Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Winter

“And if I agree to make the call?” Li said. “Consider it professional courtesy. I’m curious myself, especially since I pay the son of a bitch.”

“Then have a nice day,” Scorpion replied, getting up.

“You’ll call me?” Li said.

“If anyone shows up except Gabrilov, Yang Hao won’t protect you.”

“He always has,” Li said.

“Wait ten minutes, then leave,” Scorpion said, and left.

Li’s last remark had forced his hand. He went out to the Jacuzzi area and found his way to the rear exit, first checking Room 16 to make sure Ruslan had gone. It was empty.

He stepped outside into an alley, heaped with snow, crunched through it and peeked around the corner, looking for Li Qiang’s car. He spotted an Audi parked down the street, smoke coming from its tailpipe. It had to be Yang Hao, he thought, with the engine running to keep himself from freezing in the bitter cold.

He figured Yang Hao would be watching the spa’s front door and, if he was good, the side mirror as well for anyone coming up behind the car. He wouldn’t be looking for anyone coming on the passenger side from across the street. Scorpion stepped out of the alley, pulled up his overcoat collar and adjusted a scarf across the lower part of his face. Keeping to the shadows, he walked in the opposite direction, away from the Audi, till he was out of sight. Then he crossed the icy street and headed back. This late, after midnight on a weeknight in the dead of winter, there was no traffic.

He checked the Gyurza pistol with the silencer, to make sure the safety was off and ready to fire, and approached the Audi from behind on the opposite side of the street, keeping the gun shielded by his body from anyone in the car. When he was almost parallel with the car, he cut across the icy street. He saw the silhouette of a man sitting behind the wheel. The man was watching the Congo spa’s front door, the sound of the radio playing Russian hip hop coming from inside the car.

Stepping up to the passenger side, Scorpion fired three times through the window.

Babi Yar

Kyiv, Ukraine

The hotel was out from the center of the city, near the Dorohozhichi Metro station. It was across the street from a wooded park, covered with bare trees and snow and dominated by a giant TV tower as tall as the Empire State Building. Coming out of the Metro, Scorpion saw a strange bronze statue at the edge of the park. It was of a child standing beside a seated child with the head of a bird. Another statue, a massive sculpture of twisted figures, stood farther back in the snow closer to the woods. The park was dark, silent in the night, and looming above it was the TV tower. When Scorpion checked in, he asked the hotel clerk about it.

“Is Babi Yar,” said the clerk, who acted like he had been asked about it many times and was in any case more interested in the two hundred hryvnia Scorpion gave him to not ask for ID.

“What’s Babi Yar?”

“Place where Germans kill Jews in Great Patriotic War.”

“Were many killed?”

“I don’t know.” The clerk shrugged. “Many thousands. All Jews in Kyiv,” drawing a finger across his throat. “Nazis kill Ukraintsi too, but all anyone care about is Jews,” slapping the room key on the counter and turning away.

Scorpion went up to the seventh floor in the elevator, then walked down the stairs to the sixth, where his room was. He peered out at the empty hallway and went quickly to his room. He had booked adjacent rooms in case Gabrilov didn’t come alone. Always a possibility with the SVR, especially after what he had done to Yang Hao. He’d had no choice, he thought. It was essential that he, not Li Qiang, was driving things, and that Li Qiang understood that.

Walking by the park on the way to the hotel he had heard from Iryna. A text message on the cell phone he had in sync with hers telling him it was urgent she see him. It was followed by a second text indicating an address, with, as he had instructed her, the numbers transposed by one, so 2 became 3, 3 became 4, and so on. Things were coming to a head. He had texted back: c u. late.

He checked that both hotel rooms were empty. In the room he’d had Li Qiang arrange for the RDV, he unlocked the window, checking the distance to the window of the room next door. There was no ledge, but it was only about a meter away. He looked around to get the lay of the room, knocking on the wall for the best spot to listen. He left, then, locking the door behind him, and went into the room next door.

He opened his pack and got ready. He readied plastic ties that he kept coiled inside a Band-Aid kit and a roll of duct tape he never went anywhere without. He got a glass out of the bathroom and put it next to the wall, then took out his Glock, attached the sound suppresser and snapped off the safety. He had already gotten rid of the Gyurza pistol after terminating Yang Hao, taking it apart and wiping each part clean of fingerprints before dropping pieces of it in various sewer openings on the way to the Metro. Having used the Gyurza in the Mercedes in Kyiv and on Yang Hao; it was past time to get rid of it. The Glock tied him to the shoot-out at Stadion Dnipro, but once he found the real assassin, he would get rid of that too. He got ready by the door, peering through the peephole.

Then, before he saw them, he heard them coming, men speaking Russian. Gabrilov appeared with two men in black jackets, both carrying guns. Even though Li Qiang was supposed to have told him to come alone, the meeting was enough out of the ordinary that Gabrilov was afraid to take chances. Unless they were there because Gabrilov had found out about Yang Hao.

Gabrilov knocked on the door of the room where the RDV with Li Qiang was supposed to take place, then flattened himself out of the way against the wall, while his SVR bodyguards aimed at the door. When there was no response, he handed them the key and they went inside with a show of force, aiming their guns. A minute later, having found it empty, the two men came out of the room. One positioned himself in the hallway by the elevator; the other peered out from behind the staircase door.

Scorpion put the glass to the wall and listened. There was nothing, only the sounds of Gabrilov moving around, sitting down. Time to go, he thought, slinging his pack over one shoulder, going to the window and opening it. Icy air instantly poured into the room.

He stepped out, squatting onto the windowsill, fingers gripping the lintel. He tried not to look down at the street, six stories below. Pressing against the side of the building, he reached the toes of his left foot to the next door windowsill. It was longer than he had thought. He was about three inches short, would have to push off with a small leap and grab onto the next window’s lintel, hoping he didn’t make any noise. It was freezing cold. The alternative, he thought, was to have a shoot-out with the SVR guns in the hallway. Not for the first time, he thought about getting into a different line of work. Then he thought about what might happen if he didn’t stop the Russian invasion.

He took a breath and half swung, half leaped, across to the other window. The front of his foot landed on the sill as he grabbed for the lintel. For an instant his fingers slipped and he felt himself falling, but managed to grab and hold on by his fingertips. Squatting, he looked into the room. Gabrilov was looking at the door. Scorpion raised the window up in a sudden move and aimed the Glock at Gabrilov who, hearing the sound, had turned around, his eyes wide.

“Zatknis!” Scorpion hissed in Russian. Shut up! He motioned with the Glock for Gabrilov to raise his hands. Gabrilov started to say something. Scorpion shook his head no. He pulled the window the rest of the way up and stepped into the room.