Nesbitt and his two guardians reached the bottom of the staircase and walked past the door to the living room. “He sees nothing!” whispered the Baj.
“No, he doesn’t,” Bajaratt’s hostess agreed. “In an hour or so he will, although he will not remember the specific events of tonight. He will only realize that he’s been satisfied, that inner recognition that produces peace.”
“He does this often?”
“Once or twice a month, and usually in the late evenings. At first it started with his humming a strange melody from long ago in his past. Then, like a sleepwalker, he would change his clothes, an entirely different wardrobe he kept in his deceased wife’s closet. They were hardly the clothes of a powerful senator, instead the trappings of a well-to-do roué out slumming for the night. A suede or leather jacket, frequently a wig or a beret, always dark glasses, but never any identification. Those were terrible days for the housekeeper. When it happens now, she calls us and we pick him up.”
“She cooperates with you?”
“She has no choice. She is well paid, as is his driver-bodyguard.”
“And so you control him.”
“We’re very special friends. We’re there when he needs us, and there are times such as now when we need him, need the power of his office.”
“I can see that,” said Bajaratt icily.
“Of course, the optimum would be to learn who in the Senate is the highest-placed Scorpio, for as the Providers control him, so can we. However, it’s only a matter of time before a pattern is established, no matter how subtle. Your own actions will help us, as every member of that body will be studied anew, and in their reactions to the chaos will be found the weakness that attracted Van Nostrand.”
“Is it so important to you?”
“Make no mistake, dear Amaya, it’s of vital importance. I repeat what I said before, we have great sympathy as well as close ties to the Baaka, but these do not extend to the mercenary Scorpions. They are the creation of Van Nostrand and his mad companion in the Caribbean, recruited by blackmail and kept on their tethers with money—money that pales into insignificance compared to the money they make for the Providers, who, in reality, have always been the padrone and Van Nostrand, no one else. The Scorpios have no cause but fear of exposure and, of course, the money they receive. Such people have no calling beyond themselves, beyond their petty little lives, driven by greed and anxiety. They must be destroyed, or rendered impotent … or recruited by us.”
“I remind you,” interrupted the Baj. “The Scorpios have served me well, and by doing so have served the Baaka through me.”
“Ordered to do so by the all-powerful Van Nostrand. He can cut off their funds with a telephone call, to say nothing of revealing their crimes—past and present—to the authorities. Do you think they give a damn about us, about the things we hold so dear? If you do, you’re not the woman I was led to believe you are.”
“Van Nostrand has retired. He’s somewhere in Europe, or he is dead. He’s no longer Scorpio One.”
“… Palm Beach’s trouble with the telephone codes,” said the diminutive, catlike Arab, barely audible. “That’s astonishing news—are you sure?”
“Whether he’s alive or dead, I can’t be certain. Another survived, a former intelligence officer named Hawthorne, who I thought had been taken into custody; he hadn’t. But Nils Van Nostrand is gone; he told me himself he was going to disappear.”
“Not only astonishing, but extremely disturbing. As long as Van Nostrand was in place, we could monitor him; we had people at his estate, at the gate, informers loyal to us.… Who are you dealing with now? You must tell me!”
“I don’t know—”
“The White House, Amaya!”
“I’m not lying to you. You say you have the codes, dial them yourself. Whoever answers certainly will not volunteer his identity.”
“You’re right, of course—”
“I can tell you that the Scorpio I last spoke with is a man so privileged as to be given the most secret information. He had details about the government’s progress in its search for me; they were accurate details. He called it the inner circle.”
“The inner circle …?” The Palestinian beauty frowned, producing few lines on her dark, classic features. “The inner circle,” she repeated as she walked across the immense room in thought, her small, lacquer-tipped fingers brought to her dainty chin. “If it’s the senator we’re looking for, there’s only one committee that’s accorded such classified information. Senate Intelligence. Of course, it’s so natural, so brilliantly simple! Since the scandals of Watergate and Iran-contra, every agency in Washington makes sure it reports the details of its covert operations to Senate Intelligence. They can’t afford not to; none cares to be left facing accusations of illegality in front of the entire Congress.… You see, dear Amaya, already you’ve been of immense help.”
“Further, he is a man who kills, at least that’s what he told me. He said he killed a man named Stevens, the head of naval intelligence, because this Stevens had come close to finding me. For that I owe him.”
“You owe him nothing! He was following orders, that’s all he was doing.… Whether he told you the truth, or lied to you so you would be beholden to him, is immaterial. There’s only one man in the Senate who would speak in such crude, bravado terms, and we’ve studied them all.… Seebank, the intolerable, ill-tempered General Seebank. Thank you, Baj.”
“If it is he, I should also tell you I gave him a test of his commitment to me. As you may know, in certain military situations where it’s imperative to eliminate an obstacle, even a command post, a man is chosen to walk into a compound, knowing he will not walk out. It is in his footwear.”
“The Allah Boot,” the Palestinian said. “Explosives packed into the sole and the heel, set off by kicking the toe into a solid object. Death to the wearer and everyone in the vicinity.”
