“Then why? Why dig it all up?”
The Scorpion shrugged, then turned, a boyish smile dimpling his right cheek. “I’m sentimental,” he said.
Harris grunted and shifted uncomfortably on the couch. His hands ached fiercely from the knots and he knew it would take hours to undo them and get help, which was precisely the head start the Scorpion wanted. His mouth hurt viciously from the kick. He explored a loose tooth with his tongue and wondered if it could be saved. He looked up at the Scorpion.
“You know what your problem is, Scorpion? You’re a romantic!” Harris declared triumphantly.
“And you’re not, Bob. That’s your weakness. ”
Dallas
DALLAS (UPI)—Congressman Max Ormont (R-Tex) plunged to his death from the balcony of his high-rise penthouse early this morning. Paramedics from Dallas Memorial pronounced him dead at the scene at 11:53 p.m.
The multimillionaire oilman-turned-politician had returned to Dallas for a political fundraiser before leaving on a fact-finding trip to the Soviet Union, police officials said. Preliminary indications are that the congressman may have been drinking. However, determination of the cause of death is pending the coroner’s report.
“There appears to be no evidence of foul play, but our investigation is continuing,” said Daryl Dobson, chief of homicide.
There were no witnesses to the incident.
The congressman is survived by a daughter. She could not be reached for comment.
Ein Gev
THE RESTAURANT WAS on a tiny spit of land sandwiched between the sheer ridge of the Golan and the lake. Two wooden fishing boats belonging to the kibbutz were turned upside-down on the rocky beach bordering the terrace. During the day fishermen from the kibbutz fished for the small bony St. Peter’s fish which made the restaurant famous.
Men had always fished these waters. Even in prehistoric times, fishermen had harvested here, leaving nothing behind but the name they gave to the lake. They called it Kinneret, because its shape reminded them of a harp. The name was kept by the Hebrews who documented it in their records, which became the Bible, until the Romans came and gave it the name of the soft rolling hills to the west. They called it “the Sea of Galilee” and so it stayed for two thousand years, until the Jews returned to reclaim the land and rename the lake once more. Kinneret again, still harp-shaped, still mysterious.
It was the dusk hour. The restaurant was closed. A couple sat on the deserted terrace and looked out over the lake, turned to molten gold by the last rays of the sun. Across the lake they could clearly see the rounded outlines of the hills of Galilee against the red sky. The Sabbath stillness was complete, except for the lapping of the waves against the low terrace wall, a few feet from their table. At such a moment, it was easy to imagine Jesus walking along this shore, followed at a distance by the shy fishermen of the village struggling to understand what he meant by talking about love in a world which seemed to have no place for it.
This is where she thinks she belongs, the Scorpion thought, looking across at Kelly. She was slim and tan and healthy-looking in a frayed white shirt and khaki shorts. This is her world now, as alien to her as Arabia; but she believes in it and maybe that makes it her world, he thought.
“Call me Chava,” she had told him when he found her at Kibbutz Shaar Ha-Golan, in the Jordan Valley where Wadi Yarmuk divides the three territories, Jordan, Israel and the occupied Golan. After dinner in the kibbutz dining hall, they had driven the three or four miles to the restaurant at Ein Gev.
“I wanted to show you this,” she said, gesturing at the lake. “I like to come here on erev shabbat when it’s quiet like this. It’s a special place.”
“I can see why they called it a Land of Milk and Honey, coming out of the desert,” he said.
The mention of the desert brought back the memory of Arabia. The shadow of it flickered in her wonderful violet eyes and she looked away for a second. The Scorpion cursed himself for being an idiot.
“I’m sorry about your father,” he said, keeping his voice carefully neutral.
“Don’t be. Nobody else is,” she shrugged, her face a mask against pain.
“I suspect you’ll be inheriting quite a lot,” he said.
“It’s a lot,” she agreed gravely.
“You could go anywhere. Do anything,” he said.
“I am doing something,” she said, her chin set defiantly. She sat up straight and looked directly at him, wearing her independence like a flag.
“I know,” he said.
A bullfrog croaked down by the water’s edge. Across the lake he could see the lights of the resort town of Tiberias shining on the water. Under Prince Judah, the rabbis of Israel had written the Mishna and determined the final form of the Old Testament there. Nearby twinkled the lights of Kfar Nahum, the biblical Capernaum, where Jesus used to preach. There was no escaping the past in a place like this, he thought.
