Scorpion Deception (15 page)

“Do it—or I will.”

“I'll see what I can do,” Shaefer muttered. “Anything else?”

“I need an SOG,” Scorpion said.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

El Born,

Barcelona, Spain

“Y
ou were there?” Scorpion asked.

“You kidding, hombre? I helped with the cooking,” Shehi said. The Albanian was a short man with a close-shaved head and a three-day beard that didn't disguise the knife scar that ran down the side of his face from the hairline to the jaw.

They were in the back room of a small bar on the cobblestoned Carrer de l'Argenteria in the gothic El Born district. Starting with a Romanian whore on Calle Ramon in El Raval, it had taken Scorpion just four hours to work his way up the criminal food chain to the Albanian. It seemed odd for him to be there in the tiny room, dark and smelling of beer and mold, when the day had turned sunny, the trees green, and in an early sign of spring, girls were on the Ramblas in tank tops and brighter colors.

“How'd they kill him?” Scorpion asked. They were talking about a notorious incident that had echoed around the police and intelligence world in which the members of an Albanian Spanish mafia gang had killed, cooked, and eaten one of their own they considered a traitor.

“With a hammer,” Shehi said. “Why do you think they call Hayir ‘El Martillo'? Here.” He poured brandy from a bottle of Fundador and pushed the glass at Scorpion. “Stop with that
cava
piss and drink like a man.” Scorpion traded the sparkling wine for the brandy.

“Salud,”
he toasted, and they drank. “So how'd you cook him?”

“We ground him up in a meat grinder. Then we made
pimientos rellenos de carne
. Stuffed red peppers. Everyone at a big table. Must have been at least twenty of us.”

“How was it?”

“You know . . .” The Albanian paused to reflect. “We fried the peppers, and let me tell you, with a nice onion sauce and
vino tinto
, he was pretty good. Better than he ever was alive, that
culero
.” He laughed, then looked at Scorpion speculatively. “So what kind of
joda hijo de puta
”—cop son of a bitch—“you looking for?”

“A
joda
who likes to
chupame la polla.
” A cop who'll do oral sex; in slang, someone willing to do anything for money. “Even Muslims.”

Shehi looked at him sharply. “What kind of Muslims?” For Albanians, religion was dangerous territory.

“Shia,” Scorpion said.

“Hezbollah? You talking Hezbollah? That's serious
mierda
you talking, hombre.”

Scorpion put a hundred euro bill on the table. Shehi didn't respond. He put another hundred down, then a two hundred. Shehi put his hand over the money, and Scorpion stopped him from taking the money by touching his index finger to the back of Shehi's hand. Neither of them moved.

“The
joda
you want is Pintero. Victor Pintero. A
sotsinspector
in the
mossos d'esquadra
in El Raval,” Shehi said, taking the money.

“He'd sell information to Hezbollah?”

Shehi shrugged. “For the price of a stink-faced whore, he'd sell his mother.”

“What makes you so sure he's Hezbollah's
puta
?” Scorpion asked, letting his right hand drop below the table to the pocket where he carried the Walther PK380 he had taken from the police station. Shehi was holding something back; he wasn't sure what. He put his hand on the gun. “You don't want me to come back,” he added quietly.

“I shit on you too,” Shehi said. Then looking into Scorpion's cold gray eyes, he reconsidered. “He's on our payroll. I know definitely one hundred percent he deals with Hezbollah. So do we.”

“Like what?”

“Guns, drugs, money washing,
putas
. Romanian women, Moldovan, Russian. Good business,” rubbing his thumb on his fingers in the universal sign for money.

“And I should believe you because . . . ?” Scorpion said.

“Like you say, hombre,” Shehi said, taking a swig of the brandy and wiping his mouth with his hand. “I don't want to see you again. You too hot. Too many people looking for you,” looking directly at Scorpion. “No good for business.”

So Shehi had recognized him from the police sketch shown on TV and in the newspapers, Scorpion thought. He would have to change his appearance beyond just growing a Van Dyke type beard. It also meant Shehi knew about the four policemen he had taken out at the
comisaria
who were all in serious condition at Clínic de Barcelona hospital. That's why the Albanian didn't want to mess with him.

“Except maybe you'll think to call the
mossos
the minute I leave.”

