Scorpion Winter (16 page)

“Then have a nice day,” Scorpion replied, getting up.

“You'll call me?” Li said.

“If anyone shows up except Gabrilov, Yang Hao won't protect you.”

“He always has,” Li said.

“Wait ten minutes, then leave,” Scorpion said, and left.

Li's last remark had forced his hand. He went out to the Jacuzzi area and found his way to the rear exit, first checking Room 16 to make sure Ruslan had gone. It was empty.

He stepped outside into an alley, heaped with snow, crunched through it and peeked around the corner, looking for Li Qiang's car. He spotted an Audi parked down the street, smoke coming from its tailpipe. It had to be Yang Hao, he thought, with the engine running to keep himself from freezing in the bitter cold.

He figured Yang Hao would be watching the spa's front door and, if he was good, the side mirror as well for anyone coming up behind the car. He wouldn't be looking for anyone coming on the passenger side from across the street. Scorpion stepped out of the alley, pulled up his overcoat collar and adjusted a scarf across the lower part of his face. Keeping to the shadows, he walked in the opposite direction, away from the Audi, till he was out of sight. Then he crossed the icy street and headed back. This late, after midnight on a weeknight in the dead of winter, there was no traffic.

He checked the Gyurza pistol with the silencer, to make sure the safety was off and ready to fire, and approached the Audi from behind on the opposite side of the street, keeping the gun shielded by his body from anyone in the car. When he was almost parallel with the car, he cut across the icy street. He saw the silhouette of a man sitting behind the wheel. The man was watching the Congo spa's front door, the sound of the radio playing Russian hip hop coming from inside the car.

Stepping up to the passenger side, Scorpion fired three times through the window.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Babi Yar

Kyiv, Ukraine

T
he hotel was out from the center of the city, near the Dorohozhichi Metro station. It was across the street from a wooded park, covered with bare trees and snow and dominated by a giant TV tower as tall as the Empire State Building. Coming out of the Metro, Scorpion saw a strange bronze statue at the edge of the park. It was of a child standing beside a seated child with the head of a bird. Another statue, a massive sculpture of twisted figures, stood farther back in the snow closer to the woods. The park was dark, silent in the night, and looming above it was the TV tower. When Scorpion checked in, he asked the hotel clerk about it.

“Is Babi Yar,” said the clerk, who acted like he had been asked about it many times and was in any case more interested in the two hundred
hryvnia
Scorpion gave him to not ask for ID.

“What's Babi Yar?”

“Place where Germans kill Jews in Great Patriotic War.”

“Were many killed?”

“I don't know.” The clerk shrugged. “Many thousands. All Jews in Kyiv,” drawing a finger across his throat. “Nazis kill Ukraintsi too, but all anyone care about is Jews,” slapping the room key on the counter and turning away.

Scorpion went up to the seventh floor in the elevator, then walked down the stairs to the sixth, where his room was. He peered out at the empty hallway and went quickly to his room. He had booked adjacent rooms in case Gabrilov didn't come alone. Always a possibility with the SVR, especially after what he had done to Yang Hao. He'd had no choice, he thought. It was essential that he, not Li Qiang, was driving things, and that Li Qiang understood that.

Walking by the park on the way to the hotel he had heard from Iryna. A text message on the cell phone he had in sync with hers telling him it was urgent she see him. It was followed by a second text indicating an address, with, as he had instructed her, the numbers transposed by one, so 2 became 3, 3 became 4, and so on. Things were coming to a head. He had texted back:
c u. late
.

He checked that both hotel rooms were empty. In the room he'd had Li Qiang arrange for the RDV, he unlocked the window, checking the distance to the window of the room next door. There was no ledge, but it was only about a meter away. He looked around to get the lay of the room, knocking on the wall for the best spot to listen. He left, then, locking the door behind him, and went into the room next door.

