The Scorpio Illusion: A Novel

  “He never specifically learned, but he assumed that one was a senator because Van Nostrand once told him that the Senate Intelligence Committee was an excellent source of information. As to the fifth man, David said O’Ryan had traced him, but would say only that S-Five was ‘a heavyweight—the heaviest at the Pentagon.’ ”

  “It’s a big place with a lot of heavyweights,” observed Tyrell.

  “I agree. Nevertheless it confirmed what I learned on the Costa del Sol. Van Nostrand made scores of calls to Washington whenever he was in residence, many of them to the Pentagon. However, as David pointed out, the list is useless. If Neptune wanted to reach a Scorpio, he’d use the satellite codes.”

  “Unless he was using blinds to send a message,” Hawthorne said. “Your son was right. It’s a useless avenue.… Did you learn anything else from that villa outside of the telephone calls?”

  “Yes, I found correspondence from a real estate firm in Lausanne. Apparently Van Nostrand owned property on the lake in another name, a Spanish name. He himself was listed as custodian.”

  “Nothing there, and even if there were, it would take too long to unscramble. Anything else?”

  “Again, yes.” Ingersol smiled thinly. “A list of twenty names and addresses on the stationery of the Gemeinschaft Bank in Zurich. Eighteen months ago it was in Van Nostrand’s wall safe. I paid ten thousand dollars to have the alarms neutralized and the safe opened by a delightful rogue currently incarcerated in Estepona. Twenty names, Mr. Hawthorne. Twenty.”

  “The mother lode!” whispered Tyrell. “The rest of the Scorpios. Did your son know?”

  “I’m an experienced jurist, Hawthorne. I know when to deliver sealed evidence and when not to, especially if that evidence could bring great harm to counsel.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “To put it bluntly, David was neither raised nor prepared for the position he was forced into. He was a fine attorney, a good corporate lawyer, but he was no street lawyer, no legal knife for the underworld. He put on a good act as Scorpio Three, but it was just that, an act. He was constantly frightened, prone to periods of depression and moments of panic. If I had given him the list, he very well might have used it in an attempt to extricate himself during one of his anxiety attacks.”

  “Could he have?”

  “Good Lord, use your head, young man! Van Nostrand, an intimate of presidents with connections all over Washington; O’Ryan, a top-flight analyst, privy to the deepest secrets; and a list of unknown names delivered by a panicked man who can’t substantiate who or what they are?”

  “What about the satellite codes?”

  “Instantly shut down by any number of Scorpios in a position to send out the alarm.… If I were a conspiratorialist where the John Kennedy assassination was concerned, I could detail how a cover-up was easily managed, totally eluding the Warren Commission. The Scorpios are proof of how it can be done.”

  “Why was your son killed?”

  “He panicked. Over what, I have no idea, but it must have been recent. As I told you, we never allowed ourselves written or wired communication. He was convinced his house and his office were monitored by the Providers.”

  “Are they tapped?”

  “The house isn’t; the office, I don’t know. It’s a large firm with a complicated telephone system. Intercepts might raise suspicions.”

  “Are you certain about the house?”

  “I have my own people check it out once a month, but I could never convince David. He kept saying ‘You don’t know what they can do.’ I agreed I didn’t; I merely insisted that his house was clean. Bugs are easily discovered in residences, as you well know.”

  “Who are the Providers?”

  “I’m not sure, I can only give you leads. People flew in on private aircraft to see Van Nostrand, and naturally, I spread some money around at the airport in Marbella and among its customs officials. Oh, yes, Mr. Hawthorne, I have the names and points of origin of everyone he saw, among them certainly several of the Providers, but to my regret nothing made sense. Lies are normal on such documents, but there was no core, no center that I could unearth.… But there was a man and a woman, he from Milan, she from Bahrain, who appeared much more frequently than the others. At first I thought they were raisons de coeur—lovers accepting Van Nostrand’s private hospitality. Then I realized my foolish naiveté. They were both quite elderly, gross, enormous. If they were lovers, neither could mount the other without the help of grooms.… No, Hawthorne, they were not lovers. In my opinion, they were intrinsic to the Providers, possibly their leaders, at least their brokers.”

