The Scorpio Illusion: A Novel

  “When you were shot at that beach resort in Maryland—he went out of his mind, thinking he was responsible again—”

  “Again?”

  “Later, I beg you, Tye,” said the widow softly.

  “Ingrid?”

  “It’s complicated. Later, please.”

  “All right.” Hawthorne swallowed, his face flushed with the rush of blood to his head. “Go on.”

  “He said your name, maybe three or four times, demanding that you be given the finest treatment available, and that he’d hang whoever gave you less.”

  “To whom, Phyll?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. Someone who was tight with whatever you’re doing. Hank told him he wanted a full report circulated—no room for error.”

  “Which means the entire Little Girl Blood circle got it, including the heavyweight.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Forget it—”

  “I wish you’d stop saying that. In Amsterdam, whenever people who cared about you and saw you come back with an arm in a sling or a swollen face and asked you what happened, all you ever said was ‘forget it.’ ”

  “I’m sorry, really I am.” Tyrell frowned, slowly shaking his head.

  “Is there anything else, old friend?” asked the widow.

  “I can’t think of anything. I’ve got a pattern. As Henry always said, ‘There’s got to be a pattern, that’s what you look for,’ when I usually looked for the small pieces.”

  “But when you found them, that’s when Hank put together the patterns. He never stopped giving you credit for that, if not to your face.”

  “Never to my face.… Okay, at least we’ve got another clamp in the trap for a pathological general, unless there’s anything, anything, no matter how seemingly inconsequential that you haven’t told me, Phyll.”

  “I suppose there are the calls from London—”

  “London?”

  “They started about seven or eight o’clock this morning, my sister took them, I refused.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, old friend, I’ve had it! Henry gave his life for this rotten, rotten business, and I don’t want calls from London, or Paris, or stations in Istanbul, or Kurdistan, or Mediterranean fleet intelligence. For God’s sake, the man is dead! Leave him—and me—in peace!”

  “Phyll, those people don’t know he’s dead!”

  “So what? I told my sister to tell them to call the Navy Department. Let those bastards make up the lies, I can’t do it any longer.”

  “Where’s the phone?”

  “Henry never allowed one in the living room. It’s on the sun porch—they’re on the sun porch—three of them in different colors.”

  Hawthorne got to his feet and raced through the open French doors to the glass-enclosed sun porch. On a table in the left corner were three phones: beige, red, and dark blue, all partially concealed by a louvered panel that had been spread halfway open. He picked up the red telephone, pressed the O button, and spoke to an operator. “This is Commander Hawthorne, acting attaché for Captain Henry Stevens. Connect me to the senior officer on the N.I. watch.”

  “Right away, sir.”

  “Captain Ogilvie, red line,” said the voice at naval intelligence headquarters. “Your name’s Hawthorne? I’m entering it.”

  “The same, Captain, and I have to ask you a question.”

  “On this line I’ll answer whatever I can.”

  “Have there been any messages from London to Captain Stevens’s office?”

  “None that I’m aware of, Commander.”

  “I don’t want an ‘aware of,’ Captain, I need—repeat need—a confirmation one way or another.”

  “Hold on.” There was silence for roughly ten seconds, then Ogilvie returned. “Nothing from London, Commander. No messages at all.”

  “Thank you, Captain.” Tyrell hung up the phone and walked back into the living room. “There was nothing from London for Henry at his office,” said Hawthorne.

  “That’s crazy,” said Phyllis, her head snapped up at Tyrell. “They must have called a half-dozen times.”

  “I wonder if it’s back channel,” said Hawthorne. “Do you know which phone the calls came in on?”

  “No. I told you, my sister answered. All she said to me was that each time it sounded like the same very official, very agitated Englishman. And each time she told him to call the Department of the Navy.”

  “But he never did,” said Hawthorne. “He kept calling here. Why?… What else did your sister say?”

  “Not much, I wasn’t really listening.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Down at the supermarket, getting some things. She’ll be back any minute; actually, when you arrived I thought it was she.” There was a short burst of a horn from outside. “There she is. The chief will go and help with the packages.”

