The Scorpio Illusion: A Novel

  “That was Jerusalem’s thinking.”

  “But not at the expense of the prize, tell him that.”

  “He understands.”

  “Anything new in Paris?”

  “Well, you know she’s sleeping with a ranking member of the Chamber of Deputies, a close friend of the President. She’s a foxy girl, very clever.”

  “It would be better if she were sleeping with the President.”

  “It could happen.”

  “Ashkelon,” said the Baj, signing off the call.

  “Forever,” said the voice in London.

  * * *

  British Virgin Gorda was still asleep when the U.S. Air Force seaplane, cleared by Government House, glided into the water two miles south of the yacht club. Hawthorne had requested no assistance insofar as the aircraft’s standard equipment included several PVC inflatable boats, and he wanted their entry to the island to be as secure as possible. When he had replaced the radio phone on the bulkhead cradle, Catherine Neilsen called out from a nearby seat, her voice loud enough to be heard over the outside engines.

  “Just a minute, profound leader, haven’t you forgotten something?”

  “What? I got us to Gorda, what else do you want?”

  “Clothes, perhaps? Ours are on a British hovercraft a couple of hundred miles from here, and it strikes me that we’d be noticed in these black Spider-Man outfits. If you think I’m going to walk around in a bra and panties alongside two unshaven gorillas in white shorts, think again, Commander.”

  “I guess we gotta take wearin’ apparel out of your expertise, huh, Tye?” said Poole, grinning. “ ’Course, you like greasy coveralls, but we come from a better class of folk.”

  So Hawthorne got back on the phone and was patched into the yacht club’s switchboard. “Mr. Geoffrey Cooke, please.” Tyrell waited while the incessant, erratic ringing went unanswered. Finally, the clerk came back on the line.

  “I’m sorry, sir, there’s no answer.”

  “Try Monsieur Ardisonne, Jacques Ardisonne.”

  “Very well, sir.” Again the ringing continued to no avail, and again the clerk returned to the phone. “I’m afraid it’s the same, sir.”

  “Look, this is Tyrell Hawthorne and I’ve got a problem—”

  “Captain Hawthorne? I thought it sounded like you, but there’s so much noise on your end.”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Beckwith, sir, the night clerk, mon. Did I sound reasonably English, sir?”

  “Right out of Buckingham Palace,” said Tye, relieved that he remembered the man. “Listen, Beck, I’ve got to reach Roger, and I left his home number on my boat. Can you get it for me?”

  “Don’t have to, Cap’n. He fillin’ in for the day boy who got himself in jail for a fight. I’ll connect you.”

  “Where you been all night, Tye-Boy?” Roger, the chickee bartender, said. “You lizard-scamp from one place to ’nother and don’t tell nobody!”

  “Where are Cooke and Ardisonne?” Hawthorne cut in.

  “We all tried to call you in St. Martin—you disappeared, mon.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Off-island, Tye-Boy. They got a call from Puerto Rico around ten-thirty, a very crazy call, mon, so crazy they reached Government House an’ all kinda crazy things happen! The police drive ’em to Sebastian’s Point, and the coast patrol take ’em out to a seaplane and a pilot who’s gonna take ’em back to P.R., that’s what they told me to tell you!”

  “That’s all?”

  “No, mon, I save the best for last … I think. They said to tell you they had someone named Grimshaw—”

  “Breakthrough!” shouted Hawthorne, his voice carrying through the fuselage of the plane.

  “What happened?” cried Neilsen.

  “What is it, Tye?” yelled Poole.

  “We’ve got one of them!… Anything else, Roge?”

  “Not actually, ’cept those two white cocoruroos stuck me with a tab I already run up.”

  “You’ll be paid off fifty times over, pal!”

  “Just half’d be enough. I can steal the rest.”

  “One last thing, Roge. I’m flying in with two friends, but we need some clothes.…”

  Chickee-Roge met them on the isolated east beach, a hundred-plus yards away from the yacht club’s docks, and pulled the heavy rubber boat up into the sand. “It’s still too early for the tourists to come down, and the pot skippers can’t see you, so follow me. I got an empty villa where you can change; the clothes are up there.… Wait a minute. What am I supposed to do with the inflatable? That’s a two-thousand-dollar piece of equipment.”