Shehi grinned. “The thought occurred.”

“Sure. Kill two birds with one stone. Make a little extra.” Scorpion winked, easing the Walther out and pointing it, under the table, at Shehi's belly. Another word and he would have to kill him.

Again Shehi shrugged. “Not a bad idea.”

“It's a very bad idea,” Scorpion said, finger tightening on the trigger.

“You think I don't know, hombre? I shit in the milk of any
joda's
mother,” Shehi said, giving no sign he knew how close to death he was. “I never tell
mossos
nothing.
Nada
. And if I did, what would I tell them? We talk. ‘And where did he go?' they will ask. What can I say? I don't know nothing. I don't want to know nothing.” He looked shrewdly at Scorpion. “We finish, hombre?”

Scorpion slid the Walther back into his pocket as he got up.

“Cell phone,” he said, holding out his hand. Shehi handed his over.

Scorpion stood over him. “So long as you forget you ever saw me, that we ever had this conversation, we finish,” he said.

When he got outside, the sun was so bright he had to shade his eyes. As he walked the narrow street toward the Santa Maria del Mar church, he used Shehi's phone to make a call. When he was done, he took out the SIM and battery, tossed the cell phone into a trash bin, then dropped the SIM and battery into a storm drain a block away before heading to the Metro.

The clock was ticking. And all he could think about was not the mission, but Sandrine. He wondered where she was now and if she was safe.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Dharkenleey,

Mogadishu, Somalia

S
he was being watched. It was the South African, Van Zyl, a lanky bearded man with blue eyes. He was from UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, at the improvised horror show called Badbaada Camp on the western outskirts of Mogadishu. The Badbaada refugee camp made the one at Dadaab in Kenya seem like the Ritz Carlton. Plastic sheeting was the only shelter, no food or toilet facilities, nothing; just dirt on the wrong side of Dharkenleey Road and a single water faucet for sixty thousand people and hundreds more arriving every day to escape the fighting and starvation in Afgooye and Lower Shabelle. Van Zyl had shown up just three days after she arrived.

She had flown in from Nairobi. Coming in from the airport, Mogadishu was a city of blazing sun and battered white Toyota vans so packed with people that men and boys rode clinging to the outside, standing on rear bumpers as they bounced along the rutted streets; a city of open-air markets selling vegetables, guns, and ammunition; concrete cinder-block buildings, some blasted to ruins by the recent fighting, women in multicolored
direhs
with children moving among the armed green-bereted African Union troops and Somali government soldiers that were everywhere.

Whenever Van Zyl was around, she sensed his eyes on her. Not the normal way men looked at a woman, particularly if she was reaching or bending over to get something. She was a grown woman and understood that kind of a look. This was different. As if he was watching to see what she would do.

The boy, Ghedi, the one saved by the American she called David Cheyne, even though she knew it wasn't his real name, noticed it too. When she had come back to Dadaab from Paris, the boy was gone. He disappeared after learning his little sister might still be alive in Mogadishu. God only knew how he'd made it through the war zone, but somehow he was here now, still looking for his sister.

“That
mzungu
,” Ghedi said, using the Swahili slang word for a white man that he had picked up in Dadaab, “he watch you.”

“Yes,” she nodded, wiping her forehead with her forearm. Under the stretch of plastic tarps that served for a hospital tent, it was unbelievably hot, at least forty-five degrees Celsius. If her patients weren't already dying, the heat and the flies only compounded the misery. But they never complained. Even though she could do so little for them, they were grateful. They were wonderful, and it was hopeless, and what was she doing here and where was the American and why couldn't she get him out of her mind?

The Hawiye women in their beautiful
direhs
and graceful gestures would say she was bewitched. Maybe it was true, she thought. Why else was she here?

“Should I kill him,
isuroon
?” the boy asked, using the Somali word for a woman deserving of respect, holding up the
belawa
knife he wore on a leather thong around his neck. He had seen her with the American and had appointed himself her protector till the American returned.

“
La
,” no, she said, touching his hand with the knife. “Not yet.”

“If you say, I will kill him,” he said, looking at her.

“I know,” she said. “But now you must go. This is for women. A
ragol
,” a man, “may not be here.”

