Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Winter

Shaefer grinned. “I hear you.”

They talked until the taxi came. Scorpion asked Shaefer to keep an eye on Iryna.

“You liked her?” Shaefer asked.

“Hell of a girl.”

The taxi pulled up in front of the cafe, and the driver came in and looked around.

“Take care,” Scorpion said, getting up.

“Keep in touch,” Shaefer said.

Scorpion left him sitting there looking like a man who was very much alone, an African-American as out of place in a corner of Romania as anyone could be. Come to think of it, he thought in the taxi on the way to the airport, he didn’t know much about Shaefer. He didn’t know if he was married, had kids, any of it. The truth was, none of them in this business knew much about each other.

As the taxi drove out of the city to the airport, Scorpion checked out flights from Constanta on his cell phone. Bucharest was the only major city he could fly to; a bare thirty-five minute flight. From Bucharest he could go anywhere. He could go to either Istanbul and on to Tel Aviv, or to Rome and from there to Civitavecchia and back to Sardinia. Go see that sexy Abrielle in Porto Cervo and get reacquainted with his dogs. Or talk to Rabinowich about the Flash Critical. Or go anywhere in the world. He’d had enough of winter. Maybe go someplace sunny, where the girls wore bikinis and drinks came with umbrellas in them. Going to Rome would give him time to decide.

While waiting for his flight at Coanda airport in Bucharest, Scorpion checked the news on his laptop. In Yemen, fighting had been reported between the Hashidis and a force comprised of AQAP allied with elements of the Bakil and Abidah tribes. Meanwhile, in Ukraine, there had been a massive demonstration in Kiev’s Independence Square against the new president, Lavro Davydenko, after restrictions were announced following the country’s financial rating being downgraded by the IMF.

There had been riots and looting in Kiev and fighting in the streets between those backing Davydenko and supporters of Iryna Shevchenko, who was calling for a vote of no confidence against Davydenko in the Verkhovna Rada. A Jewish synagogue in Donetsk had been torched, and a gang of Black Armbands killed two Jewish college students in Lviv.

“Everybody wins,” Shaefer had said.

In the Horn of Africa, a famine had created a terrible humanitarian crisis. Millions of people were starving. There were images of potbellied children with shrunken limbs and dazed eyes. The Islamist extremist group, Al-Shabab, had banned international food relief efforts in the areas of Somalia they controlled. For some reason, Scorpion couldn’t take his eyes off the images of the starving children.

Later that afternoon, he boarded the Alitalia flight to Rome. It was a short flight, just over an hour. By the time he landed at Fiumicino airport, he knew what he was going to do.