  The introductions were brief and rapid, the urgency apparent to the sister. The chief petty officer carried her grocery bags as she was escorted into the living room by Tyrell.

  “Mrs. Talbot,” he began.

  “Joan’s fine; Phyll’s told me a lot about you. Good Lord, what’s happened?”

  “That’s what we have to find out from you.… The calls from London, who were they from?”

  “They were simply dreadful, I never felt so uncomfortable in my life!” cried Joan Talbot, the words rushing out. “That horrible man kept asking for Henry, saying it was urgent, and how could he reach him immediately. And I had to say we were trying to locate him, and had his office checked with the Navy Department, and he kept telling me the navy said he was unavailable—unavailable, my God, the man’s dead and the navy won’t admit it and I can’t say it! It’s all sickening.”

  “There are good reasons, Joan, very good reasons—”

  “For putting my sister through this hell? Why do you think she doesn’t want to, and I won’t let her, answer the phone? Either I do or the ‘admiral’ in the hallway does. Let me tell you. All this time people have been calling for Henry, and she had to say, ‘Oh, he’s in the shower,’ or ‘Oh, he’s playing golf,’ or ‘Oh, he’s in a meeting somewhere’… as if she expected him to walk through the door and ask what’s for dinner! What kind of ghouls are you people?”

  “Joannie, stop it,” said Henry Stevens’s wife. “Tye is simply doing his job, a distasteful job he has to do. Now, answer his question. Who were the calls from?”

  “It was like mumbo-jumbo talk, made worse by that bastard’s ‘veddy Eenglish’ accent, damn near sinister, in fact.”

  “Who was he, Joan?”

  “He didn’t give a name, just M something or other, and Special something.”

  “MI-6?” asked Hawthorne. “Special Branch?”

  “Yes, that sounds right.”

  “Christ, why?” whispered Tyrell, as if to himself, his mouth stretched, his eyes wandering, seeing nothing but clouds of confusion. “It’s got to be deep back channel.”

  “More mumbo jumbo?” said the sister from Connecticut.

  “It may be,” admitted Hawthorne. “Only you can tell me. Which phone did the calls come in on?”

  “The blue one, always the blue one.”

  “That’s it, the ‘blue boy.’ Direct, dedicated lines constantly swept for intercepts.”

  “I’m beginning to understand,” added Phyllis. “Whenever Hank wanted to talk to someone in his position in Europe or the Middle East, he always used that phone.”

  “Makes sense. It’s a global network designed for the head honchos of allied intelligence and their counterparts in the military. You can’t get any more internationally secure than with a blue boy, except you have to have a number to call, and I don’t have one. I’ll reach Palisser, he’ll get it for me.”

  “You mean the number in London?” asked Joan Talbot. “If you do, it’s on a pad next to the phone.”

  “He gave it to you?”

  “Only after he repeated twice that it would be … ‘altered in
the morning, madam,’ each word pronounced as though he were giving a satanic benediction.”

  “It may not have to be.” Hawthorne walked rapidly back into the sun porch, found the pad, and started dialing the fourteen numbers for London. As he did so, he felt a sharp pain in his chest, sharp but hollow, a warning he had experienced too often to count, a warning that had nothing to do with his physical health, instead a state of mind born of instinct. In questioning Phyllis he had hoped to find a gap, a word, a scrap that led to a linkage between himself and the killing of Henry Stevens. He knew he had found it with Henry’s having demanded a full circulated report on his condition after Chesapeake Beach, a report demanded as a threat to ensure his proper care, but one that inevitably reached every member of the Little Girl Blood circle, including a Scorpio named Meyers, Maximum Mike Meyers, scourge of civilian thought, who could easily access the routine of a military patrol car guarding Stevens’s house. That information was the linkage he had been looking for, but the deep back-channel calls from MI-6, London, outflanking naval intelligence to Stevens’s home blue line, was a totally unexpected occurrence, a tactic that engendered panic, thus accounting for the sharp pain in Tyrell’s chest. Axiom: Beware the outrageously unexpected when it comes from user-friendly territory. Something was off-the-charts, as Poole might say.