  “Milan, the northern conduit for Palermo, for the Mafia,” said Tyrell softly. “Bahrain, with all the money in the world, often a major source for the Baaka Valley. Can you identify them, tell me who they are?”

  “Shh!” Ingersol abruptly raised his right hand, palm forward. “Someone’s coming through the archway.”

  Hawthorne started to turn; he was too late. A loud spit cracked through the air, a silenced gunshot. The bullet shattered the old man’s forehead. Tyrell lunged to his right, diving into a duster of rosebushes, his hand plunging under his belt for his weapon, but not in time. A silhouetted figure swooped down on him like a giant bird, filling his vision with darkness. A heavy metal object crashed down on his skull, and there was nothing.

  29

  Hawthorne felt the sharp, agonizing pain first, then the rivulets of blood rolling down his face. Gasping for breath, he tried raising his head, only to have his hair and his flesh caught and scraped by thorns. He was deeply entangled in a rosebush, the needled branches enveloping him, pressed into his clothing everywhere as if someone had used his feet to crush the pain-inducing stems into his body. Someone had; a silhouetted killer who had ended the life of Richard Ingersol, father of Scorpio Three.

  Slowly, unsteadily, and wincing through the web of thorns, Tyrell got to his feet, suddenly realizing that there was a gun in his hand but it was too large, too heavy to be his own. He looked down through the wash of light from the nearby pool. The weapon was a .38-caliber Magnum with a perforated silencer attached to the barrel, the same gun used to kill the elder Ingersol. A setup! thought Hawthorne, only then realizing that there was a pulsating irritation inside his jacket—one, two, three … one, two, three—Poole was trying to reach him on the emergency signal. For how long, he had no way to tell.

  He lurched up from the soft earth of the garden, trying with all his concentration to orient himself while pulling out his shirt and blotting the blood on his face with the ends. There was no one else there, only Ingersol’s corpse, his entire skull drenched in blood, his face a shining scarlet mask. Tye rushed forward, instinct telling him what to do, as long as it was done quickly. He lowered Ingersol’s body off the white wrought-iron bench, placed it on the ground, and dragged it under the base of the tall hedges beyond the garden. He searched the old man’s pockets; there was nothing but a billfold filled with money and credit cards; he left it there and took the unsoiled handkerchief from Ingersol’s breast pocket. The light from the swimming pool—water!

  Hawthorne raced to the latticed trellis, carefully peering around the corner as he shoved the Magnum under his belt. Again no one. The muted sounds of quiet voices confirmed the presence of several dozen figures moving slowly beyond the tinted sliding glass doors of the living room. He soaked the handkerchief in the pool, moving the wet surface over his face and head. If he could just get through the crowded, overworked kitchen without notice, he could reach the hallway only steps away from the younger Ingersol’s office. He had to! He had to reach Jackson, had to learn what the emergency was, had to tell him what had happened. There was a limp bath towel hanging over a deck chair; he grabbed it, not sure what he would do with it other than to somehow cover his soiled clothes. But suddenly he was sure what had brought him out of his unconscious state. The weak but incessant pulsating electric charges from the plastic lighter against his chest. Without that electroni
c interference he would have been found within feet of Richard Ingersol’s blood-drenched body and held by the police for murder. Thus would be eliminated two men, perhaps the only two people outside of the terrorist Bajaratt, who knew about the underground Scorpios. Move, now!

  Tyrell held the towel against his face and rushed up the flagstone path to the kitchen door. He entered the white-aproned melee as though he were an overcome mourner or one who, in sorrow, had drunk too much in this house of death. Those who noticed his pitiful presence turned away; they had their work to do. In the narrow hallway he hurried to the study, grateful to see that the door was still closed. He slipped inside, locked the door behind him, and went to each window, pulling the drapes shut. The wound in his head had opened again, but thank God the stitches on his hip had held. There was blood above, but none below; Poole’s extra taping had done its work. There was a bathroom in Ingersol’s study, the door open. He would take care of the gash in his skull as soon as he could, but first there was A. J. Poole V, Lieutenant, United States Air Force.

