The Scorpio Illusion: A Novel Read online

  3

  The Caribbean sun burned the earth and the rocks and the sand on the island of Virgin Gorda. It was eleven o’clock in the morning, prelude to the scorching hour of noon, and Tyrell Hawthorne’s “charters” protected themselves under the thatched roof of the outdoor beach bar, doing whatever they could possibly do to alleviate their nausea. When told by their captain that due to a mechanical emergency they could not sail until midafternoon at the earliest, four sighs of relief accompanied three one-hundred-dollar bills pressed into his hand by a banker from Greenwich, Connecticut, who pleaded, “For Christ’s sake, make it tomorrow.”

  Tyrell returned to the villa, where Mickey stood guard over Cooke and Ardisonne while his colleague, Marty, attended to the docks. By now the two intruders had been stripped to their shorts, their clothes deposited at the hotel laundry. Hawthorne slammed the door and turned to the mechanic. “Mick, do me a favor. Go to the chickee and bring me two bottles of Montrachet Grand Cru—forget it, two bottles of white wine and I don’t care if it’s Thunderbird.”

  “What year?” asked Ardisonne.

  “Last week,” replied Tyrell. Mickey left quickly and Hawthorne continued. “All right, you secret agents you, let’s ‘carry on,’ as the English say.”

  “You’re not funny,” said Cooke.

  “Oh, it’s great when you Euros come up with your fog-bound narrow streets and your trench coats lurking around waterfronts, but why don’t you face it? High tech has replaced you, just as it replaced me. Amsterdam taught me that, unless they all lied on their own, which they couldn’t have. They were programmed by the numbers, do and say what the machines tell you, that’s all you know!”

  “Not true, mon ami. Put simply, we are not equipped to deal with that technology. We are of the old school, and believe me when I tell you, it is coming back in ways you cannot imagine. The computers and their modems, the satellites and their high-altitude photographs, borders crossed by television and radio signals—all are magnifique, but they do not and cannot deal with the human condition. We did that … you did that. We meet a man or a woman face-to-face, our eyes and our instincts tell us whether he or she is the enemy. Machines cannot do the same.”

  “Is that lecture by way of telling me our combined medieval practices can find this dragon lady, Bajaratt, quicker than faxing her photograph, description, and whatever else you’ve got to your secure sources on roughly fifty habitable islands? If so, I can only presume you should immediately be forced back into retirement.”

  “I believe what Jacques is suggesting,” broke in Cooke, “is that our expertise, combined with available technology, can be more effective than one without the other.”

  “Well said, mon ami. This psychopathic female, this killer, is not without brains or resources.”

  “According to Washington, she’s also not without a lot of hate rattling around in that brain of hers.”

  “Certainly no justification for what she’s done, or God help us, what she intends to do,” the man from MI-6 said emphatically.

  “No, it isn’t,” agreed Hawthorne. “But I wonder who and what she might be now if there’d been someone to help her years ago.… Christ almighty, the heads of your mother and father cut off in front of your eyes! I think if that had happened to my brother and me, we’d both be every bit the killer she is.”

  “You lost a wife you loved very much, Tyrell,” said Cooke. “You didn’t become a killer.”

  “No, I didn’t,” replied Hawthorne. “But I’d be a liar if I didn’t tell you I thought about killing a number of people—not only thought about it, but in several cases planned it.”

  “But you didn’t carry out those plans.”

  “Only because I had help … believe me, only because there was someone to stop me.” Tyrell glanced out the window at the sea, the constant movement briefly mesmerizing him. There had been someone, and, oh, God, how he missed her! In drunken moments he would tell her of his plans to take out this one and that one, even going so far as to open locked drawers on his boat and, in a stupor, show her his plans, diagrams of streets and buildings, his strategies for ending the lives that caused the death of his wife. Dominique would hold him as he swayed in an alcoholic daze, whispering into his ear that causing death would not bring back the dead, only create pain for many others who had no connection with Ingrid Johansen Hawthorne. In the mornings she would still be there beside him, dismissing his hung-over guilt with gentle laughter, yet reminding him how foolish and how dangerous were his fantasies; she wanted him alive. Christ, he loved her! And when she disappeared, the whiskey went with her. Perhaps it was another fantasy, but he often wondered: If he had stopped his heavy drinking before, might she have stayed?