  “Yes?” fairly shouted the voice from London.

  “This is Stevens,” lied Hawthorne, hoping the rapidly spoken words would be accepted in the event the man from London knew Henry Stevens.

  “For God’s sake, Captain, what are you people doing over there? I can’t get through to your DO, and I’ve been trying to reach you for damn near ten hours!”

  “It’s been a difficult day—”

  “I should hope to kiss a pig, it has! Since we’ve never met, my name is Howell, John Howell—there’s a Sir in front of it in case you’re checking a computer, but it’s very droppable, I assure you.”

  “MI-6, Special Branch?”

  “Well, I’m hardly the queen’s equerry, old man. I assume you’re taking all maximum precautions, God knows we are, and so is Paris. We haven’t heard from Jerusalem, but those chaps are usually way ahead of us. They’ve probably got their blighter in a tunnel beneath Mount Sinai.”

  “So we’re in sync, John, and since I’ve been confined to a crisis meeting most of the day and may be out of the loop, bring me up to speed, will you?”

  “You’ve got to be joking!” yelled Howell. “You are the running control of Commander Hawthorne over there, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, of course,” answered Tyrell, thinking quickly, desperately trying to find logic within the illogical. “Incidentally, thanks for recruiting him—”

  “Geoffrey Cooke did that, rest his soul, not I.”

  “Yes, I know, but as I say, I just got your message here at the house, there was nothing from you at my office.”

  “Damn it, Captain, I certainly wasn’t going to leave my name or who I was. Your new director at the Agency and I agreed to keep this whole thing so bloody secret, it was to be restricted to the three of us; you were included because you’re Hawthorne’s control. What the hell happened? Didn’t your DCI contact you? His secretary, a damned arrogant bitch if I may say so, told me her chap got word from the unit and was on top of things, but how could he be without reaching you?”

  “There was a Syrian-Israeli problem,” said Tyrell lamely. “It’s all over the radio and television now.”

  “Utter nonsense!” interrupted the chairman of MI-6, Special Branch. “They’re simply posturing, both of them. As far as I’m concerned, they can blow each other to smithereens. What we’re facing makes their goddamned theatrics insignificant.”

  “Wait a minute, Howell,” said Tyrell quietly, his face growing pale with the panic he had known was on his own personal horizon. “You mentioned a unit … are you referring to the coordinated telephone surveillance operation between you fellows and the Agency?”

  “This is preposterous! Do you mean you don’t know?”

  “Know what, John?” Hawthorne’s breath was suspended.

  “It’s tonight! Bajaratt claims she’ll strike tonight! Your time!”

  “Oh, my God …” said Tyrell, barely audible, exhaling slowly, his face white. “And you say the Agency unit relayed this to the director?”

  “Of course.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “My dear man, I spoke with that bitch secretary myself. She said your DCI was in meetings all over Washington, and specifically, when I called the last time, with the President’s Cabinet at the White House.”

  “The Cabinet?… What the hell for?”

  “It’s your country, old chap, not mine. Of course, if it were our Prime Minister, he’d be under the protection of Scotland Yard—which he is—not meeting with his Cabinet at 10 Downing Street; too many of those fellows might just care to blow him away.”

  “It’s a possibility here too.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Forget it.… You’re telling me that the director of the Central Intelligence Agency was aware of this information, and by extension, since he was in meetings, he had spread the word to all those in Washington who should know?”

  “Look, old boy, he’s new and he obviously panicked, don’t be too harsh on him. Perhaps I should have been more circumspect. I took the word of our people who said he was an experienced hand, a splendid fellow.”

  “They’re probably right, but there’s a small omission.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t think he ever got the information.”

  “What?”

  “You don’t have to alter this number, Sir John. I’ll burn it and get back to you on normal channels.”

