“Who? Sadeghi? Why should he?”
“Because the Gardener would have,” Scorpion said, thinking he should have realized it at the time. The Olympic Torch software had changed it for everyone else, but the Gardener had seen the original Kilbane file photo from Bern. The real Gardener would have known that Laurent Westermann was Scorpion. But Sadeghi didn’t.
“This is a total fantasy. You can’t prove anything,” Ghanbari said. He started to get up. “I’m leaving.”
“I don’t have to prove anything,” Scorpion said, aiming. “And move another centimeter and I will shoot you.”
Ghanbari sat back on his heels. “Maybe you’re Scorpion,” he said. “We already know you’re CIA.”
“Maybe I am,” Scorpion said, a little tingle of electricity going through him at hearing it actually said. “In any case, this is all beside the point. Why do you suppose I left you alone and went for petrol on my own this morning?”
“So you could make your own arrangements on the escape,” Ghanbari said.
Scorpion smiled. “True, but that’s not why. It was to give you a chance to make a call without me being there.”
For the first time Ghanbari looked disconcerted.
“You mean it was a trap?”
Scorpion stood up.
“I think we should have that chai now. We’ll know very soon, one way or the other. If PJAK shows up, I’m delusional and I’ll apologize to you and do everything I can to make it up to you. If the Kta’eb Hezbollah or the Revolutionary Guards show up, you’re the Gardener.”
Keeping the gun on Ghanbari, they made tea and sat down again on the carpet in the main room. He watched Ghanbari sip the tea, his hands trembling. While they waited, Scorpion decided that if it went bad, he wouldn’t be taken alive. If necessary, he would use the gun on himself. He caught himself straining to hear sounds outside. From nearby, perhaps under the eaves of the roof, he heard the sound of a bird and thought about the bird in Laleh Park. Then the bird went silent. They waited.
He could hear Ghanbari breathe. The sound of his own heartbeat. Then there was a rumble. An undefined noise, far off, a sudden rush of sound.
The house began to tremble. The liquid in the tea glasses rippled and danced. The glasses began to rattle and fell over, spilling on the carpet. The house started shaking as if in an earthquake. Then the unmistakable whop-whop of a helicopter overhead, then multiple helicopters and the house began to shake even more. Through the windows they could see military vehicles racing on the road toward them, one after the other, kicking up storms of dust. Outside the window they saw one helicopter, then two, landing in the fields. The minute they touched down, Revolutionary Guards in camouflage uniforms piled out and began running toward the farmhouse, assault rifles ready to fire. There was so much noise and dust it was getting hard to see outside the windows.
With his free hand Scorpion tossed the cell phone to Ghanbari.
“If you want to live another minute, call Scale,” he shouted over the noise.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Haj Omran,
Iran
Scorpion hauled Ghanbari to his feet and over by the side of the front window as Revolutionary Guards deployed, weapons aimed. Keeping the pistol pressed against Ghanbari’s head just behind his ear, Scorpion watched as Ghanbari called.
“Salam. This is Muhammad Ghanbari,” he said, shouting over the noise, and listened for a second.
“Is it Scale?” Scorpion whispered in his ear.
Ghanbari nodded.
“Give me the phone,” Scorpion said, pressing the muzzle of the ZOAF hard against Ghanbari’s ear. “Scale?” he said in English into the phone.
“Scorpion?” he heard a not unpleasant voice on the phone say. Peering through the window, he tried to see if he could spot Scale, but there were too many men and vehicles and too much dust.
“This is Scorpion. I believe we met in Begur. I want you to hear something,” Scorpion said, and fired.
The bullet exploded a gob of blood and matter from Ghanbari’s head, splattering the window and wall.
“Scale? That was Ghanbari. He’s dead,” Scorpion said into the phone.
“In a second, so will you be, you madar sag,” Scale said.
“Oh no! Wait one second. Please. I’ll call you right back,” Scorpion said.
He peeked out the window one last time. A small man in camouflage BDUs, barely visible behind one of the vehicles, was holding a cell phone to his ear. It might be Scale, he thought. He had gambled everything that Scale’s normal human curiosity would have him wait the extra second or two. If he was wrong, he would die. He dived to the floor next to Ghanbari’s body. Using his own personal cell phone, he redialed Scale’s cell phone number. Scale answered immediately.