He opened his pack and got ready. He readied plastic ties that he kept coiled inside a Band-Aid kit and a roll of duct tape he never went anywhere without. He got a glass out of the bathroom and put it next to the wall, then took out his Glock, attached the sound suppresser and snapped off the safety. He had already gotten rid of the Gyurza pistol after terminating Yang Hao, taking it apart and wiping each part clean of fingerprints before dropping pieces of it in various sewer openings on the way to the Metro. Having used the Gyurza in the Mercedes in Kyiv and on Yang Hao; it was past time to get rid of it. The Glock tied him to the shoot-out at Stadion Dnipro, but once he found the real assassin, he would get rid of that too. He got ready by the door, peering through the peephole.

Then, before he saw them, he heard them coming, men speaking Russian. Gabrilov appeared with two men in black jackets, both carrying guns. Even though Li Qiang was supposed to have told him to come alone, the meeting was enough out of the ordinary that Gabrilov was afraid to take chances. Unless they were there because Gabrilov had found out about Yang Hao.

Gabrilov knocked on the door of the room where the RDV with Li Qiang was supposed to take place, then flattened himself out of the way against the wall, while his SVR bodyguards aimed at the door. When there was no response, he handed them the key and they went inside with a show of force, aiming their guns. A minute later, having found it empty, the two men came out of the room. One positioned himself in the hallway by the elevator; the other peered out from behind the staircase door.

Scorpion put the glass to the wall and listened. There was nothing, only the sounds of Gabrilov moving around, sitting down. Time to go, he thought, slinging his pack over one shoulder, going to the window and opening it. Icy air instantly poured into the room.

He stepped out, squatting onto the windowsill, fingers gripping the lintel. He tried not to look down at the street, six stories below. Pressing against the side of the building, he reached the toes of his left foot to the next door windowsill. It was longer than he had thought. He was about three inches short, would have to push off with a small leap and grab onto the next window's lintel, hoping he didn't make any noise. It was freezing cold. The alternative, he thought, was to have a shoot-out with the SVR guns in the hallway. Not for the first time, he thought about getting into a different line of work. Then he thought about what might happen if he didn't stop the Russian invasion.

He took a breath and half swung, half leaped, across to the other window. The front of his foot landed on the sill as he grabbed for the lintel. For an instant his fingers slipped and he felt himself falling, but managed to grab and hold on by his fingertips. Squatting, he looked into the room. Gabrilov was looking at the door. Scorpion raised the window up in a sudden move and aimed the Glock at Gabrilov who, hearing the sound, had turned around, his eyes wide.

“Zatknis!”
Scorpion hissed in Russian. Shut up! He motioned with the Glock for Gabrilov to raise his hands. Gabrilov started to say something. Scorpion shook his head no. He pulled the window the rest of the way up and stepped into the room.

“Close the window,” Scorpion told him in English, frisking him as he went by. Gabrilov closed the window and turned around.

“You!” Gabrilov said, his eyes narrowing.

“Call your man by the elevator with your cell phone. Tell him to come in. You need help with something. Remember,
Ya govoryu na russkom.
” I speak Russian.

“You speak
govno
shit Russian.”

“True, but if you say the wrong thing, I'll kill you.”

Scorpion could see Gabrilov calculating, his eyes darting. He was putting it together, realizing that he had gotten to Li Qiang.

“What is it you want?” Gabrilov said.

“Call your man,” Scorpion said, coming close and touching the silencer muzzle to his head. Gabrilov took out his cell phone and called him.

A moment later there were two knocks on the door, followed by two more knocks. Scorpion moved beside the door and nodded to Gabrilov, who came and opened the door.

“Ostorozhna!”
Gabrilov cried out. Look out! But it was too late. Scorpion had put the Glock to the SVR man's head while grabbing the man's pistol with his other hand and twisting it out of his grip. He kicked the door closed and pushed his knees against the back of the knees of the SVR man in front of him, forcing his legs to buckle. He pushed the man facedown to the floor.

