Scorpion Winter

by Andrew Kaplan

  “Because he’s dead,” Scorpion snapped. They walked quickly away from the van toward the street corner. She started to look back.

  “Don’t,” he said, pulling on her arm to keep her walking with him. The prison tattoo was a dead giveaway, he thought. The men after them were Syndikat blatnoi. Mogilenko’s thugs. He should have taken care of Mogilenko before. The question was, how did they find them? How did they know about the apartment? And how did they know about Danylo? As they turned the corner, Scorpion spotted a man getting into a small Skoda sedan.

  “Call him. Tell him we need a lift. We’ll pay him,” he told Iryna.

  “Probachte! Pryvit!” Excuse me! Hello! she called out, waving to the man, who just looked at her.

  “Anything else, your highness?” she whispered to Scorpion.

  “Smile,” he said.

  For a hundred hryvnia the man agreed to take them to Tolstoho Square. Within minutes they were driving across the bridge Scorpion had looked down on from the apartment window. A pale sun, pale as the moon, cast a cold light on the frozen river. The man tried to talk to Iryna, but she answered in monosyllables. They drove through traffic. The man dropped them off near the Metro entrance on the museum side of the square. They waited till he drove off, then began walking.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “We need a car. I looked it up before. There’s a car rental agency on vulytsya Pushkinska.”

  “I can’t keep doing this,” she said. For a moment she stood there, trembling.

  “No,” he said.

  They spotted the car agency on the ground floor of an office building. Scorpion used his South African passport and driver’s license in the name Peter Reinert to rent a four-wheel-drive Volkswagen Touareg SUV.

  While they waited for the car, Iryna took off her Ushanka hat and he saw she was in her pixie cut; she hadn’t had time to put on the blond wig. Scorpion was instantly on guard, but no one seemed to recognize her. After the rental agent programmed the GPS, they drove the Volkswagen into traffic.

  “What’s the best way to Bila Tserkva?” he asked.

  “Go left, there,” she said, pointing. “We need to get to the M5 going south.”

  “How far?”

  “Eighty kilometers, give or take,” she said.

  A few minutes later she had input the town into the GPS and they were getting directions from it in Russian. Scorpion turned onto a wide street that had been cleared of snow.

  “Feel better?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer. She stared straight ahead. They were driving on a boulevard with a broad divider lined with bare trees and with trees along both sides. Not for the first time, it occurred to Scorpion that in summer, Ukraine would be beautiful. He glanced at the rearview mirror. So far there was no sign of a tail.

  “Are you sure Danylo’s dead?” she asked.

  “Pretty sure,” he nodded. It was next to impossible that the Syndikat blatnoi knew about the apartment and not about the van. He hadn’t wanted to go near it not only because they needed to get away, but also because he didn’t want Iryna to see would likely be left of Danylo inside the van.

  “I don’t understand,” she said, looking at him. “Who were they?”

  “Mogilenko is a sociopath,” he said.

  “Mogilenko?”

  “Head of the Syndikat, the mafia. His shpana did it. They were the ones after us.”

  “Tell me, do you always make everyone so angry with you?”

  “It’s a gift,” he said, and in spite of herself, she almost laughed.

  “Impossible man,” she muttered.

  “Besides Danylo, who else knew about us and that apartment?” he asked.

  “Viktor, of course.” She turned to him. “You don’t think . . . ?”

  “What does Viktor gain if you die?”

  “Nothing. He loses the support of women—and also those who remember my father. Without my father and the Rukh, this country would have never achieved independence. Not Viktor,” she said.

  “Well, I’m not buying two landlords in a row. Who else?”

  “My aide, Slavo. You don’t think . . . ?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “It can’t be! Not Slavo!”

  “Why not? You have a mole in Svoboda. Why shouldn’t they?”

  “You said this was mafia, not politics,” she said, glaring at him.

  “Didn’t you say Cherkesov and Gorobets were corrupt? With ties to the mafia?”

  “You mean use them as hatchetmen? No dirt on them or their Chorni Povyazky? It almost makes sense. But Slavo?”

  “You better call Kozhanovskiy. Let him know. He needs to get rid of Slavo. After you call, get rid of your cell phone. Wipe off your fingerprints and toss the phone and the SIM card out the window separately, about a minute apart.”

  Iryna called and spoke rapidly, intensely, in Ukrainian. Afterward she threw the cell phone away and took out another of the prepaid cells Scorpion had given her. As they drove out of the city, they began to see trees and fields of snow. She started to light a cigarette, then stopped and instead tried to find news on the radio. A commentator was arguing with someone on a Russian language talk show. She translated for Scorpion. One man said that if Ukraine was invaded, Ukrainians would have to fight. Not to fight would mean the end of Ukraine as an independent country. The other man wondered if the country was ready for war. They agreed that everything depended upon what NATO and the Americans decided. After a while she shut the radio off and they rode in silence through farmlands on the outskirts of the city.

  They passed a long convoy of Ukraine Army trucks filled with soldiers, coming in the opposite direction. Many of the trucks were flying the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag.

