Scorpion Deception (11 page)

CHAPTER TEN

Zurich-Höngg,

Switzerland

F
or Scale, the problem was the twenty-four-hour surveillance. They—he assumed it was the Swiss NDB, although for all he knew it was the CIA—were watching Norouzi so closely that, as the Persian saying went, they had eyes in their asses.

During a drive-by earlier that day, Scale had spotted not only the parked VW with watchers, but security cameras set up for complete coverage of the apartment house in the Leimbach quarter where Norouzi was holed up with his Ukrainian whore. They also likely had surveillance equipment and maybe even a watcher hiding on the hill behind the apartment house.

Problem one: Norouzi had sent them a message. So how were they to get a message back to him? They were not only watching him round-the-clock, he had to assume they had an invisible net over him to bug all electronic communications. The Swiss and the Americans were good at that sort of thing, he acknowledged. Any kind of call, e-mail, text, anything electronic was impossible.

Problem two: even if they did get a message through, would Norouzi show up? And if he did, what to do about the watchers?

Problem three: what to do about the Ukrainian whore?

He thought about the apartment house. They were holed up in there. Did either of them go out at all? Of course. The whore went to the Migros supermarket every day to shop.

Scale smiled to himself as he looked up the hill through binoculars toward Norouzi's apartment house on Maneggpromenade and took out his cell phone. He had the solution. All he needed was a junkie, preferably female; less threatening.

H
e picked the girl up on Langstrasse, the main street of Zurich's red light district. At night it was filled with the lights of bars, clubs, passing trams, and men of all nationalities crowding the sidewalks, but the morning belonged to the junkies and prostitutes too desperate for a fix to wait for nighttime. She was thin, a Brazilian with long dark hair and coffee-colored skin, arms scarred by needle marks, and if she hadn't been desperate, she wouldn't have been working the street at eleven in the morning for a quick forty Swiss francs.

Scale offered her a hundred.

“For a hundred I do anything you want,
schatz
,” she said, inclining her head toward a nearby hotel with a neon sign, pale in the morning light, that read
THE VEGAS
. “Whatever you want. Mouth, anal, I'll let you hit me,” she whispered, pressing her thin body against him.

“I need you to come with me,” he said in English. “Only for a few hours.”

“What is this?” she said, drawing back. “Are you a
bulle
?” German slang for cop.

“Look at me,” Scale said, standing there. Small, wiry, Middle Eastern. “I'm not even Swiss.”

“What do you want?” she said, her eyes narrow with suspicion.

“I need you just to give something to someone. A woman.”

“Give what?”

He showed her. A chocolate candy bar called “Tourist” he had spent a quarter hour rewrapping carefully so it looked like it had never been opened. He put it back in his pocket.

“Just that? A hundred?” she said.

He nodded.

“I can't wait,
schatz
. Give me the money now,” she said, her pink tongue darting between her lips. Scale knew if he gave her any money, he'd never see her again.

“Get your—” He hesitated. “You get whatever you need, but I come with you. Then you come with me and I'll give you the rest of the money.”

“You don't know these
jungs
,” she said, holding out her hand, implying the guys she was talking about were dangerous. “Give me the money. I'll be right back. I'll give you a
blasen
,” meaning a blowjob. “No charge,
schatz
,” her hand caressing and squeezing his crotch. He grabbed her wrist and started to twist and apply pressure. She cried out and tried to pull away, but he held her hand imprisoned in his powerful oversized hand like a vise.

“A hundred and fifty,” he said. “Fifty now—we go wherever you need to, but together—and a hundred after you give her the candy.”

An hour later, after she'd had her shot of heroin in the unisex bathroom of a Langstrasse bar lit by blue light so it would be easy for junkies to find their vein, they were in a Migros supermarket in the Leimbach district pretending to shop. Maziar had called him to let him know the Ukrainian woman, Norouzi's mistress, was on the way.

He watched in the overhead aisle mirrors as the Brazilian girl—Yara, she said her name was—walked by the canned vegetables section for the third time, her hand in her handbag holding the candy bar. He had told her to pretend she didn't know him.