“Scorpion?” Scale said. “I have something I want you to hear. At-” he started to shout, and Scorpion didn’t have even enough time to complete the thought about what Scale was shouting. “-esh! Fire!”
The world exploded.
The ground shook, the walls of the farmhouse rattling and buckling in a hurricane of sound and force. There were multiple explosions coming one on top of another so hard and fast they were impossible to tell apart. An almost continuous roar, punctuated by the unearthly hum of vehicles and screams of men being obliterated by big 25mm depleted uranium rounds at a staggering thirty rounds a second. The explosions, some bigger every few seconds-those are the 105s, Scorpion thought-and the explosions of smaller shells at a rate of two per second from the Bofors 40mm autocannon, went on for what seemed like an hour, but by Scorpion’s watch lasted a little more than a minute. The firing was continuous and with pinpoint accuracy as the unseen U.S. Air Force gunship, too high and far away to be seen or heard, made its pylon turn so its weapons were kept precision-trained on the target.
He heard another massive explosion coming from the field behind the farmhouse. One of the helicopters blowing up, a rain of debris and shrapnel battering the farmhouse roof, a chunk of red hot metal tearing a jagged hole in the roof the size of a basketball and ripping through the floor less than a meter from Scorpion. There was a clatter as the second Revolutionary Guards helicopter tried to lift off. It got about ten meters into the air before exploding in a giant orange fireball that sent a wave of force and heat toward the farmhouse, washing over Scorpion on the floor. He crawled on the carpet to the other window, raised himself up and peeked out.
The AC-130U Spooky gunship had done its work from many miles away, and he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The force of some twenty-plus Revolutionary Guards military vehicles, trucks, and APCs, and more than a hundred armed men, were gone. All that was left were bits and pieces of smoking metal wreckage and parts of human bodies. There not only wasn’t anyone left, there wasn’t even a part of anything left, not even a portion of a human torso intact. The Air Force’s big gunship had been so high and so far away-no doubt still over the border in Iraq when it first fired-that none of the men killed had ever seen or heard it before they died. Yet the combination of the GPS-located cell phone Scale was using, targeted by Scorpion’s call, combined with the pinpoint accuracy of the Spooky’s AN/APQ-180 radar, meant that the enemy had been completely obliterated without a single round hitting the farmhouse where he was hiding.
Scorpion’s ears were ringing as he staggered out the farmhouse’s back door and into the field, covered with the still burning debris from the two downed helicopters. He walked past one Revolutionary Guard who was somehow still alive, although the bottom half of his body was missing. The two men looked at each other, the Revolutionary Guard’s eyes confused, and then Scorpion remembered he was in blackface and still wearing the floppy red costume of Haji Firuz. Maybe he thinks he’s hallucinating, Scorpion thought, suddenly realizing his cell phone was ringing.
“Flagstaff,” he said.
“Where are you?” Shaefer’s voice shouting over the sound of something very loud; probably a helicopter rotor, Scorpion thought.
&
nbsp; “I’m in the field behind the farmhouse on the side toward the mountains,” he said.
“We’ll be there in five.”
“I won’t be hard to spot. I’m wearing red,” Scorpion said, walking past the smoldering rubble of the second Iranian helicopter, burning fragments starting small brush fires, and into the open fields.
A few minutes later he spotted the helicopter flying in from the direction of the Haj Omran border station. It was an Apache AH-64. He watched as it swooped down from the blue sky over the green slopes of the mountains. His cell phone rang again.
“Mendelssohn. We’re dropping you a harness.”
“The LZ’s cold, Top. You can pick me up,” Scorpion said.
“We want to stay high, in case any Bravo Golfs,” Bad Guys, “are coming down the road,” Shaefer said. He said something else but Scorpion couldn’t hear it because the Apache was almost directly over him. He could feel the push of the rotor wind flattening the grass as they lowered a harness on a line. When the line reached him, he pulled it over, got into the harness, and snapped the buckles closed.