  “For the love of God, will you please tell me what’s going on over there!”

  “I don’t have time. I’ll talk to you later.” Tyrell instantly hung up the blue telephone, picked up the red one, and pressed the O button; it was answered quickly. “This is Commander Hawthorne—”

  “Yes, Commander, we spoke before,” said the operator. “I trust you reached the senior officer of the watch at naval intelligence?”

  “Yes, I did, thank you. Now I need Secretary of State Palisser, preferably on this line, if you can manage a secure patch.”

  “We can, and we’ll find him, sir.”

  “I’ll stay on. It’s an emergency.” As he waited, Tyrell tried to formulate the words he could use to deliver the incredible news to the secretary of state, a revelation Palisser might well find impossible to believe. The coordinated telephone surveillance between London and Washington had not been a failure, it had worked! Bajaratt had been intercepted, her words recorded: She would strike sometime tonight! The insanity was that no one knew about it!… That was incorrect, mused Hawthorne, someone knew, and that someone had short-circuited the information. Where the hell was Palisser?

  “Commander …?”

  “I’m right here. Where’s the secretary?”

  “We’re having a little difficulty tracing him, sir. We have your red line code, so when we locate him we can patch him directly through to you if you wish.”

  “I don’t wish, I’ll stay on.”

  “Very well, sir.”

  Again the line was silent, the further delay aggravating the hollow pain that refused to leave his chest. It was past six o’clock, thought Hawthorne, turning his wrist to look at his watch—well past, it was nearing six-thirty. Daylight savings or no, the night had begun. Goddamn it, Palisser, where are you?

  “Commander—”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m not sure how to put this, sir, but we simply can’t locate the secretary of state.”

  “You’ve got to be joking!” shouted Tyrell, unconsciously echoing Sir John Howell.

  “We reached Mrs. Palisser in St. Michaels, Maryland, and she said the secretary called her, saying that he was stopping at the Israeli embassy and would join her within an hour or so.”


  “And?”

  “We spoke to the ambassador’s first attaché—the ambassador is temporarily in Jerusalem—and he said Secretary Palisser was there for roughly twenty-five minutes. They discussed, as he phrased it, ‘State Department business,’ and then Secretary Palisser left.”

  “What business?”

  “We could hardly ask that question, sir.”

  “Since when does the American secretary of state lapdog over to the Israeli embassy rather than the other way around?”

  “I can’t answer that, sir.”

  “Maybe I can.… Connect me to the Israeli attaché, and make sure you tell him this is an emergency call. If he’s not on the premises, find him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Thirty-nine seconds later a deep voice came on the line. “This is Asher Ardis of the embassy of Israel. I’m told this is an emergency call from a ranking officer of U.S. Naval Intelligence. This is so?”

  “My name’s Hawthorne, and I’ve been working closely with Secretary of State Bruce Palisser.”

  “A lovely man. How may I be of service to you?”

  “Are you aware of an operation called Little Girl Blood? We’re on red line, so you can talk.”

  “I could talk, Mr. Hawthorne, but I know nothing of such an operation. May I assume it is coordinated with my government?”

  “It is, Mr. Ardis. With the Mossad. Did Palisser talk to you about two Mossad agents who were flying over to deliver him a package? It’s very important, sir.”

  “A package means so many things, doesn’t it, Mr. Hawthorne? It could be a slip of paper, or blueprints, or a case of our outstanding fruit, no?”

  “I don’t have time for Twenty Questions, Mr. Ardis.”

  “Neither do I, but I am curious. We extended the courtesy of putting your secretary of state in a private room with a secure telephone to Israel so he could reach Colonel Abrams, who is naturally with the Mossad. You’ll grant it was a most unusual request and an equally unusual courtesy, do you not?”

  “I’m not a diplomat, I wouldn’t know.”

  “The Mossad frequently operates outside normal channels, which is often irritating, but we try to understand its penchant for living up to its image of the clandestine octopus, a mollusk with far-reaching secret tentacles—”