The Scorpio Illusion

by Robert Ludlum

  “Whaddya looking for, Stosh?” asked one of the men.

  “A couple who may be bringing in diamonds.”

  “May I go down and escort them to my personal jeweler?”

  The superior laughed with his crew and headed for the outer door. “For that you cover my phone. I gotta take a leakeroonie.” The security official went out into the narrow corridor, turned left, and hurried to the end, where there was a railing and an even narrower balcony that overlooked much of the terminal. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a hand-held radio, and switched to another frequency. He then held it to his lips and spoke while squinting down at the crowds until he saw what he had seen on the television monitor. “Rattler, it’s Catbird. Come in.”

  “Rattler on. What is it?”

  “Targets are confirmed.”

  “The M couple? Where?”

  “They’re heading for the limo platform. He’s in a gray suit; she’s taller and dressed in black. Move!”

  “I see them!” whispered a third voice over the radio. “I’m not fifty feet away. Jesus, they’re picking up speed; they’re in a hurry.”

  “So are we, Copperhead,” said the chief of immigration security, listed among the Scorpios as number fourteen.

  The two Mossad officers sat in the back of the limousine, their attaché cases on top of their flight bags on the jump seats; the captain’s case was open. In his left hand, the blond undercover agent held a laminated card, four by six inches in size, that listed every nonsecure telephone number he might possibly need in the United States, from major addresses to embassies and consulates, from allied and enemy intelligence agencies to favorite restaurants, bars, and several women he felt might welcome his attention.

  “Where did you get that?” asked the major.

  “I made it myself,” answered the captain. “I hate looking things up in telephone books. Remember, I was posted here for eighteen months.” He slid a credit card through the telephone slot, waiting for the word dial to appear on the thin panel. “Be quiet now,” he continued as he pressed the numbers on his index. “This is the White House switchboard, and they don’t care to ask questions; they only take messages.”

  “You’ve done this before …?”

  “Frequently. There was a sweet thing, a maid in the third floor private quarters—… Shhh! I’ve got an operator.”

  “The White House,” said a tired female voice on the line.

  “Forgive me, miss, but I’ve just spoken with the secretary of state’s wife, Mrs. Bruce Palisser, who informed me that her husband was with the President. I should like to leave a message for Mr. Palisser, please.”

  “Are you cleared, sir? Otherwise, the Security Council can’t be interrupted.”

  “I would not presume to interrupt, madam, I simply wish to leave a message.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Just tell him that the cousins of his old friend, Colonel David, are in town and will be in touch with his residence and his office as frequently as we can. He may leave word where we can reach him at his convenience.”

  “You want to give me a number?”

  “That would be presumptuous on our part, and I wouldn’t care to put you to any more trouble.”

  “He’ll get your message as soon as the meeting’s over.”

  The Mossad captain replaced the phone and leaned back in the seat. “We’ll take turns calling his office and his residence every five minutes. As you say, we’ve got to get Nesbitt’s name to him even if we have to give it over the phone,” he said. The captain had leaned forward to put his laminated telephone index back into his briefcase, when he suddenly looked to his left outside the closed window. A second limousine was crowding them off the highway! Its rear windows were open … and in those dark spaces were weapons!

  “Get down!” he screamed, throwing himself over the major as an unending fusillade of gunfire exploded, sending full-jacket bullets through glass and metal, penetrating the bodies inside. During the murderous attack, a grenade was lobbed through the shattered window. The limousine spun off the highway, rolling over and over on the shoulder of the road until it crashed into a metal sound wall and exploded in fire.

  34

  The highway from Dulles Airport was in shambles. Thirty-seven vehicles had piled up, smashing into one another as the fires from the explosion spread across the road, the result of the multi-punctured fuel tank of the destroyed limousine. Within minutes the sound of sirens and the deafening roars of helicopter rotors filled the morning air, joined shortly by the two-note screeching nah-noahs of the medical emergency units skirting both shoulders of the road to reach the casualties.