He signaled a thumbs-up to the crew and immediately felt himself being hoisted high into the air, the sound from the chopper growing louder, and, as he rose up, the wind pressing against him, he could see the spread of burning debris like a scorched wasteland around the farmhouse. Rising higher, the rest of the town and the surrounding countryside was spread out below, untouched all the way to the highway. He looked up and saw Shaefer in BDUs and a crewman in the open hatchway waiting to bring him in.
This is how the crisis ends, he thought. A successful JSOC mission that killed all the Bravo Golfs responsible for the attack on the embassy in Bern. Medals all around and the U.S. administration gets a political plus on their report card, looking macho without having to go to war.
They hauled him into the helicopter, the sound of the rotor and the wash of wind so loud, he could barely hear.
“You are wearing red,” Shaefer said, shaking his head as they unhooked him and sat him down. “And blackface too.” Scorpion was suddenly conscious of Shaefer being African-American. “What’s that about?” Shaefer continued.
“I’ve been playing the fool,” Scorpion said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Galata Bridge,
Istanbul, Turkey
The three men met on the Galata Bridge shortly after midnight. Scorpion, in a leather jacket against the cool evening wind, came from the Beyoglu side. Lights from buildings and ships on both sides of the Golden Horn reflected on the dark water. He walked toward the other two men, leaning on the pedestrian rail near the middle of the bridge. A quartet of men in the shadows a hundred meters in either direction, Soames was one of them, secured the area and kept watch. There was little traffic on the bridge at this hour; just the occasional car or taxi. Scorpion came over and leaned on the rail next to Bob Harris.
“For the record, this meeting never happened,” said Yuval, head of the Israeli Mossad. “No recordings, no notes, nothing. I will never tell anyone. Bob Harris and you, Scorpion, will not reveal anything no matter what. Not to the director of the CIA, the DCI, or the President of the United States. Not one of us will ever mention this again, not even among ourselves.”
They looked out over the water and the city, landmarks like the mosques on the hills and the Galata Tower lit up at night. Scorpion could smell the roast kabobs from the restaurants below that crammed the bridge’s lower deck and the apple-tobacco smoke from the nargileh cafes.
“Pretty,” Harris said. “Can you imagine what it must have been like for some officer on some Roman, what-do-you-call-’em, quinqueremes, warship, a couple of thousand years ago? Byzantium. A major posting; at anchor in the Golden Horn. Probably thought he was in the big-time, on his way up.”
“Or missing his wife or thinking it was a shit hole and the whores in Rome were prettier,” Scorpion said.
“We Jews had our own share of troubles with the Romans,” Yuval said, lighting a cigarette.
“You Jews have trouble with everyone. With you, it’s never easy,” Harris said.
“It’s true. We argue even with God.” Yuval looked at Scorpion. “So you know, we had somebody watching your Dr. Sandrine Delange. A South African Jew before he made aliyah to Israel. She knows him as Van Zyl, an official from UNHCR. She’s in the refugee camp in Dadaab. Apparently she’s acquired two Somali children, a boy and a girl, along the way. Anyway, she’s safe.”
“Good to know,” Scorpion said, feeling something lift inside, a weight he didn’t know he was carrying.
“The least we can do,” Yuval said, exhaling a stream of smoke. He glanced at Harris next to him. “You could have told us what you were planning. An AC-130U Spooky gunship. Impressive.”
“Why the hell should we tell you?”
“We’re supposed to be allies.”
“Never stopped us from stabbing each other in the back before,” Harris said. “This is about the strike on the nuclear facilities and missile sites in Iran, right?”
Yuval smiled. “Ah, that. You know, I’m almost tempted to let you believe you’re going to find out something you don’t think we know you know.” He flicked the ash from his cigarette, the tip glowing orange in the darkness. “No, this is something more. .” He groped for the word. “What I’m about to tell you is the most critical, most highly classified secret in the state of Israel. I can’t even begin to tell you how many rules and laws I’m violating, not to mention an oath I took on Masada when I was eighteen years old.”
