Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Winter

“Let’s just say a source.”

“What source?”

“Sorry.” He shook his head. “Do you have any comment?”

“It’s a lie. You can’t print that. Barely a week before the election. It would destroy us.”

“It would help,” he said, “if you told me what you knew.”

“Is this coming from the Cherkesov campaign? It’s a plant. Surely you can see that?”

“It’s not coming from your opponents. Is it true?”

She got up from the desk.

“Who’s saying this? Tell me.”

It’s you, he thought. Because eight minutes after he had left the Russian embassy, Gabrilov had made a call on his cell phone that, thanks to the SIM he had replaced in Gabrilov’s cell phone and the software on his laptop, had enabled the NSA to track it to a cell phone registered in her name.

“Suppose I said it was another country that was the source?”

“Who, the Russians? It’s the SVR, isn’t it? Only a fool would believe anything from them,” she said, exhaling a stream of cigarette smoke. “The Russians want Cherkesov to win. They’ll say or do anything.”

“Normally I would agree. Except, one,” he held up a finger, “it’s my job to check it out, and two,” holding up a second finger, “turns out they got it from you.”

“From me? What are you talking about?”

“From a cell phone that belongs to you.”

“That’s impossible! Besides, there are at least a hundred cell phones registered in my name. I bought them for the campaign.”

“What about this one?” Scorpion said, holding up his cell with the number Gabrilov had called displayed on the screen.

Iryna peered intently at it.

“It can’t be,” she said, brushing her hair away from her face. “It’s Alyona, one of my aides.” She looked at him curiously. “How did you get this?”

“How I got it is my business. Is it true?”

“You can’t print this. It’ll kill us,” she said, coming closer. He could smell her perfume. Hermes 24 Faubourg, he thought; hints of orange and jasmine, vanilla and sex.

“It’s my job; providing I can confirm it,” he said.

“You don’t get it, do you?” She shook her head. “If Cherkesov takes power, you think it’ll be like Democrats and Republicans in America? We’ll just call each other nasty names and try to screw each other? If Cherkesov wins, you think he’ll leave us around to oppose him?”

“Sounds like a pretty good motive for murder to me,” Scorpion said, watching her closely.

She stubbed her cigarette out in an ashtray on the desk and looked out the window. “All right, how much?” she said.

“Don’t,” he said sharply, getting up. “I’m not a whore. Don’t play me like one.”

“I’m sorry,” looking straight at him. “Neither am I-despite being a politician,” she said with a wry smile. “What can I do?”

“Tell the truth. Help me get to the bottom of this. For instance, this Alyona. Did you know she was in contact with the SVR?”

Iryna shook her head. “I’ve known her since she was a girl in senior school. She came to work for me as an intern. What you say she’s doing; it’s not possible.”

“You’d be surprised what people will do,” Scorpion said. “I’ve seen them betray their country, husbands, wives, everything they believe in. They do it for love, money, sex, revenge, sometimes out of sheer boredom.”

“Not Alyona,” Iryna said, getting her cell phone out of her handbag. “She’s a serious girl, an artist. She believes in what we’re doing.”

Scorpion grimaced. “So you say. Look, I need to talk to her. Where is she?”

Iryna dialed her cell phone and after a moment said something rapidly in Ukrainian. She listened, then clicked off and looked at Scorpion.

“That’s odd. She was supposed to be in our Saksaganskogo office today. No one seems to know where she is. I should call her fiance. She’s engaged,” she said, a flicker of a smile lighting her face.

Her male aide walked in then and they spoke in Ukrainian. He handed her a sheaf of papers, pointing at something. She looked at Scorpion.

“We have new numbers,” she explained. “Thirty-four percent for Kozhanovskiy in Kharkov.”

“Doesn’t sound so good.”

“It’s not bad,” she said. “Kharkov is a Cherkesov stronghold. Another minute, Slavo,” she told the aide in English. He glanced curiously at Scorpion as he left.

“Alyona. I need to talk to her. Now,” Scorpion said.

Iryna looked at him as though trying to decide something.

“So how do we do this?” she asked.

“For the moment, I’ll hold off. There’s no story till I find out what’s going on. I’ll keep you as background. An unnamed source. But from now on we stay in touch,” he said, pulling on his jacket.

The male aide, Slavo, had come back. He stood in the door and pointed to his watch. “Iryna, bud’laska, ” he said, in accented English. “Viktor Ivanovych is waiting. We must go.” Scorpion assumed he was referring to Kozhanovskiy. She nodded and waited. After a moment, he left.

“All right,” she said. “Meet me tonight. Call me,” writing her cell number on a slip of paper and giving it to him. She started to go, leaving behind a lingering scent of Hermes, then stopped at the door. She had an odd look on her face. “Cherkesov has a big rally in Dnipropetrovsk tomorrow night,” she said. “It would be the perfect place.”

“You mean for the assassination?”

“Yes,” she said, and was gone.

Andriyivsky Uzviz

Kyiv, Ukraine

A sign with the silhouette of a black cat hung above the door of the Chorna Kishka Theatre Cafe on Andriyivsky Uzviz, a cobblestone pedestrian street winding steeply up the hill from Kontraktova Square. A poster in the cafe window advertised a play with a cubistlike drawing of a clown’s face dripping blood, as if it had been drawn by an untalented Picasso. There were few people out. It was very cold; the wind blowing traces of snow across the cobblestones, the sky steel-gray and promising more snow. Scorpion hunched inside his overcoat and went inside.

The cafe was nearly empty. Half the space was taken up by rows of folding chairs fronting a small stage. There were photos with the names of the actors in the play on the wall next to the bar. On one side of the stage hung an odd-looking puppet. It looked like a fairy-tale woodsman holding an ax. A young man sat at the bar, reading a paperback and nursing a beer, ignoring the nearly silent TV on the wall. A waitress in jeans came over. She was young, thin, her short reddish hair streaked with blue, metal studs in her nose and upper lip. Her photo was one of those hung by the bar.

“Yestli u vas menyu?” Scorpion said, asking in Russian for a menu.

“We got borscht,” she said in a thickly accented English.

“What else?”

“Borscht is good,” she said.

“I’ll have the borscht and an Obolon,” Scorpion said.

A few minutes later she brought him a steaming bowl of soup with a dollop of sour cream, some garlicky pampushkamy rolls, and a bottle of Obolon beer.

“Kak vas zavut?” he asked her in Russian as he started to eat. What’s your name?

“Ekaterina,” she said, turning back toward him, one hand on a bony hip.

“Are you an actress?” indicating the photos on the wall.

“Why? You want to put me on the televidenie?” she smirked. “I’ve heard this story before, krasivyi. ”

“I’m looking for Alyona Kushnir,” he said. “I’m told she’s an actress in the play.”

The young man sitting at the bar stopped reading his paperback and turned to look at him. “What you want with Alyona?” he asked in clumsy English, putting down the book.