Scorpion Deception

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Piranshahr,

Iran

“I think you broke my jaw,” Ghanbari said, holding the reddened side of his face. They were sitting on the carpet facing each other, Scorpion holding the pistol on his thigh.

“No, but I might if I don’t get the answers I want,” Scorpion said.

“I don’t understand,” Ghanbari said, looking bewildered. “You told me yourself you killed Sadeghi. What’s this about?”

“I didn’t say Sadeghi. I said the Gardener.”

Ghanbari’s eyes narrowed.

“Sadeghi is the Gardener. You said so yourself.”

“No, actually you did,” Scorpion said. “You and Zahra.”

“If you weren’t sure he was the Gardener, why’d you kill him?” Ghanbari said, wincing as he spoke.

“Because I wasn’t sure. But now I am.”

“What are you saying?”

“Sadeghi wasn’t the Gardener. But you already knew that, didn’t you, Muhammad jan?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. What are you saying?”

“Bashe,” Scorpion exhaled. All right. “We’ll do it by the numbers. You sent Zahra to Sadeghi.”

“You wanted her to go too,” Ghanbari said hotly. He was breathing hard, and although the temperature was a little cool, he was sweating. The air in the farmhouse was still, particles of dust visible in a shaft of sunlight from a window.

“Yes, but for different reasons. When we were on the run, you brought us to the safe house. You equipped me. You gave me the motorbike and the Nakhir rifle. You sent Zahra to him knowing he wouldn’t trust a word she said. You wanted to get rid of Sadeghi and you used Zahra and me to do it for you. She flushed him out; I did the killing.”

“And what did I get for it? Look at me! My life is ruined. I’m on the run. I’m probably going to die, and even if I don’t, I’ll be cut off from my family, my country. You’ve ruined me, you madar ghahbeh!”

“Or maybe not.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying, maybe your life isn’t ruined after all.”

“How can you say that? Look at me! Look at where we are!” Gesturing at the farmhouse. “We’re being hunted like animals. They’re looking for us everywhere.”

“I doubt that, Muhammad jan. I think they know exactly where we are.”

“Are you insane?” Staring at him, wide-eyed. “How could they know?”

“Because you told them.”

“What? What are you saying?”

“Bashe.” Scorpion gestured. “Not you. Your cell phone. They’ve been GPS-tracking you all along. That was no ordinary roadblock on the road to Chalus. There must have been thirty Revolutionary Guards military vehicles. They knew we were coming.”

“But you said yourself it was logical. The only road to Chalus and the Caspian coast,” Ghanbari sputtered.

“I lied. A sea or air-sea operation is the most complex thing possible and requires full communications and setup; something they assumed we didn’t have because they’ve got every piece of COMINT-communications intelligence-blanketed over the country, especially Tehran. Besides, there are easier ways to get out of Iran. Like I said, they knew we were coming.”

“All right, so they figured out how to track my phone. How can you blame me?”

“No good. We bought the new cell phones together, remember? I programmed yours myself. You’ve had it less than twenty-four hours. There’s no way they could’ve gotten the number to GPS-track unless you gave it to them.”

Ghanbari straightened.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

“Sure you do. Scale made a cell phone call from Begur, Spain, to you. Zahra thought she was helping you, her sister-in-law’s brother, by deflecting the identity of the Gardener to Sadeghi, which was what you had planned all along because the rivalry between you two had gotten so intense only one of you could survive.” Scorpion took a deep breath. “You know, I think it’s the hypocrisy that gets to me the most. All that moral outrage when I killed those two Basiji. But you,” he said accusingly. “Knowing what Sadeghi would do, you sent her to her death without turning a hair, you lashy piece of shit.”

The two men glared at each other in silence.

“What makes you say Sadeghi wasn’t the Gardener?” Ghanbari said, never taking his eyes off Scorpion.

“Sherlock Holmes.”

“What?”

“In one of the Sherlock Holmes stories, the key clue was a dog that didn’t bark.”

“A dog? What are you talking about?”

