true emotion, Scorpion would have said that he was running scared.
“I’m not a virgin, Bob. I don’t need foreplay. What is it?”
Harris shook his head. “Need to know.” Scorpion knew that the deputy director was within his rights to withhold information. The rule was “no excess baggage.” You only told a field agent what he absolutely needed to know. Except he was getting a bad feeling about this one. He stared at the cabin porthole, the Arabian Sea a distant blue beyond the breakwater while Springsteen went dancing in the dark. Neither man spoke.
“You’ve got plenty of firepower on this. What’s the problem?” Scorpion asked finally.
“It won’t work. I have a feeling about this Palestinian. He’s good. Too good and absolutely ruthless. No matter what we do, he’ll find a way. That’s where you come in. I want you on your own, running your own operation, completely separate from everything and anyone else in the Agency. You’ll have unlimited access to anything we have anytime you want it. Spend as much money as you have to. If you want, I’ll give you the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs’ private cell number. Call out the goddamn Marines. You have one job. Stop the Palestinian. However you have to do it. No questions asked.”
“It’ll get dirty. You know what we’re dealing with.”
“Whatever it takes.”
Scorpion waited. He picked up the Beck’s but didn’t drink. The only sounds besides Springsteen were those of the port machinery and someone on the dock shouting in Urdu. As an independent agent, for Scorpion there was always the matter of payment. Finally, Harris said it.
“Double the usual fee plus a triple bonus when the Palestinian is-” He hesitated. “-no longer an issue. The first half’ll be in the Luxembourg account in an hour.”
Christ, they were scared shitless, Scorpion thought. Harris didn’t even bat an eye at so much money. What the hell was this?
“Hezbollah means Lebanon. I don’t trust Beirut station,” Scorpion said, putting down the beer.
“Rabinowich agrees. Keep it separate. Do it any way you like. There’s a backpack with a dozen passports, credit cards, money, contacts, some gear, the usual. Get it at the drop on 13th Street.” Then Harris told him the website they’d be using and the emergency password and countersign, what Scorpion’s old mentor, Koenig, used to call the pilot eject button. “Anything else?” he asked.
Scorpion stood up. “I have a plane to catch.”
“You have two weeks; probably less,” Harris said.
CHAPTER THREE
Beirut, Lebanon
Fouad was sitting by the window over a cafe au lait at an inside table at the Cafe de Paris. He was pretending to read a copy of Special magazine, a sexy Lebanese actress in a low-cut dress on the cover, as Scorpion entered the cafe. It was the signal that he was clean. If there had been any opposition, any one of the dozen different Lebanese factions opposed to his group, the March 14 Druze, the magazine would have been lying closed on the table.
Scorpion sat down across from Fouad and looked around. The cafe, with its orange awnings and multicolored chairs, was a Rue Hamra institution, and most of the clientele, he noted, was older. Gray-haired men who still wore suit jackets and en vogue women of a “certain age” who had kept their shapes. They looked like they dated from the nineties, when the cafe had been a hotbed of politicians, journalists, and spies.
“Salaam aleikem,” Fouad said, limply shaking Scorpion’s hand, passing a small plug-in flash drive as he did so.
“Wa aleikem es-salaam. This place is still here,” Scorpion said. “Un cafe turc, s’il vous plait,” he said to the waiter.
“The students all hang out at Starbucks now. The old Lebanon is dead,” Fouad said, lighting a cigarette. He spoke a Druze-style Arabic distinguished by the qaf, the guttural k sound. “The photo is on the flash drive,” he whispered, leaning closer and opening his cell phone to show Scorpion the image of a man in Western clothes and a checkered kaffiyeh draped around his neck, talking on a cell phone on an apartment balcony.
“Salim?” Scorpion said.
Fouad nodded. “It’s him.”
“How do I know it’s him? Man on a balcony with a long distance lens. Could be anybody.”
“You know Choueifat?”
“Druze village. East of the airport,” Scorpion said.
“Hezbollah came at night. They took four boys. One of them was my brother’s son, Badi. Before they killed him, they cut out his eyes. This is Salim,” Fouad said, tapping the cell phone. “How many will you need?” He stopped and they waited until the waiter served Scorpion the thick coffee and left.
“Depends. Does he ever leave?”
“Sometimes.” Fouad looked around. “He has a woman in Ashrafieh.”
“How do you know?”
“She is one of us.” Scorpion raised his eyebrows and didn’t say anything. “Her mother was Druze,” Fouad explained.
“And he trusts her enough to visit her?”
“You should see her. Dark-haired, dark-eyed…” Fouad tried to find the words, his hands in front of him as if to touch something exquisite. “A beauty.”
“Where’s the apartment?”
“On Baroudi, near Shari’ Abdel Wahab. You know it?”
“Near the football stadium? That’s an expensive neighborhood,” Scorpion said. “How does she afford it?”
Fouad shifted uncomfortably. “She is a singer. A patriot,” he said.
“She’s yours?”
Fouad nodded. “This will end it for her?” he asked.
“We’ll try to make it appear that she’s a victim too,” Scorpion said. “Maybe they won’t kill her. What floor is her apartment on?”
“The eighth. The building has ten floors.”
“How many men does he come with?”
“Seven usually. Two SUVs. Four in one and three with him in the second. All with AK-47s.”
“Do any of them come into the apartment with him?”
Fouad shook his head. “He leaves two to guard outside the apartment door, the rest downstairs or outside.”
“I’ll call and let you know after I check it out,” Scorpion said. “Probably need just the two of us plus two with a car for the getaway. But no one knows who the target is or what it’s for or where they’re going till the last second. Understood?”
“Of course. Only the two of us?”
“The fewer, the better.” He could see Fouad was worried. “It’ll be enough. Security’s a bigger concern than firepower.”
Fouad leaned forward and put out the glowing tip of the cigarette by slowly crushing it between his fingers. “We will kill him?”
Scorpion didn’t answer.
“He has to be killed,” Fouad said. “The price is agreed?”
“Sixty M-16s, ten M203 grenade launchers, and two M-240B machine guns. A thousand dollars U.S. for each of your men, ten thousand for you,” Scorpion whispered in his ear as he stood up. “And no one touches him. He must be taken alive and unharmed or I pay nothing.”
“Maashi. Mafi mushkila.”
He’s lying, saying okay, Scorpion thought. He’d have to deal with it when the time came. “Inshallah, Ma’a salaama,” he said, touching Fouad on the shoulder as he left.
“Alla ysalmak, habibi,” Fouad said, not looking up.
