Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Winter

He turned on the desk computer, plugging his NSA drive into a USB port. The NSA software automatically figured out how to log itself into any computer with administrator privileges. It also scanned the password files for account passwords and provided English translation on the fly for all major languages, including Mandarin. While the software was running, he checked the desk drawers. In one of them he found a Chinese M-77B 9mm pistol, checked to see if it was loaded and put it back. He went through the rest of the drawers but found nothing of interest.

He hit the Start and the All Programs arrow and pressed the NSA Ctrl key combination for translation to English. Then he saw it. A client software program on the PC for the CCB Bank. Based in Beijing, CCB was one of the largest banks in the world.

Scorpion accessed the bank’s website with the software client, letting the NSA software provide the user ID and password. There were multiple accounts. This was going to take a while, he thought, settling down to open them one by one. Then he got lucky. In the second account he opened, he spotted an electronic bank transfer of $2,500 in U.S. dollars to an account in Pravex Bank, Kyiv. He didn’t bother with the NSA software, but letter by letter translated the Cyrillic account name. It belonged to Oleg Nikolayevich Gabrilov. He did a Find all search and saw repeated transfers to Gabrilov’s account in amounts ranging from $1,000 to $6,500 over the past two years.

Well well. Scorpion smiled to himself. The only thing better than having a potential Joe’s balls in a vise, he thought, was getting proof he was being paid by the wrong people.

After copying the files to the plug-in drive, he shut down the computer. Before leaving, he used an antiseptic wipe to clean everything he had touched and then rearmed the security camera. Ten minutes later he was out on the snowy street on his way to the Nyvky Metro station.

So it looked like Gabrilov was Li Qiang’s double agent in the SVR. It wasn’t about politics. It was about money. Natural gas. Maybe if he could produce the real assassin, he and Iryna would be off the hook. Maybe.

The street was cold and empty and he shivered inside his coat. Not far from the Metro station he saw an open cafe, stepped inside and ordered chorna kava, black coffee, piping hot, and gulped it down. The TV on the wall behind the counter showed a press conference going on in Washington. The President of the United States was speaking. He was warning Russia not to invade Ukraine. As a precautionary measure, he announced that he had ordered the Joint Chiefs of Staff to raise the level of American military readiness to DEFCON 2, the second highest level before war.

Scorpion put down his coffee and went back outside, walking as fast as he could to the Metro.

He was running out of time.

Shulyavska

Kyiv, Ukraine

She was beautiful, blond, and sexy in a tight red dress cut low to reveal perfect cleavage. She was singing Madonna’s “Take a Bow” in a throaty contralto, stage lights gliding across her body, and she almost had you going, except that she was a man.

“Razve chto Ruslan?” Scorpion asked the waiter in Russian. Is that Ruslan?

“ On nazyvaet sebya Svetlana, ” the waiter said. He calls himself Svetlana.

“Can you bring her over?” Scorpion asked, holding out two one-hundred hryven bills.

“Konechno.” Sure. “You got good taste,” the waiter said, taking the money.

Scorpion was sitting in the shadows, in an alcove with a plush sofa and a view of the stage. The club was chrome and black, cigarette smoke spiraling in colored lights, and filled with gay men and a few lesbian couples. A few minutes after her set, the waiter, smirking, brought Svetlana over to his table.

She looked at Scorpion, smiled, and sat next to him, motioning for the waiter to stay.

“Kupitmne champanskogo, dorogoi,” she said, squeezing Scorpion’s thigh. Buy me champagne, darling.

“Skolka?” Scorpion asked. How much?

“Twelve hundred,” the waiter said. About $150.

Scorpion nodded. Svetlana looked triumphantly at the waiter, who grinned and left.

“Do you speak English?” Scorpion asked.

“Little only, dorogoi,” Svetlana said, groping up Scorpion’s thigh toward his groin till he stopped her.

“Let’s talk first,” he said.

“ Konechno, dorogoi. After champanskogo, we go VIP room,” Svetlana said, indicating a room with вип in red neon over the door. “You will like me, I promise,” she whispered in his ear.

“You will like me better,” Scorpion said, showing her a stack of large hryven notes.

Svetlana took his hand and started to pull him up.

“Forget champanskogo and fuck me now,” she said.

Scorpion pulled her back down.

“What about your droog?” Your boyfriend.

“What boyfriend?” looking at him suspiciously.

“Your Chinese droog, Li Qiang.”

“What is this?” she said, exhaling smoke.

“I need to talk to Li Qiang. No trouble, just business.”

“So go his office. Don’t come sex me. Make trouble,” she said, staring glumly at the stage, where a drag queen pulled up her plaid schoolgirl-style skirt and wiggled her behind at the audience to laughs and scattered applause.

“I need to see him alone. Without his bodyguard,” Scorpion said.

“Why?”

“You don’t understand. He doesn’t have to be afraid of me. I am afraid of his bodyguard, Yang.”

“Ne svisti.” Don’t lie. “You not type guy who is afraid,” she said, putting the cigarettes back in her purse and starting to get up. “I not like.”

Scorpion grabbed her wrist and pulled her back. He put a stack of money on the sofa and held her hand on top so she could feel it.

“You really like him that much?” he asked.

“He okay,” she shrugged. “To tell truth,” looking at Scorpion, “he kind of lokh, understand?” Russian slang for a mark, a sucker. She wrinkled her nose as if smelling something bad. “I get bored. China men not so big where is important, understand?”

“Help me tonight, I’ll give you ten thousand. Half now,” Scorpion said, removing her hand and counting it out. “No trouble, I promise.”

She took the money and smiled.

“You look big enough,” she said, exhaling a thin stream of smoke at him.

“Not for you,” he said, putting the rest of the money away. “Like I said, this is business, rodimy.”

He waited while Ruslan went back and changed. When Ruslan came out looking like a man, they took a taxi to the massage parlor on Berezhanskaya. Without the makeup and the wig, Ruslan was a young man, handsome enough to be a model, and it was easy to see how he made such a good-looking woman.

They drove down the hill toward the Shulyavska neighborhood, the streets wet with slush, overhead power lines sagging with snow. On the way, Ruslan called Li Qiang on his cell phone. Following Scorpion’s instructions, Ruslan insisted they have one night that was just the two of them, without having Yang Hao waiting outside the door.

“Ya hochu tebya, moi dorogoi,” Ruslan told him. I want you, my darling. “For once, the whole night, just the two of us.”

After hanging up, he said, “He’s coming.”

“What about the bodyguard?”

“Yang is staying in car. He promise not come inside.” Ruslan held out his hand. “You give rest of money, kharasho?”

“Inside,” Scorpion said.

The taxi pulled up to the massage parlor with its blue neon sign that read CONGO MASSAGE SPA in the curtained window. Scorpion paid the driver and he and Ruslan went in separately, acting as if they didn’t know each other. Ruslan got the deluxe room, number 4. He slipped the man behind the counter fifty hryvnia to let Li Qiang know where he was.