Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Betrayal

“I don’t trust you that much. You are not called ‘Scorpion’ for nothing,” Ivanov said, placing three clips of ammunition on the desk.

T he coffee shop in the Vladimirsky Mall looked for all the world like a Russian Starbucks, even to the oval green sign. From behind a pillar on the second floor, Scorpion watched Prosviyenko sit down at an outer table. From a distance, Scorpion couldn’t be sure, but he had to assume the reporter was wired. After twenty minutes Prosviyenko glanced at his watch, got up and started to walk to the mall exit. Scorpion waited to make sure he was alone, then bumped him from behind and said, “Izvinitye,” and then in English as he passed, “Meet me in the men’s toilet.”

As soon as Prosviyenko entered the bathroom, Scorpion told him to empty his pockets and open his shirt. Scorpion remembered Koenig telling him that local reporters who knew their beats could be invaluable sources of information, but you had to be careful they didn’t make you the story.

“Is this necessary?” Prosviyenko said, keeping his hands in his pockets. He was tall, fair-haired, with the jeans-and-tweed-jacket look of a young professor. A man came out of a stall and looked at the two men, then went to the basin to wash his hands.

“I need to know if you’re wired.”

“Suppose I don’t want to open my shirt?”

“Da svidaniya,” goodbye, Scorpion said, and started to walk out.

“You said you had a story,” Prosviyenko called out.

“There’s no story. I just want some information and I’m willing to pay for it. Say five thousand rubles for a few minutes, ten thousand, if it’s worth my time.” Scorpion wasn’t sure how much local print reporters made, but it couldn’t be that much.

“Ten thousand?” Prosviyenko said. He emptied his pockets and opened his shirt, letting Scorpion pat him down. The man washing his hands made a face as he watched them in the mirror, his expression suggesting he thought they were fairies, then he went out. “Do we do it here?”

“There’s a pub on the third floor. Meet me,” Scorpion said, and walked out. Five minutes later they were sitting opposite each other, Scorpion facing the concourse to make sure no one was paying attention to them.

“You mentioned money,” Prosviyenko said after the waitress brought them bottles of Baltika beer.

“I did,” Scorpion said, and reaching over to shake Prosviyenko’s hand, pressed the folded-up rubles into his hand.

“What do you want to talk about?”

“I saw in the Saint Petersburg Times where you covered a story on corruption in the port, only you were careful not to name names.”

Prosviyenko put down his bottle of Baltika. “You know what means ‘zamochit’?”

“You mean, to kill?”

“It means literally to piss on someone. Among the blatnoi — the criminals-it means, yes, to kill. Don’t think I didn’t get little anonymous phone calls even when I didn’t name names. Here.” He put the five thousand rubles on the table. “Take it back. You don’t know who you are dealing with.”

“Keep the money. I just need to ask you a question. You decide if you want to answer. You know the port?”

“Which one?”

“Ekateringofskiy Basin.” There were three separate ports in the Saint Petersburg complex on the Gulf of Finland, west of the city. Scorpion had checked with the port before the FSB picked him up. The Shiraz Se had berthed at the Ekateringofskiy wharves and left port yesterday. With the hotel concierge’s help, he’d hired a Russian temporary secretary and had her contact all the funeral homes in Saint Petersburg. There was nothing about a Pyotr Escher or a body having been brought in by anyone named Escher to any funeral home in Saint Petersburg during the past week. Nor were there any hotels or apartments for rent where a Brynna Escher had registered. He didn’t tell the secretary about the name Kafoury, because he didn’t want the FSB to get it. Both Najla and the coffin had disappeared as soon as she left Pulkovo Airport. The only lead he had left was the port. “Suppose I had some contraband, something serious I had to get through customs and out of the port. Who would I need to talk to?”

“Drugs? There are plenty of fartsovchiki. The city is full of them.”

“Something bigger, more difficult. I need someone who can get things done, someone with real blat,” meaning connections.

Prosviyenko leaned closer. “You mean the Tambov mafia? Listen, mister. This is not tourist Russia we’re talking about. If you want to die, there are better ways to do it than to deal with Tambov.”

“Who’s the boss, the pakhan? Who do I need to talk to?”

“You mean Vasiliev? Everyone knows of Kiril Andreyevitch Vasiliev. You don’t have to pay me for that, mister. But no one gets to see him, understand? If half the stories about him are true, believe me, you don’t want to see him.”

“Where would I find him or someone close to him?”

“Listen, this is crazy. What is this about?”

“I’m looking for someone. A woman who may have asked the same questions.”

“You care for this woman?” Prosviyenko asked. Scorpion nodded, thinking that ironically enough, it was true. “Try the Dacha Club on the Nevsky Prospekt,” he said. “Go after eleven. Pozhalsta, don’t mention my name.”

“Spasiba,” thanks, Scorpion said, passing the additional five thousand rubles to him on the tabletop. The reporter put his hand on it and slipped it into his pocket.

“Don’t thank me. Believe me, telling you about Vasiliev, I didn’t do you any favors. So there’s no story, just you looking for a woman who is a smuggler?”

Scorpion hesitated. “It’s complicated.”

“With women, what isn’t?” Prosviyenko shrugged. “Fsyevo kharoshiva!” Good luck! “Listen, there are many beautiful women at the Dacha. Maybe you will see her, maybe someone else. Sooner or later everyone goes there.”

T he bar in the Astoria was leather and glass, subdued lights reflecting off drinks, expensive-looking women in designer dresses perched on stools, looking for business. One of them, a pretty blonde in her early twenties, kept looking over at Scorpion until finally he shook his head no and she shrugged and smiled as if to say, “You can’t blame a girl for trying.” He sent the waiter over to tell her he was buying her a drink but that he wasn’t available. When the waiter told her, she raised her glass to him.

Cheers! she mouthed.

Za Vas! he mouthed back, raising his glass. He watched the rain streak the window in the gray twilight. It wasn’t close enough to summer for the White Nights, when it barely got dark, but it was late enough in spring so that although it was ten in the evening, it was still light outside. He sat sipping Stolichnaya Elit over ice and tried to work it out. He badly needed to talk to Rabinowich.

In the taxi on his way to meet the secretary he had hired, he tried calling him, but the cell phone number had been disconnected. At the secretary’s office he’d tried to track the transmission center from which Rabinowich’s last call had originated, the one he got in Frankfurt, but the best he could do was to be told that the message had been sent from somewhere in the Middle East. Perhaps Rabinowich had gone to Egypt, where the operation started, or else Israel. If it was Israel, was the Mossad involved? That was assuming that he had gone to the Middle East instead of Hawaii, or hadn’t just turned in the SIM on a disposable phone.

What was Rabinowich trying to tell him about the Twelfth Imam? If the Iranians wanted to attack through a proxy, why against Russia, Hezbollah and Iran’s supplier? Unless Russia had reneged on a deal. Suppose the twenty-one kilos hadn’t been stolen. What if it had been made to look stolen to cover Russia’s dealings with Iran, and suppose it wasn’t supposed to be twenty-one kilos of U-235 but fifty or a hundred kilos, or a plutonium plant or S-300 missiles, or God knew what, and the Russians had reneged on the deal? What then? The Iranian Revolutionary Guards were like any other strong-arm outfit. They couldn’t allow themselves to be cheated. They’d have to send a message. That was a possibility, he thought. That Hassani was the diversion, Najla, the enforcer.