Scorpion Deception (5 page)

“Follow the motorbike,” he said in bad German. The taxi driver started and turned on the meter. Taking a chance on Arabic, Scorpion added,
“Man aiyan ta'in ta?”
Where are you from?

“Algeria,
sayid
,” the driver said, looking at him in the rearview mirror.

“Stay with the motorbike, but don't get too close,” Scorpion added as they turned up Davidstrasse, its wet cobblestones glistening from the street lamps. They passed the wide Reeperbahn, with its Burger Kings, sex shops, and prostitutes, crowded this time of night despite the rain. The motorcycle maintained a constant distance from Harandi's VW, and Scorpion's driver stayed back but kept the motorcycle in sight.

“Where are we going,
sayid
?” the taxi driver asked.

“Just follow,” Scorpion said, checking the rearview mirror to make sure they were the caboose on this train. He wasn't sure where Harandi was headed or if he had spotted the motorcycle, and he cursed inwardly at not being able to warn him. He would have loved to make a move on the motorcycle, but he wasn't driving and there was no way to do it without getting the taxi driver killed.

The VW went up Hein-Hoyerstrasse, then turned at Paulinenplatz, a small tree-filled park; they appeared to be looking for a parking place. Harandi must've decided to go back to his apartment to clean things up, Scorpion reflected, knowing that once he left, Iranians from the Masjid would go over it with a fine-tooth comb. You idiot, he thought, feeling helpless to do anything. Whatever happened now, it was too late.

The VW stopped to pull into a parking space. The motorcycle came up beside the VW, slowed as the rider leaned over and attached something black to the car door, then suddenly revving the engine, sped off. The motorcycle raced down the street in a roar.

“Bess! Waqif! Bombela!”
Stop! Stop! Bomb! Scorpion screamed to his driver. The driver just had time to slam on the brakes, the taxi screeching to a stop an instant before the VW exploded in an orange fireball that rocked the street. The powerful blast cast a fiery glare across the buildings, the shock wave buffeting the taxi like a toy shaken by a dog. Fragments from the VW peppered the taxi like hail as Scorpion dived flat onto the backseat.

When he looked up, the driver was staring wide-eyed through his windshield, chipped and cracked from the explosion. His face was bleeding from broken glass cuts but he didn't appear seriously hurt. The burning wreck of the chassis was all that remained of the VW. Scorpion jumped out into the street, where a man's severed hand lay next to an overturned café table. He couldn't tell if it was Harandi's. He felt sick, stumbled over to a tree to brace himself and looked up. The motorcycle was nowhere to be seen.

A hundred-to-one the motorcyclist had videoed his meeting with Harandi, he thought. Hopefully, all they got were his back and cap, with maybe a glimpse of his glasses, spotted with raindrops. Not enough to ID him, and he would immediately get rid of the glasses and cap to change the image. Whoever they were, it was clear they were already using the Bern data. That was the only way they could've gotten on to Harandi.

His regular iPhone vibrated and he answered. It was an e-mail from the Gmail account known only to Rabinowich and Schaefer. Only it wasn't either of them. It read:

Vendredi. la marée. 8è. 20h. Urgent.

Friday, the La Marée restaurant in the 8th Arrondissement in Paris at 8:00
P.M.
Urgent.

It was Sandrine, he thought. It couldn't be anyone else. She was the only other person who knew that e-mail account. She wanted to see him. And it didn't sound like she'd e-mailed because she actually wanted to see him. Something had happened. Hence the “urgent.”

God, what insane timing, he thought as he stared at the smoldering frame of the VW and the wreckage-strewn street filling with people, windows opening in buildings around the park, spectators peering out. He had to get away, he thought, climbing back into the taxi and patting the stunned driver on the shoulder.

One thing was clear: his turn was coming.

And now he had put her in danger too.

