Scorpion Deception

CHAPTER TWENTY

Imam Khomeini Airport,

Tehran, Iran

She was attractive, with a knockout figure not hidden by a paisley manteau, a wide mouth that spelled trouble, and obsidian-black hair peeking out from under a bright fuchsia-colored rusari, as hijab head scarves were called in Iran. A girl who likes to be noticed, Scorpion thought as he exited the customs control line. Her clothes were designer-made or good copies and she carried a hand-lettered sign with the cover name he was using: Laurent Westermann. A hundred-to-one, he thought as he walked over to her, she was VEVAK, Iranian internal security.

“Salam, Mr. Westermann. Welcome to the Islamic Republic of Iran,” she said in good English. “We have you booked at the Espinas. There’s a party tonight. Just a few people from the ministry. General Vahidi would be honored beyond words for you to come, and expresses his regret on his eyes he couldn’t greet you in person.” She gestured to a tough-looking man in a windbreaker and khakis to take Scorpion’s rolling suitcase while leading him toward the airport terminal exit. “I’m Zahra,” she added, a sideways glance taking in his Burberry raincoat, Armani suit, Hermes tie, and Ferragamo shoes like he was a baklava she couldn’t wait to bite into.

I’ll bet you are, he thought, glad they had paid attention to detail.

“Ghanbari. Muhammad Ghanbari,” Shaefer had told him during his stopover in Dubai. They met in a safe house apartment in an ultramodern building near the Deira City mall, shades drawn against the afternoon sun and anyone who might be peering in with a telescope from another building.

“He’s the target?” Scorpion had asked.

“We don’t know. But that’s who the cell call from Begur was made to,” Shaefer said, rubbing his hands together as if he was cold. He’s fidgety, Scorpion thought. Something was up. Pressure from higher up maybe.

They had already gone over the cover and communications. It was going to be tricky as hell. The crisis had only made things worse. Any kind of SME PED or other device or even a gun would be a dead giveaway, and normal Internet or other COMINT was out. Both VEVAK and the Revolutionary Guards had the city of Tehran blanketed for coverage and they’d pick him up in a heartbeat. The only thing he brought in was a plug-in flash drive and electronic bugs, all disguised as components of a spare cell phone and his laptop computer.

“You think he’s the Gardener?” Scorpion asked.

“You tell us.”

“What do we know about him?”

“I told you. Nothing. Zilch. Nada.”

“Are you kidding me? You’re telling me Dave Rabinowich doesn’t have a clue who this guy is?”

Shaefer shook his head. “In theory, except for a cell phone in his name, he doesn’t exist. Except,” holding up a cautionary finger, “there was a student by that name who graduated from Tehran University eighteen years ago. Then, nothing.”

“Revolutionary Guards?” It was a pattern with the Iranian elite. Recruit top candidates or those who were well-connected from the university, and nearly all records or mention of the person suddenly and forever disappear.

“Bingo,” Shaefer nodded.

“So that’s the mission?” Scorpion asked. “I find out if this Ghanbari’s the Gardener and who he’s connected to so the U.S. can justify the hell out of it worldwide when they drop bombs on them?”

Shaefer leaned closer. “Who ordered the attack? That’s what the DCI and the White House want. Give them the tiniest shred of evidence and they’re good to go. Harris wants to know about the Gardener. Rabinowich wants more. He says it doesn’t compute.”

“It doesn’t,” Scorpion agreed.

“I know. The Iranians and their surrogates don’t mind killing Israelis or anyone else who gets in their way, but this was an attack on an American embassy. Someone deliberately wanted to pick a fight with the biggest, baddest dude on the block.”

“He wants to know why?”

“Don’t we all,” Shaefer said. “What do you think we’ve been working on while you’ve been off having fun in Spain?”

Fair enough, Scorpion thought. From the moment he had met with Harris and his team in Zug, Shaefer and Rabinowich had been working on his cover, going deep enough to set up a special office in Geneva, staffed by French and German-speaking agents supplied by Schwegler, just to deal with the inevitable Iranian vetting. That office had arranged for his visa for Iran, while Rabinowich dealt with how he would enter the country without getting nailed by VEVAK or the MOIS or any of the various factions of the Revolutionary Guards or God knew who else because of the Kilbane photograph from the Bern computer.

His cover name was Laurent Westermann, a Swiss businessman employed by Glenco-Deladier, SA, a secretive Swiss arms trading company, headquartered in Geneva. The company was privately held, powerful and extremely discreet. It was known to act as a middleman for the biggest, most sophisticated military deals for major players, including Pakistan, North Korea, and China. In particular, they were the exclusive non-Russian agent for Rosoboronexport, the giant Russian arms company.