“Ne dvigat'sya.”
Don't move, he told the SVR man, glancing at Gabrilov, who started to back away. The look in Scorpion's eyes stopped him. Covering both of them with the Glock, Scorpion grabbed his pack, took out the plastic ties and, using one hand, tied the SVR man's feet together and his hands behind him. Then he got up, Gabrilov's eyes never leaving him.

“You shouldn't have done that,” Scorpion said, twisting Gabrilov's wrist while keeping the gun to his head to force him to sit on the floor. He kicked Gabrilov's legs apart. “Remember.
Zatknis
,” he said. Shut up. Then he kicked Gabrilov between his legs as hard as he could.

“Oyyyy! Sukin-sin!”
Gabrilov moaned. You son of a bitch!

“You have no idea,” Scorpion said. He crossed back to the SVR man and duct-taped his mouth, eyes, and ears. “Call the other one,” he said.

Holding his groin with one hand, Gabrilov did as he was told. In a few minutes Scorpion had both SVR men bound, taped, and tied together, facing each other so one couldn't use his hands to try to help the other. He took Gabrilov by the arm, and after checking the hallway, walked him to the room next door, Gabrilov gasping in pain at every step. Once inside, Scorpion used another plastic cuff to tie Gabrilov's hands behind him and then propped him to sit on the floor against the bed. He sat down in a chair facing Gabrilov.

“Now we can talk,” he said.

“What you want,
zhurnalist
?” Gabrilov said, spitting out the word like an epithet.

“Who killed Cherkesov?”

Gabrilov shrugged. “How I should know?”

“Pyatov was the
bolvan—
the idiot, the decoy. You used him to set up Iryna Shevchenko and me so Kozhanovskiy would lose the election. Except it wasn't you. Russia wanted Cherkesov to be president.”

“Is maybe Kitaiskim.” Chinese.

“Get a new song. That one's getting old,” Scorpion said. “The Chinese aren't going to risk a war. Not over a pipeline that's got to go through Russia anyway. So who did it? Who had something to gain by killing Cherkesov?”

“CIA.” Gabrilov smirked. “You want assassin, look in mirror.”

Scorpion shook his head. “The Americans don't want a war in Europe any more than the Chinese.” He aimed the Glock at Gabrilov. “No more twenty questions, you
mudak
son of a bitch. Tell me or I'll kill you.”

“Even you kill, I not telling,” Gabrilov said, folding his arms over his chest.

“Not even when I tell Yasenevo about the money the Guoanbu's been depositing in your Pravex account?”

Gabrilov stared at him. Scorpion could see his hands tremble.

“It's no longer a matter of the SVR and maybe just a bullet in the back of the head, is it? It's the FSB, you fool,” Scorpion said. He waited.
You can't just lead the Joe all the way to the Promised Land,
Koenig used to say.
When it comes time for him to drop his pants, you have to let him come to it himself. People would rather die than face who they really are.

“I not know,” Gabrilov said.

Scorpion shook his head. “No good. Everything about the assassination came from you. No matter which way I turn, the compass needle points to you.” He stood up. Time to play his hole card. “I have to end this. Do I contact Checkmate?” he asked, referring to Ivanov, the legendary spymaster of the FSB.

Scorpion waited for Gabrilov to get the picture. The FSB hated the SVR even more than they hated the CIA. He wanted Cherkesov to picture himself being questioned in Lubyanka. Especially about the money from the Chinese. From somewhere in the hotel, he heard the sound of a TV commercial, something about Obolon beer.

“What you want, mister?” Gabrilov said at last.

“No more lies. Who killed Cherkesov?”

Gabrilov licked his lips. He looked lost. “His own peoples,” he said.

“Who? What are you talking about?”

“I not sure. You will find.”

Jesus, it made sense, Scorpion thought. A power struggle within Svoboda. He was about to question Gabrilov about what the Russians really wanted when his cell phone vibrated. It was another message from Iryna.

She texted:
come now. urgent.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Darnytskyi

Kyiv, Ukraine

“W
ho's the ski jacket in the van across the street?” Scorpion asked.