Norouzi's blond whore, Oksana, entered the supermarket, and he had to force himself to ignore her. His nerves felt tight as violin strings. He watched her go to the produce section. Yara paid no attention to the blond woman. Stupid junkie whore, he thought. Get her before she leaves.

He just started toward Yara when she turned and walked over to the mistress, Oksana. He watched them out of the corner of his eye in the aisle mirror. Two whores, he thought, watching Yara take the candy bar out of her handbag and hold it out to give to the Ukrainian.

Make it fast, you stupid whore, he thought, as a big man wearing a Burberry came into the supermarket and picked up a shopping basket. An American, by his shoes and crew cut, Scale thought. CIA
madar sag
son of a bitch. So they were the ones who had arrested Norouzi. It wasn't the NDB; it was the CIA after them because of Bern. He would have to alert the Gardener.

He watched Yara in the mirror say in German what he had told her to say:

“A friend says Hooshang likes chocolate.”

The woman, Oksana, looked around nervously then took the candy bar and slipped it into her pocket. The two women walked away from each other. Scale didn't think the American, still on the canned goods aisle, had spotted the exchange. They were all over Norouzi, he thought. It was going to be difficult, watching as Yara, throwing him a sideways glance, walked out of the store. For a second he thought the American might go after her. Scale moved over and bumped into him as if by accident.

“
Entschuldigen Sie, mein Herr
,” Scale muttered, and paying for a pack of cigarettes, headed out the door. He waited a minute in case the American followed, but the idiot stayed as he had been taught with his primary target—the Ukrainian woman—inside the supermarket. When Scale was sure the American wasn't coming out yet, he went around the corner where Yara was waiting, hugging herself although it wasn't cold. He wondered if she needed another fix so soon. She held out her hand for the money and he handed it to her, then watched her count it.

“Do you want
blasen
now? A quick one. No extra charge,” she said, pocketing the money and eyeing a doorway near the parking area behind the supermarket.

“I need you to forget you ever saw me,” Scale said.

“This is easy,
schatz
,” she said, already walking toward the tram stop. “I never look at your faces anyway.”

F
rom his position behind a fallen log at the edge of a clearing, Scale scanned the approaches through his night vision goggles. There had been a brief drizzle earlier that afternoon and the log was still wet. He could smell the damp leaves and earth. He studied the small reflector he had set on a stake in the ground in the center of the clearing for distance sighting for their weapons. Then he verified the cell phone numbers for each of the three IEDs he had set, planted in brush beside the hiking trails. Done. He pulled his sleeve back to check his watch. Twelve minutes to go.

The meet was for ten that night. Scale had written a message to Norouzi in Farsi on a slip of tissue-thin, water-soluble paper, so it could easily be disposed of or swallowed in seconds. He'd put it inside the Tourist candy bar wrapper:

Park-e Bergholz. 300m shomal Kappenbühlstr; Sa'at 22-e. B.

Bergholz Park. 300 meters north of Kappenbühlstrasse; 2200 hours—10:00
P.M.—
and the Farsi letter
be
, B, for Baghban, suggesting it was coming from the Gardener himself. If that didn't make Norouzi want to shit himself and ensure that he would show, nothing would. The park was a large wooded area of bike and hiking trails in Höngg, a western suburb in Zurich's District 10, south of the A1 motorway.

Scale knew he would have to deal with the CIA watchers. Norouzi would probably try to lose them in a shopping mall or movie theater, but he didn't know how good Norouzi was and had to assume they would still be on Norouzi when he tried to make the meet. The question was, how many? Best guess was a front and back box, four watchers, but he would plan for more. There was also the matter of Norouzi's whore, Oksana. She would have to be dealt with at the same time, though there was virtually no chance she would be at the meet.

Scale took off his goggles and checked the sensors he had placed on the approach trails. He guessed that Norouzi would be taking the tram, not his car, which meant his most likely approach would be to get off at the tram stop on Michelstrasse and walk to Kappenbühlstrasse, where the entrance to the hiking trail was located.