The agreement he was supposedly brokering involved Russia’s most advanced ballistic missile, the SS-27 Topol-M3. The SS-27 was nuclear-capable to 550 kilotons with up to six MIRV warheads, had a 10,500 kilometer range, and could be launched from TELs; mobile Transporter Erector Launchers. It was invulnerable to any modern antiballistic missile defense including lasers, which only existed as prototypes. The deal would cost the Iranians tens of billions of dollars, and if completed would change the balance of power in the world. So it wasn’t surprising the Iranians were giving him the five-star treatment, Scorpion mused as they got into a black Mercedes sedan for the drive into Tehran.

The key was his face. Because of Bern, someone in Iran, presumably the Gardener, knew what he looked like. Depending on how widely his photo had been dispersed, they could stop him at passport control or pick him up whenever they liked. The alternatives were hair coloring, plastic surgery, colored contact lenses, major self-alteration-such as gaining or losing a lot of weight-but there was too little time, and with more advanced facial recognition software it might not work. Rabinowich’s solution cut through all that; it was both brilliant and simple.

Olympic Torch. A genius-level, virtually undetectable piece of viral software jointly developed by the National Security Agency, Central Security Service, and the Israeli Defense Force C41 and Sayeret 8200 cyberwarfare units. The computer virus had been infiltrated into Iranian government and research computers. With it, they had supposedly located the Kilbane image taken from Bern that had been distributed to MOIS, VEVAK, and the Iranian border control and had modified the features, hair color, eye color, and facial structure of the computer image just enough so he was no longer recognizable. As Rabinowich put it: Scorpion’s face hadn’t changed; who they were looking for had. At least, that was the theory.

“This better work,” he had told Shaefer in Dubai.

“It will. The cover’s solid,” Shaefer assured him.

“Better be. Iranians notice everything,” he had replied. “The tiniest detail and they’ll be frog-marching me to Evin Prison.”

“Have you been to Tehran before, Mr. Westermann agha?” Zahra asked in the Mercedes as they drove past desert on the modern Tehran-Qom Freeway.

It was a test, Scorpion thought. His Swiss passport showed he’d been to Tehran once before three years ago. The Olympic Torch software supposedly had made sure that the visa, passport, and hotel information in the Iranian Ministry of Interior and VEVAK databases matched the information in his passport. He was in the backseat, sandwiched between her and the man in the polo shirt, while another man drove. It felt somewhere between being an important guest and being arrested.

“Just once. Three years ago,” he answered in English with just the barest hint of a French accent to help support his cover that he was from Geneva.

“Aya shoma Farsi baladid?” she asked. Do you speak Farsi?

“Sorry?” he asked, making his face go blank as if he didn’t understand. A lie, of course. He had been in Iran on a number of ops and also spent a year as a student at Tehran University because his foster father and mentor in Arabia, Sheikh Zaid, had foreseen the coming crisis between Shiites and Sunnis, and in particular, between the Arabs and the Iranians. Learn everything, Sheikh Zaid had said. To understand your enemy’s thoughts and language is worth ten thousand men with rifles.

She frowned. “You come at a difficult time.” Talking about the crisis. “I hope it won’t interfere with your enjoyment of our city,” she added so flirtatiously, he wondered if she was going to take off her clothes right then and there.

“We Swiss are neutrals,” he said. “It’s written into our Constitution. Conflicts of others are not our concern.”

“You like money, though?” she said.

“Doesn’t everyone?” he said, peering through the tinted windows at the desert giving way to farmland. A lot of this had been built up in the years he was away. Ahead, in the distance, he could see the dark smudge on the horizon from the dense layer of smog that hung like a permanent brown tent over Tehran.

“If you really wanted to make money in Iran,” she laughed, “you wouldn’t deal in technical things. You’d set up a plastic surgery concession. Every woman in Tehran gets at least one nose job.” She tilted her head as if to show off her nose and grinned, showing perfect white teeth. “You’re surprised my talking about it? Not strictly ta’arof, ” describing the elaborate code of courtesy that governed all social interactions in Iran.

“Curious,” he said. “In my very limited experience, Iranian women don’t talk that way.”

“No. .” She paused, thoughtful for a moment as they passed the cloverleaf interchange where the freeway intersected with the Azadegan Expressway and entered the city proper; the freeway bordered by clusters of apartment buildings, factories, and a billboard showing a pretty girl in a rusari advertising Zam Zam Cola. “I’m different.”

Another twenty minutes and the freeway gave way to the Ayatollah Saeedi Highway and the dense, smoggy city of high-rise apartments and streets thick with traffic. On their left was the city’s other airport, Mehrabad, slowing traffic as they headed into the roundabout around the Azadi Tower, the massive splayed-leg, flat-topped monument that was the symbol of Iran.

“Welcome to Tehran,” she said, pointing a small Beretta pistol at him. “I’m afraid Rostam here,” gesturing at the muscular man sitting next to him, “is going to have to search you rather thoroughly.”

Scorpion smiled. “I’d rather have you do it.”

“You’re a naughty man, Mr. Westermann agha,” she said, her dark eyes unreadable.

“You have no idea,” he said.