  It was not only the death of the messengers from Tel Aviv, it was the end of their lives for twenty-two innocent men and women who wanted only to get home and to their families after arduous journeys. It was an obscenity born of a far more obscene conspiracy, born yet again years before by a child forced to witness the beheading of her mother and father in the mountains of the Pyrenees. Madness at 10:52 A.M. on a bright summer’s day.

  11:35 A.M.

  Bajaratt was close to losing her temper, if not her sanity. She could not get through to Senator Nesbitt! Instead, it was first a receptionist, then a subordinate secretary, followed by the personal secretary, and finally an aide to the senator himself.

  “This is the Countess Cabrini,” said the Baj firmly. “I truly believe the senator wishes to speak with me.”

  “He does, indeed, Countess, but unfortunately he’s out of the office. You must remember, Countess, the Senate’s in summer recess, and our schedules are not as rigid as when we’re in session.”

  “Are you saying you cannot find him?”

  “We’re trying, Countess. He might well be on the golf course, or visiting friends—”

  “He has a housekeeper and a driver, young man. Certainly they know where he is.”

  “The housekeeper knows only that the senator went out in the car, and the car’s telephone merely repeats that the owner has left the vehicle.”

  “I find this quite intolerable. I wish to speak to the senator himself.”

  “And I’m sure he would wish to speak with you, Countess, but if you’re inquiring about your appointment at the White House, let me assure you that it’s on the firm schedule. I have it here in front of me. You’ll be picked up at the Carillon hotel at seven-fifteen sharp this evening. It’s somewhat early, but just in case there’s heavy traffic.”

  “You do reassure me. Thank you very much.”

  12:17 P.M.

  Hawthorne pounced on the Shenandoah Lodge’s desk telephone. “Yes?” he said.

  “It’s Palisser. I’m surprised I haven’t heard from you.”

  “Haven’t heard? I’ve left a half-dozen messages!”

  “You did?… That’s odd, you were cleared to reach me.”

  “I know that; the operators said that. They told me each time they were sending my name down to you.”

  “I never got it. On the other hand, the whole day so far has been a basket case. There was a foreign policy crisis, but with luck and a few threats we may have diffused it.… What happened with General Meyers? Frankly, he behaved like an idiot during the conference. His answer to everything was ‘sweet bombs’!”

  “What’s that?”

  “Missiles that blow up selected targets housing the leaders on both sides—he was serious.”

  “He’s more than that, he’s a confirmed Scorpio. We’ve got him on tape. He had information that could have come only from the Scorpio network. He’s one of them, there’s no doubt any longer. Trust me, I know. Take him, isolate him, put him under chemicals!”

  “We’ve got something else too. A friend of mine in Israel, a colonel in the Mossad who thinks we’re riddled with so many leaks we’re a sieve, sent two of his people here with what must be vital information. He wouldn’t take such drastic measures otherwise. Let’s wait until they reach me, then we’ll move on all fronts.”

  �
��That works for me. We’ll pull them all in and blow this bitch out of the sky.”

  “What’s the bromide, Commander? ‘From your mouth to God’s ear’? Let us hope.”

  As Hawthorne hung up the phone, the hotel television set was showing the carnage on the Dulles access road from a helicopter in the sky on the outskirts of the airport. Cameras transmitted pictures of burning vehicles, some suddenly exploding, charred bodies on the pavement, a tragedy beyond words.

  The obese chief of immigration security felt the short, sharp impulses of his Scorpio monitor, excused himself once again from his quarters, and walked rapidly to the nearest public phone in the outside corridor.

  “Number Fourteen,” he said, after pressing the digit litany.

  “Number One here” came the harsh voice on the line. “Outstanding, Fourteen, well done. It’s all over the news.”

  “I hope to hell it was the right couple,” said Scorpio Fourteen. “I figured the fund-raiser for the Negev desert was the key.”