  “I apologize for intruding,” said Ardisonne, both he and Cooke disturbed by Hawthorne’s sudden silence.

  “You didn’t intrude; it’s just private.”

  “So what is your answer, Commander? We’ve told you everything, even apologized for our actions last night, which at the time seemed appropriate. When a bartender stares at you with great hostility and lowers his body below the counter at a deserted chickee at night, well, both Jacques and I know the islands.”

  “You have a point, but you used overkill. You said we had to talk right away; it was urgent. Yet you put me out for damn near six hours. Some urgency, pal.”

  “Our measures were not designed for you or your friend the bartender,” said Ardisonne. “To be frank, they were designed for other people.”

  “What other people?”

  “Oh, come on, Tyrell, you’re not naive. The Baaka Valley is not without connections everywhere, and only the most innocent believe our services do not have corrupted personnel in one department or another. Twenty thousand pounds can turn a bureaucrat’s head.”

  “You thought you might be intercepted?”

  “We couldn’t dismiss the possibility, old boy, therefore we’ve carried only what’s in our heads, nothing in writing about Bajaratt, no photographs, no dossiers, no background material whatsoever. However, should anyone have been tipped off and tried to stop us, either in Paris, London, or Antigua, we could stop them.”

  “So you’re back in your trench coats, prowling the dark alleys.”

  “Why dismiss secrecy and hidden weapons? They saved your life more than once during the cold war, is it not so?”

  “Maybe once or twice, no more than that, and I tried like hell not to become paranoid. Until Amsterdam it was pretty cut-and-dried. Who can you turn and how much will it cost?”

  “It’s a different world now, Commander, we no longer have the luxury of known enemies. There’s another breed, and they’re neither agents nor double agents, or moles on one side or the other to be unearthed—those times are gone. Someday we may look back on them and realize how simple they were, for our root mentalities were not that different. It’s all changed now; we’re no longer dealing with people who think anything like the way we used to think. We’re dealing with hate, not power or geopolitical influence, but pure, raw hatred. The whipped of the world are turning, their age-old frustrations exploding, blind vengeance paramount.”

  “That’s dramatic, Geoff, but I think you’re blowing it out of proportion. Washington knows about the woman, and until she’s taken out, the President won’t be put in vulnerable situations. I assume it’ll be the same in London, Paris, and Jerusalem.”

  “Who is truly invulnerable, Tyrell?”

  “No one, of course, but she’d have to be a goddamned illusionist to get by armies of guards and the most sophisticated security equipment in the world. From what I’ve been told by Washington, the Oval Office’s every move is controlled. No exteriors, no crowds, everything in-house and totally isolated. So, I repeat for the umpteenth time, what the hell do you need me for?”

  “Because she is an illusionniste!” said Ardisonne. “She has eluded the Deuxième, MI-6, the Mossad, Interpol, and every special branch of intelligence and counterintelligence you can name. But,
at last, we know she is in a specific area, a sector we can cross and crisscross with all the technological devices we can employ, along with the most vital component we have at our disposal. The human equation: a dragnet, the search led by experienced hunters who know the quarry’s current territory, back alleys, waterfronts, and all.”

  Hawthorne studied both men in silence, his eyes roving from one to the other. “Suppose under certain conditions I agreed to help you,” he said finally. “Where would we begin?”

  “With the technology you hold in such exalted esteem,” answered Cooke. “Every NATO intelligence station and all police authorities throughout the Caribbean are being wired composite descriptions of Bajaratt and the young man she’s traveling with.”

  “Oh, that’s bright!” said Tyrell, laughing sarcastically. “You send out a blanket alert all over the islands and expect responses? You shock me, gentlemen, I thought you knew all the back alleys and waterfronts.”

