Scorpion Winter (13 page)

Chapter Twenty-One

Desnianskyi

Kyiv, Ukraine

T
hat afternoon, they watched television and made love. The apartment was on the tenth floor. It was small, with only a few pieces of furniture, and had a view of the street below. Their next door neighbor, Pani Pugach, a short, round woman in a housedress, came over to introduce herself. She chatted with Iryna about the building, gossiping about the other tenants as Scorpion sat at the kitchen table with his laptop computer. He let Iryna do the talking, saying only,
“Dobry den,”
Good day, when Pani Pugach came in and
“Buvay,”
So long, when she left.

“She told me where the local Furshet supermarket is,” Iryna told him. “I can go shop, and when I come back, I'll make us borscht.”

The male announcer on TV started talking very loudly. The screen showed Russian troops marching, followed by a man in a suit speaking at a press conference. Scorpion recognized him immediately. Brabov, the Russian president.

“What's he saying?” he asked Iryna.

“He's demanding an end to the crisis. He says Russian lives are being threatened. He says that Russia will take over as much of Ukraine as necessary in order to ensure the safety of ethnic Russians.” She looked at Scorpion. “It's what we feared.”

“Wait,” he said, indicating the TV. It had switched to a conference going on in Brussels. Scorpion couldn't understand the commentary and could only catch a word or two of the news ticker on the bottom of the screen:
NATO V STANI KRYZY. KOZHANOVSKIY:
“
VIYNA YDE.
” “What's it say?” he asked.

“NATO in crisis,” she read. “It quotes Kozhanovskiy: ‘War is imminent.' I've got to talk to Viktor.”

“Wait till I get you a new identity,” Scorpion said.

“I can't. Things are moving too fast.”

“Listen, they're not kidding around. The ones who set us up are safer if you're dead. Then the only one putting out a story is them.”

“I know,” she said, “pulling on her coat, wig, and Ushanka fur hat. “I'll call Viktor from the Furshet store. I'll be back.”

“Be careful,” he said when she headed out.

While she was gone, he tried to think it through. The only way for him and Iryna was to find who killed Cherkesov and why. The key was that so far everything had come from or through the SVR agent, Gabrilov. Even though Scorpion didn't think Gabrilov knew about his taps, somehow Gabrilov had set up Pyatov as a red herring and he and Iryna as the fall guys. The whole thing had SVR fingerprints all over it, he thought grimly.

Assumption: the Russians wanted to invade and were using Cherkesov's assassination as an excuse. But why? What were they after? Somehow the answer involved the Chinese. The Lianhuay China Trading Company could be a front for the Guoanbu Second Bureau, the Chinese CIA. But what the hell did they have to do with this? What did China want in Ukraine?

He shaved, trimming his stubble to form a mustache—another little something to change the image—and got dressed. He was getting antsy. What was taking Iryna so long?

He took out the Glock, took it apart, cleaned and loaded it and did the same with the SR-1 Gyurza. He was just finishing up when Iryna came back from shopping. She looked frightened.

“I think I was followed,” she said.

Scorpion went to the door, Glock in hand.

“Who was it?”

“A man. He wore a black parka and a wool cap. I had a sense someone was following me when I left the building, but I didn't see anyone. But when I left the supermarket, he was behind me. I went up a side street and came back on the other side just to make sure. He stayed with me. This stupid wig isn't working!” she said, pulling off her blond curls and throwing it on the table.

“It's not the wig,” Scorpion said. “Did he follow you into the building?” he asked, pressing his ear against the apartment door.

“I don't think so. He was across the street when I came in.”

Scorpion stood beside the window.

“Come here,” he said. “Peek out just for a second, then duck back. Tell me if you see him or anybody in the street watching the building.”

She came over beside him, peeked out and ducked back.

“No. No one,” she said. He could feel her body trembling against his. He wished he could tell her it was going to be all right, but it wasn't.

He got his minibinoculars. Checking the angle of the light coming from outside to make sure they wouldn't reflect, he peeked out from behind the curtain. The sky was leaden gray. There were no reflections and he didn't see anything in the street or in the windows of buildings. Then he spotted it. A break in the roofline of the building across the street. The silhouette of something, someone.