  “Deflate it and sell it,” said Hawthorne. “Just make sure you block out the various initials. If you don’t know how, I’ll teach you. Let’s get up to the villa.”

  The clothes were perfectly adequate, and in Major Neilsen’s case, more than acceptable.

  “Hey, Cathy, you look gorgeous!” Poole gave a low whistle as the pilot emerged from a bedroom in a flowing muumuu embossed with hot tropical colors, all in the abstract patterns of peacock and parrot feathers, and designed to emphasize the upper and lower swells of a woman’s form.

  Girlishly, Cathy pivoted around. “Why, Lieutenant, I’ve never heard you say anything like that.… Except maybe once, in a Miami strip joint.”

  “Miami doesn’t count, and you know it, but except for that wedding—which I don’t much remember—I’ve never seen you in a dress, surely not one like that. What do you say, Tye? Does she pass muster-plus, or what?”

  “You look lovely, Catherine,” Hawthorne said simply.

  “Thank you, Tyrell. I’m not used to all this flattery. I think I’m blushing, would you believe that?”

  “I would like to,” replied Tye softly, suddenly seeing on his inner screen the face of the sleeping Cathy next to him—or was it Dominique?—but no matter, both images touched him … the last with a stabbing pang of loss. Why had she left him again? “We should hear soon from Cooke and Ardisonne in Puerto Rico,” said Hawthorne abruptly, breaking the interlude of admiration and turning to a window. “I want this Grimshaw, I want to break him myself and make him tell me how they found Marty and Mickey.”

  “And Charlie,” added Poole. “Don’t forget Charlie—”

  “Who the hell are these people who can do what they do?” cried Tyrell, hammering his fist on the nearest piece of furniture.

  “You said they came from the Middle East,” offered Cathy.

  “That’s true, but it’s too broad. You don’t know the Baaka Valley. I do. There are a dozen factions fighting one another for supremacy, each claiming to be the terrible sword of Allah. This group is different; they may be fanatics, but they go way beyond Allah or Jesus or Mohammed or Moses. Their sources are too diverse, the infrastructure too widespread—good Lord, leaks in Washington and Paris that we know about, Mafia connections, an island fortress, Japanese satellites, Swiss accounts, drops in Miami and Palm Beach, and who knows what else! Those contacts aren’t the result of fanatical appeals to the believers of selected gods and prophets. No, they may be zealots, but they’re also mercenaries, capitalists of terrorism engaged in a worldwide business.”

  “They must have one hell of a big client list,” said Poole. “Where do they get them?”

  “It’s a two-way street, Jackson. They sell and they buy.”

  “Buy what?”

  “For lack of a better word, destabilization. The means to it and the execution of it.”

  “I guess the next question is why,” said Neilsen, frowning. “I can understand the fanaticism, but why would people not even remotely interested in their causes—the Mafia, for example—cooperate, much less pay for it?”

  “Because such people are interested and it hasn’t a damn thing to do with religious or philosophical convictions. It has to do with power. And money. Wherever there’s destabilization, there’s a power vacuum, and millions, hell, billions, can be made. In the panic, governments can be in
filtrated, men put where others want them to be for future use, whole countries brought under the control of vested interests who aren’t discovered until they’ve milked their territories dry, by which time they disappear, or their political asylums are guaranteed.”

  “Things can really happen that way?”

  “Lady, I’ve seen it. From Greece to Uganda, Haiti to Argentina, Chile to Panama, and most of the former Eastern bloc—their ruling bureaucrats were as Communist as the Rockefellers.”

  “Well, I’ll be dipped in muleshit!” exclaimed Lieutenant Poole. “I just never thought in those terms. I’m ashamed of myself, ’cause I see what you mean.”

  “Don’t whip yourself. It was my business, Jackson. Projection is the bottom line where intelligence is concerned.”

  “What do we do now, Tye?” said Cathy.

  “We wait to hear from Cooke and Ardisonne. If it’s what I think, we’ll fly to Puerto Rico under military security.”