She leaned across and kissed him on the mouth, her hand at the back of his neck, and for a moment they were lovers in the truest sense. Then he thought of Harris and the shadows of the past fell between them like a guillotine blade.
“You know why I had to leave Bahrain with Robert, don’t you? I thought he was my case officer,” she said, looking down for a moment. “And I had to find out where we stood with each other,” she said in that throaty voice which still tugged at his heart like a string.
“But I never thought he was … when I saw Gerard and him talking at the party and realized they were in it together—” she began, her eyes shining.
“Back in Paris you thought that one of the men you met—Gerard, or Jean-Paul, or Randy—was a contact from Israeli intelligence, didn’t you?”
She nodded.
“They were contacts, all right. Small-time informers working for the French SDECE. It was Harris who was pulling the strings,” he said.
“Some Mata Hari. I was pretty naive, wasn’t I?” she asked softly.
“Yes,” he said and held her close. She vibrated in his arms like a tuning fork. He held her until she was still, knowing it was a moment he would remember until he died. She pulled away and looked directly into his eyes as if peering into the back of his brain. No one had ever looked at him like that, he thought.
“You’re the most special man I’ve ever known,” she said and he knew it was her way of saying goodbye.
“Don’t underestimate yourself, either. There’ll be lots of nights when trying not to think about you will be the hardest thing I’ll ever have to do,” he said.
She cupped his chin in her hand and smiled fondly. “My knight in shining armor,” she said, her eyes brimming again. “But it wouldn’t work. Somehow, I can’t picture you in a kibbutz cow barn, shoveling manure. That’s not how the story goes. The knight’s supposed to kiss his lady-fair goodbye and ride off to his next adventure. So, where’s your next adventure?” she said bravely.
“I have some unfinished business in Afghanistan,” he said, wishing it didn’t sound so much like Indiana Jones.
“You see,” she said brightly, her mouth twisting as if she was about to cry.
He reached towards her and then hesitated. He let his hand drop on to the table and lay there like something dead. “I could try. Who knows? Maybe I’d like kibbutz life?” he ventured awkwardly.
She put her hand to his cheek. “Dear Nick. You know that’s not you. There are a hundred reasons. You’re not Jewish—and that matters here. But mostly you’d resent it because that’s not who you are. And I’d resent it because I’m a romantic too and I love who you are.”
They looked helplessly at each other.
“You’re right,” he said.
A yellowish full moon rose over the brooding shadow of the Golan Heights and shone down on the lake like a beacon, its light shattered into millions of fragments.
“Beware the Russians. Robert told me you’re Number One on their list,” she said, concern etched on her face.
“I won’t forget th
e Russians,” the Scorpion said in a quiet voice.
She shook her head and looked out over the water, shining white as fields of snow in the moonlight. She listened to the lapping of the waves and the croaking of the frogs and tried to think of a way to say goodbye. Smile, Kelly. Let him remember you smiling, she told herself and turned to face him. The terrace was deserted.
The Scorpion had gone.
Moscow
FYEDORENKO SAT UNMOVING as a statue in the Penal Chair. His famous stone-face stood him in good stead, giving nothing away even now, as Suvarov’s searing invective poured over him like molten metal.
Every face was turned towards him, their hatred naked and plain to see at long last. He had seen it before and understood it well. They were like a pack of wolves tearing one of their own to pieces as soon as he went down. Always before, he had led the attack.
This time they were attacking him.
Two six-foot blond Neanderthals stood at his sides. As soon as this little farce had been played out, they would take him out to the courtyard and bundle him into a limousine. It would be a short ride, he knew. It wasn’t far from the Kremlin to the Black Wall in Lubyanka Prison.
Now Andreyev, head of the KGB, joined the attack. His voice cracked like a whiplash as he denounced Fyedorenko as “a mad dog Enemy of the People.” That wasn’t his crime, of course, Fyedorenko knew. He was guilty of the only crime in the world for capitalist or communist alike: failure.
Fyedorenko’s glance fell on Svetlov, the newest member of the Politburo. It was his reward for betraying Fyedorenko to Suvarov and Andreyev. Svetlov’s bulging frog eyes blinked repeatedly as he stared in sneering triumph at Fyedorenko. Yes, I engineered your downfall and I’m glad of it, his eyes said.
But his triumph would be short-lived, Fyedorenko thought grimly. At least he had made sure of that.
