newspaper. It was logical that ministry employees would eat at the inexpensive restaurant so convenient to their office. A man in a white shirt and tie came over and sat at a nearby table. They were close enough in height and build, Scorpion decided. He got up and on his way to the bathroom nearly tripped a waiter, then caught the man to prevent him from falling. During the distraction, he slipped three pills into the ministry man’s juice drink.
A few minutes later, after Scorpion went to the bathroom and returned to his table, the ministry man was showing signs of the drug. He staggered to his feet, reached for the table to steady himself and knocked over his glass, sending broken glass and juice flying. The man swayed, staring stupidly at the broken glass as the waiter hurried over.
Scorpion stood up. “I’m a doctor,” he said. “This man is sick.”
“I don’t feel so good,” the man said, his eyes bloodshot and nearly closed.
“He needs to go to the hospital. I’ll take him,” Scorpion said. “Come help me get him to a taxi,” he told the waiter, who waved down a taxi.
“Ilhamdulilah. You are a good man, Doctor,” the waiter said, helping Scorpion get the man into the taxi.
Scorpion told the driver the address of the hotel and tried to keep the man upright and awake in the taxi. By the time they got to the hotel, his eyes were rolling in his head and it was all Scorpion could do to get him out of the taxi. He half carried the man into the hotel.
The old man came from behind the desk and helped him get the ministry man to the room. When he was sprawling on the bed, the old man smiling knowingly at Scorpion, as if to indicate he now understood why he’d wanted to keep his homosexual rendezvous secret. Scorpion winked at the old man and gave him an additional thousand, locking the door behind him. He went through the man’s pockets and took out his wallet.
“I don’t feel so good. Need to call my office,” the man moaned. He looked like he was about to throw up, and tried to get up. Scorpion pushed him back down on the bed, took the rope and tied him up hand and foot, shoving a towel into his mouth as a gag. By then the man was out cold. He’d been right, Scorpion thought, finding the GSD ID card in the wallet. He memorized, then put it into his own wallet and went out. He would now be Fawzi al-Diyala, deputy supervisor for Ar Raqqah Province.
Within minutes Scorpion was back at the Internet cafe, where he printed out his own photo, scanned from his French passport, cut it to size and pasted it with the glue over the ministry man’s photo on the ID card. After taking a taxi back to the ministry, he used the ID to get past the security guards and into the building.
He took the elevator to the third floor and walked until he found an empty cubicle. The computer’s Web browser took him to the GSD internal home page. He checked the organization chart for the director’s name, office number, and telephone extension, then glanced around and dialed the extension.
The director picked up the phone at the first ring.
“Naam, what is it?” he said.
“Fawzi al-Diyala told me to call,” Scorpion said. “We have the man from the Cham Center. He’s a CIA agent. You must come!”
“What the hell is this?”
“Min fadlak, it’s urgent! You have to come at once!” Scorpion said, then hung up. He went out to the elevators and took one to the top floor. The director’s office was at the end of the corridor. Scorpion took out his gun, screwed on the silencer and walked in. As he had hoped, the office was empty. Najah al-Hafez had taken the bait and had gone down to Diyala’s office.
Scorpion sat down in al-Hafez’s chair behind the desk, put his gun on the desktop and began to go through the desk drawers. He found a button that he assumed was an alarm button under the desktop. In a top drawer he found a BlackBerry, and was about to pocket it when al-Hafez came back into the office.
“Who the hell are you? Get out of my office!” the director demanded.
“Eskoot. Close the door and sit down,” Scorpion said in Arabic, picking up the gun and pointing it at al-Hafez’s chest. When the man didn’t move, he added: “I will kill you.”
“El khara dah?” al-Hafez growled. What the hell is this?
Scorpion cocked the hammer of the gun. “Sit down. I almost never miss and I won’t tell you again,” he said.
Al-Hafez’s eyes darted around his office as if looking for a way to escape, then at the gun. He sat down in a chair facing his desk.
“You’ll never get out of this building alive,” he said.
“Yes I will. You’ll see to it. But first we have to talk.”
“Who are you? Mossad? CIA? DGSE? You’re the one who came in on a French passport,” he said. “But you’re not French. American?”
Scorpion nodded and put the gun down on the desktop.
“Maashi, CIA,” al-Hafez said, his eyes resting for a moment on the gun. “So tell me what you want. I’ll tell you why you can’t have it and I’ll even let you try to give me one reason why I shouldn’t have you interrogated and killed.”
“The Budawi assassination in Cairo.”
“You don’t think we had anything to do with that?!” al-Hafez said, looking discomfited.
“Stranger things have happened.”
“It makes no sense. What have we to gain?”
“So why are your men following me? You’ve been on me since the minute I arrived in Damascus.”
“Of course we’re on you. A French journalist shows up at the border late at night in a Service a short time after four people are murdered in Beirut; two that we know were Hezbollah, one a woman who must have had information because someone tortured her, and the last a Druze from the March 14 Brigade. We’d be derelict if we weren’t curious. That was interesting enough. When you escaped surveillance, that made you more than interesting. Now the fact that within a short time you went from hunted to hunter into my very office makes you more than a person of interest-it makes you dangerous to the state.”
“I had to find out who was after me. Normally, I would’ve been more discreet, but right now I’m in a bit of a hurry.”
“Min fadlak, we were very impressed. What we don’t know is why you are here.”
“You know Salim Kassem, of the Hezbollah Central Council?”
Al-Hafez gestured to indicate that of course he knew him.
“The first call he made after he escaped in Beirut was to a Dr. Samir Abadi here in Damascus.”
“How do you know that?”
Scorpion smiled.
“Americans and their technology. Amazing! Truly.” Al-Hafez shook his head. “How can you be so smart and yet so stupid?”
“Do you know Dr. Abadi?”
“There are many doctors in Damascus.”
“Don’t play stupid. It insults both of us,” Scorpion said.
“Why should I help you? How does that help Syria?”
“Because you don’t want to be on the wrong side of what is about to happen. This isn’t about the Golan or the Israelis or who killed Hariri. You’re right about us. We can be stupid,” Scorpion said, his fingers lightly resting on the gun on the desk.
“If you don’t report in… of course there will be repercussions. You could’ve just called for an appointment,” al-Hafez said.
“No, I couldn’t.”
“No, you couldn’t,” al-Hafez conceded. “We had nothing to do with Budawi. But you already know that or you wouldn’t be here. We’re not even sure it was Hezbollah.”
“Just when we were almost talking,” Scorpion sighed. “Tell me about Al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya, the Islamic Resistance.”
“A myth,” al-Hafez said, shifting uneasily in his chair. “Aliases and half-baked groups consisting of two jihadis in ski masks and an imam who talks too much are more common in the Middle East than fake goods in the souks.”
“You say it wasn’t you, it wasn’t Hezbollah, and the Islamic Resistance doesn’t exist. There’s only one problem. Budawi didn’t kill himself. What do you know of the Palestinian?”
