The Scorpio Illusion: A Novel

  Tyrell hung up the phone, his trembling hand still on it, determined yet reluctant to call Henry Stevens in Washington. The fact that NVN, whoever he was, had gone around the chief of naval intelligence to reach the widower from NATO carried a message, but Hawthorne could not know what it was until three o’clock in the afternoon. He could wait until Stevens called him at the hotel in Isla Verde, which the captain surely would, or perhaps had—oh, Jesus, Cathy! He had forgotten about her; worse, Poole had also. Tyrell dialed immediately.

  “Where have you two been?” cried Nielsen. “I’ve been worried sick. I’ve come very close to calling the consulate, the naval base—even your friend Stevens in D.C.”

  “You didn’t call him, did you?”

  “I didn’t have to. He’s called here three times since four o’clock this morning.”

  “You talked to him?”

  “We’re in the same suite of rooms, remember? He and I are practically on a first-name basis.”

  “You didn’t say anything about the message I got last night—”

  “Come on, Tye,” protested Cathy. “I used to keep our heifers’ secrets too, and they only slept around a lot. Of course I didn’t.”

  “What did he say—what did you say?”

  “He wanted to know where you were, naturally, and naturally I told him I didn’t know; and then he wanted to know when you’d be back, and I gave him the same answer. That’s when he blew up and asked me if I knew anything. I told him I’d learned something about ‘contingency funds’… he didn’t think it was funny.”

  “Nothing’s funny any longer.”

  “What happened?” asked the major quietly.

  “We found the pilot and he led us to someone else.”

  “That’s progress.”

  “Not much. The man was dead before we got there.”

  “Oh, my God! Are you all right? When are you coming back?”

  “As soon as we can.”

  Hawthorne depressed the lever, cutting off the line; he waited several seconds, collecting his thoughts, one overriding everything else, consuming him. A tall woman in white with an attractive face tanned by the sun—taken from St. Barts and flown to the padrone’s island fortress.… Coincidence was nonexistent in the world he had left and was now propelled back into; manipulated insertion, one person for another with split-second timing, too inconceivable!… Oh, Christ, he was falling apart! Stop it! Bring yourself back, block out the pain! There was another insertion all too real, a note from an unknown NVN who would call him at three o’clock in the afternoon. Concentrate!… Dominique …? Concentrate!

  He lifted the phone and dialed Washington. Moments later Henry Stevens was on the line. “That A.F. major said she didn’t know when you left, where you were, or when you’d be back. What the hell’s going on?”

  “You’ll get a full report later, Henry. Right now I’m going to feed you four names, and I need whatever backgrounds you can dig up on them.”

  “How soon?”

  “Try an hour.”

  “You’re nuts.”

  “They could be close to Bajaratt—”

  “You’ve got it. Who are they?”

  “First is someone who calls himself Neptune, Mr. Neptune. Basic description is tall, distinguished, gray hair, say in his sixties.”

  “That’s half the male population in Georgetown. The next?”

  “A Washington lawyer named Ingersol—”

  “As in Ingersol and White?” Stevens interrupted.

  “Probably. Do you know him?”

  “I know of him, most people do. David Ingersol, son of a highly respected former Supreme Court justice, Burning Tree and Chevy Chase golfer, friend to the powers that be and something of a power himself. Christ, you’re not suggesting that Ingersol is part of—”

  “I’m not suggesting anything, Henry,” broke in Hawthorne.

  “The hell you’re not! And let me tell you, Tye, you’re as far off base as you can get. I happen to know that Ingersol has done more than a few favors for Central Intelligence during his Euro-business trips.”

  “That makes me off base?”

  “He’s very well thought of over at Langley. The Agency isn’t my favorite organization around here, they step on too many toes, as you damn well know, but their background checks beat anything in town, I can vouch for it. I can’t believe they’d use someone like Ingersol without putting his head under a microscope.”

  “Then they missed the lower parts.”

  “What?”

  “Look, as my source said, he may be just a weird cipher, but he was seen on the premises of someone who is involved—peripherally, blind on blind—but he was there.”