“Danylo. Viktor sent him to—” Iryna started, but couldn't finish because they were kissing, tongues searching, exploring, tearing off their clothes as if it were the first time; if anything, more intense. Bittersweet too, as if they sensed their time together was coming to an end. Afterward, in bed, she lit a cigarette and told him more.

“You heard there was a riot in the Verkhovna Rada? Anyway, it's settled. The elections will be postponed for three weeks. It hasn't been made public yet, but Svoboda is going to announce that Lavro Davydenko will be the party's new candidate for President.”

“Who's Davydenko?”

“A nobody. A nonentity. He's the kind of man that when he enters the room, you get the feeling someone just left,” she said, exhaling smoke angrily.

“Why'd they pick him?”

“He's Gorobets's man. If Gorobets sent him to fetch coffee, he'd do it. Ask him a question and he turns to Gorobets and says ‘What do you think, Oleksandr Maxymovych?' Such a man—not a man, a thing! President! Now of all times!”

“What happened?”

“Didn't you see the news? As prime minister, Viktor sent a request to NATO to stop the Russian invasion. NATO is meeting in emergency session. Viktor spoke on the phone with the American president. The Americans say they will issue a stern warning to the Russians. A stern warning!” She turned to him “The Americans. Can we trust them?”

“I wouldn't know. I don't do politics,” he hesitated. “Then too . . .”

“Then too what?”

“America has its own interests to look out for.”

She stubbed out her cigarette in a jar top she was using as an ashtray.

“I smoke too much.”

“You do,” he said.

She turned to him on her side, her naked breast nudging his arm.

“Did you find out anything?”

“It's not the Guoanbu. The Chinese made a show of interest in the new gas pipeline to distract the Russians from what they really want: new markets and gas for China.”

“So who killed Cherkesov? The CIA?”

“That's what the SVR is trying to sell. Except you and I both know it's not true.”

She traced her finger down his face from his forehead down his nose and lips to his chin.

“How do I know?”

“You were with me,” he said. “It was an inside job. A power play inside Svoboda. So we just need to figure who stood to gain from Cherkesov's death.”

“Gorobets! He's the big winner, especially if that clown, Davydenko, wins! He'll be running the country. We'll denounce him!” She sat up excitedly.

“Right now everyone, including the
politsiy,
thinks we're the killers. We need proof. We need the bomber.” He looked at her. “What was so urgent that you texted me?”

“I heard from Oksana.”

“Your mole in Gorobets's office?”

Iryna nodded. “She said something. Gorobets has a bodyguard. Big guy with scruffy blond hair in his eyes.”

“Shelayev.” Scorpion nodded. The guy who crushed heads like eggshells. “What about him?”

“She said she hasn't seen him since the assassination. No one seems to know where he is, or if they do, they're not saying.” She looked at Scorpion, her face with its pixie haircut barely visible in the darkness. “Could he be the assassin?”

“He's Gorobets's man. And he's Spetsnaz-trained. Possible, very possible.”

“She said something else. It bothered me. That's why I had to see you.”

“What?”

“She said that two days before the rally in Dnipropetrovsk she went to a café near the university here in Kyiv. She saw Shelayev having coffee with Alyona.”

Scorpion sat up suddenly and slapped his forehead. “What an idiot! How stupid of me not to have seen it!” He looked at Iryna. “Did they see her?”

“She didn't think so. She hasn't told anyone.”

Scorpion gripped her shoulder. “You have to get hold of her! Tell her not to say a word to anyone. If she says anything, she'll be killed. And especially nothing about Shelayev.”

Iryna nodded. Scorpion got up and walked naked to the window. They were on the twelfth floor of a Left Bank apartment building that overlooked a bridge over the Dnieper, the lights from the bridge reflected on the ice in the river. The van with Danylo was still parked on the street below. Something about it bothered him, but he wasn't sure what. He turned and looked at her.

“Where did she live, Alyona?”

“You know. The apartment near the Central Station.”