  “It was. My source in Jerusalem gave it to me, and he’s a tough old bastard. If he could pop-gun this whole administration, he’d do it himself. I’ll reach him and give him the news. He wants what I want and we’re going to get the whole enchilada!”

  “Don’t tell me, Number One, I don’t want to know.”

  “You can count on it.”

  Eight thousand miles away, on Jerusalem’s Ben Yehuda Street, a heavyset, barrel-chested man in his early seventies sat hunched over his desk, studying the contents of a file folder. His face was like leather, the creases deep, the eyes small and hostile. His constantly swept private telephone rang; if the caller was a member of his family, he would cut him off quickly, for that line had to stay clear, it had to.

  “Yes?” said the old Israeli curtly.

  “Shalom, Mustang,” said the voice on the other end.

  “Goddamn you, Stallion, what took you so long?”

  “Are we secure?”

  “Don’t start the foolish questions. Talk.”

  “The messengers have been rerouted—”

  “For Christ’s sake, you’re not in a wired bunker, speak English!”

  “The couple’s limousine was shot to pieces, then blown up—”

  “Documents?” asked the Israeli sharply. “Instructions, identifications?”

  “Nothing could have survived the explosions, and even if anything did, it would take the forensic laboratories days to piece it together. It’d be too late.”

  “Ah-hah! You have something else to tell me?”

  “Word from our person at the Agency is that it will happen tonight. London intercepted the call.”

  “My god, then the White House will be alerted!”

  “No, they won’t. Our person short-circuited the in-channel information, and nothing goes outside that channel. As far as anyone here in Washington is concerned, the MI-6 operation never took place, or was aborted. Tonight is just another night.”

  “Bravo, Stallion! Everything we wanted, no?”

  “Thanks to you, Mustang.”

  “A terror will spread across the world like a gargantuan brushfire! And if London and Paris are successful—may God in His wisdom permit it—the fires will become a global conflagration, and we, the soldiers, will again be supreme.”

  “I said as much a short while ago. But it could not happen without your call to me, old friend.”

  “Friend?” the Israeli broke in. “No, we are not friends, General; you’re as big an anti-Semite as I’ve ever known. We simply need each other, you for your reasons, me for mine. You want your massive toys back, and I want Israel to maintain its strength, which we cannot do without America’s largess. When this is over and we trace the horrors to the Arabs in the Baaka, your administration and your Congress will open their coffers to us—for those who would destroy us have done this terrible thing to you, this horrible, demeaning thing!”

  “We see alike, Mustang, and you’ll never know how grateful I am that you did call me.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “I think you just explained it.”

  “No, no, not that why, the how before the why?”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “That compromising intellectual Abrams, Colonel Abrams of the almighty Mossad, confided in me. Can you imagine, that so-called organizational genius thinks I’m on his side, that I want peace with the filthy Arab savages, simply because I was the greatest fighter in our country’s history, who now gives lip service to the government idiots so as to keep my position and stay in the public eye.… He said to me, he said—and I swear on the Torah—‘The leaks are too deep, too copious, I can no longer trust our channels.’… So I said, ‘Who can you trust?’ and he said, ‘Only Palisser. When I was the military chargé d’affaires at the embassy, we spoke frequently, and I spent a weekend at his house on the seashore. We see alike.’… Then I told him, ‘Send couriers, two, not one, in case there is trouble, but only to see him. Make them engineers—everybody’s an engineer—and I have projects in the Negev, I’ll back you up.’… Like a hungry puppy, he yapped how marvelous it was, how creative I was. I was. Now his Senator Nesbitt from the state of Michigan is a nonissue!”

  “Then you called me,” said the voice quietly.

  “Yes, I called you,” agreed the heavyset old man. “We met twice, my friend, and I saw a man filled with hate, with a hatred that matched my own for not dissimilar reasons. It was an intuitive risk that I felt was worth taking. I spelled out the facts but drew no conclusions, you did that by yourself.”