Scale knew that if he—or the CIA
seyyedan
bastard agents—took another route, his plan wouldn't work and within the hour he would most likely be dead. Nothing he could do about that, he thought. He had four men in place—plus himself, the IEDs, and the element of surprise. And he had sent Danush to take care of the whore. It should be sufficient, he decided. It would have to be.

His cell phone vibrated. One-word text messages from Maziar, then Armin, then Ebrahim, saying yes, meaning they were in position. Nothing from Mohammad. He texted a question mark to Mohammad. No answer. He was about to text Ebrahim to check on him when Mohammad texted back that he was in position on the opposite side of the clearing. Scale scanned the trees on that side through his night goggles. At first he saw nothing. Then he spotted the sound suppressor mounted on the HK G36K assault rifle muzzle peering out of the foliage.
Inshallah
, God willing, he said to himself.

He opened the laptop and saw them. The sensors were working. There were indications of someone, a dot on the screen, coming up the trail from Kappenbühlstrasse, followed a hundred meters behind on the trail by two more moving dots. If there were more, there was no sign of them. He closed the laptop and adjusted the night goggles, his HK rifle, and Beretta with the sound suppressor ready. Idiot, he thought, wondering if Norouzi could really be so stupid as to not know he had CIA agents trailing him.

He searched the far side of the clearing by the gap in the trees where Norouzi would emerge any minute. His cell phone vibrated with another text message. It was from Mohammad and read:
2 in Audi.
So the two American agents tailing Norouzi were backed up by another pair in an Audi, probably parked on Kappenbühlstrasse. The cell vibrated again, but there was no time to look because he saw Norouzi emerge, a lighter green moving figure in the night vision goggles silhouetted against the darker green of the trees. He watched Norouzi walk to the middle of the clearing, stop by the marker and turn, looking around, uncertain what to do next.

Scale waited. He watched the trees at the other end of the clearing. And then he saw two green figures. They stopped by the edge of the clearing and dropped to the ground, making a single green form that didn't move. They wanted to see who would show up. At the same moment, Scale's cell phone vibrated. He didn't have to look at it to know it was coming from either Maziar or Ebrahim, both already concealed on that side of the clearing, letting him know about the two CIA
seyyedan
. He scanned the tree line one last time to see if he could spot his four men, but they were too well hidden. He took a deep breath, and unfastening his Beretta in his shoulder holster under his jacket, stood up.

He walked toward Norouzi, who turned to face him.

“What time does the plane leave?” Norouzi asked in Farsi. The standard contact sign.

“The plane to Isfahan left yesterday,” Scale said. “You know you were followed?”

Norouzi nodded. “Are you him?” he whispered, wide-eyed. “Baghban?” The Gardener?

“
Saket, baradar
.” Shut up, brother. “You think they're not listening now?” Scale hissed, his eyes on the tree line.

“They arrested me. They tortured me. My family is in danger. I've got to get out,” Norouzi said.

“Who arrested you?” Scale said, watching the trees.

“I'm not sure. They didn't say. The NDB, I think.”

“What makes you think NDB?”

“My lawyer thought so. There were a number of them, but the two who spoke to me spoke Schweizerdeutsch. The lawyer,
inshallah
, spoke Farsi.”

“What lawyer?” Scale demanded.

“The one from Geneva. The one the embassy sent.”

You donkey, Scale thought. There was no lawyer from the Iranian Embassy. It was a “movie.” The CIA had set Norouzi up to see who he would contact, and the idiot had fallen right into their trap. Keep it calm. Just question him, Scale told himself, and then he saw them.

Two CIA
seyyedan
, except now he saw that one was a woman. They had gotten up from where they had been hiding in the trees and were walking toward them.

“Listen to me,
baradar
,” Scale said. “Your life depends on it. When I say
‘pay'in'
”—Farsi for down—“drop instantly to the ground.” It was all happening very fast. The Americans were getting closer. A big man with short hair in a Burberry—the one from the Migros market—and a pretty blond woman. Both holding pistols aimed right at him and Norouzi.