“The clue was that the dog didn’t bark but should have. It’s the negative; a thing that should have happened, but didn’t. Sadeghi said a number of things. But what was curious was not what he knew, but what he didn’t know.”

“This is absurd,” Ghanbari said, looking around as if for a way out.

“Don’t even think about it,” Scorpion said. “And hand me your cell phone. Carefully,” aiming the pistol at Ghanbari’s face. Ghanbari reached into his pocket and after a second’s hesitation tossed his cell phone on the carpet in front of Scorpion. “Where were we?” Scorpion continued. “Right. The dog that didn’t bark. Or in this case, the curious fact of Scorpion.”

Ghanbari’s eyes behind his glasses revealed nothing. Scorpion couldn’t tell if he’d ever heard of Scorpion before.

“What’s that?”

“You’ve never heard the term ‘Scorpion,’ aqrab, before?”

“I told you. I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ghanbari said, rubbing the side of his face where he’d been hit. It was turning red and beginning to swell on that side like the mumps.

“Just before he died, Sadeghi seemed to be suggesting that everything that happened, the attack on Bern, the crisis, everything, had to do with this Scorpion. You wouldn’t know anything about that either, Muhammad jan?”

Ghanbari threw up his hands.

“I don’t know anything about this ‘Scorpion.’ I think you’re making it all up.”

“But that’s not the dog that didn’t bark.”

“Will you please either explain or shut up!” Ghanbari snapped.

“He didn’t know what Scorpion looked like.”

“Who? Sadeghi? Why should he?”

“Because the Gardener would have,” Scorpion said, thinking he should have realized it at the time. The Olympic Torch software had changed it for everyone else, but the Gardener had seen the original Kilbane file photo from Bern. The real Gardener would have known that Laurent Westermann was Scorpion. But Sadeghi didn’t.

“This is a total fantasy. You can’t prove anything,” Ghanbari said. He started to get up. “I’m leaving.”

“I don’t have to prove anything,” Scorpion said, aiming. “And move another centimeter and I will shoot you.”

Ghanbari sat back on his heels. “Maybe you’re Scorpion,” he said. “We already know you’re CIA.”

“Maybe I am,” Scorpion said, a little tingle of electricity going through him at hearing it actually said. “In any case, this is all beside the point. Why do you suppose I left you alone and went for petrol on my own this morning?”

“So you could make your own arrangements on the escape,” Ghanbari said.

Scorpion smiled. “True, but that’s not why. It was to give you a chance to make a call without me being there.”

For the first time Ghanbari looked disconcerted.

“You mean it was a trap?”

Scorpion stood up.

“I think we should have that chai now. We’ll know very soon, one way or the other. If PJAK shows up, I’m delusional and I’ll apologize to you and do everything I can to make it up to you. If the Kta’eb Hezbollah or the Revolutionary Guards show up, you’re the Gardener.”

Keeping the gun on Ghanbari, they made tea and sat down again on the carpet in the main room. He watched Ghanbari sip the tea, his hands trembling. While they waited, Scorpion decided that if it went bad, he wouldn’t be taken alive. If necessary, he would use the gun on himself. He caught himself straining to hear sounds outside. From nearby, perhaps under the eaves of the roof, he heard the sound of a bird and thought about the bird in Laleh Park. Then the bird went silent. They waited.

He could hear Ghanbari breathe. The sound of his own heartbeat. Then there was a rumble. An undefined noise, far off, a sudden rush of sound.

The house began to tremble. The liquid in the tea glasses rippled and danced. The glasses began to rattle and fell over, spilling on the carpet. The house started shaking as if in an earthquake. Then the unmistakable whop-whop of a helicopter overhead, then multiple helicopters and the house began to shake even more. Through the windows they could see military vehicles racing on the road toward them, one after the other, kicking up storms of dust. Outside the window they saw one helicopter, then two, landing in the fields. The minute they touched down, Revolutionary Guards in camouflage uniforms piled out and began running toward the farmhouse, assault rifles ready to fire. There was so much noise and dust it was getting hard to see outside the windows.

With his free hand Scorpion tossed the cell phone to Ghanbari.

“If you want to live another minute, call Scale,” he shouted over the noise.