  “Okay, I’ve got a new relationship with the DCI. I’ll go right to him. Who else?”

  “An air controller at San Juan named Cornwall. He’s dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “Shot in the head shortly before we reached him at one o’clock this morning.”

  “How did you uncover him?”

  “That’s the fourth name, and with this one you’ve got to go subterranean.”

  “He’s that close?”

  “No, he’s an X-outside. He’s the source I just mentioned and deals only with blinds, but someone in your town has him on a leash. Whoever’s on the other end of that leash could be a breakthrough.”

  “You’re telling me that this Bajaratt has accomplices in the upper-level bureaucracy? Not just isolated bribes but honest-to-Christ accessories in the D.C. establishment?”

  “Believe it.”

  “What’s the name?”

  “Simon, Alfred Simon. He was an underage drop pilot out of Vientiane, A.I.D., flying Royal Lao.”

  “CIA,” said Stevens. “Those good, bad old days. Pouches filled with bribe money dropped to the tribes in the hills of Laos and Cambodia. The Montagnards took the worst beating; they were paid the most so the pilots stole the most from them.… How could anyone in Washington put a leash around somebody like that? You’d think it’d be the other way around.”

  “They unloaded their subsidiary aircraft on him, getting a young kid fly-boy to sign highly questionable papers of transfer when he was probably drunk. That way he’s stigmatized as a mercenary and a thief, a soldier of fortune in it for the big money with no affiliation with our pure U.S. personnel.”

  “Then they pull the rug out and build a corruption case against him, reversing the scam. He’s got his dirty hand in the Washington cookie jar while our brave boys are dying.”

  “It’s one hell of a rotten scenario.”

  “It is and it’s classic, and he wouldn’t have to be drunk, just greedy. He thinks he’s been given merchandise worth a few million, especially if he’s young, but doesn’t realize he’s on the hook for life while the spy junkies are off it.… I know just who to reach to find out what’s buried on one Alfred Simon, pilot, A.I.D., Vientiane.”

  “Can you make sure no one will know you’re looking?”

  “All the way to the max,” affirmed the head of naval intelligence. “Our source was an overseas case officer who moved up into the rarefied ranks of the analysts, but who also had her hand in a cookie jar, the Agency’s, and we caught her dead to rights. Naturally, nothing was ever said, but you might say she’s one of our stringers.”

  “Get back to me at the hotel,” said Hawthorne. “If I’m delayed or not there, give everything you’ve got to Major Neilsen. She’s now certified four-zero, unless you idiots have changed the classification.”

  “The way she sounds, is she certified for anything else?”

  “Get off my back, Captain. Without her we’d be dead.”

  “Sorry, just trying to bring a touch of levity into a very trying situation.”

  “You’re solid lead, Henry. Go to work, call me, and then go home to your wife and ‘trip the light fantastic.’ ” Hawthorne slammed down the phone, aware that beads of sweat had formed at his hairline. What next? He had to keep moving! He had to stay in m
otion—he could not think of things that he … dared not think about. Yet he had to! He could lie to others, but not to himself, not any longer. Saba, a reclusive uncle, a confidante in Paris, benevolent causes—protestations of love. All lies.

  Dominique! Dominique Montaigne was Bajaratt!

  He would hunt her down or be killed in the attempt. Nothing on earth could stop him now. Betrayal!

  At Central Headquarters, San Juan, Homicide Division, the murdered air controller’s wife, one Rose Cornwall, had put on a superb performance for the Puerto Rico police. She was stoic and courageous despite the tragic loss that was obviously tearing her apart.… No, no, she could not help. Her loving husband hadn’t an enemy in the world, for he was the kindest, most gentle man the good Lord ever gave life to, ask their parish priest. Debts, no; they lived well but always within their budget. Habits such as gambling in the casinos? Infrequently, and only at the slot machines, usually the twenty-five-cent variety where they limited themselves to twenty dollars apiece. Drugs? Never; he could barely take an aspirin, and he had cut down his cigarettes to just one after meals. Why had they come to Puerto Rico from Chicago five years ago? It was a far more comfortable life-style; the climate, the beaches, the Rain Forest—he loved to wander for hours in the Rain Forest—and without the terrible pressures of Chicago’s O’Hare Airport.