After the Molotov Plan had fallen apart, he had launched a complete top-secret security check on everyone involved. The only way the Scorpion could have been positioned to interfere was if there had been a leak. His agents reported that there had been meetings between Svetlov and the capitalist, Ormont. Then there was the rumor surfaced by the KGB that the Scorpion wasn’t dead and that he was the one who had terminated Ormont in Dallas. But up until last night, he still hadn’t known what hold Ormont had had on Svetlov. Then he got a midnight call from Novorossisk.
One of his agents found Svetlov’s great-aunt still alive. Under torture, the old woman had revealed that Svetlov’s mother was a Jewess and that Svetlov’s twin brother hadn’t been killed by the British as Svetlov had claimed all these years. The Jews had smuggled the infant to France, where the family name “Goldberg” was translated to Ormont.
But by then, it was too late. Svetlov had made his move. Fyedorenko barely had time to pass a hand-scribbled note to his housekeeper with instructions to get it to Kishinev. Although the foreign minister was his enemy and was now staring at him with barely concealed delight, Fyedorenko knew Kishinev would know how to use the information against Svetlov.
As for himself, it didn’t matter. The Molotov Plan was too big a fiasco to paper over by pointing the finger at Svetlov.
Suddenly, it was over. Calling him a “sukin sin” for the last time, Suvarov motioned for the guards to take him away.
Fyedorenko stood and faced his accusers.
“What I did, I did for the good of the Party,” he said.
His words were met by stony silence. He remembered his father reading something from the Bible when he was a child. Something about wheat sown on stony ground. Strange, he hadn’t thought of that in so many years.
As they led him from the room he heard Svetlov’s voice cut through the silence. It was for his benefit, too. Svetlov wanted him to hear it, Fyedorenko thought.
“And now, comrades, the next item of business is to order a worldwide effort to terminate the enemy agent known as ‘the Scorpion,’” Svetlov said.
EPILOGUE
The old man was dying at last. Frankly, Captain Mayakovsky was surprised he had lasted so long. But these Pathan tribesmen were tough. They had been torturing the old buzzard for six hours straight and he hadn’t told them a thing about the Scorpion.
Mayakovsky walked to the doorway of the army hut and glanced outside. The landscape here in the Khyber Pass was the most desolate anyone could imagine. Bare rock gullies and mountains, one after another like waves of the sea, with nothing green growing for as far as the eye could see. It looked like the debris left over after the world had been made. In every gully there were a thousand places for the moujahadeen to hide, every one of them a crack shot. The children here had rifles in their hands before they could walk.
His eyes roamed the barren scene, the air shimmering like water in the baking heat. It was the most God-forsaken flybitten ass-end spot on earth, he thought. He longed for the green parks of Moscow and the taste of ice-cold kvas.
They were wasting their time. He had told those GRU idiots that. All of the tribes in these parts were Pathans. They never talked. The GRU officer had looked blankly at Mayakovsky as if he didn’t understand Russian.
“Orders are orders,” the officer had pedantically remarked.
Mayakovsky shrugged. Orders were orders, but the sooner he got out of this God-forsaken shit-hole the better.
With a sigh, he turned back and motioned to his men. Once again they took the red-hot iron from the coals and held it to the old man’s feet, the skin long since burnt to a blackened crisp.
The old man’s thin scream pierced the silent hut. His breathing was labored. He was going, Mayakovsky thought.
He leaned down to the old man’s ear. A fly buzzed his cheek as he did so and he irritably brushed it away.
“Tell me where the Scorpion is and I’ll make the pain go away,” Mayakovsky whispered seductively.
The old man’s eyes were half-closed. Mayakovsky wasn’t sure he even heard him.
But the old man had heard. His pain would soon be over, he knew. Soon Allah would gather him into his bosom and he would drink the cool waters of the Fount of Selsabil. What a fool this Russian was, he thought. As if anyone could reveal the Scorpion’s whereabouts. The Scorpion was as the desert wind.
The old man smiled.
Who can capture the wind?
About the Author
Andrew Kaplan is the author of two bestselling spy thriller series, Scorpion and Homeland, as well as three earlier novels, Dragonfire, Hour of the Assassins, and War of the Raven, which was selected by the American Library Association as one of the one hundred best books ever written about World War II. His novels have been translated into twenty languages. A veteran of the US Army and Israel’s Six Day War, he has traveled the world as a freelance journalist. Visit him at www.andrewkaplan.com.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1985 by Andrew Kaplan
Cover design by Barbara Brown
ISBN: 978-1-4976-7797-5
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
180 Maiden Lane
New York, NY 10038
www.openroadmedia.com
ANDREW KAPLAN
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