Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Winter

“What happened?” Iryna said.

“I told her she should come say do pobachennya. ” Goodbye. “It is your maty. We were both crying. That’s when she said something even more strange.”

“What was it?”

“She said she couldn’t come. She was doing it for Stepan. That’s all she would say. She had to do it for Stepan. It made no sense.” She looked at Iryna and Scorpion. “Stepan is in Pavlovka.”

Scorpion was doing the arithmetic. Four nights ago was the night before Alyona disappeared. The night before Pyatov left for Dnipropetrovsk. What about her brother was so important that it forced Alyona not to come see her dying mother?

“You knew Stepan?” Scorpion asked through Iryna.

“ Tak, God help us!” Pani Shulhaska crossed herself. “A strange boy. So strange.”

“In what way?” he asked.

“The way he looks at you. Even when he was little. His eyes, like dead eyes. Like he is dead or you are dead.”

“What else?”

“He would kill things. Then he would burn them. He liked to play with fire. One day I came home from work and there were the burned remains of a cat in the snow in front of the building. I was afraid he would burn down the building. The other children were afraid of him. People used to turn away and spit when they saw him. They called him, ‘ Syn Dyyavola,’ the Son of the Devil.” She crossed herself again. “Then one day I came home early, slava Bohu! ” Thanks to God. “I smelled smoke coming from their apartment. I ran in. He had tied Alyona to the bed and set it on fire. His own sister!”

“What happened then?”

“The politsiy came. Olga Vladimyrivna, Alyona’s maty, had no choice. They sent Stepan to Pavlovka. That’s what is so strange.”

“What is?” Iryna asked.

“Alyona hated her brother. She hated and feared him. She wanted nothing to do with him. So why, when her maty is dying and trying to stay alive just to see her, would she not come because she has to do something to help Stepan? It makes no sense.”

Scorpion’s mind raced. The pani was right. It didn’t add up. And why, when Alyona was in the middle of a political assassination plot involving both of her lovers and needed a place to hide, didn’t she come home to her dying mother?

“And now this,” Pani Shulhaska said, opening a straw basket and taking out an envelope. “This comes in the mail today.” The envelope had money in it, about five hundred hryvnia. “With a note from Alyona,” showing it to Iryna, who translated it out loud.

Dearest Lyubochka Vasylivna,

Please take this money and look after my maty. I will come as soon as I can. I pray God she will still be with us. When I see you I will explain why and you will understand. Bud’te zdorovi, God bless you, and in Jesus’ name please forgive me.

Alyshka

She had mailed it the morning she disappeared or was murdered, Scorpion thought. Whatever plot she was involved in with Shelayev, she still thought she’d be able to come, until Pyatov or someone else stopped her. But it wasn’t of her own free will. The note made clear she didn’t want to let her mother die without seeing her, that if she could come, she would. That little triangle-she and Shelayev and Pyatov-was the key to everything. “We have to go,” he told Iryna. They stood up.

“You’re not staying for the service? He’s good, this priest,” Pani Shulhaska said.

“Pereproshuyu,” Scorpion said, I’m sorry, and he pressed a hundred hryven bill into her hand.

“Slava Bohu,” Iryna said. God bless. She kissed Pani Shulhaska on the forehead and held her hand for a moment. Afterward, she joined Scorpion outside the church. Although it was early afternoon, the winter sky was already growing dark. It was very cold.

“Now what?” she asked.

“If we find out what happened to Alyona, we’ll find Shelayev,” Scorpion said.

“It’s getting late,” Iryna said, looking at the sky.

“I know,” he said, shivering inside his overcoat.

The wind blew snow from the trees in the park across the way.

Kreshchatytsky Park

Kyiv, Ukraine

All the approaches were bad ones. The Puppet Theatre, looking like a miniature castle with spires, stood alone on a hill in the middle of a park, a large public space near the river. The steps and walkways leading up to the theatre were covered with snow. Footprints showed that people had come this way even though the theatre was closed mid-week. On a wooded slope away from the steps, Scorpion spotted two pairs of footprints in the snow; two people, one close behind the other. An unusual way of walking, he thought, unless someone was walking behind a captive.

The park was deserted. As the crisis escalated, people were leaving the city. Coming into Kyiv, Scorpion and Iryna had passed cars going the other way. A long line of army tanks and trucks were parked single file on Prospekt Akademika Glushkova. On the main street, Khreshchatyk, soldiers and Black Armbands patrolled silently as nearly empty mashrutkas went by. The shoppers were gone, the stores shuttered. Scorpion could feel the city’s fear, as real as the icy wind.

At a traffic light, a uniformed politseysky stared curiously at their SUV, reminding Scorpion that in spite of the crisis, the police were still hunting them. To be stopped now would be a disaster. The man studied them, while Scorpion kept his hand on the Glock in his holster. All they had going for them, he thought, was his mustache and her stupid blond wig. Iryna saw the politseysky watching them and quickly turned away. Scorpion could see the man shifting his weight, trying to make up his mind. He had just started toward them when the light changed and Scorpion drove on. When they were a block away, he and Iryna looked at each other, neither of them saying a word.

T hey left the SUV on a side street near the top of the hill and walked down Andriyivsky Uzviz to the Black Cat theatre cafe. The cafe was open, light from the window spilling out in the early darkness. Inside, there was only one customer, an old man smoking his pipe and reading a book by the window. A bald man Scorpion had never seen before was behind the counter. The woodsman puppet he remembered from his last visit still hung beside the stage, only now it was in shadow, making it look odd, more sinister.

“De Ekaterina?” Scorpion asked the bald man behind the counter. Where is Ekaterina?

“Ya ne znayu,” I don’t know, the man said, eying them suspiciously. “Who are you?”

“We’re friends of Alyona and Ekaterina,” Iryna explained. “We were wondering if you had seen them.”

The man wiped his hands on his apron.

“Are you ordering?” he asked, glancing over at the old man by the window.

“We’ll have the borscht,” Scorpion said, following his look.

“And chay,” Iryna said, ordering tea as they sat at a table away from the old man.

A few minutes later the bald man brought them two steaming bowls of borscht. He came back with their tea and black bread and butter, sat down at their table and motioned them close.

“Be careful what you say,” he whispered in passable English. “I don’t know this guy,” indicating the old man. “He is just coming the past three nights.” He looked at Iryna, obviously recognizing her. “I knew your batco,” your papa. “He was a good man, a patriot.”

She looked around as if ready to flee.

“It’s okay,” the bald man said, edging even closer. “I tell no one.”

“What about Ekaterina or the young man who was here a few days ago?” Scorpion asked while eating.

“Ah, her drooh, Fedir.” The man nodded. “I haven’t heard from either of them. Not in two days. I was hoping you knew something. We had to close the show.” He shrugged. “As if with the crisis, anybody was coming anyway.”