  “Where have you been?” an anxious Poole shouted. “I’ve been trying to reach you for the past forty-five minutes.”

  “Later, Jackson. Your news first. Is it Cathy?”

  “No. The hospital says there’s no change.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “I’d rather not tell you, Tye, but you’d better hear it.… Henry Stevens was killed, a huge knife wound in the chest. His body was found by the police behind his garage.” The lieutenant paused, then said, “I thought you’d want to know, Mrs. Stevens beat down Secretary Palisser until he gave her this number. She has a message for you and wouldn’t take no. I wrote it down and swore on my honor to tell you. It goes as follows: ‘First Ingrid, now Henry, Tye. How long can it go on? Get out for all our sanities.’… What does it mean, Commander?”

  “She’s associating one thing with another when there’s no linkage.” Tyrell could not allow himself to think about Phyllis Stevens’s pain. There wasn’t time! “Do the police have anything on Henry’s killing?” he asked.

  “Only that very unusual wound so far. Everything’s being kept silent. The police are under orders to issue nothing to the press or anyone else.”

  “What about the wound?”

  “It was a big blade and also thick, extremely rare, they say.”

  “Who are they? Who told you that?”

  “Secretary Palisser. Since Director Gillette’s heart attack, or whatever it was, Palisser’s inserted himself insofar as you’re working on behalf of the State Department. He’s running the show.”

  “Then you talk directly to him?” asked Tyrell.

  “It’s a little scary for a silver bar, but yes, I do. He gave me his private numbers, both at home and at the Department.”

  “Listen carefully, Jackson, and take notes, and stop me if there’s anything you don’t understand.” Hawthorne told Poole in detail everything that had happened at the Ingersol home in McLean, Virginia, specifically detailing his discussion with Richard Ingersol and the former justice’s violent death in the garden.

  “How badly are you hurt?” asked the lieutenant.

  “I’ll survive with a couple more stitches and a hell of a headache. Now reach Palisser and tell him everything I’ve told you. I want him to arrange for me to have immediate access to the Central Intelligence files of every senator on the intelligence committees and all the upper-level officers in the Pentagon, anyone high enough to be a decision-maker.”

  “I’m writin’ as fast as I can,” said Poole. “Jeezuss, what a scenario!”

  “Have you got it all?”

  “I don’t make too many mistakes, Commander. I happen to have what’s called an aural memory. What you told me, he’ll get.… Incidentally, your brother Marc called again. He was upset.”

  “He’s usually upset. What is it now?”

  “Those pilots from Van Nostrand’s place, the Jones boys. You’ve got twelve hours to get back to them or they’ll go public.”

  “To hell with them. Let them go public. It’ll panic the whole Scorpio network, and one of them is right here in this house! Whoever it is saw me go outside with the old man, Scorpio Three’s father. Three’s gone, so are O’Ryan and Van Nostrand. That leaves two of the upper five. The panic’s just begun.”

  “Tye, how bad is your head?”

  “A little messy and it hurts like hell.”

  “Find some tape somewhere and crisscross it over your hair. Make it tight and steal a hat.”

  “The check’s in the mail, Doctor.… I have to get out of here. Tell Palisser I’m on my way to Langley. It’ll take me at least twenty minutes, so he has enough time to get me admitted and have the first of those CIA files spewing out of the computers in one of their secret rooms with no windows. Tell him to move his ass, and make it clear I ordered you to say it.”

  “You love spittin’ in the face of authority, don’t you?”

  “It’s one of the few joys left.”

  In the secure off-limits forensic laboratory at Walter Reed Hospital, the two doctors working over the corpse of Captain Henry Stevens, U.S.N., looked at each other, astonished. On the sterile stainless-steel table at the foot of the operating table was an assortment of blades, some thirty-seven, from a medium vegetable knife to the largest cutlery available.

  “My God, it was a bayonet,” said the doctor on the right.

  “Some psycho was sending a message,” agreed the doctor on the left.

