“Oh, I’m pretty shrewd. When I get hit in the head by a two-by-four I’m bound to take notice. Like someone with your description seen leaving Bahrain with Kelly. Another thing: ever since the well I knew there was another man in Kelly’s life. You were my control, you should’ve briefed me about it, but you didn’t. That was a very odd omission. Seeing you tell Gerard to fuck off at the party was only the final nail in the coffin. I should have caught on long before,” the Scorpion said.

“How?” Harris asked, his eyebrows raised in a quizzical manner that made the Scorpion think of an intelligent chipmunk.

“All the things I should have spotted in the first place, but was too blind and stupid to see,” the Scorpion admitted.

“You were programmed. But never mind, we all are,” Harris responded.

“First, it was an outside operation right from the beginning. The President and the DCI in Langley never knew about it, that’s why you didn’t want me to go near the CIA stations in Arabia.

“The Molotov Plan was your idea, Bob. You knew Arabia was about to explode before it happened, so you had to have a mole in the Kremlin who either knew about it or set it up himself. You could have let the Russians know the game was up before it happened through a hundred different channels, but you didn’t.

“Because you wanted it to happen, didn’t you?” the Scorpion insisted.

Harris nodded. “That’s quite a fairy tale you’re concocting. Go on.”

“But, because the director wasn’t involved, you needed someone to put his finger in the dike and make sure that the Russians wouldn’t actually pull it off. Me!” the Scorpion said, pointing at himself.

“You,” Harris agreed.

“And you had to be sure to run me yourself, so you could control the situation. So you chose Macready, knowing he would fuck it up and you’d be able to come in yourself,” the Scorpion continued.

“Poor George,” Harris said blandly, wearing an expression of mock sympathy that a politician might use at an opponent’s funeral.

“Poor George nothing! He did all right. He did so all right it almost came unstuck for you. He redeemed himself, Harris. Admit it,” the Scorpion insisted.

Harris shrugged. “You really are a rank sentimentalist, Scorpion. Forget Macready. Everyone else did. Just get on with the story.”

“The problem was how to hook me in. So you set up the perfect bait and I fell for it hook, line and sinker. The knight in shining armor charging off to rescue the fair maiden from the nasty dragon. Given my nature and what happened in Saigon, it was perfect. You must have consulted with a brilliant psychologist or something,” the Scorpion said, an edge of bitterness in his voice.

“Three psychiatrists actually,” Harris remarked drily.