she said, opening her door and climbing out. Nikki, who was beginning to think her covert skills were deeply inadequate, thought—hoped—that Cannon was leaving. She was wrong. Cannon leaned back inside, raised her eyebrows.

  “You coming along, Beatrice?”

  “Me? With you? Where?”

  “We’re taking my ride. You just lock yours up right here. My guys will see to it.”

  Nikki didn’t like the sound of that at all.

  “Where are we going?”

  Cannon gave her another one of those carnivorous grins.

  “You just come along with me, my dear. Trust in the Good Lord, and all will be revealed.”

  WHAT the Good Lord had to reveal was a sharp left turn off Front Beach Road and into a narrow alley called Robin Lane that led north, away from the ocean, into the flatlands and marshes of the inland waters. Robin Lane ran between two high wooden fences: beyond the fences Nikki could make out the floodlit grounds of what looked like a very expensive gated community.

  Captain Cannon had kept up a lighthearted banter all the way from Dirty Dick’s, staying off the topic of Nikki’s trip down to Panama City Beach and, although Nikki tried to open it up once, neatly avoiding saying anything more informative about their destination and what it had to do with Raymond Paget Fyke.

  Halfway up the long curving lane, Cannon killed the headlights. A minute later, she brought the cruiser to a rolling stop beside a large wooden sign showing rolling waves crashing into a barrier mound covered in sea grass and announcing WINDWARD SHORES ESTATE HOMES.

  The gates stood wide open. In the dim glow from the streetlights Nikki could see what looked like a very large black-water lagoon surrounded by expensive homes and bound on one side by a tennis court and a golfing range. At the far end of the massive lagoon, a crowd of people were gathered on a wide, lantern-lit dock, and the sound of reggae and happy, youthful chatter drifted across the water. The cop shut the car down, looked across at Nikki.

  “What sorta shoes you got there, Bea? I can call you Bea?”

  “Please. They’re sandals.”

  “Gotta do. Now, you stay behind me, you folla? Come along, now, and mind you close the door real soft, okay?”

  Nikki did as she was told, following in the wake of the cop, who was surprisingly light-footed for a woman of her size, down the sandy lane and onto the grassy verge of the lagoon. The water smelled of mud and salt and rotting weeds. Captain Cannon went a few yards into the darkness, stopped, held up a hand to keep Nikki behind her.

  “Fitch,” she said in a carrying whisper. “You out there?”

  A low voice came out of the darkness, a man’s voice, in a whisper, hoarse, deep, wary.

  “Marcy? That you, Marcy?”

  “It is. Safe to come up?”

  “If you stay away from the water. She’s close. I can hear her.”

  Cannon paused a moment, pulled out her Glock, turned around to Nikki. “You stay here a moment, would you, dear? And maybe you should step back from the water a little.”

  “Captain Cannon, what the heck is going on?”

  “Aside from bouncing nimrods out of the Bali Hai, Fitch runs a water park up off Hutchinson, a tourist thing. Gators and sharks and such. He lost a cow gator a few days back. Name of Cloris Leachman. He’s been looking for her ever since. We all figure she’s in this lagoon.”

  “An alligator? How big an alligator?”

  “Eight feet. Nine hundred pounds. Big enough to eat a German shepherd last week. ’Long with any number of cats and small dogs, all in this area. Fitch has the lagoon sealed off. And here he sits, every evening, waiting for her to come up for air. Stay here, and don’t move around a lot, okay?”

  Nikki, her head a little spinny, stepped back into the light from the laneway, thinking that the trip from Seven Oaks, Maryland, to Panama City Beach, Florida, involved much more than mileage.

  Cannon, moving quietly, faded into the gloom along the edge of the water, leaving Nikki alone in the downlight, nervously listening to the roar and boom of the college crowds a few blocks south and to the delicate lap and ripple of wavelets on the grassy bank of the lagoon. The party at the far end of the inland lake rolled on, oblivious. And somewhere up on her bank, a lady cop and someone named Fitch were trying to catch an alligator. If she’d been in her own vehicle, she’d be six blocks away and accelerating.

  Five long minutes passed, and then she heard a swirling of water, a loud splash, and two muffled reports, deep and low, rather like someone slamming a car door. Another minute, and she heard muted voices, getting closer, and the whisper of shoes in wet grass and a slithery sound, something large coming through the saw grass. Nikki was inside the cruiser by the time two figures appeared in the light from the lane: Captain Cannon, and, just behind her, barefoot and wearing faded jeans and a black T-shirt—no clever sayings, just a black tee—a large, slope-shouldered man with long black hair shoved behind his ears and a close-cut salt-and-pepper beard.