“No, before then. Maybe with her parents or something. If she were in trouble, where would she go?”

“Her father died. Her mother came from Bila Tserkva, I think.
Gospadi
, you don't think she's alive?”

“Very unlikely. But whatever happened, she's at the center of this thing,” Scorpion said, grabbing his clothes and starting to dress.

“What are we going to do?”

“When we get there, we'll figure it out,” he said, turning on his laptop computer.

He gave her the new identity cards he'd had Matviy make for her, one with the blond wig photo, the second with her pixie haircut.

“How'd you get these?” she asked, studying the names she would be using.

“Santa Claus. Shit!” he said, looking at the laptop screen after he had clicked onto the BBC's news.bbc.co.uk website.

“What is it?” she said.

“Have a look.” He turned the screen for her to see. There had been a shooting incident involving Russian troops at a border village called Vovchansk, near the city of Kharkov in eastern Ukraine. The headline was that Viktor Kozhanovskiy, acting as prime minister, was expected to announce a full mobilization of the Ukrainian Armed Forces at 0600 hours local time.

“Gospadi,”
she whispered. “It's really happening. What will NATO and the Americans do?”

Scorpion didn't answer. He went back to the window and peered down from behind the curtain. The van was still there, no smoke coming from its exhaust. If Danylo had been sitting in it through the night, he would have frozen to death. An SUV was double-parked behind the van. As he watched, he saw five men crossing the street toward their building. He began grabbing things and shoving them into his backpack.

“We have to go,” he said.

This time she didn't say a word. She immediately began cramming things into her carry-on. He went into the kitchen and rummaged like a madman through the pantry and under the sink, throwing contents and cans onto the floor. He found a bag of flour and two aerosol cans of cleaning spray. He came back to the main room, dumped the flour out of the bag onto the sagging sofa and tossed the cans on top.

“Do you have any fluids? Perfume, nail polish, hair spray, anything?” he asked her.

“Here. Why?” she said, digging in her handbag. She handed him a bottle of eau de cologne and another of nail polish remover. He poured them both over the sofa, the cans and the flour. He went back to the kitchen, turned on the gas in the oven but didn't light it, and left the oven door open.

“Give me your lighter,” he said, shoving her toward the door. She handed it to him, her hand shaking.

“Do you ever leave an apartment normally?” she asked.

“Apparently not in Ukraine,” he said, flicking the lighter and holding the flame to the drapes. When they started burning, he put the lighter flame to the spilled perfume and nail polish remover on the sofa. An acrid cloud of flame and smoke mushroomed up.

“How do you say ‘fire' in Ukrainian?” he asked as they headed out of the apartment.

“Pozhezha.”

“Come on,” he said, heading to the next apartment. He started pounding on the door and yelling,
“Pozhezha! Pozhezha!”
then ran to the next apartment and shouted and pounded again.

Iryna ran the other way to another apartment, shouting,
“Pozhezha! Dopomozhit!”
Fire! Help!

They ran past the elevator. It was coming up. As it did they shouted and pounded on other apartment doors on the floor. People, most in pajamas or half dressed, were coming out of their doors. They could smell smoke in the hallway. Scorpion spotted tendrils of smoke coming from the bottom and sides of their apartment door. Men, women, children, everyone began shouting, screaming, and rushing out of their apartments and into the halls.

Scorpion grabbed Iryna's hand and led her toward the staircase. Suddenly, a massive explosion rocked the hallway. It blasted the door off their apartment, lifting them off their feet and knocking them to the floor. A whoosh of flame shot out of the blasted doorway into the hall. People screamed in panic. Everyone began running.

“
Zabyraysya!
” Get out! “Down the stairs! Hurry!” Iryna screamed in Ukrainian as she and Scorpion joined a cluster of people pounding down the staircase. On the floor below, she and Scorpion ran out to the hallway. They pounded on doors and shouted again, and when they got back to the staircase, a river of people were scrambling down.

