The Scorpio Illusion: A Novel

  “We’ll bring in the old man and question him with the appropriate doctors,” said Palisser gruffly, pensively.

  “Forgive me for using an old technique.” Hawthorne lowered his voice and braced himself wearily on the butcher-block table, beads of sweat forming on his hairline. “It’s something I refined in Amsterdam. I used to call it the clincher, in case an asset was wavering.… You can’t bring in Justice Ingersol because he’s dead. A bullet from a .357 Magnum blew his forehead apart, and I was set up to take the kill as my own.”

  Palisser’s chair screeched as he involuntarily scraped it backward across the stone floor of the kitchen. “What are you—”

  “It’s true, Mr. Secretary.”

  “it would be all over the news! I would have been reached!”

  “Not by the Pentagon, and it’s entirely possible that no one at Ingersol’s house has walked back into an outside garden beyond the swimming pool. They may not find him until morning; tonight’s occasion at that house didn’t call for skinny-dipping in the pool, unless I’ve grossly underestimated my distaste for Washington get-togethers.”

  “Who shot him and why?” Palisser’s face was white, his lips parted in shock.

  “I can only guess, but it’s based on what I saw, what I was told when I was beat up and getting out of there. I watched as Meyers’s extremely agitated aide rushed up to him and damn near forced his boss to leave, not exactly the behavior of an underling to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Then old Ingersol’s grandson said the aide had been trying to get the general out of there for the past half hour. That would correspond to the time when Ingersol was killed and I took the fall.”

  “Nothing makes sense. Why would anyone want to kill the old man?”

  “Because the Scorpios exist, they’re real. I don’t know what the killer heard, but Ingersol was about to tell me the identities of two people who frequently visited Van Nostrand on the Costa del Sol. He felt that they were keys to the Scorpios—that was uppermost in his mind. He would do anything to break the hold they had on his son.”

  “So you’re saying Meyers’s aide shot Ingersol?”

  “It’s the only assumption that makes sense.”

  “But if you saw him when you were leaving, why didn’t he see you—a man he bludgeoned half to death—and if he did, why didn’t he react accordingly?”

  “The foyer was dark, I was wearing this hat, and the place was crowded. Besides, he raced past the kid and me like a man possessed. He had only one thought on his mind, and that was to get the hell out of there.”

  “And on those disjointed suppositions you want me to impugn the integrity and the patriotism of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, a man who endured four years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, and have him taken into custody?”

  “That’s the last thing I want you to do!” Tyrell said emphatically. “I want you to help me do what I started to do, go down and dirty, and insinuate myself into the core of these people just as fast as I can.… He’s part of the ‘circle,’ isn’t he, one of the few people who are apprised daily, even hourly, of the Little Girl Blood progress, right?”

  “Naturally, he’s the—”

  “I know who he is,” Hawthorne interrupted. “But he doesn’t know that I know he’s a Scorpio.”

  “So?”

  “Bring us together. Tonight. I’m the expert where Bajaratt is concerned, and I was almost killed at the Ingersols’.”

  “For God’s sake, if you’re right, he tried to have you killed!”

  “I don’t know that, I don’t even suspect it,” said Tyrell disingenuously. “I believe it was someone else at the house, and since he was there, I’m joining him to find out who it was.” Hawthorne suddenly turned and approached the dark glass of an upper oven, his voice becoming harsh, inquisitorial. “Think, General! Go back over every name, every face you can remember! It’s vital, General, someone in that crowd is working for Little Girl Blood!” Again Tyrell spun around, his eyes on Palisser. “You see how it’s done, Mr. Secretary?”

  “He’ll see through you.”

  “Not if I do it right. Incidentally, I’ll need one of those small tape recorders, the kind you can put in your shirt pocket. I want to record every word that son of a bitch says.”

  “I don’t have to tell you, Hawthorne, that if you’re right and Meyers even suspects he’s being recorded, he’ll kill you.”

  “If he tries, he won’t have much of a future.”