  “Your intuition was right.”

  “Outstanding soldiers, especially battle-tested leaders, have a way of seeing into each other’s souls, don’t we?”

  “You’re wrong about one thing. I’m not an anti-Semite.”

  “Certainly you are, and so am I! I want fighters first and Jews second, just as you want fighters first and gentiles second! The temples and the churches are too often impediments.”

  “Come to think about it, you’re right.”

  “What will you do—tonight over there?”

  “Stay close to, or perhaps even in the White House. After all, I’ll have to take charge very quickly, very firmly.”

  “Is that where it’s going to happen?”

  “Where else?… I doubt that we’ll talk again.”

  “I should think not. Have a good day, Stallion.”

  “Shalom, Mustang.” General Meyers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, hung up the phone.

  35

  2:38 P.M.

  Angel Capell walked through gate seventeen of National Airport, passengers and paparazzi crowding her, shouting questions. She spotted the barone-cadetto and his aunt; they were taken by an airline official into a private office.

  “I’m so sorry, Paolo! All this nonsense must make you very uncomfortable.”

  “Everyone loves you! How can that make me uncomfortable?”

  “It does me. My only consolation is that a month after the series is over, I’ll be a has-been and I’ll hear things like ‘Didn’t she used to be Angel Capell?’ ”

  “Never!”

  Bajaratt interrupted, giving Angel the sealed document envelope. “Dante Paolo’s father does not want him to see the instructions until tomorrow.”

  “Why not?”

  “I cannot say, for I don’t know, Angelina. My brother has his brilliant ways and I do not question them. All I know is that I have business elsewhere, and Dante Paolo tells me he wishes to go to New York tomorrow morning to see you and your family.”

  “If you will permit it, Angel,” said Nicolo questioningly, his eyebrows together in fear.

  “Permit it? Holy moly, that’s terrific! I got my folks a place on a lake in Connecticut. We can all go up there for the weekend, and I’ll show you an actress who can cook, noble guy!”

  The airline official who had escorted them into the room suddenly opened the door. “Miss Capell, we’ve been in touch with your
studio and they agree. We have a private jet that will fly you to New York; it will be much simpler and you won’t be bothered.”

  “It doesn’t bother me being bothered. Those people are my audience, mister.”

  “Well, they also keep leaving their seats and fill up the aisles while in flight.”

  “Oh, I see. Then you’re the ones who are bothered.”

  “Safety is the issue, Miss Capell.”

  “Oh! Well, I can’t fault you there, sir.”

  “Thank you so much. If you don’t mind, we’d like to depart right away. Gate seventeen is a mess.”

  Angel turned to Nicolo. “Hey, noble guy, you can kiss me good-bye if you want to. There’re no photographers here, or my father.”

  “Thank you, Angel.” They embraced, kissed sweetly, and the young television star left the room with the airline official, carrying twenty-four thousand dollars in a thick brown envelope.

  3:42 P.M.

  “Have you got him?” asked Hawthorne over the phone. “It’s been damned near three hours and we haven’t heard a word from you! That’s shit-kicking unfair!”

  “And I haven’t heard from the two Israelis who are bringing me crucial information, and that’s even more unfair, Commander,” said Secretary of State Palisser, doing his best to control his anger.

  “What about Meyers?”

  “He’s under close surveillance, that’s all the President would agree to until there’s more substantive evidence. He made it abundantly clear that it would be a very unpopular move for his administration to arrest a hero of Meyers’s stature. He suggested that we go to the Senate with your information and let it take the heat.”

  “He’s all balls, isn’t he?”

  “He vacillates, I’ll go that far.”

  “Well, where is Meyers?”

  “Currently in his office, doing whatever he does.”

  “Is his telephone tapped?”

  “He’d know it instantly. Don’t even think about it.”

  “Anything from the CIA?”