  “What is your point?” asked Ardisonne, not amused.

  “My point is that you’ve got barely a thirty percent chance of hearing anything from anyone who spots them, official or otherwise. If somebody does, he won’t come running back to you, he’ll come on to the lady and a few thousand dollars will close his mouth. You’ve been away too long, fellas, this isn’t the land of Oz. Except for places like this, it’s poverty row from island to island.”

  “How would you have done it?” said Cooke.

  “The way you should have,” replied Hawthorne. “You say she has to have access to the offshore banks, that’s your key; nobody down here provides large amounts of money to strangers except face-to-face. Concentrate on the islands with those facilities, which cuts you down to twenty or twenty-five. Between the two of you, you’ve covered most if not all of them during your tours here. Reach your blinds with a great deal of cash and have them make their own arrangements with the authorities. The back door down here is far more effective than the front entrance. I’m surprised I have to tell you that.”

  “I can’t fault your reasoning, chap, but I’m afraid we don’t have time. Paris estimates that she’ll be here for a minimum of a fortnight; London believes far less, say five to eight days maximum.”

  “Then you’ve thrown your jockey at the starting gate. You’ve lost the race down here; she’ll stay out of your net.”

  “Not necessarily,” said code name Richelieu.

  “London was responsible for the strategy,” Cooke explained. “And we didn’t overlook the corruption to which you refer. Accompanying the alert is an addendum that can scarcely be ignored. The governments of England, France, and the U.S. have pledged a million American dollars apiece for information that leads to the capture of the two fugitives. Conversely, should it be learned that such information was withheld, punishment in the extreme will be administered.”

  Hawthorne whistled. “Wow,” he said softly. “The hardball is made of concrete. It’s open up for three million dollars or close out with a bullet in your head in one of those dark alleys.”

  “Precisely,” agreed the veteran of MI-6.

  “You stole it from the old NKVD—even the KGB was prettier.”

  “Hardly. It goes back to Beowulf. Very effective.”

  “Time, Tyrell!” said Ardisonne. “We must move quickly.”

  “When was the alert sent out? The descriptions?”

  Cooke looked at his watch. “Approximately six hours ago, five A.M., Greenwich time.”

  “Where’s the base of operations?”

  “Temporarily Tower Street, London.”

  “MI-6,” said Hawthorne.

  “You mentioned ‘certain conditions,’ Tyrell,” said Cooke. “May we assume that in the interests of global stability, you’ll join us?”

  “You can’t assume a thing. I have no affection for the assholes who run this planet. You want me in, you’ll pay, whether or not they get blown away, and you’ll pay up front.”

  “That’s hardly cricket, chap—”

  “I don’t play cricket. For my brother and me to really make a go of this business we need two more boats—used, but good, class-A boats. That’s seven fifty apiece, a total of one million five. In my bank on Saint T. by tomorrow morning. Early.”

  “Isn’t that rather excessive?”

  “Excessive? When you’re willing to pay three million dollars to some informer who may accidentally stumble on this Bajaratt and the kid? Come off it, Geoffrey. Pay up or I’m off to Tortola at ten A.M. tomorrow.”

  “You’re a self-important son of a bitch, Hawthorne.”

  “Then drop out and I’ll sail for Tortola.”

  “You know I can’t do that. However, I wonder if you’re worth the money.”

  “You won’t know that until I’m paid, will you?”

  CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  The gray-haired Raymond Gillette, director of the CIA, stared at the uniformed naval officer sitting in front of his desk, his gaze an admixture of reluctant respect and disgust. “MI-6, with some help from the Deuxième, did what you couldn’t do, Captain,” he said quietly. “They recruited Hawthorne.”

  “We tried,” said Captain Henry Stevens, chief of naval intelligence. There was no apology in his sharp reply as he braced his lean fifty-year-old body in the chair as if conveying a sense of physical superiority over the obese DCI. “Hawthorne was a dupe of the first rank and never accepted the fact. In plain words, he was a goddamned fool and wouldn’t believe us when we presented him with irrefutable proof.”