“Yes, I even provided him with a blueprint.” The Baj nodded slowly. “If he sends back the authentic article, I will know I can trust him. If not, I will break off all communication. Should he be true, I shall use him … and you will have your Scorpio.”
“Is there no end to your skills, Amaya?”
“Muerte a toda autoridad, that’s all you have to know.”
28
Senator Paul Seebank walked down the country road on the outskirts of Rockville, Maryland, the afternoon dark, the sky heavy with clouds. He carried a flashlight which he continuously, nervously snapped on and off. His brush-cut gray hair was covered by a walking cap, his chiseled features concealed by the upturned lapels of a lightweight summer raincoat. In truth, the lean, tough, former Brigadier General See-bank, now the lean, tough, outspoken Senator Seebank, was in panic, close to losing his equilibrium. He could not stop the trembling in his hands, or halt the progressively obvious tic that drew down his lower right lip in short, abrupt spasms.
He had to keep his thoughts focused; he could not lose control. Yet he could not contain his dread at becoming Scorpio One.
The madness had started eight years before on this very road—where it led to a dilapidated shell of a long-deserted barn in the long-abandoned fields of a long-forgotten farm, now merely the unused, infertile acres of some estate, more interested in gardens than in crops.
It had been initiated by a frighteningly obtuse telephone call on his private office line, the sacrosanct line of a newly elected senator that rang only at his desk, a standard privilege for family and very close friends. However, the caller had not been a member of his family or a friend at all; he was a stranger who introduced himself as Neptune.
“We watched your campaign for the Senate with great interest, General.”
“Who the hell are you and how did you get this number?”
“That’s irrelevant, our business is not. I suggest we meet as soon as possible, for my superiors are most anxious that we make contact.”
“And I suggest you pound sand!”
“Then I m
ust further suggest that you examine the basis, the essence, of your campaign for your office. The heroic prisoner of war in Vietnam who kept his men together under intolerable conditions through sheer leadership and his own personal courage. We have friends in Hanoi, Senator. Need I say more?”
“What the hell …?”
“There’s an old barn on a road outside the town of Rockville—”
Goddamn it! What did they know?
Seebank had gone to that barn on that road eight years earlier, as he was going to it now because of another phone call from another stranger. But eight years ago, under the glow of an old lantern, in the presence of the shadowed, elegant Neptune, he had read the affidavits of the commandants of the five prison camps in which he and his men had been interned.
“Colonel Seebank was most cooperative and frequently dined with us…”
“The colonel would describe for us the escape procedures his other officers created…”
“A number of times we pretended to subject him to physical abuse while he screamed in earshot of his comrades…”
“We used a mild acid to discolor his flesh—usually while he was quite happily drunk—and sent him back later to his quarters in torn clothing…”
“He was cooperative, but we did not admire him…”
Everything was there. Brigadier General Paul Seebank was no hero. He was something else.
And he was valuable to the Providers, so valuable, he was given an elite position: Scorpio Four. All future elections were guaranteed, for no opponent could ever match his political war chest. He had won his second term by burying the contender in an avalanche of money, The senator, a military expert, had merely to steer defense contracts to the coffers of those selected by the Providers.
The old barn was in sight, a ramshackle silhouette against the gray sky, on the rise of a hill of wild grass. Seebank left the road and climbed toward the rendezvous, the beam of his flashlight now steady. Six minutes later he reached the broken-down doors, half doors, slats really, and called out, “I’m here. Where are you?”
His answer was the brief illumination of a second flashlight. “Come inside,” said the voice in the darkness. “It’s a pleasure to meet my superior officer—in a different army, of course.… Turn off your light.”
Seebank did so. “Did we serve together? Do I know you?”
“We’ve never met personally. You might, however, remember a unit number and a rank, even a barracks location—the ‘south compound.’ ”
“A prisoner, you were a prisoner! We were prisoners together!”
“It was a long time ago, Senator,” interrupted the unseen figure. “Or do you prefer General?”
“I prefer to know why you called me and why you chose this place.”
“Isn’t this where you were recruited? This very barn? I was. I merely thought it would convey how very urgent the emergency is.”
“Recruited …? You? Then you are—”
“Of course I am. Why else would you be here? Let me introduce myself, General. I am Scorpio Five, the last of the elite Scorpions, the remaining twenty every bit as vital but without our authority.”
“I can’t say I’m not relieved.” Seebank’s hands were still trembling, the tic in his lower lip now constant. “Of course, this location had an immediate impact on me. Frankly, I thought I’d be meeting with one of our … our—”
“Say it, Senator, one of our Providers, right?”
“Yes … a Provider.”
“In light of the extraordinary events of the past two days, I’m surprised that you haven’t—also somewhat relieved.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, according to the telephone codes, Scorpio Four is now, for all intents and purposes, Scorpio One, isn’t that so?”
“Yes, yes, I suppose it is.” Seebank’s tic accelerated.
“Do you know why?”
“No, not actually.” The senator clasped his hands around the extinguished flashlight to control the trembling.
“No, you probably wouldn’t. You don’t have access to the information. Fortunately, I do, and I’ve acted upon it.”
“You’re talking in circles, soldier. I don’t like that!”