“Shit,” he said, pulling back and closing the curtain. “They know we're here. We've got to get out now. Pull your things together.”

“It's my fault,” she said, getting her carry-on. “I'm no good at this.”

“It's not the wig and it's not your fault,” Scorpion said, throwing his things into a backpack. “Until a few hours ago even we didn't know we were going to be in this building in this
raion
. They were already on to us.”

“How could they be?”

“Only two ways. You used your cell phone to call Viktor. It was the first time you used it, so they weren't tracking you, but ten-to-one they were tapping his phone. Once you called, they could've GPS-tracked your cell. That's not Syndikat
blatnoi
. Those are pros. The second explanation is even simpler.”

She stopped for a moment.

“The building manager,” she said, talking about the fat man with a wheeze who couldn't take his eyes off her chest when they rented the apartment. “He seemed shifty to me. I don't think he believed our story.”

“Not for a minute,” Scorpion said, grabbing his pack and jacket. “My screwup. Between your chest and the money, I thought it would hold him. Either that or everybody's favorite busybody, dear old Pani Pugach. Too bad I don't have time to deal with either of them.”

Iryna packed her carry-on and zipped it up. She put on her outerwear, wig, and Ushanka hat.

“Give me the cell phone you used to call Kozhanovskiy,” he said, holding out his hand.

She gave it to him, and making sure it was on, he put it in a kitchen drawer.

“Now what?” she asked, watching him go to the door, the Gyurza with its silencer in his hand.

“We leave. How do you say ‘Come here' in Ukrainian?”

“Idy syudy.”

“I'll go first. You stay back but follow close enough to hear me. If I shout, ‘Nadia,' come fast. If I shout,
‘Idy syudy!'
do the exact opposite. Run back to the apartment, lock yourself in, call Kozhanovskiy to come with his bodyguards and get you.”

“You're scaring me,” she said.

“Good. It's about time you understood what game you're in. Ready?”

She took a breath.

“What about the TV?” The TV was still on. It was a soap opera about an upper-middle-class Kyiv family. The wife had been kidnapped by her evil identical twin sister.

“Leave it on.” He put his finger to his lips, cracked the door open and stepped into the hallway, looking both ways, ready to fire. The hallway was empty. He listened at the door to Pani Pugach's apartment and moved on. He checked the stairway in both directions, up and down. It looked clear.

He went back to the elevator, pushed the button, took Iryna's hand and led her to the staircase. He told her to wait on the landing till he called her with one of the signals, then walked down slowly, pivoting at each landing, Gyurza ready to fire.

Just as Scorpion approached the landing of the fourth floor, two men came up the stairs from below, one of them in the black jacket and wool cap described by Iryna. They all saw each other at the same time. As they started to point their guns at him, he fired twice, hitting the first man in the head, the second—the one in the wool cap—in the shoulder. The man in the wool cap managed to fire twice as Scorpion leaped down to the landing, the bullets just missing, ricocheting off the metal stairs. He tripped as he landed, dropping the Gyurza. The man in the wool cap kicked the Gyurza away and aimed his own pistol. He smiled, showing broken teeth.

He was still smiling as Scorpion ripped his Glock from its holster at the small of his back and fired into the center of his forehead. The door to the landing opened then, and another man was on him, using a Russian Sambo kick to his middle along with a forearm that knocked the Glock from Scorpion's hand. He was a big man, broad as he was high, and looked as strong as an ox.

Scorpion bounced off the wall to close in, using a CQC strike and parry combination with a leg sweep that took the big man down. He broke the man's nose with an upward palm smash and put a guillotine choke hold around his massive neck, using the crook of his elbow and forearm to cut off the flow of blood through the carotid artery to the brain. The big man struggled violently, repeatedly slamming Scorpion back against the wall. He groped for Scorpion's eyes with his sausagelike fingers. Scorpion barely held on, his ribs and back feeling like he'd been hit with a sledgehammer. He grabbed his wrist to tighten his grip around the man's neck and pulled up with all his strength.