  There was a knock on the villa’s door, an unnecessary knock, as the voice that followed belonged to the chickee bartender. “It’s me. I’ve gotta talk to you, Tye-Boy.”

  “For God’s sake, Roge, the door’s not locked!”

  “Maybe I don’ want to come in,” said Roger, slouching inside and closing the door, a newspaper in his hand. He crossed to Hawthorne and held out the paper for him. “It’s the early edition of The San Juan Star; it was flown in a half hour ago and the front desk is cacklin’ like chickens. The small story, mon, is on page three, I folded it for you.”

  Two Dead Men Washed Up on Morro Castle Rocks

  SAN JUAN, Saturday—The bodies of two middle-aged men were discovered early this morning pinned between the rocks on this area of the coast, west of the water shacks. The two were identified by means of their passports as Geoffrey Alan Cooke, a British citizen, and Jacques René Ardisonne of France. The cause of death was established as drowning prior to being smashed into the rocks. The authorities will be making further inquiries in the U.K. and France.

  Tyrell Hawthorne threw the newspaper on the floor, spun around, and raced to the window, smashing his fist through the glass, leaving his hand covered with blood.

  The Manhattan penthouse, high above Fifth Avenue, overlooked the lights of Central Park and was properly aglow with subdued crystal chandeliers and glass-enclosed floral candles on damask-draped tables. Among the guests were the movers and shakers of the city: politicians, real estate tycoons, bankers and prominent newspaper columnists, plus several instantly recognizable stars of films and television, as well as a smattering of established authors, all of whom had been published in Italy. They had been summoned by their host, a flamboyant entrepreneur whose questionable manipulations in the bond market had gone unnoticed while a great many of his associates had gone to jail. His Agincourt, however, was on the horizon, his outstanding debts soon to be called in, and his favors to the movers and the shakers reluctantly acknowledged, so all were there. The object of their attention was a young man whose recommendations to his immensely wealthy father, the baron of Ravello, could considerably lessen the host’s difficulties.

  The evening progressed with oily smoothness, the barone-cadetto and his aunt, the contessa, receiving the guests as though they were a czar’s favored son and sister in old St. Petersburg. To the Baj’s annoyance, one of the young television actresses spoke Italian and engaged “Dante Paolo” in prolonged conversation once the introductions were over and everyone mingled with cocktails. It was hardly jealousy that disturbed Bajaratt, it was the specter of danger. A sophisticated, multilingual young woman might easily spot flaws in Nicolo’s “noble” upbringing. The danger, however, blew away like an overinflated sausage casing when Nico turned to the Baj, the dark-haired actress at his side.

  “Cara Zia, my new friend speaks a fine Italian,” he cried in that language.

  “I gathered that,” said Bajaratt, also in Italian and without much enthusiasm. “Were you educated in Rome, my child, or perhaps Switzerland?”

  “Gosh, no, Countess. After high school, the only teachers I had were some method weirdos in acting class until I got the TV series.”

  “You’ve seen her, my dear aunt, I’ve seen her! In our country it’s called Vendetta delle Selle, everybody watches it! She plays the sweet girl who cares for her younger brother and sister after the bandits killed their parents.”

  “The translation’s not too hot, Dante. Revenge of the Saddles doesn’t really say it. But look, who cares? They watch.”

  “Then your fluency in our language …?”

  “My father owns an Italian deli in Brooklyn. Where they live, not too many people over forty speak English.”

  “Her father hangs whole provolones and cheeses from Portofino and the best prichute from the south. Oh, I would love to go to this Brooklyn!”

  “I’m afraid there’s no time, Dante. I’m flying back to the coast tomorrow morning,” the actress said.

  “My dear child,” the Baj said quickly in Italian, her coolness receding rapidly as she smiled at the actress, a new warmth in the tone of her voice, an idea forming. “Is it so necessary that you return to … to—”

  “The coast, we call it,” completed the young woman. “That’s California. I have to be back on the set in four days, and I need at least a couple to run on the beach and work off my family’s cooking. The Saddles big sister has to look the part.”

  “If you stayed just one more day, it would still leave you two for your beach, not so?”

  “Sure, but why?”