  General Michael Meyers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stood impatiently in his trousers, bare to the waist, as his aide removed the prosthetic right arm that had filled out the sleeve of his civilian suit. Once the straps were off, the general shook the flesh-encased stump protruding from his shoulder, annoyed to see that the skin was reddish; it was time for a new harness.

  “I’ll get the salve,” said the aide, following his superior’s eyes and noting the resulting frown.

  “Get me a drink first, and make a note to call the Walter Reed doctors in the morning. Tell them to get the damn thing right this time, okay?”

  “That’s what we told them last time,” replied the middle-aged master sergeant, “and that was over a year ago. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times, these things stretch, and when they’re loose they scratch. But no, you don’t listen.”

  “You’re a pain in the ass—”

  “Don’t insult me, you prick. You owe me big for tonight.”

  “I hear you,” said the general, laughing. “But be careful or I’ll take away that fancy Porsche you’ve got stashed in Easton.”

  “Take it. I’ll use the Ferrari you keep in Annapolis; that’s in my name too.”

  “You are one unholy grunt, Johnny.”

  “I know,” said the master sergeant, pouring two drinks at the bar and looking at Meyers. “We go back a long time, Michael. It’s been a good life, give or take a couple of interludes in gookville.”

  “It’s going to get even better,” added the general, sitting down in an easy chair, his feet on a hassock. “We’re on our way back to where we should be.”

  “Is that what tonight was all about?”

  “You better believe it,” answered Meyers reflectively, quietly, staring at a wall. “The Ingersols, both of them, were greaseball shyster cowards. They connect with that bastard Hawthorne—either one of them—it’s bad news, the worst.”

  “Hawthorne …? He’s the fall guy you wanted, the one with the old man? Don’t tell me if you don’t want to. I’m not curious, I just follow the leader.”

  “Ed White told me he was with him outside. White wanted to know if I knew anything about a State Department investigation of his partner. It was a smoke screen. Hawthorne’s in another ballpark. Bad news.”

  “There isn’t any news now, M.M. They’re both history.” The phone rang, diverting the master sergeant named Johnny from the drinks to the telephone. “General Meyers’s residence,” he said. “Yes, sir!” he exclaimed several seconds later, turning his head quickly to the general, his expression one of astonishment. “The chairman is in the shower, Mr. Secretary, but I’ll have him return your call the moment he’s out.” The master sergeant picked up a pencil and wrote on a notepad. “Yes, sir, I’ve got it. He’ll get back to you in a few minutes.” The middle-aged noncom hung up the phone, his eyes still on the general; he swallowed as he spoke. “It was the secretary of state! They must have found the bodies.… Christ, and you wanted to stick around longer!”

  “You’re sure you weren’t recognized outside the place?”

  “No way! I’m too good, and you know it. How many times did I do this kind of thing to the yellow crud snitches in Hon Chow? Nine kills and not a spit leading to me.”

  “I believe you. What did Palisser say?”

  “Only that something terrible happened and they—he said ‘they’—needed your help.… I don’t want anything to do with this, Max. I don’t want to drive you, I don’t want to be seen with you, not to
night!”

  “You’ve got a point. Call your relief, Everett, from the car, tell him to get into a dark suit, and go over and pick him up. On the way back, fill him in on everything you did inside the house, including everyone you remember seeing, especially nodding at.”

  “I’m on my way,” said Johnny, bringing Meyers his drink and heading for the door. “Don’t take too long calling Palisser. He’s really uptight.”

  “You forget, Sergeant, you’ve got lousy handwriting. I’ll have to decipher it.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Michael, he’ll call you back and it won’t look good!”

  “No sweat. Your sevens look like twos, and your threes look like eights—”

  “Asshole! You could ask we!”

  “Not likely—and this part is true. I sent you out on an errand in the event the secretary’s conversation should be confidential. No one who isn’t cleared from on high can be privy to any information concerning a certain bloody girl.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “See what I mean? Get going, Johnny.” The aide shook his head and left, muttering vulgarities.