Scorpion spotted two men, one with a prison cross tattoo on the side of his neck, trying to come up the stairs. The two men were swamped by the people swarming down, and after a moment of trying to go against the tide hearing the cries of
“Pozhezha!”
they gave up and joined the flood of people running down the stairs. Scorpion and Iryna were swept with the crowd out into the frozen street.

Iryna spotted the van. She started toward it, but Scorpion grabbed her arm and pulled her away. She struggled, trying to go back.

“I have to see Danylo. Make sure he's all right.”

“He's dead. Come on,” he said, pulling her with him.

“How do you know?”

“Because he's dead,” Scorpion snapped. They walked quickly away from the van toward the street corner. She started to look back.

“Don't,” he said, pulling on her arm to keep her walking with him. The prison tattoo was a dead giveaway, he thought. The men after them were Syndikat
blatnoi.
Mogilenko's thugs. He should have taken care of Mogilenko before. The question was, how did they find them? How did they know about the apartment? And how did they know about Danylo? As they turned the corner, Scorpion spotted a man getting into a small Skoda sedan.

“Call him. Tell him we need a lift. We'll pay him,” he told Iryna.

“Probachte! Pryvit!”
Excuse me! Hello! she called out, waving to the man, who just looked at her.

“Anything else, your highness?” she whispered to Scorpion.

“Smile,” he said.

For a hundred
hryvnia
the man agreed to take them to Tolstoho Square. Within minutes they were driving across the bridge Scorpion had looked down on from the apartment window. A pale sun, pale as the moon, cast a cold light on the frozen river. The man tried to talk to Iryna, but she answered in monosyllables. They drove through traffic. The man dropped them off near the Metro entrance on the museum side of the square. They waited till he drove off, then began walking.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“We need a car. I looked it up before. There's a car rental agency on
vulytsya
Pushkinska.”

“I can't keep doing this,” she said. For a moment she stood there, trembling.

“No,” he said.

T
hey spotted the car agency on the ground floor of an office building. Scorpion used his South African passport and driver's license in the name Peter Reinert to rent a four-wheel-drive Volkswagen Touareg SUV.

While they waited for the car, Iryna took off her Ushanka hat and he saw she was in her pixie cut; she hadn't had time to put on the blond wig. Scorpion was instantly on guard, but no one seemed to recognize her. After the rental agent programmed the GPS, they drove the Volkswagen into traffic.

“What's the best way to Bila Tserkva?” he asked.

“Go left, there,” she said, pointing. “We need to get to the M5 going south.”

“How far?”

“Eighty kilometers, give or take,” she said.

A few minutes later she had input the town into the GPS and they were getting directions from it in Russian. Scorpion turned onto a wide street that had been cleared of snow.

“Feel better?” he asked.

She didn't answer. She stared straight ahead. They were driving on a boulevard with a broad divider lined with bare trees and with trees along both sides. Not for the first time, it occurred to Scorpion that in summer, Ukraine would be beautiful. He glanced at the rearview mirror. So far there was no sign of a tail.

“Are you sure Danylo's dead?” she asked.

“Pretty sure,” he nodded. It was next to impossible that the Syndikat
blatnoi
knew about the apartment and not about the van. He hadn't wanted to go near it not only because they needed to get away, but also because he didn't want Iryna to see would likely be left of Danylo inside the van.

“I don't understand,” she said, looking at him. “Who were they?”

“Mogilenko is a sociopath,” he said.

“Mogilenko?”

“Head of the Syndikat, the mafia. His
shpana
did it. They were the ones after us.”

“Tell me, do you always make everyone so angry with you?”

“It's a gift,” he said, and in spite of herself, she almost laughed.

“Impossible man,” she muttered.

“Besides Danylo, who else knew about us and that apartment?” he asked.

“Viktor, of course.” She turned to him. “You don't think . . . ?”

“What does Viktor gain if you die?”

“Nothing. He loses the support of women—and also those who remember my father. Without my father and the Rukh, this country would have never achieved independence. Not Viktor,” she said.