The man slammed him again, knocking the wind out of him. All Scorpion could do was hang on, desperately squeezing his neck. Then all at once his efforts succeeded. The man went limp, falling back, a dead weight on top of him. Scorpion kept the choke hold tight another thirty seconds till he was sure the man was dead.

He squeezed out from under the massive body and, staggering, retrieved the Glock and the Gyurza pistols from the stairs. A woman with a little boy, who had no doubt heard the shots, peeked at him from the landing above.

“Ischezni!”
he snapped at her in Russian. Beat it. She and the boy disappeared.

“Nadia! Nadia!” he called up to the landing above, and after a moment he heard Iryna's footsteps on the stairs. He went through the dead men's pockets. They carried cell phones and ammo clips, but none of them had ID of any kind. Even the labels from their shirts and jackets had been removed.

“Christ,” he said to himself as Iryna knelt beside him.

“What is it?” she asked.

“They have no ID,” he said as they went quickly down the stairs toward the back exit he had checked out when they first moved in.

“So they're not
politsiy
or
militsiyu
.”

“Or Syndikat
blatnoi
. The thugs have to carry ID in case they get stopped by the cops.”

“So who are they?”

“Can't you guess?” he said, pausing at the back door. He cracked it open and peered out at an alleyway piled with snow and trash. He scanned the roofline for snipers. It looked clear. They probably figured three men inside plus the front covered and the element of surprise was more than enough to arrest a man and a woman.

“SBU,” she said.

“Probably,” he nodded. “Let's go!”

They ran out the door into the alley, slipping in the snow, its surface black with dirt. Scorpion went ahead toward the corner. Iryna followed, her carry-on balanced on her head like an African woman. Scorpion stopped at the corner and, motioning her to keep back, lay down in the snow. With Iryna behind him, breathing hard, he edged forward, peeked around the corner and ducked back.

He stood up and brushed the snow off. “It looks clear, but they'll be waiting to hear from their men inside. We won't have much time.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Wait here. Keep out of sight. When you hear a car horn, run toward it and get in. If you hear shooting, go out in the street and run the other way.”

“How will you get a car?” she asked, but Scorpion was already walking quickly down the street path in the snow, his backpack over his shoulder. As soon as he was sure no one was watching, he slipped the Glock into his overcoat pocket.

He spotted a Lada sedan parked by the curb. After trying the driver's door and finding it locked, he knelt in the street. He didn't want to smash the car window. There was always the chance of an alarm, and driving in this cold with an open window was not only uncomfortable, it would attract attention. He fished in his backpack for his lock kit, pulled out the Peterson universal key and within seconds opened the car door and got in. Using the kit's cylinder extractor, he pulled the cylinder from the car's ignition switch and started the engine with a jiggle of the Peterson key, then unlocked the doors and honked the horn for Iryna.

As he turned the wheel, ready to pull out, he saw her in the rearview mirror, pulling her carry-on toward him through the snow. She was bending over to see which car he was in and he honked again. He felt for the Glock as the seconds ticked by. The rear door opened and she tossed her carry-on in back. As she got in beside him, he spotted two men in the side mirror coming out of the alley.

They saw Iryna get into the car and started running toward them. Before she even closed the door, Scorpion pulled away, the tires slipping on snow and ice. He swerved the Lada into the street and heard shots behind them as he accelerated, skidding, toward the corner. He made a sharp turn, cutting off a snow-covered van, and cut into the lane of cars moving on a wide street thick with slush churned by the traffic.

“Now what?” she breathed.

“Where's the nearest Metro?”

“I'm not sure. I'm a Right Bank girl. Probably Lisova,” she said, looking back. To their left was a lake or inlet of the Dnieper, the ice frozen solid, and in the distance tall apartment blocks. “I've never even been in this part of Kyiv before.”

“We have to get rid of the car,” he said. “They're probably already calling in a description to the
politsiy
. We don't have much time. What did Kozhanovskiy say?”