  “That his Swedish wife was an agent, or at least a paid informer, for the Soviets?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Whose proof?”

  “Ours. Meticulously documented.”

  “By whom?”

  “On-scene sources; they confirmed it to a man.”

  “In Amsterdam,” said Gillette, no question in his statement.

  “Yes.”

  “I read your file.”

  “Then you saw how indisputable the data was. The woman was under constant surveillance—Christ, married two months after their meeting to a ranking undercover officer of naval intelligence—and seen, photographed, going into the rear entrance of the Soviet embassy at night on eleven different occasions! What else do you need?”

  “Cross-checking comes to mind. With us, perhaps.”

  “Covert operations computers do that.”

  “Not always, and if you don’t know that, you should be demoted to seaman.”

  “I don’t have to take that from you, civilian.”

  “You’d better take it from me—from someone who has a regard for your other accomplishments—or you might find yourself in a courtroom, both civilian and military. That is, if you survived twenty-four hours after Hawthorne learned the truth.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’ve read our file on Hawthorne’s wife.”

  “So?”

  “You spread the word and had every asset in your Amsterdam orbit swear under N.I. Code Twelve—severe anonymity—that Hawthorne’s wife, an interpreter with full clearance, was working for Moscow. Each was instilled with the exact words right down the line. ‘Ingrid Hawthorne is a traitor to NATO; she makes constant contact with the Soviets.’ It was all like a broken record playing the same phrase over and over again.” “It was true!”

  “It was false, Captain. She was working for us.” “You’re out of your mind—I don’t believe you!” “Read our file.… As I piece it together, so your hands would appear clean, you passed another lie that happened to be the truth, a fatal truth. You sent word through a selected asset with KGB internals that Mrs. Hawthorne was a double agent, that her marriage was real, not a ceremony of convenience, as the Soviets believed it was. They eliminated her and dumped her body in the Heren Canal. We lost an extraordinary penetration and Hawthorne lost a wife.”

  “Oh, my God!” Stevens writhed in his chair, his body jerking nervously back and forth between the a
rms. “Why the hell didn’t anyone tell us?” Then abruptly, he stopped, his eyes riveted on the director. “Wait a minute! If what you say is true, why didn’t she ever tell Hawthorne?”

  “We can only speculate. They were in the same business; she knew about him, but he didn’t know about her. If he had, he would have forced her to stop, obviously knowing the risks.”

  “How could she not tell him?” “Scandinavian sangfroid, perhaps. Watch their tennis players. She couldn’t stop, you see. Her father died in a Siberian gulag as an anti-Soviet activist captured in Riga when she was quite young. She changed her name, built her own dossier, learned fluent Russian as well as French and English, and went to work for us in The Hague.”

  “We had none of that in our records!”

  “You could have had it if you’d picked up a telephone before making decisions. She was logged out of the system.”

  “Bullshit! Who the hell can trust anybody?”

  “Maybe that’s why I’m here, young man,” said Gillette, his narrow, flesh-encased eyes conveying equal parts contempt and understanding. “I’m a pretty old geezer out of G-2, Vietnam, where things were really screwed up, so messy that I emerged with a terrific reputation that I didn’t deserve—to the contrary, I probably should have been court-martialed. So I know where you’re coming from, Captain, which doesn’t excuse you or me, but I think you should know the truth.”

  “If you felt that way, why did you take this job?”

  “You called me a civilian, and you’re right on the mark, a very rich civilian. I made a great deal of money, in part due to that undeserved reputation, so when I was tapped for this job, I decided it was payback time. I’d like to try to make things a little better in this very necessary area of the government … to make up for past mistakes, maybe.”

  “Considering your mistakes, what made you think you’re qualified?”

  “Because of those mistakes. We’re so panic-prone over secrets, we all too frequently fail to communicate essentials—or seek them out. For instance, I don’t think you’ll repeat the error of Ingrid Hawthorne.”