  “My nephew is very taken with you—”

  “Wait a minute, lady!” the actress burst out in English, obviously offended.

  “No, please,” broke in Bajaratt, also in English. “You misunderstand me. Rispetto, rispetto totale. Always in public and I would be with you—a proper chaperone. It’s just that all these business conferences with people so much older, I thought perhaps a day off, sightseeing with someone nearer his own age who speaks his language, would be a welcome relief. He must get tired of his old aunt.”

  “If you’re ‘old,’ Countess,” said the young woman, relieved and reverting to Italian, “then I’m still in the first grade.”

  “Then you’ll stay?”

  “Oh, well … why not?” the young actress said, gazing at Nicolo’s handsome face and breaking into a smile.

  “Since we should start early in the morning,” said Bajaratt, “may we get you a room at our hotel after dinner?”

  “You don’t know Papa. When I’m in New York I sleep at home, Countess. My uncle Ruggio owns his own taxicab and he’s waiting for me.”

  “We can see you home to this Brooklyn,” insisted Nicolo excitedly. “We have a limousine!”

  “Then I can show you Papa’s store! The cheese, the salamis, the prosciutto.”

  “Please, car a Zia?”

  “Uncle Ruggio can follow us, that way Papa can’t get angry.”

  “Your father protects you, doesn’t he?” said Bajaratt.

  “Tell me about it! Since I’ve been in L.A., one unmarried female relative after another shares my apartment. One leaves and twenty minutes later another shows up!”

  “A good Italian father who instructs his family in the proper traditions.”

  “Angelo Capelli, father of Angel Capell—that’s what my agent shortened it to; he thought Angelina Capelli belonged in a New Jersey diner. He’s the toughest papa in Brooklyn. But if I tell him that I’m bringing home a real baron to meet Mama and him …”

  “Zia Cabrini,” said Nicolo, in his words an edge of authority. “We’ve met everybody, can’t we leave? I can smell the cheeses, taste the prichute!”

  “I’ll see what I can do, my nephew—but may I have a word with you privately?… It’s nothing at all, young lady, just a few words about a man he will meet before we leave. Business, of course.”

  “Oh, sure. There’s a critic from the Times who gave me a terrific review for a small part I played in the Village; it led to
the series. I sent him a letter, but I’ve never thanked him personally. See you in a few minutes.” The young actress, carrying a champagne glass filled with ginger ale, walked toward an obese, gray-bearded man with the eyes of a leopard and the lips of an orangutan.

  “What is it, signora? Have I done something wrong?”

  “Not at all, my darling, you are having fun with someone your own age and that’s fine. But remember, you do not speak English! Do not even betray an inkling in your eyes that you understand English!”

  “Cabi, we speak only Italian together.… You’re not angry that I find her attractive, are you?”

  “You’d be a fool not to, Nicolo. Middle-class morality is irrelevant to you or to me, but something tells me you should not treat her as you might a woman from the docks of Portici anxious for your body.”

  “Never! She may be famous but she is a pure Italian girl whom I respect in the family traditions as I do my sisters. She is not part of the world you brought me into.”

  “Are you dissatisfied with that world, Nico?”

  “How could I be? I’ve never lived like this—never dreamed I would.”

  “Good. Go to your bellissima ragazza, I’ll join you soon.” The Baj turned and glided gracefully toward their host, who was in a deep, even contentious, discussion with two bankers. Suddenly a hand touched her elbow, gently yet firmly. She snapped her head around only to stare at the attractive face of an aging, white-haired man who might have stepped out of an English magazine advertisement extolling the virtues of a Rolls-Royce. “Have we met, sir?” asked Bajaratt.

  “We have now, Countess,” replied the man, lifting her left hand, his lips touching the flesh. “I was a late arrival, but I see that all goes well with you.”

  “It is a charming evening, of course.”

  “Oh, this is the crowd for it, take my word. Charm lathering over the room like barrels of shaving cream. Power and wealth combine to turn maggots into butterflies—monarch butterflies.”

  “Are you a writer … a novelist, perhaps? I’ve met several here tonight.”

  “Good heavens, no, I can barely get through a letter without a secretary. Piquant observations are merely part of my stock-in-trade.”