Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Winter

“I won’t waste any more whiskey by throwing it in your face,” Scorpion said. “But I won’t promise not to kill you.”

“Close enough,” Harris said, and signaled to one of his men. A few minutes later a car pulled up at one of the entrances and drove them out of the parking lot and across the street to the Tysons 2 Mall. They walked into the Ritz Carlton and went into the lobby bar, still busy with the lunch crowd, found an empty table and sat down. Two of Harris’s men sat at a table near the doorway. Scorpion didn’t bother to check; he was confident Harris had every entrance and exit covered.

“It’s like a spooks’ convention,” Scorpion said, looking around the crowded bar. “Is there anybody left minding the store at Langley?”

“This is the place,” Harris agreed as the waitress came over. She was slim and good-looking enough to help justify the price of the drinks. “What’ll you have?”

“Belvedere Bloody Mary,” Scorpion said, thinking it was too bad you couldn’t get Stoli Elit or Nemiroff in the States.

“The same,” Harris said.

They waited till the waitress walked away. There was no one near their table. Scorpion wasn’t worried about bugs. Harris and the other spooks wouldn’t be there if they were being listened to.

“You said there was a problem,” he said.

Harris toyed with the triple dish of nibbles the waitress had brought. He looked uncomfortable.

“Look, maybe in some cosmic accounting sense, I-we-owe you. I’ll give you that. But frankly, if that’s all it was, I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about it or you.” His eyes were blue and very cold. “It’s worse than that. If I tell you anything, I have to break protocol, every rule we have, and then I have to trust you. A Green Badge!” he said, referring to the fact that within CIA facilities, CIA personnel wore blue badges, while contractors and other nonemployees wear green badges. “And even if I could trust you,” his eyes narrowed as he looked straight at Scorpion, “what happens next time you go off in the wild blue yonder and get captured by the opposition? Then I not only have to trust that you won’t reveal something against someone you don’t like, on a matter of the highest national security, but you won’t do it under torture! You see my problem?” he finished, just as the waitress returned with their drinks.

Scorpion didn’t say anything. He watched the waitress as she wiggled to another table, wondering whether she had heard Harris’s last words about torture. She’s probably used to hearing all kinds of bizarre talk around here, he thought.

“You set me up, you son of a bitch,” he said, his voice soft, controlled, but intense. “You, Rabinowich, and Shaefer practically sent me an engraved invitation to Ukraine. You begged me to go and then you cut me off and then you sold me out. I was a couple of minutes away from a bullet in my head, so I’m supposed to give a shit about your problem? I’m your problem, Bob old buddy. If you really want to worry about something, I’d worry about me.”

Harris nodded grimly. He let his gaze wander around the bar at the gilt-framed paintings and men in expensive suits sitting over drinks.

“You look around and you’d think we live in a civilized world,” Harris said, “but that’s not true at all, is it? Who pointed you at us? Checkmate?” meaning Ivanov and the FSB.

Scorpion smiled. He took a long sip of the Bloody Mary and put it down on the table.

“I was wondering when you’d bring that up. Did I think he was feeding me black info? The thought occurred, but no, I didn’t think so. You know why?”

“You tell me,” Harris said.

“Because when I was laying there in that freezing cell, tortured to within an inch of my life, I realized there was another player in the game. Only I had neutralized them all: Kozhanovskiy, the Syndikat, the SBU, Gabrilov and the SVR, the Guoanbu’s Second Bureau, Shelayev, the Chorni Povyazky. Christ, I got to everyone but the Boy Scouts. But there was someone else, someone I didn’t know about. When Checkmate told me, I knew it was true.”

“What made you so sure?”

“The dog that didn’t bark.”

“What?”

“Sherlock Holmes. As a fail-safe, in case something happened to me, I uploaded the video of Shelayev’s confession to YouTube. Guess what? Nobody knew about it. It disappeared. This isn’t China. Who on earth could have gotten Google to take it off? Who has that kind of leverage over an American corporation? The minute Checkmate said it, the person I thought of was you.” His eyes focused on Harris like a laser.

Harris finished his Bloody Mary. The waitress started toward them, and he waved her off.

“As soon as I heard about Checkmate being in Kyiv, I knew you’d be knocking at my door,” Harris said. “You know what the DCIA called it? ‘Our moment of truth.’ That’s what he said. Twenty-plus years in the Company and neither of us had ever faced anything like this.” He shook his head. “I met with the President. He’s thrilled you’re alive, but he’s not sure that lets him off the hook. It bothered him. A lot.”

“Yeah, I know how tough you guys have it. West Wing chicken sandwiches, Ritz Carlton and all,” Scorpion said, looking at the spot on Harris’s throat where a single blow would end it. “Cut the bullshit, Bob. Why’d you set me up?”

Harris smiled grimly. “I guess it’s time to-what was it the old-timers used to call it-to ‘fallen die hose, ’ to drop your pants.” He leaned forward. “I need your word. What we say now never leaves this table. Never. No matter who, no matter under what circumstances, no matter anything.”

Scorpion looked at him sharply. “Or else what?”

Harris glanced at the two men he had stationed by the door. Scorpion followed his glance.

Go to hell, he thought, but didn’t say it. If Harris was this serious, it meant that what he was about to say went higher up. If he wasn’t lying, it went all the way to the Oval Office. It might also explain why people he had trusted-Rabinowich and Shaefer-had gone along. Also, he didn’t need a war with the CIA. “I’ll want something in exchange,” he said.

“What?” Harris asked.

“I’ll tell you when we’re done.”

Harris exhaled sharply. “God, you’re a pain in the ass. You want another?” indicating the drinks.

“You’re buying,” Scorpion said.

Harris waved the waitress over and gestured for another round. They watched her walk away in her tan Ritz-Carlton-worth-the-money skirt and top. Harris hesitated.

“I have your word?” he began.

“For Chrissake, let’s have it,” Scorpion said.

“I t was a walk-in,” Harris said. “Can you believe that? A walk-in! Like having a single dollar bill in your pocket and, as a throwaway, you give it to the clerk and you win the lottery.”

“Where was this?”

“Madrid. An all-expenses-paid NATO and wannabes’ conference. Tapas and whores. That’s not the story.”

“What’s the story?”

“The father. Let’s call him ‘Leva.’ Leva Nikolaevych. But you need the context. In 1964, Leonid Brezhnev becomes General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Soviet Union. Brezhnev was a Ukrainian of ethnic Russian parents from Dnipropetrovsk oblast. He was a protege of Nikita Khrushchev, who, although Russian, was himself born near the Ukrainian border. Brezhnev brings with him several key Ukrainians whose loyalties belong to him. Among them is a certain KGB agent, our Leva Nikolaevych. Leva is instrumental during the period when Brezhnev is jockeying for power with Suslov, Kosygin, and others. He gets very close to Brezhnev, who will eventually consolidate all the power in his own hands. Life is good.

“Fast-forward to 1968. In Czechoslovakia, Alexander Dub?cek launches a wave of reform that came to be known as the ‘Prague Spring.’ This created a major crisis for the Soviet Union. You have to remember, 1968 was a time of great unrest: the Tet Offensive in Vietnam and the resulting student protests, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, demonstrations and protests all around the world, the riot at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Within the Russian Politboro there were serious disagreements as to how to deal with Czechoslovakia. They feared a wave of revolt and reform that if unchecked could lead to the breakup of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union. Some argued for a hands-off attitude, others for political and economic pressure, still others wanted a full-scale military invasion to crush the reform.