She felt him leave as she turned back to the patient, a little girl on a shred of blanket on the ground. Small, shriveled with a swollen belly, she looked barely four years old, though her mother said she was seven. The child was severely malnourished and dehydrated. Too malnourished to use an IV, which could overhydrate and kill her. And she was dangerously lethargic. It could be shock or sepsis, she thought, looking at the mother, whose face had so little flesh it was like looking at a skull.

“Voici.”
She gestured to the mother, handing her one of the few Baggies of liquid ReSoMal she still had left and showing her how to give it to the girl orally, even as she debated with herself whether to use it or save it for another because this child was so far gone. Except she couldn't do that, could she? she told herself. She raised the tiny torn
direh
and then saw it. The gaping bloody wound at the child's genitals.

“Mada? Mana?”
What? Who? she asked the mother, pointing at the wound and using two of the few words of Arabic she knew.

“Digil, Al-Shabaab,”
the woman said. Al-Shabaab soldiers from the Digil clan.

It was rape, Sandrine thought, feeling nauseous. The thought of grown men with this tiny child made her try to swallow to keep from throwing up. I can't do this anymore, she thought, looking at the girl's wasted body. She took a breath. This
petite
didn't do anything to have this happen to her, she thought, pulling out a thermometer strip to take the girl's temperature: 40.2 degrees Celsius. High fever. Sepsis from the wound. She looked around despairingly. By rights she should order a CBC, start skin tear repair, but the only thing she had—and damn little of it—was penicillin. This wasn't medicine, it was witch-doctoring!

She took out the ampule, gave her the injection, and bandaged the wound as best she could. The child barely reacted to the needle. She had to get out of here, Sandrine thought. She patted the mother on the arm and ran out into the blazing sun.

Van Zyl, in his ratty Kaizer Chiefs football T-shirt and shorts, was standing there. Not doing anything, just standing there.

“Stop watching me, you bloody son of a bitch!” she screamed at him. “So help me, I'll have someone shoot you! And do something useful for once! Get the medicines I ordered!”

“Take it easy,
bokkie
. I'll catch you later,” he said, holding up his hands in mock surrender and walking away.

She put her hands to her face. She wasn't helping these people or herself. Why was she here? And an inner voice whispered:
Because you know he'll find you here
.

She shook her head.
Ce n'est pas moi
, she told herself. It's not me. She went back into the hospital tent. The heat and stench were overpowering.

“Merde,”
she said aloud, and went back to work.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Gràcia,

Barcelona, Spain

M
archena, the CNI agent who hadn't showed at the RDV set up by Shaefer at the Plaça Vicenç Martorell, was a tall balding man in a gray suit and dark shirt. He had the look of casual authority, like a professional soccer coach, Scorpion thought as he watched him get into his car, a bright red BMW Series 6 coupe in the office building's underground garage. The Barcelona branch of the Spanish intelligence service, the Centro Nacional de Inteligencia, was headquartered in the building, using the cover of a construction machinery company, Grupo Puentas y Gracia. He treats himself well, this Marchena, Scorpion mused as he walked over and rapped on the driver's window with the Walther pistol.

“Qué diables!”
Marchena exclaimed in Catalan. What the hell!

Scorpion motioned with the Walther for Marchena to unlock the passenger door. It took Marchena a second to figure it out that there wasn't enough time to start the car and drive before the stranger with the gun and wearing a blond surfer boy wig could shoot. Marchena pressed the unlock button and Scorpion got in.

“Drive. I'll tell you where,” Scorpion said in English.

“The hell I will. Who are you?” Marchena replied in good English, not moving.

“I'll shoot you,” Scorpion said, pointing the Walther at Marchena's head.

“No, you won't,” Marchena said confidently, looking around. There were a few other people going to their cars in the garage.

Scorpion fired a shot, the bullet shattering a hole in the driver's side window, just past the tip of Marchena's nose. The sound of the shot echoed loudly in the garage, and two people who had been going to their cars froze and looked around.

“Last chance,” Scorpion said, shoving the muzzle against Marchena's ribs. “Drive.”

Darting him a quick sideways glance, Marchena started the BMW and drove out of the garage into the bright sunlight. Both men put on their sunglasses as they drove on the broad Passeig de Gràcia, past fashionable stores and office buildings.

“Where are we going?” Marchena asked.

