Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Winter

“I don’t know where he is. He was protecting me,” Alyona said. She took out a cigarette, but her hands were shaking so much that once again Iryna had to light and hold it for her. Alyona inhaled and spoke with a shaky voice. She was breathing heavily, almost panting. Scorpion thought she might pass out any minute. “He said… he going… where no one… find him. I wanted… go… but my maty…”

“Your maty,” Iryna said. “She’s gone. I’m sorry.”

Alyona whimpered. Her eyes were shiny, but she didn’t cry. Scorpion guessed she had been through so much she was numb. Iryna gave him directions.

They went across a bridge over a frozen inlet of the Dnieper. The clinic was on the northern outskirts of the city; fields of snow stretched into the distance. To the right, he saw the clinic standing by itself, a yellow ambulance parked by the entrance. He drove into the parking lot and parked at the back of the building.

They helped Alyona out of the car. She couldn’t walk. Scorpion picked her up and carried her. They knocked at the back door until a nurse let them in. Iryna spoke to her, gave her money, and the nurse led them to a private examining room. Scorpion laid Alyona down on the examining table.

A minute later the nurse came back with a doctor, a middle-aged man with a jowly neck. His badge read: DR. YAKOVENKO. He took one look at Alyona, then at Iryna and Scorpion.

“ Ya znayu, chto vy,” he said to Iryna in Russian. I know you. “You’re wanted by the militsiyu.” He started toward the door. Scorpion stood in his way, showed him the Glock.

“You’re a doctor. She needs help. I’ll give you five hundred if you keep quiet about this,” he said in Russian.

“Otvali,” Dr. Yakovenko muttered. Go to hell. But he went over to examine Alyona. His expression changed when he saw the cuts and bruises. He turned on Scorpion.

“Did you do this?”

Scorpion shook his head no.

Iryna touched the doctor’s arm. “Someone else. He saved her,” she said, indicating Scorpion.

Frowning, Dr. Yakovenko went back to examining Alyona. He pressed her abdomen and she cried out in pain. He shook his head and after a moment sent the nurse out, telling her to get the operating room ready and start an antibiotic drip.

“We have to operate,” he told them. “She’s bleeding internally. If we don’t act immediately, she’ll go into shock. Who did this to her?” he snapped.

“Black Armbands,” Iryna said. “An aide to Oleksandr Gorobets.”

“I don’t believe you.” He looked at Iryna and Scorpion. “By law, I should notify the politsiy.”

“If you do, they’ll kill her,” Scorpion said. “Probably you too. They don’t want witnesses.”

“So you say,” the doctor replied, examining Alyona’s external wounds. “These are less serious. If you didn’t do anything, why are the politsiy after you?”

“If you know who I am,” Iryna said, “you know there are people who would do anything to stop me. Anything. Ask her. She knows it wasn’t us who killed Cherkesov.”

“Is this true?” he asked Alyona.

She looked at him as if from a far distance, but finally nodded.

“Here’s a thousand,” Scorpion said, handing him money. “Be a doctor. We’ll keep you and your staff out of this. If we’re in danger, so are you.”

“You really think-” Dr. Yakovenko started. “ Hivno, shit,” he said, rushing to Alyona, whose eyes were turning up. “Medsestra!” he shouted. Nurse! “She’s going into shock.”

The first nurse rushed into the room, followed by two more nurses with a gurney. In seconds they had moved Alyona onto the gurney and were rushing her to the operating room.

Scorpion and Iryna settled down to wait in a small waiting room by the nurses’ station. The TV was on. It showed movements of soldiers and tanks, then cut to a conference room and a reporter outside a government building. The reporter was talking rapidly and there was a news crawl at the bottom.

“What’s it say?” Scorpion asked.

“ ‘NATO warns Russia not to violate Ukrainian sovereignty. Ukraine mobilizes for war. American forces in Europe are on full alert,’ ” she read. “What are we going to do?”

“We’re at a dead end,” Scorpion said. “She says she doesn’t know where Shelayev is. If he didn’t tell her, he didn’t tell anyone. Without him, we have nothing.”

“Actually, she did tell us,” Iryna said, lighting a cigarette. “I think I know where Shelayev is.”

Chernobyl

Chernobylska Exclusion Zone

“Damy i gospoda takzhe, ladies and also dear gentlemen, on night of twenty-six April of 1986, at one hour and twenty-three in morning,” the InterInform guide, a bulky man with a reddish-brown goatee, Denys-Call me Dennis-said, “under supervise of Alexandr Akimov, chief engineer night shift, is starting safety test of shutting down of reactor chetyre number four.”

Scorpion was sitting in a classroomlike conference room in the Tourist Office in Chernobyl, a village at the second or inner checkpoint, some ten kilometers out from the nuclear reactor site. With him were three couples-a pair of male backpackers from Munich; two British women, Sarah and Millicent from East Putney; and an American couple, the Dowds, retirees from Maryland-who were set to take the tour.

In the early hours of the morning, while it was still dark, he had left the clinic. Dr. Yakovenko had managed to stop Alyona’s abdominal bleeding. Iryna stayed with her, registering Alyona under a false name. As soon as she knew Alyona was stable, Iryna would be meeting with Viktor Kozhanovskiy. They would try to buy some time for Scorpion to find Shelayev. No more than forty-eight hours, Iryna had insisted. Even trying to negotiate that much time with Gorobets and the Russians was going to be nearly impossible.

Overnight, Russia’s president, Evgeni Brabov, had reacted to what he called the “NATO ultimatum and Ukrainian provocations,” by declaring Russia would protect Russian “nationals” and Russian borders, even if it meant war. “Russia is not intimidated and will not be intimidated. Russia will defend her people,” he had declared in a televised speech to the Duma in a rare night session, a clip of which was being replayed around the world.

The UN Security Council was meeting in emergency session, where Russia had threatened to veto any action that did not support the legitimate right of Russia to defend itself and her people, including ethnic Russians in the former Soviet Union. In reaction to what was happening in Europe, China had raised the readiness level of the People’s Army. Other nations were beginning to react as well. Iran sent warships into the Persian Gulf.

Before he left Kyiv, Scorpion decided to try the dead drop in Pechersk Landscape Park one last time. The Company had written him off, but all hell was breaking loose and there was a chance they were trying to reach him.

The park was deserted in the icy darkness. When he got to the top of the steps down to the amphitheatre, he saw it: a ribbon tied on the lamppost. He released the ribbon, tossed it away, and dug through the frozen earth under the bench to retrieve a cell phone left in the spike.

Sheltering in the trees from the bone-chilling wind, he called the cell phone’s only preset number. Someone picked up on the second ring.

“Are you still GTG?” someone said, meaning good to go, operational. It was Shaefer, and despite the early hour, he didn’t sound sleepy. Something was up. The CIA needed him again.

“Didn’t know you still cared,” Scorpion said, pulling his collar closer around him against the wind. The Company had cut him loose, and he wasn’t about to let them forget it.