The Scorpio Illusion (59 page)

“A couple of stitches, that’s all; I walked—ran—right into it.”

“What happened?”

“Later, Mr. Secretary, there’s something else. Do you know a CIA analyst named O’Ryan?”

“Yes, I believe I do. He was the DCI’s senior aide at our last briefing. As I recall, he’s been around for quite a while and is considered one of those back-room whizzes. I could be wrong, but I think it was Ryan or O’Ryan.”

“You’re not wrong and he’s dead, courtesy of Little Girl Blood.”

“Oh, my
God
!”

“If I read it correctly, he was the primary intelligence leak to Bajaratt and her crowd.”

“Aren’t you contradicting yourself?” interrupted an astonished yet thinking Palisser. “If he was of such value to her—them—why would they kill him?”

“Only a guess, but he may have made a mistake that could lead us to her, or, even more likely, he’d fulfilled his function and had to be eliminated because of what and who he knew.”

“Which leads back to your thesis that the Baaka penetration in Washington reaches into dangerously high places.”

“Knowingly or unknowingly, Mr. Secretary,” Hawthorne broke in quickly. “For example, your helping Van Nostrand was an act of compassion, not complicity. You were conned.”

“It’s so hard to believe—”

“Further, if Howard Davenport’s death is related, and I’m convinced it is, even the most avid conspiracy freak would back away from calling him a friend of Bajaratt’s, any more than you. You’re just not logical candidates.”

“Good heavens, never!”

“But O’Ryan was—”

“How can you be certain?”

“She was within a mile of where he was killed.”

“How do you know that?”

“I told you, she tried to add me to the list.”

“You
saw
her?”

“Let’s put it this way, I was trying like hell to get out of her line of sight.… Please, Mr. Secretary, we’re wasting time. Have you got the papers I asked for?”

“I’ll have them all in a half hour, although I still have misgivings.”

“Do you have a choice—do we have a choice?”

“Not if your service record is accurate and wasn’t written by your mother. Incidentally, we took your photograph from your last navy ID, which was six years ago. It appears you haven’t aged perceptibly.”

“I look better, because I have a better job. Ask my mother.”

“Thank you, but I shouldn’t care to have another Hawthorne in my life, no matter how charming she may be. Have the lieutenant come around and pick everything up. He should ask to see the undersecretary for Caribbean affairs. He’ll have the envelope with your credentials—Special Agent, Consular Operations. It will be logged, sealed, and marked Geological Survey, North Coast: Montserrat.”

“As in Bajaratt?”

“One should always anticipate the esoterica of future congressional hearings, Commander. Also, the mentalities of the inquisitors. Such an obvious code mitigates the specter of criminal secrecy.”

“It
does
?”

“Certainly.… A senator asks, ‘Montserrat and
Bajaratt
? Isn’t that kind of obvious, Mr. Secretary?’… ‘Why, Senator, you’re very astute. Therefore, as you’ve so brilliantly perceived, we did not engage in duplicity when we enlisted former Commander Hawthorne. If we had, we surely would not have been—as you’ve pointed out—so obvious.’ ”

“In short, you’re covering the State Department’s ass.”

“Most assuredly,” agreed the secretary. “As well as yours, Commander. And, Hawthorne?”

“Yes, sir?”

“What’s your approach with the families?”

“Down and dirty.”

“Right now, since I’ve prepared your credentials, be a little more specific, please.”

“Direct confrontation. I’ll claim there’s a State Department crisis of extreme sensitivity that could well involve the deceased. There’s no time for the usual period of mourning prior to interrogation.”

“You’ll be resented, perhaps stopped by family members or the religious.”

“I hope I am, because I can summon up a few resentments of my own.… Let’s say I’m very personally motivated. In addition to everything that’s happened, there’s a friend of mine in the hospital who may never walk again.” Tyrell hung up the phone and turned to a pensive Poole, who was staring out the window. “You’re elected, Jackson,” he said. “You’re to see the undersecretary for Caribbean affairs; he’s got a large padded manila envelope for me.… What’s the matter?”

“Things are happening awful fast, Tye,” replied the lieutenant, stepping back from the window, his eyes on Hawthorne. “The body count is risin’ quicker than we can keep up with it.… Van Nostrand and his head of security, plus a gatehouse guard, then the old woman, a chauffeur, and a red-haired guy right down in that parking lot, then Davenport, Ingersol, and now this O’Ryan.”

“You’re forgetting a few, aren’t you, Lieutenant?” asked Hawthorne. “If I recall, they were close friends of mine, and one was a very close friend of yours. I don’t think this is the time for evangelical pacifism.”

“You’re not hearing me, Commander.”

“What did I miss?”

“We’re not a thousand miles away in the Caribbean, where you and I can sorta control the things we can control. The geography’s narrowed down a whole hell of a lot, and there’s a lot of people involved we don’t know.”

“That’s logical. We don’t have a schedule, but we know this is ground zero, and Bajaratt’s systematically eliminating every conceivable link to her.”

“We know where she’s comin’ from, but who’s on our side? Who’s on those controls?”

“It’ll be San Juan again,” Hawthorne replied. “You’ll take Cathy’s place and handle the base camp here. You’ll coordinate my moves as the additional information comes in.”

“With what and from whom?”

“With the high technology that’s supposedly replaced men like me—what we used to be. I imagine it was there, but we didn’t have much use for it, or the laboratory boys didn’t think we could learn.”

“What’s the equipment?”

“First, there’s a device called a transponder—”

“It’s a tracing module on UHF,” Poole explained sharply. “Within given distances it can relay your position to a map grid.”