“What you like doesn’t matter. Scorpios Two and Three were taken out. They chickened; they couldn’t live with the current scenario, so Little Girl Blood had them eliminated, and that’s good enough for me.”
“I don’t understand. Who the hell is Little Girl Blood?”
“I wondered if you knew; you don’t. You work for the Providers in a different area, very profitable but very different, and this isn’t your thing. Considering what you are—what we know you are—you couldn’t hack it. It’s called no guts. You’re a fraud, Scorpio Four, and I was told years ago to watch you.… Now you’re a liability.”
“How dare you!” roared the panicked Seebank. “You are my subordinate!”
“Sorry, I couldn’t wait for that to change—couldn’t wait for the electronics to untangle the signals and replace you. If you could call your wife right now, she’d tell you that a telephone serviceman came to your house at eight-ten this morning, twelve minutes after you left for your Senate office. He did his work on the phone in your den.… You see, we’re too close, General, too close to putting this country back where it belongs. We’ve been stripped bare, our military budgets cut disastrously across the board, our personnel decimated, our armed might reduced to chickenshit. There are twenty thousand nuclear warheads all over Europe and Asia pointed at us and we pretend they don’t exist!… Well, that’ll change when Little Girl Blood carries out her operation. We’ll be in charge again, the nation ours to govern the way it should be governed! The country will be paralyzed, and, naturally, as always, it will turn to us for guidance and protection.”
“I’m not against you, soldier,” the trembling senator managed to say. “Those could be my very words; surely you must know that.”
“Hell, General, I certainly do, but they’re only words. You’re all words, no action. Your cowardice is a deficiency we can’t afford. You couldn’t hack it.”
“Hack what?”
“The killing of the President. How does that grab you?”
“My God, you’re insane!” whispered Paul Seebank, his hands suddenly steady, his tic diminished in sheer terror. “I can’t believe what you’re saying. Who are you?”
“Yes, I guess it’s time.” From behind the brick wall a one-armed figure, his right sleeve folded into his shoulder, emerged. “Do you recognize me, General?”
Seebank stared, uncomprehending, at a face he knew all too well. “You …?”
“Does the absence of my arm bring back any memories? Certainly, you were told about it.”
“No!… No memories! I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do, General, although you never saw my face back then—I was simply Captain X, as far as you were concerned—a very particular Captain X.”
“No … no! You’re fantasizing—I never knew you!”
“As I said, not personally, no, you didn’t. Have you any idea how amused I was sitting at a table in front of your interminable Senate hearings, listening to your so-called military expertise, which was pure bullshit, fed to you by our mutual benefactors through Scorpio One? The army graciously provided me with a prosthesis, a false right arm that filled the uniform, for the Pentagon recognized that my talents did not require an arm, only a brain and a certain minor eloquence which is allowed the military.”
“I swear to Christ, I know you only as you are, nothing before!”
“Then let me prod your temporary amnesia. Do you remember the south compound? Do you remember hearing that an obscure captain had engineered a foolproof escape? An escape that would have worked.… But it didn’t—because an American officer had tipped off the compound’s prisoner council. The gooks came into our hut, held out my right arm, and cut it off with one of their fucking swords. And in near perfect English the cam
p translator said, ‘Now you try escape.’ ”
“I had nothing to do with that—with you!”
“Move off it, General, I have you dead to rights. When I was recruited, Neptune showed me the depositions from Hanoi, including a paragraph you never saw. He was the one who told me to watch you. How to alter your telephone if it was ever necessary.”
“That’s all in the past! It doesn’t matter anymore!”
“Would you believe it does to me? I’ve waited twenty-five years to pay you back.”
Two shots were fired as a drizzle caressed the old dilapidated barn in a barren field in Rockville, Maryland.
And the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff walked through the high grass toward his concealed civilian Buick. If everything remained on schedule, Little Girl Blood was one step nearer Ground Zero.
A perplexed, frustrated Hawthorne drove the State Department vehicle toward McLean, Virginia, trying to understand the enigma of the family O’Ryan. They were either the dumbest, most gullible bunch of human beings he had ever encountered, or they were taught so well by O’Ryan they could all pass a polygraph claiming they weren’t even on the premises while robbing a bank!
He had arrived at the beach house shortly past 5:30, and by 7:00 o’clock Hawthorne had begun to think that Patrick Timothy O’Ryan was the most close-mouthed Irishman in the history of that Gaelic race. From O’Ryan’s Agency file, delivered to him an hour before he had left the Shenandoah Lodge, Tyrell’s antennae had been assaulted by a gaping omission in the analyst’s background check. The family’s sudden reversal of fortune, from a modest house on a median CIA salary to a much larger residence, as well as a substantial summer home on the beach, was just too pat to be explained by an inheritance from a horse-breeding uncle in Ireland. The Agency had settled for the legal paperwork; they hadn’t gone any deeper. In Hawthorne’s judgment, they should have, much deeper. For starters, O’Ryan had older brothers in the New York City police department. Where were they and why had they been bypassed by a wealthy relative who, according to Mrs. O’Ryan, had never met any of the boys?