The Scorpio Illusion (67 page)

Slowly, unsteadily, and wincing through the web of thorns, Tyrell got to his feet, suddenly realizing that there was a gun in his hand but it was too large, too heavy to be his own. He looked down through the wash of light from the nearby pool. The weapon was a .38-caliber Magnum with a perforated silencer attached to the barrel, the same gun used to kill the elder Ingersol. A setup! thought Hawthorne, only then realizing that there was a pulsating irritation inside his jacket—
one, two, three … one, two, three
—Poole was trying to reach him on the emergency signal. For how long, he had no way to tell.

He lurched up from the soft earth of the garden, trying with all his concentration to orient himself while pulling out his shirt and blotting the blood on his face with the ends. There was no one else there, only Ingersol’s corpse, his entire skull drenched in blood, his face a shining scarlet mask. Tye rushed forward, instinct telling him what to do, as long as it was done quickly. He lowered
Ingersol’s body off the white wrought-iron bench, placed it on the ground, and dragged it under the base of the tall hedges beyond the garden. He searched the old man’s pockets; there was nothing but a billfold filled with money and credit cards; he left it there and took the unsoiled handkerchief from Ingersol’s breast pocket. The light from the swimming pool—
water
!

Hawthorne raced to the latticed trellis, carefully peering around the corner as he shoved the Magnum under his belt. Again no one. The muted sounds of quiet voices confirmed the presence of several dozen figures moving slowly beyond the tinted sliding glass doors of the living room. He soaked the handkerchief in the pool, moving the wet surface over his face and head. If he could just get through the crowded, overworked kitchen without notice, he could reach the hallway only steps away from the younger Ingersol’s office. He had to! He had to reach Jackson, had to learn what the emergency was, had to tell him what had happened. There was a limp bath towel hanging over a deck chair; he grabbed it, not sure what he would do with it other than to somehow cover his soiled clothes. But suddenly he was sure what had brought him out of his unconscious state. The weak but incessant pulsating electric charges from the plastic lighter against his chest. Without that electronic interference he would have been found within feet of Richard Ingersol’s blood-drenched body and held by the police for murder. Thus would be eliminated two men, perhaps the only two people outside of the terrorist Bajaratt, who knew about the underground Scorpios. Move,
now
!

Tyrell held the towel against his face and rushed up the flagstone path to the kitchen door. He entered the white-aproned melee as though he were an overcome mourner or one who, in sorrow, had drunk too much in this house of death. Those who noticed his pitiful presence turned away; they had their work to do. In the narrow hallway he hurried to the study, grateful to see that the door was still closed. He slipped inside, locked
the door behind him, and went to each window, pulling the drapes shut. The wound in his head had opened again, but thank God the stitches on his hip had held. There was blood above, but none below; Poole’s extra taping had done its work. There was a bathroom in Ingersol’s study, the door open. He would take care of the gash in his skull as soon as he could, but first there was A. J. Poole V, Lieutenant, United States Air Force.

“Where have you
been
?” an anxious Poole shouted. “I’ve been trying to reach you for the past forty-five minutes.”

“Later, Jackson. Your news first. Is it
Cathy
?”

“No. The hospital says there’s no change.”

“Then what is it?”

“I’d rather not tell you, Tye, but you’d better hear it.… Henry Stevens was killed, a huge knife wound in the chest. His body was found by the police behind his garage.” The lieutenant paused, then said, “I thought you’d want to know, Mrs. Stevens beat down Secretary Palisser until he gave her this number. She has a message for you and wouldn’t take no. I wrote it down and swore on my honor to tell you. It goes as follows: ‘First Ingrid, now Henry, Tye. How long can it go on? Get out for all our sanities.’… What does it mean, Commander?”

“She’s associating one thing with another when there’s no linkage.” Tyrell could not allow himself to think about Phyllis Stevens’s pain. There wasn’t time! “Do the police have anything on Henry’s killing?” he asked.

“Only that very unusual wound so far. Everything’s being kept silent. The police are under orders to issue nothing to the press or anyone else.”

“What about the wound?”

“It was a big blade and also thick, extremely rare, they say.”