  Maximum Mike Meyers sipped his Canadian rye whiskey, his eyes on the bar telephone, thinking. Bruce Palisser was smart, brave in war, and probably the most honest man in the administration, as the media frequently suggested. He called the shots as he saw them, frequently at the expense of fellow Cabinet officials, and amid rumors—always gracefully denied—that he had admonished the President over certain issues. He was this administration’s George Shultz, as the press often suggested, and a man like that did not play the Washington games, it was not in him. So if he called asking for help, he wanted it; he was too honest to fake the request. Meyers did not basically like the secretary of state—he had little use for academicians in government; they were prone to endlessly debate too many sides of an issue without a firm commitment to one—but he respected the bastard.

  The general got up slowly, his left hand propelling the weight of his body from the arm of the leather chair and, reaching down for his drink, he walked over to the bar. He placed the glass down on the black marble surface and turned his wrist to check the time. Seven minutes had passed since Johnny had left; he picked up the phone and pressed the numbers clearly written on the notepad by his aide.

  “This is Palisser,” said the secretary of state on the line.

  “Bruce, forgive me,” apologized Meyers firmly. “The sergeant’s a worthy adjutant, but his handwriting’s lousy. I called three other numbers until I deciphered this one. I sent him out before I started, of course, and we’re phone secure.”

  “I was about to call you back, Michael. Something terrible has happened—terrible and grotesque, but may very well be tied in with the Bajaratt woman.”

  “My God, what is it?”

  “You were at the Ingersols’ tonight, is that right?”

  “Yes, my office agreed that I should show up. David was a friend to the Pentagon; we frequently called on him for pro bono advice in our dealings with the defense contractors.”

  “That may have been misguided, but you’d have no way of knowing it.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “You’ve kept up with the Little Girl Blood progress reports, haven’t you?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Then you’re aware of the fact that it’s been determined she has an organization behind her—loose or tight, we have no idea—but there are influential people working on her behalf.”

  “It’s a given,” said the general, smiling grimly for the benefit of no one but himself. “She couldn’t have eluded all the dragnets if she didn’t.”

  “A new development came today. It hasn’t been sufficiently documented to be circulated, but it’s legitimate. Tonight proves it.”

  “Proves what?”

  “Ingersol was part of the Bajaratt group.”

  “David?” exclaimed Meyers in mock astonishment. “That’s the last thing on earth I ever expected to hear.”

  “There’s more. So was his father, the former justice of the Court.”

  “That’s very hard to believe. Who’s advanced this?”

  “Commander Hawthorne put it together.”

  “Who?… Oh, the retired N.I. deep cover recruited by the Brits, I remember now.”

  “He’s lucky to be alive. He was at the Ingersols’ too.”

  “Alive …?” Startled, Meyers quickly recovered. “What happened?”

  “He was out in the garden, behind the pool, talking to the old man and learning a number of shocking details about both father and son. Apparently, they were followed, and someone shot Richard Ingersol in the head, killing him instantly. Before Hawthorne could adjust, that same someone assaulted him, rendering him unconscious and leaving the murder weapon in his hand.”

  “This is incredible!” said the general in a harsh monotone.

  “Incidentally, a CIA salvage unit was sent out to remove the body, taking it through the adjacent woods. Mrs. Ingersol and her son were told that the old man was tired of the whole affair and was driven to a hotel.”

  “Did they buy it?”

  “The son did. He said if he had known, he would have joined his grandfather. Since this is tied to Little Girl Blood, we’ve got to keep it quiet and figure out what to say later.”

  “I agree, but Jesus, Bruce, I didn’t hear any gunfire and I’d recognize it a half mile away!”

  “You wouldn’t have. The commander has the weapon, it’s a .357 Magnum with a silencer. He regained consciousness before anything was discovered—thorns from a rosebush awakening him, he says—and got out of there.… Here, let me put him on the phone, he wants to talk to you.”

