Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Winter

They didn’t speak inside the minibus; anyone could have heard them. A man next to Scorpion was reading a Kyivsky Telegraf, and though he couldn’t read the Ukrainian headlines, he was stunned by the prominently displayed photos of Iryna and him, side by side. His photo was taken from the Canadian passport, which had been scanned at the airport when he first entered the country. He coughed and used his gloved hand to cover his mouth and nose. The noose around them was being drawn tighter and tighter.

The mashrutka stopped by the entrance to the Metro. They got off along with the other passengers, taking the escalator down to the station platform. It was the first chance they had to talk.

Before Scorpion could speak, Iryna said, “I know. I saw the photos in the paper. Now what?”

“After tonight, you’ll have a different identity and it’ll be harder to track us.”

“How?”

“I’ll take care of it. You stay out of it.”

“Because it’s dangerous?”

He didn’t answer.

“Those men, three of them. You killed them,” she said, taking his arm and leaning close so he could hear her as the train approached.

“Yes,” he said.

“It was the way you did it. Just like that,” snapping her fingers.

“What about it?”

“Good,” she said.

Nyvky

Kyiv, Ukraine

It took Scorpion less than an hour to find the podlog. He’d simply hailed a taxi and told the driver to take him to a late night club that was “pryvatnyy,” private, and “ne dlya turistov,” not for tourists.

“This is not club for you, pane. No turistiv. Bad people,” the taxi driver said.

“That’s the kind I’m looking for. Peryeiti,” Scorpion had told him. Go.

The taxi took him to a hole-in-the-wall club called the Crocodile. It was in a square building on a hill in the Verkhny Gorod, near the Golden Gate museum. Once inside, Scorpion told the first prostitute who approached him what he wanted. In exchange for a thousand hryvnia slipped into her cleavage, she came back with a slip of paper with the address of a counterfeiter, a podlog, that she said was named Matviy, who did fake identity cards. He left the club and took the Metro to the Tarasa Shevchenka station in the Podil district, then walked down to a warehouse area near the river.

The street was dark, icy, traffic lights swaying in the wind. He passed an open lot where a shadowy red-lit shape moved on the snow; a group of street boys huddled around a trashcan fire. They spotted Scorpion, ran toward him, knives glittering from the streetlights, and surrounded him. Their clothes were ragged, their dirty faces looking hungry, almost feral, but they scattered like wolves when he showed them the Glock. He waited till they were gone before finding the address of a small storefront with apartments above.

The shop was locked, dark, but there were lights in the frost-covered windows of the apartment above. Scorpion pounded on the shop door until a voice from upstairs finally yelled out, “Khto tse?”

“ Ya ishchu Matviy,” Scorpion shouted up in Russian. I’m looking for Matviy. He pounded on the door again. “It is cold. Open up!”

“Ischezni!” the voice said. Go away.

He pounded even harder then, and began kicking the door. A minute later a light came on in the shop.

“Dosyt!” he heard someone grumble. Enough.

The door opened, and without waiting, Scorpion shoved his way inside.

Matviy was a small, stoop-shouldered man in an old sweater. He looked at Scorpion and motioned him to follow. They went into a small workshop at the back lit by a single hanging lightbulb. Scorpion showed the podlog what he wanted.

He watched Matviy download the two photos of Iryna, one in the blond wig, one in the pixie cut, from his cell phone camera to Matviy’s computer. Although the stoop-shouldered man didn’t say anything, Scorpion was certain that despite the change in appearance in the photos, he recognized Iryna. Just to be safe, while he worked, Scorpion planted a bug near the back of the computer. Twenty minutes later Matviy handed over two new Ukrainian posidchenaya osoby identity cards for Iryna: as a blonde, she was Valentyna Khodyneva; as a dark-haired pixie, she was Nadiya Zhdanova. Scorpion watched as Matviy deleted the images from his computer.

“These don’t exist,” he said in Russian as he paid Matviy. “She does not exist. I do not exist.”

“ Pazhalusta, this is my business. No one will ever know,” Matviy replied.

“You do not want me to come back,” Scorpion said, then left.

He walked around the corner of the building and waited, putting an earplugged Bluetooth to his cell phone set to the bug he had planted at the back of Matviy’s computer. A moment later he heard Matviy make a phone call. Although Scorpion couldn’t understand the Ukrainian, it was enough. Dammit! he thought. He went back to the shop, opened the door with his Peterson key and burst in on Matviy, who turned toward him, cell phone in hand.

Matviy’s eyes opened wide. He dropped the phone and tried to run, but Scorpion tripped him, then went back and hung up the phone. He took out the Glock and Matviy stared at it.

“ Ya govoryu, prezhde, I said before you don’t want to see me again,” Scorpion said, motioning Matviy to sit with his hands on the worktable. Matviy came and sat hesitantly down. Holding the Glock to his head with his left hand, Scorpion picked up a microscope he had spotted earlier, probably used for fine detail work, and smashed the base of the microscope down on Matviy’s index finger, breaking it. Matviy cried out.

“Zatknis!” Scorpion hissed. Shut up. He jammed the muzzle of the Glock hard against Matviy’s head, then smashed the microscope down twice more till the index finger was a bloody pulp. Matviy moaned but didn’t cry out.

“If I have to come back again…” Scorpion said in Russian as he headed for the door, not finishing the sentence. The look in Matviy’s eyes made clear he didn’t have to.

S corpion wasn’t sure what to do next. He needed more information on the Lianhuay company, but didn’t want to risk using WiFi for the Internet. There was always a chance someone was scanning, and there were too many people chasing him. He walked toward the Metro and took it back to the Internet cafe on Prospekt Chokolovsky. Finding an open computer, he looked up the Lianhuay Trading Company. There wasn’t much.

The company, headquartered in Shanghai, produced light and heavy machinery. Lianhuay’s local Kyiv office was headed by Li Qiang, a graduate of Tsinghua University in Beijing with a Masters in Economics from USC. There was a photograph of Li Qiang, a thin Chinese man with glasses. There was something about him that, as Rabinowich would have said, wasn’t kosher. What was it? He was looking at the entry, knowing it had to be there, but didn’t see it. Then he read the brief description on the company’s web page again and had it.

Tsinghua was one of the best universities in China, equivalent to a top Ivy like Harvard or Princeton. So why would the Lianhuay company’s managers post an up-and-comer like Li Qiang to such a minor market for China as Ukraine? Not to mention his masters from USC, which meant Li spoke English. He was someone the Chinese would want to post to San Francisco or New York or London. Having Li Qiang in Kyiv was like having Einstein work as a high school teacher. Unless he was Guoanbu, the Chinese CIA, in which case the Lianhuay company was a front. But Gabrilov was SVR. The Guoanbu and the SVR were mortal enemies. So if Gabrilov regularly called Li Qiang, the real question was, who was running whom?

Were the Chinese running Gabrilov or the other way around? And what the hell did this have to do with assassinations and a crisis in Europe?