  Bajaratt proceeded through the crowds to the platform’s electronic doors. Inside the El Al terminal she veered to the right, away from the counters, toward a bank of storage lockers. She unzipped the side of her purse, took out a small key that had been given to her in Marseilles, and began studying the numbers of the locked panels. Finding the one marked 116, she opened it, reached her hand inside, and, fingers stretched, probed the unseen upper part, where there was an envelope taped to the surface. The Baj ripped it off, tore it open, and shook out a claim check which she quickly dropped into the side pocket of her purse, replacing the key that remained in the now-empty locker.

  She walked back into the crowds and over to the El Al checkroom, where she casually removed the claim check and gave it to the girl behind the counter. “I believe one of our pilots left a package for me,” she said, smiling sweetly. “The older we get, the more we need perfume from Paris, no?”

  The clerk took the check. Several minutes passed while Bajaratt’s anxiety mounted. It was taking far too long. As the Baj’s eyes darted around like a potentially ensnarled animal nearing a trap, the woman returned.

  “I’m sorry, but your pilot friend got his countries mixed up,” explained the clerk, handing Bajaratt a heavily taped package, roughly a square foot in bulk. “This isn’t out of Paris, it’s straight from Tel Aviv.… Between you and me, we store the homeland packages in a separate area. People are so anxious when they come here to get things, y’know what I mean?”

  “Not entirely, but thank you.” The Baj took the package; it was light; she shook it. “That naughty pilot must have flown home first and given half my share to another woman.”

  “Men,” the clerk agreed. “Who can trust ’em, especially pilots?”

  Bajaratt carried the package back through the milling bodies to the entrance. She was elated; the procedure had worked. If the neutralized plastic explosive material had passed through Israeli security, it would pass through anything the White House could produce! Less than twenty-four hours! Ashkelon!

  She walked through the electronic doors out to the platform area only to see that the limousine was not there; it was obviously circling the no-parking area. She was irritated but not angry; the success of her package’s arrival filled her with purpose. It had gone undetected not only through the airport equipment but through the checkroom scans, which were constant since the explosions in the Tel Aviv terminal in the seventies. Little did anyone know that in the lower seam of the detonating purse was a single stran
d of black steel thread, no more than a half inch in length, that when pulled out activated the tiny lithium batteries, producing a bomb equivalent to several tons of dynamite, set off by merely moving the hands of an enclosed diamond wristwatch to twelve noon and pressing the crown three times. She felt like a girl of ten again, when she had plunged a hunting knife into the Spanish soldier who was hungrily, furiously breaking her virginity. Muerte a toda autoridad!

  “If it isn’t the sabra from the kibbutz Bar-Shoen.” The words came like a bolt of lightning, firing her brain, fragmenting her thoughts. She looked up to see a stranger who was not a stranger at all! It was the once-dark-haired Mossad agent, now bleached blond, whom she had slept with years before, the man she had seen at the Carillon hotel’s front desk. “Except I don’t think the name is Rachela,” he continued. “I believe it starts with the letter B, as in Bajaratt. We knew you had colleagues in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, so where better to receive messages or parcels but in the one place no one would think you’d appear. It was only a hunch, but then, we’re rather good at hunches—”

  “It’s been so long, my darling!” shouted the Baj. “Hold me, kiss me, my dearest, dearest love!” Bajaratt flung her arms around the Mossad intelligence officer under the smiling, sympathetic glances of the crowds on the platform. “Not since the kibbutz Bar-Shoen! Come inside, to the café. We must talk and talk and talk!”

  The Baj gripped his arm, pulling the agent through the willing, parting crowds back into the terminal, all the while singing his praises in Hebrew. Once they were beyond the doors, she led the embarrassed Israeli toward the nearest and fullest lines in front of the ticket counters. Suddenly she screamed, her screams rooted in sheer terror.

  “It’s he!” Bajaratt shouted hysterically at no one and everyone, her eyes wide in fright, the veins in her neck pronounced. “It is Ahmet Soud, of the Hezbollah! Look at his hair, it’s bleached, but it is he! He murdered my children and raped me in the border war. How can he be here? Call the police, call our officials! Stop him!”