Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Winter

The funny part-and he had to suppress an almost hysterical laugh-was that what he’d initially thought of as the most dangerous part of the night was still ahead.

T he signal was a ribbon tied on a lamppost near the steps, indicating a pickup. Good old Shaefer, he thought. The dead drop was under a bench in the amphitheatre in Pechersk Landscape Park near the river. It was after eleven and the paths were deserted, although fartsovchiki drug dealers were known to do business in the park at night. Scorpion waited in the shadows. It was snowing heavily. At the top of the snow-covered slope, the gold-domed Pecherska Lavra Monastery, a Kyiv landmark, was illuminated by floodlights. He untied the ribbon and let the night breeze carry it away.

From where he stood he could see the giant Rodina Mat statue of the Motherland, defending her country with a sword. Facing east, his apartment concierge had joked-the joke being that although built by the Soviets, she was looking east as if to defend Ukraine against Russia instead of against the Nazis. He studied the footprints in the snow by the bench. The falling snow would fill them in. That was good. It would fill in his footprints as well.

He watched the shadows around the amphitheatre area. It looked clear to approach, but still he waited, shivering inside his overcoat. His meeting with Mogilenko had accomplished one thing. It confirmed that the assassination plot was real. Mogilenko hadn’t been surprised. That meant he already knew about it, probably either from Cherkesov’s people or the SVR.

Assumption: Cherkesov had probably hired Syndikat and Kemo goons to break up the Kozhanovskiy rally. Second assumption: Mogilenko knew about the plot but had questions. That’s why he had agreed to meet with him. If that was true, it meant Mogilenko and the Ukrainian mafia knew about it, but they hadn’t been contracted to do it themselves or they would have wanted to keep him alive, to either find out what he knew or use him to play one side against the other. Although, Scorpion had to admit, it was all speculation; there were a hell of a lot of ifs.

Checking the shadows one last time, he walked to the first bench near the steps and felt underneath for something buried in the ground. He had to pull off his gloves to feel through the snow and the frozen ground. The cold was intense; the snow burned his fingers. Maybe it wasn’t there, he thought as he dug for it. Then his fingers touched something: a metal ring. He pulled hard, yanking out a wedge-shaped box-called a “spike”-buried in the snow-covered ground.

He rubbed his frozen hands to warm them, then opened the spike. Inside was a Glock 9 x 19mm pistol, four standard seventeen-round magazines and four thirty-two-round extended clips, cell phones, SIM cards, bugs, a button spy video camcorder, NSA software on a flash drive, and other equipment. It was good to have a decent weapon again, he thought, loading and checking the Glock. When he was done, he put his gloves back on, forced the spike back into the ground under the bench, spread snow over it and left.

He headed up the hill past the church. It was too late for the Metro to be running, so he walked until he caught a late night mashrutka minibus on Povstannya. It was nearly empty and smelled of cigarettes and wet clothes. As the minibus moved through the snowy street, he thought about his next move. The obvious candidate for someone with a motive to get rid of Cherkesov was his opponent, Kozhanovskiy, but all the information about a plot had come to the billionaire, Akhnetzov, from the SVR; and if his assumption was right, had been transmitted to Mogilenko from the same source.

Scorpion’s eyes began to close. He was tired and jet-lagged, but soon the SVR and the SBU would find out he was in the game. The best time to hit the SVR was now, before they were aware of him. The problem was, how to do it without getting killed?

Shevchenkivskyi

Kyiv, Ukraine

The apartment was on the fourth floor of a Soviet-style building near the Golden Gate, the thousand-year-old stone gateway of ancient Kyiv. Scorpion studied the facade from a doorway across the street. There were no exterior security cameras or alarms. The street was empty and white with snow. He could hear it crunch underfoot as he crossed to the building. Using a Peterson universal key with a tap from the Glock, he opened the outer door lock and stepped inside.

The hallway was dark. It smelled of cigarette smoke and fried onions. Somebody had made varenyky- dumplings-he thought, taking out a pocket LED flashlight. As he made his way up the stairs to the fourth floor, the building was silent, and in the light of the flashlight cold enough to see his breath. He paused on the fourth floor landing and peered into the hallway.

A security camera was hidden in a wall lamp mounted near Gabrilov’s apartment, positioned to cover the area in front of the door. It looked like a simple single-channel model. Standard SVR offsite, he thought, then approached from the side away from where the camera was aimed. He used the screwdriver of his Swiss Army knife to disable the channel so it wouldn’t record or set off an alarm.

That done, he checked the door for alarms, but couldn’t see any. He didn’t expect Gabrilov to be home. He had called the Russian embassy earlier in the day to confirm that there was a reception that evening to promote a new Russian film. There would be bigwigs and the Russian stars of the movie, and as a cultural attache, Gabrilov would have to be there as well. Just to make sure, Scorpion knocked, waited, then put his ear to the door. There was no sound, only a midnight silence. It only took a few seconds with the Peterson key to open it.

The living room was sparsely finished. Just a sofa, a table with a half-empty bottle of horilka, and a TV. The apartment smelled of pipe tobacco. He tiptoed to the bedroom door and opened it. The bed was unmade and empty. Using the flashlight, he checked the tiny kitchen and bathroom and a second bedroom. There was nothing of interest except for a laptop computer and a telephone on a table against the wall.

Scorpion turned the computer on, went back to the living room, took off the wall outlet cover and put in an electronic bug. Then he went back to the laptop and, using a flash drive, installed untraceable NSA software that would forward everything on Gabrilov’s computer to NSA receivers in Fort Meade, Maryland, and from there to a server he could access with his laptop. He heard a dog bark and froze. The sound came from somewhere outside. Another building, he thought. He turned the computer off and, using the knife screwdriver, unscrewed the base of the phone and put in another bug.

Just then he heard voices and the sound of a key in the lock. He had only seconds. A man was talking to a woman, and as the door opened, he just managed to duck behind the door in the tiny bathroom. He waited there in the darkness, smelling the bad plumbing, the Glock in his hand. He was hoping neither of them came into the bathroom, but if one of them did, he’d have no choice but to confront Gabrilov right then. They were talking. The woman said something about horilka and money. He’s got a whore, Scorpion thought, listening to the clink of glass and a bottle and Gabrilov toasting, “Budmo!”

Through a crack between the door and the jamb, he saw the woman in the dim light on her knees in front of Gabrilov, his pants around his ankles. She was a buxom blonde, and after a minute she stood up and they went into the bedroom. Scorpion waited till he heard the bed creaking and the sound of heavy breathing.

Gabrilov had left his pants on the living room floor. He fished in the pockets and found the man’s cell phone. He input the number into his own cell phone, then replaced Gabrilov’s SIM card with a NSA-modified SIM. Waiting for a moment when he could hear the blonde moaning like it was worth extra, he opened the door carefully and left the apartment. In the hallway, he reconnected the security camera, and in less than a minute was down the stairs and outside the building.