“Just drive. Go someplace where I can shoot you if I don't like what you say,” Scorpion said as they slid into the traffic circling the stone obelisk in the center of Plaça de Juan Carlos I where the two broad boulevards, the Passeig and the Avinguda Diagonal, intersected.

“Why? Who are you? What do you want?”

“We had a date, remember?”

“Date? What the hell are you talking—” Marchena went suddenly pale.
“Déu,”
he breathed, glancing at the man beside him. “You're Scorpion.”

“Why didn't you show?” Scorpion asked.

Marchena took a deep breath. “How am I still alive?” he muttered, his eyes flicking sideways at Scorpion. “Was it you?” he asked. “It was, wasn't it? You put five
mossos d'esquadra
into the hospital while handcuffed. Unbelievable,” shaking his head while watching traffic. “Did you kill Mohammad Karif?”

“Don't be stupid. Karif was the only link to what happened in Bern. I'm the last person on the planet to want him dead.”

“So who killed him?” Marchena asked, forced to make a left turn as the wide boulevard dead-ended and then a right turn into a narrow residential street.

“A man with a mustache. Looked Middle Eastern. I got there maybe a minute after he killed Karif. He caught me unawares.”

“I wouldn't have thought that was possible,” Marchena said cattily.

“I try not to make a habit of it,” Scorpion said. “If I did, I'd be as dead as Karif.”

Marchena glanced over at him.

“This mythical man with a mustache—” he began.

“He's not mythical. Somebody killed Karif,” Scorpion said.

“All right, I'll bite. Why didn't he kill you?”

“To frame me for Karif's murder. He's the one who called the
mossos d'esquadra
. He must've figured if they were chasing me, they wouldn't be chasing him. They got there as I was leaving.”

“Why'd he kill him?”

“Don't you watch TV? The Americans want to bomb the hell out of somebody for what happened in Bern. Someone's trying to avoid it being them.”

“What did Karif have to do with it?”

“Karif was a contact. An Iranian named Norouzi called Karif from Zurich. That's what brought me to Barcelona. Last night Norouzi was also found dead.”

“They're shutting down the network. Is that it?” Marchena said, making his way around construction and then turning onto Travessera de Dalt, a long straight street lined with apartment houses.

“Where are we going?” Scorpion asked.

“You wanted to talk. I thought maybe Park Güell. We could walk.”

He wants people around, Scorpion thought. Someplace where he feels safe.

“If I decide to terminate you, having people around won't make any difference,” Scorpion said. “And you didn't answer my question. Why didn't you make the RDV?”

“Spain is a leading supporter of Palestinian rights. We have more than a million Muslims. If America—or Israel—want to make war with Iran, NATO or no NATO, it's not good for us. We don't want any Berns—or Zurichs—in Barcelona,” he said, glancing pointedly at Scorpion. “My bosses ordered me not to meet you, and they were right. You've been in Spain less than twenty-four hours, Scorpion, and already we've got a dead Muslim and five policemen in the hospital. Whatever you're here for, Senor Cahill,” making sure Scorpion knew he knew his cover ID, “we want no part.”

For several minutes they didn't talk. There was a tunnel up ahead. Marchena glanced at Scorpion, who nodded. They drove through the dark tunnel and out into the bright sunshine.

“It's not that simple,” Scorpion said. “You can't ignore us,” implying he was speaking not just for the CIA, but for the entire U.S. government. Total bullshit, he thought. The reality was, except for Shaefer and maybe Rabinowich, he was on his own.

“Meaning?” Marchena said, turning left into a narrow street going up a hill. He's heading for the park, Scorpion thought. Human instinct. In danger, people always head up, and if possible, toward other people.

“It's not that simple,” Scorpion repeated, letting the implied weight of Washington sink in.

“What do you want?” Marchena said finally, pulling the car into a parking space on the street. Ahead, they could see the entrance to Park Güell, the gate flanked by two gingerbread gatehouses designed by the famed architect, Gaudi, after whom the word “gaudy” was coined.

“I want you to get a message to a certain
mosso d'esquadra
, but it has to be done the right way.”

Marchena shut the ignition and turned to face Scorpion.

“Who is this
mosso
? A mole—or is he simply a corrupt
policia
?”

