Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Winter

“You can do that? Change your identity like that?” snapping her fingers. “Gospadi!”

“You’d better hurry,” he said, checking the mirrors to make sure no one could see. “We’re going to have to move any second.”

“I’m scared,” she said, her eyes wide.

“I know,” he replied, motioning for her to get in back.

She opened the passenger door and got out. A moment later he heard the rear passenger door open and close. There was the sound of rustling as she got under the blanket, then nothing. He glanced back. She was hidden. The truck in front of him began to move, and he eased the BMW forward. His pulse began to race. In his left hand he had his South African passport, in his right, close to his body so it couldn’t be seen by someone looking in, the Glock and five hundred hryvnia, about sixty dollars. Not too much, not too little, for a highway bribe.

He thought about his cover. Downside, he couldn’t disguise that he was a foreigner. Upside, he’d come up with a cover reason to be going to Zaporozhye. The politsiy were looking for two people, not one, so if they didn’t inspect the car, he was okay. Also, they would be looking for them to be heading north, to Kyiv, not south, to Zaporozhye. He didn’t want to think about what would happen if it didn’t work. If they decided to inspect the car and found Iryna, they were as good as dead.

A politseysky policeman bundled against the cold motioned him forward. A second politseysky came around to the passenger side window and peered in. Scorpion rolled down his window. A blast of frigid wind blew snow into the car.

The politseysky said something in Ukrainian. Scorpion smiled and shrugged as if to say he didn’t understand.

“Ya iz Yuzhnoi Afriki,” I am from South Africa, he said in Russian, handing politseysky the passport.

“Why are you going to Zaporozhye?” the man replied in Russian.

“I go see women,” Scorpion said. In his searches on the Internet, he had found it was almost impossible to look up anything on Ukraine without being hit with ads from Ukrainian dating sites for women seeking foreign men. It seemed plausible, he thought. Only a fool hot for finding women would drive at night through the snow to an industrial city like Zaporozhye.

The politseysky smirked and said something to his partner about Scorpion being a bolvan, a dumb jerk. The partner laughed. The politseysky looked at Scorpion’s photo on the passport, comparing it to his face, then said something in Russian too fast for Scorpion to catch.

“Chto? Ya ne ponimayu,” Scorpion said. What? I don’t understand.

“Vyidite iz avtomobilya,” the politseysky said, motioning for him to get out of the car.

Scorpion’s hand passed the money to his left hand and tightened on the Glock. Although it was dark, if he got out they might spot the blood on his jacket. They might inspect the car. He wasn’t going to get out.

“Vyidite iz avtomobilya!” the politseysky repeated. His partner rapped on the window with a 9mm pistol, indicating that Scorpion should get out.

“Listen, drooh,” Scorpion said in English. “I got a date. Beautiful girl, krasivaya devushka,” making a motion for sex with his left hand, the one with the money. “Pazhalusta, ” he said, Please, and passed the money to the politseysky. The politseysky looked at it, then slid it into his coat pocket. He looked at Scorpion, didn’t say anything, then motioned for him to get out of the car.

Scorpion took a deep breath and stayed seated, his hand tightening on the Glock. He doesn’t want to shoot you, he told himself. Yeah, tell that to him. He knew a shoot-out would be a disaster. He let go of the Glock. Instead, he took out his money and handed the politseysky another five hundred hryvnia.

“Make sexy with Ukraine girls,” the politseysky said, grinning all at once and making a vulgar gesture for intercourse as he took the money. His partner laughed. The politseysky made the gesture again and waved him on. Scorpion put the BMW into gear and drove, forcing himself to breathe normally.

He drove for ten minutes, checking the rearview mirror every few seconds to make sure they weren’t being followed. The highway had been cleared by snowplows, two lanes in each direction, but the snow was making it harder and cutting down the visibility. Because of the roadblock and the weather, there was hardly any traffic.

He pulled off to the side of the road at a spot where the snow didn’t appear too deep and looked around. Except for the highway in his headlights, it was almost impossible to see anything. The land was flat and empty, covered with drifts of snow, the occasional light from a farmhouse gleaming in the darkness like a star. He opened the back door and told Iryna to come back up front. She threw off the blanket and climbed back into the passenger seat. It only took a few seconds, and then they were driving again, the BMW fishtailing till Scorpion got it under control as he pulled back onto the icy highway.

They listened to the news on the car radio. Gorobets, speaking for the Cherkesov campaign, accused the Kozhanovskiy campaign of assassinating Cherkesov and of the massacre at the stadium. Kozhanovskiy denied the charges, but Russian president Evgeni Brabov called the assassination an outrage and threatened that Russia would not stand idly by while innocent Russian-speaking civilians were threatened by a “Kozhanovskiy coup” and “genocide.”

Ukrainian interim President Lavro Davydenko, called for calm and ordered militsiyu police to patrol the streets. The foreigner wanted by the police-a Canadian journalist named Michael Kilbane-and Kozhanovskiy aide Iryna Mikhailivna Shevchenko were considered fugitives. The authorities were moving to charge them in the stadium murders. The politsiy announced they were to be considered armed and dangerous.

Scorpion turned off the radio. The only sound was of the snow tires on the highway.

“I should have listened to you,” Iryna said. “I shouldn’t have come.”

“We got lucky just now,” meaning at the checkpoint. “The good thing about a corrupt country is you can buy anything, even the cops. Especially the cops.”

“Now what?” she asked.

“We have to get back to Kyiv.”

“So why are we going south, to Zaporozhye? Kyiv’s the other way.”

“It’s four hundred kilometers to Kyiv. We’d never make it by road, even if it doesn’t get shut down by the snow. The airports, trains, all public transport will be watched. By this time the militsiyu has locked Dnipropetrovsk down tight as a drum. They’re probably going through every hotel room and apartment rental in the city right now. Not to mention we’ve got the politsiy, the SBU, the Syndikat, probably the SVR and God knows who the hell else after us. Oh, and did I forget to mention I’m with the most recognizable woman in the country?”

“I’ll turn myself in. I’ll tell them you were just trying to save me. Oddly enough, that’s the truth, isn’t it?” she said, looking at him.

“Too late. They’d never let you talk to the press. They’d torture you till you swore you and Kozhanovskiy were behind every assassination in history including Kennedy.”

“So we go south to Zaporozhye because they won’t expect it,” she said, taking a deep breath.

“Plus it’s got an airport. It’s only seventy kilometers. We’ll be there in about forty minutes to an hour, even in this weather. I thought I could get through before they put up roadblocks, but now that we’re through, it’s even better. They won’t be looking for us there.”

“So we get to Zaporozhye. Then what?”

“We go to Kyiv and find out who was really behind Cherkesov’s killing,” he said. “It’s our only chance.”

“What about the election? The Russians?”