CHAPTER FIVE

Paris,

France

“I
wasn't sure you would come,” she said. It was the first time he had seen her wearing makeup, and in a green sheath dress and bronze eye shadow that brought out the gold in her lion's eyes, she took his breath away. “I wasn't so nice the last time.”

“You knew I'd come,” Scorpion said. “You didn't dress like that for the chef de cuisine.”

They were sitting at a table at La Marée, a clubby restaurant with Tudor-style leaded windows on the Right Bank not far from the Arc de Triomphe. They were the only ones speaking English in the crowded restaurant, sharing a superb Montrachet white wine along with the freshest
fines de claire
oysters he'd ever tasted. The restaurant was famous for its seafood.

“Alors,”
she smiled. “There are two occasions when a woman must look absolutely fabulous. When she's going to see a man she's interested in and when she's getting rid of a man, so he can properly appreciate what he's lost.”

“And which is this?”

“Allez au diable,”
she laughed, her laughter clear as a bell. Go to hell. “Impossible man.”

The waiter came over and they ordered. Around them, well-dressed French couples were doing what the French did best, eating and talking. The evening sparkled, and looking at her, Africa and what had happened in Switzerland and Hamburg seemed far away. Except for the brown Peugeot 308 he had spotted following his taxi in from the airport.

Who could have made him at De Gaulle? he had wondered, watching as the Peugeot followed them in on the A1, past the Périphérique and into the city, making the turn from the Boulevard de la Chapelle onto Boulevard de Magenta. And then it hit him like the persistent beep-beep-beep of an alarm.

They didn't know who he was in Hamburg, and in any case, he had gotten rid of the glasses, cap, and shaved the stubble to change his image. It had to be either Bern, the photo ID from the Kilbane cover, or that stupid article from Africa. Or worse, something else. Something he didn't know about.

Except how had they gotten onto him in Paris? And so quickly? He'd watched the brown Peugeot in the taxi's rearview mirror, not relaxing even when it didn't follow their turn onto Rue Saint-Martin. Either he was being paranoid or they had switched off and someone else was following now.

“You said it was urgent,” he began, as they sat in the restaurant.

She nodded. “I was at a charity
spectacle
,
très chic
, at the Grand Palais for
les MPLM
. This man came up to me. Said he was a journalist. He was asking about you.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That you were an American. That I hardly knew you, which of course is true.” The waiter brought them chilled langoustines for an appetizer and refilled their glasses. She waited till he left. “He wanted to know if I knew where you were.”

“And?”

“I told him I had no idea, and if I did, I certainly wouldn't tell him.” She smiled wryly.

“That doesn't sound terribly urgent,” he said, sipping the wine.

“It was his manner,” she said. “I had a bad feeling. There was something about him.”

“Describe him.”

“Middle Eastern. Arab or Iranian. Small man. His hands were very big, like they belonged to a much bigger man. And his journalist's
carte
. It looked cheap, phony. His clothes too. He gave me, in French we say,
la chair de poule
?”

“He gave you the creeps.”

“Yes, he creeped me.” She frowned. “But it wasn't just that.”

“Something spooked you. What was it?” he said, looking up as the waiter brought his sole meunière and Sandrine her pike quenelles in shellfish sauce.

“For a journalist, he didn't seem interested in the story. Not the children, not the bravery or what happened in Somalia, nothing. It was all about you. He wanted to know where you were. He showed me a photo.”

Scorpion put his fork down. His sole meunière stuck in his throat. It was unbelievably good and at the same time terrible because he knew it was all about to go to hell.

“Of me?” he said.

She nodded. “Not the one from the article. A different one and with a different name.”

“Michael Kilbane?” he asked.

She nodded again. “He asked if it was you.”

Christ, he thought, taking a deep breath. He was blown. Someone had put it together.

“What did you tell him?”

She shook her head, her hair swaying like a curtain.

“I said it didn't look like you to me.” She looked at him sharply. “But it was you. And I don't think he believed me.”

For a moment neither of them spoke. There was laughter from another table, a family. A thin man with a long nose shook his head and told them:
“Non, non. Mais c'est vrai
.
”
No, no, but it's true, and they laughed again.