“Who are they? Who told you that?”

“Secretary Palisser. Since Director Gillette’s heart attack, or whatever it was, Palisser’s inserted himself insofar
as you’re working on behalf of the State Department. He’s running the show.”

“Then you talk directly to him?” asked Tyrell.

“It’s a little scary for a silver bar, but yes, I do. He gave me his private numbers, both at home and at the Department.”

“Listen carefully, Jackson, and take notes, and stop me if there’s anything you don’t understand.” Hawthorne told Poole in detail everything that had happened at the Ingersol home in McLean, Virginia, specifically detailing his discussion with Richard Ingersol and the former justice’s violent death in the garden.

“How badly are you hurt?” asked the lieutenant.

“I’ll survive with a couple more stitches and a hell of a headache. Now reach Palisser and tell him everything I’ve told you. I want him to arrange for me to have immediate access to the Central Intelligence files of every senator on the intelligence committees and all the upper-level officers in the Pentagon, anyone high enough to be a decision-maker.”

“I’m writin’ as fast as I can,” said Poole. “Jee
zuss
, what a scenario!”

“Have you got it all?”

“I don’t make too many mistakes, Commander. I happen to have what’s called an aural memory. What you told me, he’ll get.… Incidentally, your brother Marc called again. He was upset.”

“He’s usually upset. What is it now?”

“Those pilots from Van Nostrand’s place, the Jones boys. You’ve got twelve hours to get back to them or they’ll go public.”

“To hell with them. Let them go public. It’ll panic the whole Scorpio network, and one of them is right here in this house! Whoever it is saw me go outside with the old man, Scorpio Three’s father. Three’s gone, so are O’Ryan and Van Nostrand. That leaves two of the upper five. The panic’s just begun.”

“Tye, how bad is your head?”

“A little messy and it hurts like hell.”

“Find some tape somewhere and crisscross it over your hair. Make it tight and steal a hat.”

“The check’s in the mail, Doctor.… I have to get out of here. Tell Palisser I’m on my way to Langley. It’ll take me at least twenty minutes, so he has enough time to get me admitted and have the first of those CIA files spewing out of the computers in one of their secret rooms with no windows. Tell him to move his ass, and make it clear I ordered you to say it.”

“You love spittin’ in the face of authority, don’t you?”

“It’s one of the few joys left.”

In the secure off-limits forensic laboratory at Walter Reed Hospital, the two doctors working over the corpse of Captain Henry Stevens, U.S.N., looked at each other, astonished. On the sterile stainless-steel table at the foot of the operating table was an assortment of blades, some thirty-seven, from a medium vegetable knife to the largest cutlery available.

“My God, it was a bayonet,” said the doctor on the right.

“Some psycho was sending a message,” agreed the doctor on the left.

Bajaratt proceeded through the crowds to the platform’s electronic doors. Inside the El Al terminal she veered to the right, away from the counters, toward a bank of storage lockers. She unzipped the side of her purse, took out a small key that had been given to her in Marseilles, and began studying the numbers of the locked panels. Finding the one marked 116, she opened it, reached her hand inside, and, fingers stretched, probed the unseen upper part, where there was an envelope taped to the surface. The Baj ripped it off, tore it open, and shook out a claim check which she quickly dropped into the
side pocket of her purse, replacing the key that remained in the now-empty locker.

She walked back into the crowds and over to the El Al checkroom, where she casually removed the claim check and gave it to the girl behind the counter. “I believe one of our pilots left a package for me,” she said, smiling sweetly. “The older we get, the more we need perfume from Paris, no?”

The clerk took the check. Several minutes passed while Bajaratt’s anxiety mounted. It was taking far too long. As the Baj’s eyes darted around like a potentially ensnarled animal nearing a trap, the woman returned.

“I’m sorry, but your pilot friend got his countries mixed up,” explained the clerk, handing Bajaratt a heavily taped package, roughly a square foot in bulk. “This isn’t out of Paris, it’s straight from Tel Aviv.… Between you and me, we store the homeland packages in a separate area. People are so anxious when they come here to get things, y’know what I mean?”