  He had a big bolt-action rifle slung over his shoulder and was dragging a very unhappy alligator, trussed up like a Christmas parcel and hissing like the air brakes on a Freightliner. The light was dim, but Nikki was pretty certain the man was Ray Fyke.

  Cannon came forward as Nikki got back out of the cruiser. Cannon’s face was a little flushed. Something was humming in the air between the pair, and Nikki realized that Captain Cannon and this hard-looking man had more in common than alligator hunting.

  “We got her,” said Cannon a little redundantly, wiping her hands on the butt of her uniform slacks, her eyes a little wild.

  “You shot her?” asked Nikki, staying well clear of the reptile, which was now twisting herself around inside a network of ropes and showing every sign of ripping her way clear.

  “No, miss,” said Fyke, coming forward into the light, his eyes squinting against the glare, his seamed and weather-beaten face cracking into a broad smile. “We just calmed her down with a tranq and hogged her up. We’ll call a couple of my boyos with a pickup truck and take her back to the water park.”

  There was an uneasy pause as what was not being said became painfully obvious, so Marcy Cannon said it.

  “Brendan,” she said in the kind of warning tone all wise and attentive males learn to fear, “I’d like you to meet a Miss Gandolfo. She’s flown all the way from Virginia just to meet you. Isn’t that special? Beatrice, may I present the bottom-feeding slug known—to me anyway—as Brendan Fitch.”

  After a momentary hesitation, and a very wary glance at Marcy’s face, Fyke stuck out a hand, took Nikki’s hand in a gentle, dry-skinned grasp, held it for a moment as he smiled down on her with a less-than-fatherly look in his eyes, taking her in from hair to sandals and back again, pausing appreciatively at various points of interest along the way.

  “Beatrice Gandolfo, is it?” he asked with a wry smile. “Well, you have a twin in the living world, Miss Gandolfo, although I know her only by her photograph. Do you by any chance know a young lady named Nicole Turrin at all?”

  “I do,” said Nikki. “And would you by any chance know a man named Raymond Paget Fyke? At all?”

  Fyke smiled broadly, said nothing for a beat or two, while the alligator hissed and a wind off the Gulf stirred the sea grass.

  Then, turning to Marcy and putting a hand on her left shoulder, Fyke said, “Marcy, I believe I have some explaining to do. I propose that the three of us go for a drink.”

  “Or three,” said Marcy Cannon, shrugging his hand away.

  SINCE Cannon had to get her shift covered and Fyke had to get Cloris Leachman back to her tank, the drinks turned into a late-night dinner at an oceanside restaurant called The Sands, still busy at this hour but mercifully free of Spring Breakers. The restaurant ran for almost a half block along the barrier dunes, a rambling wooden structure made mostly of glass and square-cut timber, with accents of polished brass, hardwood floo
rs, green glass lights hovering above the booths, and a panoramic view of what looked to Nikki like the edge of the universe, a perfect inky blackness that started just beyond the walkway lights and stretched all the way to infinity. White-curling waves unfolded along the shoreline, and far out to sea a tanker, yellow in the haze and glimmering like witch fire in a limitless void, crawled slowly into the east toward a distant oil rig, a grid of floodlit spires far out there on the edge of the night. The windows were wide open, and a cool breeze laden with salt and seaweed moved the candle flames and stirred the gold curtains. They sat in a semicircle around the comfortable booth, ordered up a bottle of pinot grigio for Marcy and Nikki. Fyke called for a double Jameson’s, neat with a beer chaser. But Marcy, who knew her man—or, until tonight, thought she did—changed that to a glass of Chianti. A small one. Fyke, a wise man, let it stand.

  Their drinks came, the willowy waiter wafted away on a shell-pink cloud, and a sudden and uneasy silence came down, taking a place at the table like an unwelcome guest.

  Nikki broke it.

  “Captain Cannon—”

  “Marcy. Please.”

  “My name is not Beatrice Gandolfo. I apologize for the lie.”

  Marcy nodded, a little chill since she had seen Fyke admiring her fine points, but ready to be won back.