He's good, Scorpion thought. The Spaniard had figured it out in a second. He would have to keep that in mind when dealing with him.

“Haven't a clue. He's probably just a bad cop, but honestly, it doesn't matter.” Scorpion shrugged.

“What does matter?”

“That he passes information to certain Muslim interests.”

Marchena looked at him sharply.

“Hezbollah? Mind?” he asked, taking out a pack of Fortuna cigarettes. Scorpion nodded, and Marchena pulled one out and lit it. “Or maybe Kta'eb Hezbollah?” exhaling a stream of smoke.

“You're good. We should have met when we were supposed to. Would have saved us all a lot of trouble—and those cops wouldn't be in the hospital. What else do you know?” Scorpion said quietly, keeping the Walther still pointed at Marchena.

“Shall we walk?” Marchena asked, indicating the park.

“Give me the car key—and don't be stupid,” Scorpion said. They were talking. If Marchena felt more comfortable in the park, he thought, all the better. In the sun visor mirror, Scorpion checked the blond wig he had picked up in a theatrical supply shop in the Raval. Now that he was clean-shaven, the change in his appearance was astonishing, he thought, putting the gun in his pocket.

Marchena handed him the key. They got out of the BMW, walked into the park and up broad stone stairs curving past a fountain with a sculpture shaped like a dragon covered with bits of colored tiles like a mosaic. A crowd of tourists posed for photos on the steps and around the fountain. They went up to an undulating stone pavilion lined with columns and past a long serpentine stone bench covered in colored tiles, all designed by Gaudi. At the top was a terrace with a snack stand. People crowded at tables, eating and enjoying the view.

If Marchena was going to make a move, he would do it here, Scorpion thought, but by now it seemed the Spaniard was as interested in what he had to say as he was in getting the man to help him.

They kept walking, following curving paths through stands of trees. The day was sunny and clear, and for a time they said nothing. They climbed to a stone cross at the top of a hill. From there, they could see over the city to the Mediterranean, the sun sparkling on the sea.

“So what is this information you want this
poli malo
”—bad cop—“to pass to these Islamic
capullos
?” Marchena asked.

“Careful. You're letting your prejudice show,” Scorpion said.

Marchena shook his head.

“You Americans. We've been fighting Muslims for a thousand years. You're Johnny-come-slowlies, believe me.” He stopped walking and looked directly at Scorpion. “I don't want my city turned into a war zone,” he added before starting to walk again. “What do you want him to know?”

“Just tell him where I am. I've been spotted. Very hush-hush. Use my code name, ‘Scorpion.' ”

“You're painting a target on your back . . . Of course,” the Spaniard smiled, taking a deep drag of the cigarette and exhaling, “you're setting a trap.”

“The key to all of this is that this
policia
—his name is Victor Pintero; he's a
sotsinspector
in the El Raval district—has to believe he got this information on his own. That it's top secret. Shouldn't be hard. Everyone's hunting me. I'm Karif's killer. Make it part of the
policia
manhunt. Except you let him know the CNI knows something the ordinary
policia
don't.”

Marchena's eyes narrowed. He flicked the ash from his cigarette.

“What's that?” he asked.

“Karif was a Kta'eb Hezbollah agent. He was killed by the American agent, Scorpion,” Scorpion said.

“And where will whomever they send find you?” he asked.

Scorpion told him.

“Why there?” Marchena muttered, half to himself.

“To minimize civilian casualties.”

“Jesús Cristo,”
Marchena swore, shaking his head. “And I should do this because . . . ?”

“Right now the trail ends in Barcelona,” Scorpion said. “One way or another, America will have its justice for Bern. Trust me, this city isn't where you want the war to happen.”

Marchena dropped the cigarette and stepped on it.

“I was ordered to stay out of this, so no Spanish will be involved. But I have to tell you, two of the
mossos
you injured at the
comisaria
are in critical condition. They may not survive. They had families.”

“I know. I'm sorry,” Scorpion said. “For what it's worth, if I wanted to kill them, they wouldn't be alive.”

“It would be best if you were to leave Spain soon, Scorpion,” Marchena said. “I'd say the quicker you are out of my country, the better, but the truth is, if these are the same hombres who did Bern and Zurich, I suspect you will not be alive much longer.”