“How did the Sûreté and the Company suddenly get involved? I mean, she’s cute, but nobody’s that pretty.”

“Her daddy is Congressman Max Ormont, the oil millionaire. He’s a member of the Republican National Committee.” Harris winked.

“How do you know she didn’t run off for a dirty weekend on the Cote d’Azur?”

“She was snatched,” Harris said with finality.

“Political?”

Harris shook his head. “It looks like white slavery.”

The Scorpion whistled silently to himself. Now he knew why Harris needed him. Arabia was his personal briarpatch and that’s where the biggest market was for white females. But it was also a dead end, because the one sure way to get Arabs to kill you was to go around trying to sniff out their womenfolk.

“How good is the data, Bob?” the Scorpion asked.

Harris looked insulted and turned his profile to the Scorpion to show how bravely he could suffer. In a way, a pique was justifiable, the Scorpion mused. In theory, any data passed from a senior case officer to a field agent was supposed to be sacrosanct. They might—and usually did—withhold a lot, but what they gave you was supposed to be good. Except that he had known men to die in the gap between theory and practice. When Harris looked back at him, a hard glint had come into his eyes.

“Don’t worry about the data. This is straight from the Sûreté and we independently confirmed. It’s got the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.”

“Oh sure, Grade A. Just like Warsaw,” the Scorpion shrugged.

Harris winced at that one. He had been in Warsaw when the Company had paid thirty thousand dollars for the latest Soviet military plan on Poland; except that the report turned out to be a rewrite of an article in Le Figaro. Then he leaned forward and the Scorpion saw that the flush in his face was anger, not embarrassment. His naked fury surprised the Scorpion. Harris was a born actor. Normally, he held his real emotions like a miser, carefully doling them out like coins.

“Do you want the guns, or don’t you?” Harris said through gritted teeth.

The Scorpion nodded. As Sergeant Walker used to say in his easy Georgia drawl, “They got you by the short and curlies, boy. Y’all can’t complain about the price when it’s the only store in town.” Harris leaned back and smiled, back in control again. That was the way he liked it.