“I don't know what to call you,” Sandrine said softly. “I don't even know why I'm here.”

“The food's good,” he said, and in spite of herself, she sputtered, laughing.

“Damn you,” she laughed. “So what is your name? Is it really Nick? Or is it Michael, or do you have one for every day of the week?”

He wiped his mouth with his napkin.

“I shouldn't have come. It was stupid. Self-indulgent. I'm so very sorry,” he said, frowning. “We need to leave Paris. Both of us. Tonight.”

“What are you talking about? I'm not leaving.”

“Look, I know it sounds insane, but right now you'd be safer in Africa. I think you should go back to Dadaab. Now. Right away. I'm begging you.”

She examined him with her lion's eyes.

“You know,” she said, “the Canadian nurse, Jennifer. She e-mailed me. She said the boy, Ghedi, the one you saved from Somalia, all he talks about is you. That you're coming for him.”

“I will,” he said, his voice thick. He had to take a sip of wine to go on. “Have to clean this up first.”

“I don't understand any of this. Why did you come tonight? Truly?”

He looked at her. Smooth golden skin, high cheekbones, and eyes like no one else's.

“You know why,” he said, barely able to get it out. The effect she had on him was unbelievable.

“Tiens!”
she whispered, mostly to herself. “Come on,” she said, taking his hand for him to get up.

“Where are we going?” he said, following her up and motioning to the waiter for the bill.

“My place. I'm going to rip your clothes off and have sex with you.”

As they headed for the door, the waiter, a Gallic half smile on his lips as if he knew exactly why they were leaving, handed him the bill, and Scorpion shoved a handful of euros at him.

“Why?” he asked as they nodded to the maître d' and stepped outside, the street dark and nearly empty except for the streetlights shining on the cobblestones and darkened shop windows.

“I don't care whether you're lying or telling the truth,” she said. “That was the sexiest proposition I've ever heard in my life.” They started walking toward the Place des Ternes when he stopped suddenly. He had spotted the brown Peugeot parked near the corner.

She looked at him, and he pulled her close as if to kiss her, his eyes quartering the Peugeot and the street. He put his lips to her ear.

“When we get to the Place des Ternes, don't ask questions. Run down the stairs to the Metro without me. Make sure you're not followed home. I'll come later if I can. What's the address?”

“What's going on?” she whispered back.

“We're being followed,” he said, and kissed her so long and hard he almost forgot what he was doing.

“Mon dieu,”
she said, catching her breath. “Eight rue du Terrage,
au troisième étage
. It's in the 10th Arrondissement, near the Canal St. Martin.”

“I know the canal,” he said, taking her arm, the two walking together. He had spotted a glint of metal reflected from the shadows in a parked Renault Mégane half a block behind them. As they walked toward the lights of the Place des Ternes, he could feel her trembling beside him.

I
n the center of the square was the entrance to the Metro, and next to it a shuttered flower stall. Scorpion spotted a front tail behind a tree near the stall. He didn't have to turn around to sense the tail behind them. They were bracketed.

“Is this how it's going to be?” Sandrine whispered.

“Je ne sais pas comment il va être.”
I don't know how it is going to be. “Run!” he said abruptly, pushing her toward the Metro entrance. He had a sense of her running down the stairs as he whirled and kneeled into a shooting position, pulling the Glock from the ankle holster under his trouser leg.

“Ne bougez, trouduc!”
he shouted at the shadow. Don't move, asshole!

The shadow detached from the side of the flower stall and ran toward the Avenue de Wagram. A Middle Eastern–looking man in a windbreaker. Scorpion started after him. He needed him alive, he thought, running as hard as he could, wondering why the man hadn't fired first.

The man, wearing a windbreaker, hopped onto a motorbike parked vertically between cars. Dodging a passing red Citroen, Scorpion raced toward the curb. He needed to get out of traffic and get a clean shot. He had almost reached the curb when he got his answer about why the man in the windbreaker hadn't fired.