“Not entirely, but thank you.” The Baj took the package; it was light; she shook it. “That naughty pilot must have flown home first and given half my share to another woman.”

“Men,” the clerk agreed. “Who can trust ’em, especially pilots?”

Bajaratt carried the package back through the milling bodies to the entrance. She was elated; the procedure had worked. If the neutralized plastic explosive material had passed through Israeli security, it would pass through anything the White House could produce! Less than twenty-four hours!
Ashkelon
!

She walked through the electronic doors out to the platform area only to see that the limousine was not there; it was obviously circling the no-parking area. She was irritated but not angry; the success of her package’s arrival filled her with purpose. It had gone
undetected
not only through the airport equipment but through the checkroom scans, which were constant since the explosions
in the Tel Aviv terminal in the seventies. Little did anyone know that in the lower seam of the detonating purse was a single strand of black steel thread, no more than a half inch in length, that when pulled out activated the tiny lithium batteries, producing a bomb equivalent to several tons of dynamite, set off by merely moving the hands of an enclosed diamond wristwatch to twelve noon and pressing the crown three times. She felt like a girl of ten again, when she had plunged a hunting knife into the Spanish soldier who was hungrily, furiously breaking her virginity.
Muerte a toda autoridad
!

“If it isn’t the sabra from the kibbutz Bar-Shoen.” The words came like a bolt of lightning, firing her brain, fragmenting her thoughts. She looked up to see a stranger who was not a stranger at all! It was the once-dark-haired Mossad agent, now bleached blond, whom she had slept with years before, the man she had seen at the Carillon hotel’s front desk. “Except I don’t think the name is Rachela,” he continued. “I believe it starts with the letter B, as in Bajaratt. We knew you had colleagues in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, so where better to receive messages or parcels but in the one place no one would think you’d appear. It was only a hunch, but then, we’re rather good at hunches—”

“It’s been so
long
, my darling!” shouted the Baj. “
Hold
me,
kiss
me, my dearest,
dearest
love!” Bajaratt flung her arms around the Mossad intelligence officer under the smiling, sympathetic glances of the crowds on the platform. “Not since the kibbutz
Bar-Shoen
! Come inside, to the café. We must talk and talk and
talk
!”

The Baj gripped his arm, pulling the agent through the willing, parting crowds back into the terminal, all the while singing his praises in Hebrew. Once they were beyond the doors, she led the embarrassed Israeli toward the nearest and fullest lines in front of the ticket counters. Suddenly she screamed, her screams rooted in sheer terror.

“It’s
he
!” Bajaratt shouted hysterically at no one and
everyone, her eyes wide in fright, the veins in her neck pronounced. “It is
Ahmet Soud
, of the
Hezbollah
! Look at his hair, it’s bleached, but it is
he
! He murdered my children and
raped
me in the border war. How can he
be
here? Call the police, call our officials!
Stop
him!”

Men broke from the lines and converged on the Mossad officer as the Baj raced through the platform doors and ran against the stream of one-way traffic.

“Get
out
of here!” she roared, stopping the slowly approaching limousine by banging on the window and leaping into the rear seat beside a startled Nicolo.

“Where to, ma’am?” asked the driver.

“The nearest hotel, as decent as possible,” answered the Baj breathlessly.

“There are several right here at the airport.”

“Then the best will do.”

“
Basta
, signora!” said Nicolo, his large dark eyes riveted on Bajaratt and continuing in Italian as he closed the glass partition between the chauffeur and the rear of the limousine. “For the last two hours I have tried to talk to you but you will not listen. You will listen now.”

“I have a great deal on my mind, Nico. I have no time—”

“You will make time now, or I will stop the car and get out.”

“You’ll
what
? How dare you?”

“It is not such a dare, signora. I simply tell the driver to stop, and if he does not, I will force him to.”

“You are an insolent child.… Very well, I will listen to you.”

“I told you, I spoke to Angelina—”

“Yes, yes, I heard you. The actors are on strike in California and she is flying home tomorrow.”

“She’s flying into Washington first, and we shall meet at two o’clock in the afternoon at National Airport.”

“It’s out of the question,” said Bajaratt firmly. “I have plans for tomorrow.”