Scorpion Betrayal Read Free Page B

crane was moving another container, gleaming in the hot sun, from the ship to the dock. Three loaders were working farther down the dock. The two dockworkers were walking toward their forklifts, the way clear except for a ship’s crew member near the top of the gangway, resting a handheld scanner on the rail. No one was loitering or doing anything out of the ordinary.
    Scorpion crumpled the can and tossed it in a trash bin. He walked across the wharf, climbed the gangway and stopped at the top to show his ID badge, which he had just gotten that morning. The crew member, a young Malay, checked his face against the photo on the ID, scanned the ID bar code, and let him aboard.
    He opened a heavy outer door, closed it behind him, and instead of going down toward the hold as a dockworker might be expected to do, went up the stairs toward the crew deck. He studied a cross-section map of the ship posted near the compartment door, then went up another deck and entered the officers’ and passenger deck quarters. At the last passenger cabin on the port side, he knocked twice and went in.
    Bob Harris stood in a two-handed stance, pointing a Navy SEAL standard-issue SIG Sauer 9mm at his chest. He wore shorts and a T-shirt, one of the rare times Scorpion had ever seen him not in a suit.
    â€œPut it away. You’ll hurt yourself,” he said.
    â€œYou’re right. I haven’t touched one of these since CST training.” Harris nodded and put the gun down on the table in the small cabin.
    Instead of sitting, Scorpion started checking the bulkheads and closet for bugs.
    â€œIt’s clean,” Harris said. “I had NSA Dubai sweep it twice, before and after I came on board last night.”
    Scorpion ignored him and continued checking the cabin, running his fingers along the edge of the windows and under all the ledges. Harris watched for a moment, then opened the small refrigerator under the TV counter, popped the tops on two Beck’s and handed one to Scorpion. Then he turned on the MP3 player loud enough to drown out any possible eavesdropping with Bruce Springsteen.
    The two men sat face-to-face, knees almost touching in the cramped quarters, and leaned close so they could whisper to each other. Harris tilted his bottle to Scorpion and swallowed. He’s trying to do it by the book, Scorpion thought. Harris was the CIA’s National Clandestine Service deputy director, and it had been years since he was in the field. For him to have flown halfway around the world to take a last minute meeting outside a safe house and try to act like an ops officer meant that all hell had broken loose.
    â€œYou’ve heard about the Budawi killing in Cairo?” Harris asked.
    â€œThere was something on the Pakistani TV. What about it?”
    â€œBudawi was probably the most closely guarded man in Egypt, maybe one of the best guarded anywhere. His death has set off alarms in every capital in the world. The Egyptians locked up the entire country tighter than a gnat’s asshole. They’ve sweated every informer they ever had—or will have at the rate they’re going.”
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œNothing. Nada. They’ve come up empty. We’ve come up empty. MI-6, the BND, the Israelis…” Harris shrugged. “Nothing. Every intelligence service on earth’s come up zero.”
    â€œOr so they say,” Scorpion said carefully. The last time he had worked with Harris was on the attempted coup in Arabia, and whatever there was between them, trust wasn’t any part of it. The only time Harris ever told the truth, went the saying around Langley, was when he thought no one would believe him. “What’s this about? You think the hitter’s in Pakistan?”
    â€œListen,” Harris said, touching an icon on his cell phone screen, then handed Scorpion a plug-in earpiece. “The second voice is General Budawi.”
    â€œA demonstration. Multiple demonstrations.