Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Winter

The fact that Ivanov was here meant that he had ordered it, Scorpion thought. Gabrilov was probably being beaten to a pulp in a Lubyanka cell by the FSB that very minute. The SVR had played with fire, and now the Kremlin was reining them back in. He looked at Ivanov, sitting there so calmly. The Russian was waiting to tell him something, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear it.

“All right, Checkmate. I know you want to tell me. It’s probably why you came to Kyiv. So let’s have it. Who set me up?” Scorpion asked.

Ivanov smiled. A tiny sign that he was enjoying their mental chess game and appreciated Scorpion’s having figured it out.

“It was the CIA’s Kyiv Station. One of yours. Somebody in the Company doesn’t like you.”

Scorpion didn’t say anything. He wanted to tell Ivanov to fuck off, but it made too much sense. Back when he was about to die, he had realized there was another player in the game. He didn’t want to believe it, but it had the feel of truth. But why? If the Russkies wanted Davydenko to win, Washington sure as hell didn’t. What the hell was going on?

“You could be feeding me black info,” Scorpion said.

“If I thought it would work, I would.” Ivanov smiled. “But it might bring you back to Moscow. Don’t come to Russia, Scorpion. After going to so much trouble to save you, I wouldn’t like to have to kill you anyway.”

“I wouldn’t be too crazy about it myself. What’s going to happen to them, to Viktor and Iryna, when Davydenko wins?”

“They’ll make noise, and when the noise dies down, they’ll be arrested. Not for Cherkesov; something else. Corruption perhaps.” Ivanov shrugged. “There’s a lot of corruption in this country.”

“As opposed to Russia?”

“Or America?” Ivanov grinned, showing his teeth. They both smiled.

“And Russia controls Ukraine?” Scorpion said.

“There are people who believe Ukraine is part of Russia. That someday we’ll get it back. I’ve heard people at the highest levels say such things.”

“Still, you opposed the SVR in this.”

“I opposed their tactics. Not necessarily their goal.” Ivanov glanced out the window at the traffic on the M03 highway and beyond to the buildings and the endless snow-covered plain. “Maybe they would be better off. Look at their history. This is a tragic country.”

Scorpion thought about Alyona and Babi Yar and Olena, the woman in the trailer-restaurant, and the millions starving to death in the Holodomor. He thought about Gorobets with his Black Armbands and what was coming.

“Yes, it is tragic,” he said, looking up. A highway sign up ahead read: AEROPORT BORYSPIL 6 KM.

T hey put him in a private airport holding room, empty except for bottles of Svalyava mineral water on a console and a few plastic chairs. The walls and everything in the room was white, even the plastic chairs. There was nothing personal there. It was a place where people waited, their lives elsewhere.

Even before he reached the center of the room, Scorpion spotted two hidden cameras. They were taking no chances, he thought. In addition to the cameras and bugs, they had a half-dozen FSB and SBU plainclothesmen and militsiyu stationed outside the door to make sure he got on the plane. He had less than an hour till his Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt.

He asked to go to the men’s room. On the way, he pickpocketed a cell phone from one of the SBU plainclothesmen. After asking the guards to wait outside and checking the stalls to make sure they were unoccupied, he called the Dynamo Club and asked for Mogilenko. A rough-sounding man’s voice got on the line.

“Idi na tsuy huesos,” he was told. Fuck off. “What do you want with Mogilenko?”

“Ya frantsoos,” Scorpion told him. I’m the Frenchman.

After a long minute, Mogilenko came on the line.

“ Tu es fou, salaud? Or should I call you Kilbane? I knew you weren’t French,” Mogilenko said.

“I need a favor,” Scorpion replied in French.

“When I cut off your head and balls, you’ll consider it a favor, fils de pute. Where are you? No matter how far you go, it won’t save you.”

“ Ecoutez, don’t be stupid. This is business,” Scorpion said.

“ Va te faire foutre,” Mogilenko said, telling him to fuck off. Then after a moment, “What do you want?”

“You know Kulyakov? Prokip Kulyakov.”

“Maybe. What about him?”

“Be too bad if someone did to him what you were planning to do to me,” Scorpion said.

“He has friends.”

“So do I. Fifty thousand of them.”

“What is this? A joke? A miserable fifty thousand hryvnia?”

“Dollars,” Scorpion said.

There was a moment of silence.

“It must be admitted, you are un type inhabituel. ” An unusual type. “What you did to my men on the bridge was exceptionnel. Kulyakov’s SBU. It’s a complication.”

“How much more complicated?” Scorpion asked.

“Seventy-five.”

“A hundred thousand. Half now, half when it’s done. In five minutes I’m getting rid of this cell phone. Text me a bank account number.”

“Maybe you come back to the club and we discuss it,” Mogilenko said.

“One more thing,” Scorpion said. “It has to take a long time. A work of art.”

“What did he do, this Kulyakov?” Mogilenko asked seriously.

“The same to a woman. Young, beautiful like Marilyn Monroe. You’d have liked her,” remembering the photograph of Alyona in the cafe.

“This changes nothing between us, salaud. You still owe me,” Mogilenko growled.

“At the end, he needs to be warmed up. Use l’essence.” Gasoline. “And he has to be still alive when you do it.”

“One hundred thousand. Half now, the rest within twenty-four hours of Kulyakov’s…” He hesitated. “… sortie de grand.” Grand exit. “And Kilbane, on the second payment, don’t make me wait.”

“D’accord,” Scorpion said, ending the call.

On the way back to the waiting room, he slipped the cell phone back into the SBU man’s pocket. He had just finished transferring the money for Mogilenko with his laptop when Iryna came in.

She looked the way she had when he first met her. She wore a black sheath dress, pearls, the Ferragamo purse, the pixie cut that, if anything, made her more striking, and then there were those stunning lapis lazuli eyes. It was as if she hadn’t been touched by prison or anything else that happened. When she saw him, she gave a little cry and ran into his arms. He could feel her trembling as he held her.

“I’ve been crying since yesterday. I thought you were dead,” she sobbed. He let her cry, holding her tight. Finally, she pulled back and looked at him. “I’m a mess. I wanted to look good for you.”

“You look damn good. You look as good as anything I’ve ever seen,” he said.

“I thought I’d never see you again. Then they told me you were at the airport. I don’t understand.” She shook her head. “Not any of it.”

“The Russians. I’m their insurance policy. In a way, it’s funny.” He half grinned. “Sometimes you need your enemies more than your friends.”

Her eyes scanned his face as if there were an answer for everything there, if she could just find it.

“What are you talking about? Insuring them against what?”

“In case Gorobets ever decides to do any original thinking that isn’t first preapproved in Moscow.”

“The Russians know about Shelayev? Is that why there wasn’t an attack?” He watched her wrinkle her brow and figure it out. “I see,” she said, fishing in her purse for a cigarette.

“For what it’s worth,” he shrugged, “you should feel good. We stopped the invasion. Without you, it wouldn’t have happened.”