“That’s what I gathered. It’ll be embedded in a belt that’s in the envelope. Then there’s a paging mechanism that emits small electrical charges telling me whoever’s at the other end wants to reach me, two shots repeated twice meaning as soon as it’s convenient, three shots repeated a number of times signaling emergency. It’s fiber-optic and implanted in a plastic cigarette lighter so it can bypass a metal detector.”

“Who controls it?” asked the lieutenant.

“You. I’ll set it up that way.”

“Set it up so I know by alternatin’ codes whoever it is at the Agency or the State Department who’s delivering
information for you. The number should be restricted to the required personnel on four-hour shifts, all sequestered under guard and with no access to telephones.”

“Were you in my former business, Poole?”

“No, Commander, I’m a senior computer operator of an AWAC. False information—deliberately false—is a nightmare we gotta live with.”

“I wonder where Sal Mancini is?… Sorry.”

“Don’t be. If I ever see him, you’ll know it when you read the papers. He’s a dead snake, ’cause he’s as much responsible for Charlie’s death as any of the others! And make damn sure the people forwarding you information are the same ones on the grids.”

“What grids?”

“The screen printouts that pinpoint your whereabouts relayed by the transponder. One team can handle both; separate teams leave everything too loose.”

“Aren’t we getting a little paranoid? Palisser made it clear to me that only the most experienced and trusted people at Central Intelligence would be working with us.”

“In other words,” said the lieutenant, “it might have been someone like the late Mr. O’Ryan?”

“I’ll tell Palisser and make it clear that’s the way it’s got to be,” said Hawthorne, nodding slowly. “All right, let’s get started.” Tyrell rose unsteadily from the bed and pointed to his hip. “I meant what I said, Jackson. Tape this thing up firmer.”

“What about your clothes?” Poole grabbed the adhesive gauze from the desk as Hawthorne stood up, pulled down his shorts, and watched the lieutenant expertly crisscross the tape across his wound. “You can’t head out to the O’Ryans and the Ingersols in skivvies.”

“I gave my measurements to Palisser’s secretary. Within an hour everything will be delivered here. Suit, shirt, tie, and shoes—the whole fish and fancy chips. A State Department employee can’t violate a dress code.”
The telephone rang and Hawthorne bounced down on the bed, once again wincing. “Yes?” he said curtly.

“It’s Henry, Tye. Did you get any sleep?”

“More than I thought.”

“How are you feeling? How’s the wound?”

“I’m anxious and the stitches are holding. Phyllis said you finally hit the sack with a loud thump yourself. You’ll never learn to be subtle, will you, Hank?”

“Thanks for that—the Hank.”

“You’re welcome. You’re not off my personal hook, and maybe someday you’ll fill in the missing pages that were lost in Amsterdam, but right now we’re working together. Speaking of which, do you have anything new? What about the telephone in Paris?”

“It’s a mansion in Parc Monceau belonging to a family, a dynasty, I guess, named Couvier, very old, very large French fortune. According to the Deuxième, the owner is the last of the great boulevardiers; he’s close to eighty with a fifth wife who, until last year, was a beach hostess in Saint-Tropez.”

“Any phone records, international, I mean?”

“Four from that side of the pond. Two from the Caribbean and two from the mainland during the past ten days. They’ve got it tapped; from now on they’ll get specific locations by area codes and numbers.”

“Are the Couviers in residence?”

“Not according to the head housekeeper; they’re in Hong Kong.”

“Then the housekeeper takes the calls?”

“The Deuxième figured that out,” Stevens cut in. “Her name’s Pauline, and she’s under tight surveillance, electronic and physical. The moment anything breaks, they’ll reach us.”

“That’s the best we can ask for.”

“May I ask how you knew about the Couviers?”

“Sorry, Henry, maybe later, much later.… Anything else?”

“Definitely. We have proof of sorts that Ingersol was up to his ass in the Bajaratt circle.” The navy captain described the concealed telephone in the dead attorney’s office as well as the rooftop satellite relay. “It was obviously networked with the yacht in Miami Beach and that crazy old man’s island.”

“
Crazy
’s the operative word, Henry. I can understand Van Nostrand, but why men like O’Ryan and Ingersol? Why would they be a part of it? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Sure it does,” replied the chief of naval intelligence. “Look at that pilot of yours from Puerto Rico, Albert Simon. He thought they had something on him that called for forty years in Leavenworth. Same kind of thing with O’Ryan and Ingersol, maybe. Incidentally, the Agency’s sending over whatever information it has on both of them.”

“Where is Simon, by the way? What’s happened to him?”

“He’s got his tail in a tub of warm molasses, living it up in a suite at the Watergate, courtesy of an adoring Pentagon. A private ceremony was held—in the Oval Office, no less—where he was presented with a couple of medals and a sizable back paycheck.”

“I thought the President was keeping a low profile these days—”

“You weren’t listening. It was a very private ceremony, no photo ops, no press, over in five minutes.”

“How the hell did Simon explain away his—to say the least, his prolonged absence?
Christ
, all those years!”

“Very smart, I’m told. Just obscure enough for people who don’t really want explanations. His long-ago discharge was mailed to him in the Australian outback and subsequently lost. He’s been moving around for years, a real expatriate, from one flying job to another, one country to another. Nobody cared to learn anymore.”

“That’s the washed-out Simon,” said Hawthorne. “Not an influential lawyer on the White House’s A list, or a highly respected analyst at the Central Intelligence
Agency. Ingersol and O’Ryan weren’t cut from the same cloth as Al Simon.”

“I didn’t say they were, just a variation in a better quality of fabric.” There was the sound of chimes over the naval officer’s phone. “Hold on, Tye, there’s someone at the front door and Phyll’s taking a shower.”

Silence.

Captain Henry Stevens did not return to the telephone.

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