  “May I go home now? I’d like to be alone for a while until I call our priest. He’s a wonderful man and will make the arrangements.”

  Rose Cornwall was escorted to her condominium in Isla Verde, but she did not telephone her priest. Instead, she called a number in Mayagüez.

  “Listen, you son of a bitch, I covered for you shit-heads and now I want mine,” the widow Cornwall said.

  * * *

  The telephone rang in the El San Juan suite as Catherine Neilsen sat at the desk, reading the newspaper account of the airport murder. She reached over quickly and picked up the bellowing, shrill instrument.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Stevens, Major.”

  “Call number five, if I can count.”

  “You can, and I presume he’s there. I talked to him an hour and a half ago.”

  “Yes, he told me. He’s in the shower, both of them are in showers, and let me tell you, they should stay in them for a long time. This place smells like a sickening flower spray.”

  “A what …?”

  “A whorehouse, Captain. Which is where they were, so I suppose it makes sense.”

  “What?”

  “You do repeat yourself, don’t you, sir?”

  “Get him out of there! He’s the one who put a priority-red on this data.”

  “I hope I don’t shock him. Hold on, please.” Neilsen walked into Hawthorne’s bedroom, then to the bathroom door. Listening, she hesitated, then opened it, only to find a naked Tyrell drying himself with a huge towel. “Sorry to intrude, Commander. D.C. on the phone.”

  “Did you ever hear of knocking?”

  “Not when a shower’s on.”

  “Oh.… I forgot.”

  Wrapped in the towel, Hawthorne walked rapidly past the major to the bedroom phone. “What have you got, Henry?”

  “On ‘Neptune,’ almost nothing—”

  “What do you mean almost?”

  “The southern hemisphere computers came up with a single entry. Apparently, years ago, there was a Neptune in Argentina, part of the generals’ coup down there, but it was only a rumored nickname for some foreigner close to the big boys. No other information except for a Mr. Mars, same classification.”

  “Ingersol?”

  “Whistle-clean, Tye, but you got Puerto Rico right. He flies down four or five times a year to service clients, all checked out, all legitimate.”

  “Only he’s the client,” said Hawthorne.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Never mind. A weird cipher. What about the controller, Cornwall?”

  “A little more interesting. He was head of his section at O’Hare Airport, a bright guy making decent money but no threat to the country-club set by a long shot. However, a little digging turned up his wife’s owning a piece of an old Chicago steak house. It’s no Delmonico’s, but it’s one of the most popular in that section of the city, and she—read ‘they’—sold her piece for a lot less than it’s worth when they moved to Puerto Rico. It was a decent annual dividend.”

  “Which raises a question,” interrupted Tyrell. “Where did they get the money to buy that kind of annuity?”

  “There’s another question that might be the answer to that,” said Stevens. “How does an air controller in San Juan, where the pay doesn’t compare to O’Hare, buy a six-hundred-thousand-dollar condominium on the beach in Isla Verde? Her restaurant share could barely cover a third of it.”

  “Isla Verde …?”

  “The beachfront there is the better part of town.”

  “I know, it’s where we’re staying. Anything else on our mobile Cornwalls?”

  “Opinion time, nothing in concrete.”

  “Translation, please?”

  “They put air controllers through a battery of tests to see if they can handle the job. Cornwall passed among the elite—cold as ice, quick and methodical—but it seems he preferred night duty, in fact, insisted upon it, which is pretty unusual.”

  “He did the same down here, that’s how my source fingered him. What was the opinion in Chicago?”

  “That his marriage was on the rocks, maybe beyond repair.”

  “It obviously wasn’t, since they came down here together and bought a condo for six hundred thousand.”

  “I said it was opinion time, not fact.”