  “Got good paperwork, I have to say,” she said, trying for a smile. “I look at phony ID all the time, and your license is as real as mine. Which says that you’re with the government. And I’d like to know which part, if you don’t mind.”

  “My name is Nicole Turrin. My employer is the National Security Agency. I work in Fort Meade, Maryland. But I’m not here in any official capacity. I’ve been asked by a mutual friend to come down here and speak with Mr. Fyke about a matter that has to remain confidential.”

  Cannon grunted, sipped at her wine, set it down.

  “Okay. I’ll let that slide for now. How about, just as a courtesy between us girls, you tell me who the hell I’ve been sleeping next to for the last five months or so.”

  Fyke started to speak, but Marcy silenced him with a hand, never taking her eyes off Nikki’s face, her fingers around the stem of her wineglass, her face flushed, real pain in her thin strained smile and flickering around the edges of her eyes. Nikki, who had just been blindsided by a man she thought she knew, understood Cannon perfectly and decided to tell her as much of the truth as she could manage. The woman deserved that much.

  “This man’s real name is Raymond Paget Fyke. He was a member of the British Special Air Service and was seconded to the CIA, at London Station, several years ago. His service record is impeccable—”

  Fyke could not suppress a snort at that one.

  Nikki rolled on over him.

  “And he is now is an honorably retired agent of the Central Intelligence Agency—”

  Cannon’s eyes were filling with moisture, but she drove that down and steadied herself, her throat working.

  “Horseshit. Nobody ever retires from the CIA. If he were actually retired, then I doubt you’d be here. And it doesn’t cut a lot of ice with me to find out a man I thought was a dear friend is just another professional liar.”

  “Marcy . . .”

  She rounded on him with some heat.

  “Shut up, Brendan . . . Ray . . . whatever your name is. You and me, we’ll sort this out later. Go on, Miss Turrin,” she said, coming back. “You have got my full attention.”

  Nikki hesitated, took some wine, organizing her thoughts.

  “Last winter, Mr. Fyke, along with other government agents, stopped a major terrorist attack on the Port of Chicago. I was part—a small part—of that operation—”

  “What sort of terrorist attack?” asked Marcy, giving Fyke a look. Nikki gave her the A version, leaving in enough to lay out the risks taken and leaving out anything about Micah Dalton.

  Marcy’s expression softened considerably as Nikki unfolded Fyke’s tangled career narrative. Nikki was putting a shine on Fyke’s record, but the story was, Nikki realized as she was telling it, essentially an honest portrait of the man.

  “You said earlier that Brendan—Ray—had gotten himself crossed up with the ICC. How’d he do that?”

  Fyke stopped her there, and Marcy turned to look directly at him for the first time since they had all sat down at the table.

  “I was on a ship, the Mingo Dubai, a gypsy tanker, a rust bucket. We were boarded by pirates at the eastern end of the Malacca Straits. They were Malays, Dyaks, working for a Serb named Branco Gospic. They killed most of us, and I killed some of them, and then, for health reasons, put myself overboard. A Singapore patrol boat fished me out of the water, and I got charged with sinking the ship, which wasn’t sunk at all but was being reflagged for Gospic’s people. A guy named Chong Kew Sak was the head of the Singaporean SID—sort of their CIA, Marcy. He was in on the deal, locked me in Changi Prison, and was in the process of having me beaten to death when a friend of mine—”

  Nikki shook her head slightly.

  Fyke got the message.

  “Can’t say who got me out of Changi. We did some things together in the South China Sea. Ended up in the Port of Chicago last fall, where I first heard of Miss Turrin here. We’d never met, but I saw her picture on the operations monitor. Anyway, when it was all over, well, having the likes of me around made the dons at Langley a tad uneasy. I might pee on the Bokhara or start humping a table leg. So they got the head reptile to walk me to the door, check my pockets for silverware, and kick me down the lane—”

  Here he gave Nikki a look.

  Cather, she realized.

  “So, being at liberty, with a pittance in my pocket, I went back to Singapore to see about this Mr. Chong Kew Sak. Led me quite a chase, he did. Finally ran him down about six months ago, in Papua New Guinea, at a little village called Sogeri, upriver from Port Moresby, where we had what the House of Lords would call ‘a frank exchange of views.’ After that, things were a little warm in Southeast Asia. The ICC had a warrant out for me, and so did Singapore, so I picked up an old legend again and came out here because the U.S. doesn’t recognize an ICC warrant. Yet. Here I met you, Marcy. Thought I was gonna live happily ever after until Miss Turrin shows up.”