A bullet pinged off the cobblestones less than two inches from his foot. Scorpion dived between two parked cars and wriggled under one of them. He peered out from beneath the car. The shot had made no sound. Whoever fired must have been using a sound suppressor.

He quartered the area looking for the source of the shot. It hadn't come from behind, from rue du Faubourg St.-Honoré. Other than the man in the windbreaker, he had spotted no one and no one had followed Sandrine down the stairs to the Metro. So where the hell did the shot come from? he wondered, pulling off his jacket.

His thoughts were broken by the sound of an engine revving. Scorpion peeked out from under the car and saw the man on the motorbike cut into traffic. He flicked his jacket out toward the sidewalk while rolling the other way to the street, looking around wildly while snapping into a kneeling shooting position. He was about to fire when something moved, a shadow or a reflection; something out of the corner of his eye made him look up, and he just had time to roll back under the car as another bullet ricocheted off the cobblestones, barely missing his head. He heard a woman scream and saw another woman, crossing the street to the Metro with a small dog, look up. He watched her, the sound of the motorbike fading up the avenue.

The shot had come from a roof or upper floor apartment building on Avenue de Wagram near the little square. The middle-age woman with the dog shouted,
“Aidez-moi! Police!”
—Help! Police!—scooped up her dog and ran to the Metro stairs. A couple walking across the square ran back from where they'd come.

The shot had come from above on his side of the street, Scorpion realized. It had to be a rifle because even a marksman couldn't have come so close while shooting from above at that distance with a pistol. Also, he wouldn't have been in an apartment, because before he and Sandrine decided to take the Metro to her place, they hadn't known they would be walking to the Place des Ternes. The tails must have spotted them heading this way, figured out where they were going, and the sniper—part of the front tail team—went into the apartment building above the pharmacy. He would have gone up to the roof for what should have been an easy kill. It was the red Citroen that saved him, forcing him to step aside, spoiling the sniper's first shot.

Whoever they were, they were good. He wouldn't get lucky again.

It was about four meters from under the car to the front door of the apartment house. A ledge between the top floor and the roof would give him some protection from the sniper shooting vertically down. There would be no time to ring the bell for the concierge; it would take perhaps seven or eight seconds to bump the front door lock with his Peterson universal key. He would only be vulnerable during the two or three seconds on the open sidewalk.

It would all depend on how fast the sniper's reaction time was, he thought. Also, a pure vertical shot was difficult; the kind people almost never fired in their lives. The bullet would not have a curved trajectory. The sniper would have to adjust the sight lower than normal to hit the desired point of impact. Scorpion knew that moving fast, at night, he would present a minimal target from above, where all the sniper would see were his head and shoulders.

They'd set it up well, he realized. The man on the motorbike had been a decoy. Another few seconds, and if he hadn't shoved Sandrine to the Metro stairs, the sniper would have killed them both. He had told her that knowing him would be dangerous, and she'd probably wondered if he was being melodramatic. He hadn't expected it to be proven right so quickly.

Did the sniper know about the vertical trajectory? he wondered. One way to find out. Taking a deep breath, he rolled out from under the car and sprinted to the apartment house door, a bullet drilling into the sidewalk behind him as he slammed himself flat in the doorway.

He had been right. The sniper overshot the point of impact by a few critical centimeters.

Scorpion used the Peterson universal key to open the door and enter the building. The hallway was typically Parisian: a patterned tile floor, flowered wallpaper, a staircase and narrow elevator. Gun ready, he pressed the button for the timed hall light and looked up the staircase. Nothing moved.

He pushed the button for the elevator, and using the noise as it started down to cover his footsteps, climbed the stairs, whipping around at every turn and landing, ready to fire. The timed hall light went off. He crept up to the top floor, his eyes slowly adjusting to the dark. Reaching the landing, he hesitated, peering into the darkness.