  “Unless it’s based on information that had him chasing women.”

  “The tests don’t go that far. They need controllers. It just appeared that he didn’t care to stay home nights.”

  “I’ll follow up,” said Hawthorne. “What about the subterranean, our pilot, Alfred Simon?”

  “He’s either lying to you or he’s the sickest joker I’ve ever heard of.”

  “What?”

  “He’s pure Clorox with a couple of medals waiting for him if he ever surfaces. There’s no mention of his taking over any Lao aircraft, illegitimately or otherwise. He was a very young air force second lieutenant who volunteered for hazardous operations out of Vientiane, and if he ever stole anything, no one ever reported it. If he walked into the Pentagon tomorrow, they’d hold a ceremony, hand him a few clusters for his air medals, and give him some hundred and eighty thousand-plus dollars in hazardous pay and pension accruals that he’s never picked up.”

  “Jesus Christ. I’ll tell you straight, Henry, he doesn’t know anything about this!”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I’m damn sure where he’d send the money.”

  “You’re beyond me.”

  “I hope so. The bummer is that he’s traded a lie that’s strangled him for years for a reality that could kill him today.”

  “Still beyond me—”

  “He’s been blackmailed into working for the wrong people. Bajaratt’s crowd.”

  “What are you going to do?” asked Stevens.

  “I’m not, you are. I’m sending Second Lieutenant Alfred Simon to the naval base here, and you’re going to fly him up to Washington and put him under a blanket until it’s safe for him to come out and become a quiet hero with a few extra dollars.”

  “Why now?”

  “Because if we delay, it could be too late, and we need him.”

  “To identify Neptune?”

  “Among others we may not know about yet.”

  “One Simon, first-class military to D.C.,” said the head of naval intelligence. “What’s next?”

  “Air Controller Cornwall’s wife. What’s her first name?”

  “Rose.”

  “Somehow I think her petals have withered.” Hawthorne hung up the phone and looked over at Cathy, leaning against the door frame. “I want you and Jackson to go
back to Old San Juan and get Simon over to the naval base. Quickly.”

  “I hope he doesn’t misinterpret and try to recruit me.”

  “You’re not the type.” Tyrell lifted a telephone directory out of the bedside table shelf and leafed through the Cs.

  “I’m not sure whether that’s a compliment or an insult.”

  “Whores don’t wear guns, the bulge spoils the curves, so make damn sure yours is in evidence.”

  “I don’t have a gun.”

  “Take mine, it’s on the bureau.… Here it is, Cornwall, the only one in Verde.”

  “What do you know?” said the major, taking the Walther P.K. automatic from the top of the bureau. “It’s so small, it can fit into my purse.”

  “You’ve got a purse?” Hawthorne glanced up as he scribbled the Cornwall address on the hotel memo pad.

  “Well, normally I suppose I should wear a knapsack strapped to my back, but I’ve been carrying this lovely pearl-beaded handbag for the past twenty-four hours. It goes with the dress—Jackson approved.”

  “Hate the bastard.… Will you two get going?”

  “He’s just out of the shower, I can tell. He’s still singing country, but it’s too loud to be underwater.”

  “Then go dress the kid and get out of here. I really don’t want another corpse on my hands, this one named Simon.”

  “Aye, aye, Commander.”

  Tyrell drove Alfred Simon’s white Cadillac convertible into the parking lot of the Cornwalls’ condominium complex. As Stevens had projected, it was the high-rent district of Isla Verde, not only on the beach, but with each apartment possessing its own wide, screened-in balcony overlooking the ocean and a huge, terraced pool below on either side.

  Hawthorne got out of the car, walked up the path to the entrance, and gestured to the man on duty. As in all such buildings in the area, there was a uniformed doorman seated at a desk in a walled-off cubicle behind a sheet of thick glass; he pressed a button in front of him and spoke. “Español or Ingles, señor?”

  “English,” replied Tyrell. “I must see Mrs. Rose Cornwall, it’s most urgent.”

  “Are you with the police, señor?”