  Fyke sat back, finished off his glass of Chianti, got the waiter’s eye, and ordered up another. The silence came back, but now it seemed slightly more amiable. Marcy Cannon looked at her glass for a while, turning it in the glow from the lamp. Fyke watched her carefully, his green eyes bright in the table glow, a vulnerable look on his battered face. Cannon took the bottle, filled Nikki’s glass, and then hers. She sat back with a sigh, took Fyke’s left hand in her right, and looked across the table at Nikki.

  “I guess now is where we find out why you’re here, Nikki.”

  Nikki gathered herself, rode down her guilt, and went straight at it, addressing herself to Fyke.

  “You heard about an explosion in Vienna two days ago?”

  “I saw something on Fox about it,” said Fyke warily. “A car bomb near a church? Terrorists, they said.”

  “It’s a bit more complicated. An Israeli citizen was killed, along with two police officers. The Mossad is involved—”

  “Oh Jeez. Nobody does revenge better than the Shin Bet.”

  “Yes. That’s the problem. The man they’re after—”

  Fyke got there before she finished the sentence.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he said. “You’re not talking about . . . about the crocodile, are you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who the hell is the crocodile?” asked Marcy, understandably confused. “Is that some sort of spook code name?”

  “No,” said Fyke. “Just a nickname. For an old friend. A lovely man. Is the Agency doing anything to help him at all?”

  “No. Quite the reverse. The latest is, the Bureau of Diplomatic Security sent a covert unit to Venice last night, trying to arrest him.”

  “Did they,” said Fyke with a glint in his
green eyes. “And how did that work out for them?”

  “Not well. The BDS now has five agents sitting in a prison block in Mestre and two more in a hospital—”

  “That’s my lad.”

  “And all without any papers. And the Carabinieri—”

  “Brancati?”

  “Yes. Major Brancati is threatening to send them all to a terrorist lockdown in Milan and hold them there indefinitely unless the U.S. government can explain—and also justify—why they violated standing protocols and formal undertakings in an attempt to kidnap someone who was enjoying the protection of the Italian authorities.”

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. What a cluster . . . What a sorry fix it all is. What’s Langley doing about it?”

  “They’ve denied any involvement. They say it was a BDS mission, ordered out of the embassy in Rome—a State Department matter—and they know nothing at all about it. As for our friend, they’ve effectively given the Mossad a free hand. They’re staying well clear.”

  “Running for cover, now that there’s a Special Prosecutor, is that it? Like Pontius Pilate? Letting all their hard boys twist in the prevailing wind that’s blowing out of the President’s arse? The Mossad will do their sticky work, the clouds will all roll away, the golden lads and lassies at Langley will climb into the sunlit uplands of prosecutorial immunity, the President gets on Oprah, and everybody on the wrong side of the blanket offers up a quiet novena for the late and unlamented.”

  “Yes. Essentially. You know the old story about the scorpion and the crocodile who meet at a river?”

  “I do. I bloody well do. So poor bloody Mikey’s out there on his poor bloody own, is he?”

  “No,” said Nikki. “We’re hoping he has you.”

  Sevastopol

  THE SEVASTOPOL HOTEL, ARTBUHTA EMBANKMENT, EIGHT P.M. LOCAL TIME

  Thirty-one hours and 1,756 kilometers later—290 from Venice to Zagreb, 390 from Zagreb to Belgrade, 450 from Belgrade to Bucharest, and another 626 from Bucharest to Sevastopol—and Dalton, who had somehow managed to sleep much of the way in spite of the five different planes involved in the journey, each one more rickety and bone-shaking than the last, was finally installed in a wicker chair on the shining-white pillared balcony of the Sevastopol Hotel’s restaurant. In honor of a Free Ukraine, he was smoking a sky-blue, gold-tipped Sobranie Cocktail, nursing a G & T so cold it was hurting his fingertips, and watching the lights of Sevastopol Harbor come flickering on all around the shoreline. The broad bay, steely under a pinto sky, was studded here and there with the matte-gray spearheads of six Russian destroyers moored out in the offing, their amber running lights shimmering in the damp evening air. Because the eye-blink-brief tourist season was now under way, an armada of pleasure craft and tour boats was circling around the gunships like tropical fish darting around in a shark tank.