  Before the startled chairman of the Joint Chiefs could assimilate the news, Hawthorne was on the line.

  “General Meyers?”

  “Yes …?”

  “By the way, sir, I’m an enormous admirer of yours.”

  “Thank you.”

  “We’ve got to talk right away, sir, and not on the phone. We’ve got to go over everything you and I witnessed tonight, every person you saw or spoke to, because I didn’t know anybody. I know only this, General. Someone who was there is working for Bajaratt!”

  “Where do you want to meet?”

  “I can come to your place.”

  “I’ll be waiting, Commander.” General Michael Meyers hung up the phone, briefly staring at the stump of flesh that protruded from his shoulder. He had not come this far to be stopped by a turncoat sailor.

  31

  MOSSAD HEADQUARTERS, TEL AVIV

  The shirt-sleeved Colonel Daniel Abrams of the antiterrorist unit assigned to the Bajaratt enterprise sat at the head of the conference table. On his right was a woman in her late thirties with sharp features, her skin tanned by the Israeli sun, her dark hair swept back and woven into a bun at the nape of her neck. On his left was a boyish-looking man with thinning blond hair, bright blue eyes, and a reconstructed nose that had been smashed during his capture by the Hezbollah Party of God in south Lebanon. They were, respectively, a major and a captain in the Mossad, both experienced in undercover operations.

  “Our man Yakov was outflanked by Bajaratt,” said the colonel. “He found her in the El Al terminal at Dulles Airport, but she reversed the trap. She nearly created a riot by screaming that he was a disguised Palestinian terrorist and got away. Yakov was damned near killed by enraged travelers, mostly American, until our people listened to him and pulled out his papers.”

  “He never should have approached her alone,” said the woman major. “She couldn’t help but recognize him; he had cultivated her in the Bar-Shoen kibbutz. She had an immediate advantage.”

  “Or it could have been the other way around,” suggested the young captain. “Yakov never knew she was Bajaratt when she was at the kibbutz. We established that later, after Ashkelon, from our agents in the Baaka. He was simply suspicious; he speculated that she might be someone, or something, el
se.”

  “She certainly turned out to be,” said Abrams. “Why did Yakov let her go?”

  “He didn’t. He took her out a few times, very unofficial, very low key, to see if he could learn more about her. She must have had her own ideas, and learned more about him than he did about her. One morning she didn’t show up for the kibbutz breakfast; she’d disappeared.”

  “Then it was stupid of him to be in the vicinity by himself, much less confront her alone.”

  “Look, Major,” said the captain, “would you rather have had a circle of agents closing in on her, no doubt resulting in indiscriminate gunfire, perhaps killing a number of people, mostly Americans? We decided to send him and let him act alone because he might recognize her despite her well-known talents for disguise. In addition, Yakov changed his own appearance; his black hair was made blonder than mine, what’s left of it, and his eyebrows were bleached, shaped far differently from their natural curve. It wasn’t perfect, only surgery could do that, but it was sufficient for even short distances.”

  “Men glance at a face, then study the body. Women appraise a body, then study the face.”

  “Please,” interrupted Colonel Abrams, “let’s not descend into sexist psychospeculation.”

  “It’s proven, sir,” insisted the major.

  “I’m sure it is, but something else came out of this misadventure and we must determine how to use it.… We broke the Palestinian we had in custody, the singer of songs that so entertained our ever-alert officers, the idiots. A guard reported an attempted bribe to free him, so we moved our prisoner to the Negev and sent the guard to another outfit.”

  “I thought Bajaratt’s Ashkelons had sworn to be tortured to death before revealing anything,” said the female officer scornfully. “So much for Arab courage.”

  “That’s a stupid remark, Major,” rebuked the colonel. “In all likelihood, no amount of torture—which we do not employ in the accepted sense—would have produced a thing. When will we learn that these people are as committed as we are? Only when we accept that will there be peace. We used chemicals.”