Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Winter

They sat him in a chair in the middle of the room facing a narrow table. There were two rows of benches behind him. The mussory guards who had brought him down took up places by the door and along the wall, truncheons in their hands. He had hoped he might see Iryna, but there was no sign of her. They waited in silence, just him and the mussory. They don’t want this getting out, he thought. That’s why they had to do it right away; even in the middle of a war.

The door opened and three men, all with short hair and wearing the dark suits favored by Ukrainian nomenclatura officials, came in and took their seats behind the table. The middle suddya, or judge, was a thin, hatchet-faced man with short iron-gray hair. He wore a black tie with the yellow Ukrainian cross, suggesting he belonged to the Chorni Povyazky, and glanced down at the sheaf of papers he had brought in with him. A moment later a woman in a suit, carrying a laptop computer, came in and sat at a side desk, apparently to take notes. A technician entered the room and hooked up a video camcorder pointed at Scorpion. As the technician set up the camera, Kulyakov, also wearing a black suit and Chorni Povyazky tie, came in and sat in a chair on the side.

“Nam skazali, vy ne govoryat na Ukrainskom.” the hatchet-faced suddya said. We have been informed that you do not speak Ukrainian. “So this sud will be conducted in Russian. He glanced at the woman taking notes on the laptop. “For the record, this is a sud authorized by the Sluzhba Bezpeky Ukrayiny,” or SBU, “and the office of the Ukraine President Lavro Davydenko for the purpose of determining the guilt of the prisoner known as Michael Kilbane, also known as Petro Reinert, also the foreign agent Scorpion, in the murder of Yuriy Dmytrovych Cherkesov. The penalty for this crime is death. Let it be noted that this sud has authority to impose this sentence.”

He leaned forward and stared at Scorpion as if through a gun sight.

“You understand, prisoner, here is no prosecution, no defense. We ask questions. You answer. We decide. I am told that you will not reveal your real name or nationality. This is correct?”

“What difference does it make what my real name is?” Scorpion asked.

“A man who will not tell you the truth about his name will not say the truth about many things.”

“You could take it that a man who will not lie about his name will not lie about other things,” Scorpion said.

“But you are known by false names and also the code name Scorpion, da?”

“ Da. ”

“Are you an agent of the CIA or some other Western country? MI-6? DGSE? Mossad?” He pronounced “agent” the Russian way, with a hard g.

“ Nyet. I am an independent. I work for different people.”

“Like a business?”

“It is a business.”

“A good business? You make a lot of money?”

“Sometimes.”

“You work for anyone? So long as they pay?”

“Not anyone.”

“There are people you won’t work for no matter how much they pay?”

“ Eta verna. ” That’s right.

“A spy with morals!” The hatchet-faced suddya smirked, glancing at his fellow judges, who smirked with him. “But you took this assignment?”

“I took an assignment, da.”

“Tak,” the hatchet-faced suddya said, rubbing his hands together like a businessman who wants to make a deal. “Who hired you to assassinate presidential candidate Yuriy Cherkesov?”

“Nikto ne.” No one. “I was hired to prevent his assassination.”

The judges looked at each other.

“Tak vy govorte,” the hatchet-faced suddya said. So you say. “You have admitted killing Cherkesov. We have seen the video.”

“Did you also see the electrodes attached to my genitaliy?”

“That is not relevant. You confessed. That is sufficient here. Who hired you?”

Scorpion shook his head. “I protect my clients. That’s the basis of my business.”

The hatchet-faced suddya’s short laugh cracked sharp as a gunshot. “You really think after this you will still have a business?” He glared at Scorpion. “You will be dead, you mudak spy!”

“Then I’ll be dead,” Scorpion said. “If you want, get the electrodes. I won’t tell you who hired me.”

“Your job was to save Cherkesov?” the hatchet-faced suddya said sarcastically, leaning toward Scorpion.

“It was understood that Cherkesov’s death might lead to great difficulties with Russia. My client wished to prevent this.”

“Not very good at your job, are you?” one of the other judges, a thin man with bloodless lips, put in.

“Not this time,” Scorpion said, thinking how close he had come to pulling it off. Just a few more hours and it would have been over. “I was led to believe that a baklan punk working for the Kozhanovskiy campaign named Sirhiy Pyatov was the assassin. I managed to stop him.”

At this, the judges began to whisper among themselves. The hatchet-faced suddya leafed through the papers in front of him, then looked up.

“This Pyatov was one of those killed at the stadium in Dnipropetrovsk?”

Scorpion nodded.

“Did you kill him?”

“Two militsiyu did. There was much shooting.”

“But you were ready to kill him?”

Scorpion nodded, and the judges looked meaningfully at one another.

“You killed militsiyu and politsiy at the stadium?”

“Two militsiyu. Also several of the Chorni Povyazky, not politsiy.”

“How many Chorni Povyazky?”

Scorpion thought for a moment. “Five,” he said.

The judges looked at each other.

“A total of seven men dead, murdered by you?” the hatchet-faced suddya said.

“Not murdered. Killed. They were shooting at Iryna and me.”

“Not even counting Cherkesov?”

“I didn’t kill Cherkesov. One of the Svoboda security men, Dimitri Shelayev, planted the bomb that killed Cherkesov and his people in the car.”

“So you say,” the hatchet-faced suddya said.

“This is absurdnyi!” Kulyakov said, standing up. He pointed at Scorpion. “This man has confessed to the crime. Trying to lay the blame on another, a patriot, in the hour of our country’s peril, is obscene!”

“How many times do you change your story, Pane Scorpion? Whenever it suits you?” the hatchet-faced suddya said.

“I can prove it,” Scorpion said.

The hatchet-faced suddya turned to Kulyakov. “Where is this Shelayev? Can we bring him to the sud?”

“I know Dimitri Shelayev,” Kulyakov said. “We were colleagues, friends. He went missing the night of the attack at the stadium.”

“So where is he?” the hatchet-faced suddya demanded.

“He was hiding in the Chernobylska Exclusion Zone,” Scorpion said.

“So you say,” the hatchet-faced suddya said once more, staring at Scorpion. “And where is he now?”

“Dead.” Scorpion looked down. “He killed himself.”

“Not true,” Kulyakov said. “We found Shelayev’s body. There was evidence of a struggle. He was murdered. This man,” pointing at Scorpion, “was the last man to see him alive.” He faced Scorpion. “More blood on your hands, ubeetsa.” Murderer.

“Tak,” the hatchet-faced suddya said, steepling his fingers and squinting at Scorpion. “You are a dangerous man to be around, aren’t you?” He turned to the other judges. “We’ll have to execute this mudak bastard fifty times over!” He turned back to Scorpion. “You keep saying you have proof.”

“Shelayev confessed. It’s on video,” Scorpion said.

“Where is this video?”

Time to show his cards. “Everywhere. It’s on the fucking yob Internet. On YouTube,” he said.

The judges didn’t react. Neither did anyone in the courtroom. Scorpion got a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach and the pain in his groin started up. Sure, Kulyakov and Gorobets had suppressed the TV video and gotten rid of everyone at the TV station, but how is it that they didn’t know about YouTube? What the hell was going on? Somebody had to have spotted it. It was impossible not to. Who the hell could have gotten to Google or forced them to suppress it? Could Gorobets have done that? He looked at Kulyakov. He was smiling. Someday I’ll kill you, Scorpion thought, but he couldn’t think anymore. The pain in his groin was getting worse. He clenched his fist.