“I’m listening,” Harris said. “And I’ve agreed to the terms, even though it might be breaking a few oaths of my own. As for Scorpion. .” He gestured.
“In a curious way, we trust Scorpion,” Yuval said. “He belongs to no one, certainly not to us, but what I’m about to tell, he needs to know. Also it’s in his interest to keep this to himself.”
“I know part of it,” Scorpion said. “The other piece is why I’m here.”
Harris looked at him curiously.
“Like what?”
“Just before I terminated Farzan Sadeghi of Kta’eb Hezbollah, he said something that stuck in my brain. He implied that the Bern attack was because of me. It made no sense. I’m not that important in the scheme of things.”
“What were his exact words?” Yuval asked.
“He mentioned my code name. Scorpion. Aqrab in Farsi. The woman, Zahra, asked him why this Scorpion was so important, and he said, ‘What do you think this is all about?’ ”
“Is that why you terminated him?” Harris asked.
Scorpion shook his head.
“There were only two possible candidates for the Gardener: Sadeghi and Ghanbari. The only way to be sure the Gardener was eliminated was to eliminate them both. Plus, he was about to kill Zahra.” He turned to Yuval. “But that doesn’t explain why they were after me in particular or why they attacked the embassy. That’s why I’m here.”
Yuval nodded. He took a drag from his cigarette and flipped it over the rail. They watched the glow of its burning tip as it fell down to the dark water. He leaned on his side to face them.
“He was the most extraordinary person I’ve ever met,” he began. “You have to understand, I’ve-let’s just say I’ve been around. I’ve known prime ministers, kings-eight U.S. Presidents-all kinds, mass murderers, some people who will live in history, but never anyone like him. And certainly never anyone who did what he did.”
Harris looked irritably at his watch.
“Come on, Yuval,” he said. “Skip the commercial. I’m impressed, all right? Who the hell is he?”
Yuval smiled. “You’re such an ass, Bob. Aren’t you the one who looked at the Golden Horn,” gesturing vaguely at the lights on the Eminonu side of the bridge, “and talked about the Romans? What I’m talking about,” he tapped the metal rail. “This is history. This is what’s about to happen.”
“All right.” Harris frowned. “I’m listening.”
“I
first met him when he was seven years old. This was in the 1980s. Reagan was the U.S. President. The boy had come from Isfahan in Iran, where he had seen his parents murdered before his own eyes. His father had literally been torn apart by chains attached to trucks pulling in opposite directions. They made him watch. They raped his mother. Many times. They cut off her arms and legs, then poured gasoline over her and his little brother and set them on fire right in front of him. A child. Can you imagine?
“They sent him to the Iraqi front to die. He was about to be executed by a firing squad when an unknown Iranian woman helped him get away and some of the few Jews left in Iran smuggled him to Israel. We called him David.
“I was his trainer. His first and only case officer. In a way, he was my creation. You must understand,” he said, biting his lip, and to Scorpion it seemed he was trying to defend himself to an invisible jury, “we don’t train children. Ever. It was hard enough for him, dealing with what he had just gone through, being in a new country with a new language, customs, new everything, but it was his idea. He insisted.
“Do you understand?” Yuval said, his face in shadow, only the lights from the bridge reflected in his eyes. “He knew what he was going to do. He knew what his revenge would be. He had formulated it, all of it. At age seven!
“That first time we walked on Gordon Beach in Tel Aviv, just the two of us, me and this child walking on the sand, I told him it was impossible, and he told me, ‘Today, Saddam Hussein is the Ayatollah’s enemy. Tomorrow, they will come for all the Jews.’ Seven years old-and this is how he talked!” he said, shaking his head.
“For two years I trained him. The Mossad became his school, his parents, his family. It wasn’t like training a child. He was brilliant. More than brilliant. Imagine you were the music teacher of Mozart or Mendelssohn. Your pupil not just more brilliant than you, but someone born to it in a way that you couldn’t even imagine. It didn’t just come naturally to him, it was as if compared to him you were a caveman, banging one stone against another. Mozart. Even while we trained and prepared, I tried to talk him out of it, not only because he was a child, but because what he was going to do, no one had ever done before.”
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