  They passed truck after truck, all heading toward Kyiv.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Bila Tserkva

  Ukraine

  The coffin lay in front of the altar. There were candles and the smell of incense, but no other mourners except for a middle-aged woman with a plain face and a withered leg, limping up the aisle toward them. The church was near a park, its gold-painted spires covered with snow. During the warmer months the park would be green, but now there were only naked trees, the branches heavy with ice and snow, creaking in the cold wind. They had found the church by a note taped to the front door of Alyona’s mother’s apartment.

  “Laskavo prosymo.” Welcome. “Are you members of the family?” the woman asked in Ukrainian. Her name was Pani Shulhaska, and Iryna translated for Scorpion.

  “We’re friends of her daughter, Alyona,” Iryna said.

  “Is she coming, slava Bohu?” Glory to God.

  “We don’t know,” Iryna said, glancing at Scorpion. “I don’t think so.”

  “Would you like to look at her?”

  Iryna translated, and Scorpion nodded, then walked up to the open coffin. It was the face of an older woman, white as plaster and made gaunt by disease. If Alyona had gotten any of her prettiness from this woman, he couldn’t see it. He returned to the pew, where Iryna sat with Pani Shulhaska.

  “It’s sad no one came,” the woman said. “Most of her friends had already passed or moved away.”

  “What did she die of?” Iryna asked.

  “The breast cancer. It was terrible. I’m her neighbor. I did what I could to help,” she said, clasping and unclasping her hands in her lap. “I don’t understand. It’s so strange about Alyona. The son, we understood, of course.”

  “She had a son?” Iryna asked.

  “Her boy, Stepan. He was a few years older than Alyona,” Pani Shulhaska said, glancing at the coffin. “So sad.”

  “I didn’t know Alyona had a brother,” Iryna said.

  “They didn’t talk about him. He is in likarni.” She lowered her voice. “Ivan Pavlov Hospital.”

  “Pavlovka, the mental hospital in Kyiv. The worst cases,” Iryna explained to Scorpion.

  “What was the strange thing about Alyona?” Sc
orpion asked, Iryna translating.

  “Four nights ago she called me. I told her she should come. The doctor said her maty,” her mama, “did not have long. She had to come home at once.”

  “What did she say?” Iryna asked.

  “She said a strange thing. She said she wasn’t sure she could come. She begged me to stay with her maty and not let her die alone. She said she would send money.”

  “What happened?” Iryna said.

  “I told her she should come say do pobachennya.” Goodbye. “It is your maty. We were both crying. That’s when she said something even more strange.”

  “What was it?”

  “She said she couldn’t come. She was doing it for Stepan. That’s all she would say. She had to do it for Stepan. It made no sense.” She looked at Iryna and Scorpion. “Stepan is in Pavlovka.”

  Scorpion was doing the arithmetic. Four nights ago was the night before Alyona disappeared. The night before Pyatov left for Dnipropetrovsk. What about her brother was so important that it forced Alyona not to come see her dying mother?

  “You knew Stepan?” Scorpion asked through Iryna.

  “Tak, God help us!” Pani Shulhaska crossed herself. “A strange boy. So strange.”

  “In what way?” he asked.

  “The way he looks at you. Even when he was little. His eyes, like dead eyes. Like he is dead or you are dead.”

  “What else?”

  “He would kill things. Then he would burn them. He liked to play with fire. One day I came home from work and there were the burned remains of a cat in the snow in front of the building. I was afraid he would burn down the building. The other children were afraid of him. People used to turn away and spit when they saw him. They called him, ‘Syn Dyyavola,’ the Son of the Devil.” She crossed herself again. “Then one day I came home early, slava Bohu!” Thanks to God. “I smelled smoke coming from their apartment. I ran in. He had tied Alyona to the bed and set it on fire. His own sister!”

  “What happened then?”

  “The politsiy came. Olga Vladimyrivna, Alyona’s maty, had no choice. They sent Stepan to Pavlovka. That’s what is so strange.”

  “What is?” Iryna asked.

  “Alyona hated her brother. She hated and feared him. She wanted nothing to do with him. So why, when her maty is dying and trying to stay alive just to see her, would she not come because she has to do something to help Stepan? It makes no sense.”

  Scorpion’s mind raced. The pani was right. It didn’t add up. And why, when Alyona was in the middle of a political assassination plot involving both of her lovers and needed a place to hide, didn’t she come home to her dying mother?

  “And now this,” Pani Shulhaska said, opening a straw basket and taking out an envelope. “This comes in the mail today.” The envelope had money in it, about five hundred hryvnia. “With a note from Alyona,” showing it to Iryna, who translated it out loud.

  Dearest Lyubochka Vasylivna,

  Please take this money and look after my maty. I will come as soon as I can. I pray God she will still be with us. When I see you I will explain why and you will understand. Bud’te zdorovi, God bless you, and in Jesus’ name please forgive me.

  Alyshka

  She had mailed it the morning she disappeared or was murdered, Scorpion thought. Whatever plot she was involved in with Shelayev, she still thought she’d be able to come, until Pyatov or someone else stopped her. But it wasn’t of her own free will. The note made clear she didn’t want to let her mother die without seeing her, that if she could come, she would. That little triangle—she and Shelayev and Pyatov—was the key to everything. “We have to go,” he told Iryna. They stood up.

  “You’re not staying for the service? He’s good, this priest,” Pani Shulhaska said.

  “Pereproshuyu,” Scorpion said, I’m sorry, and he pressed a hundred hryven bill into her hand.

  “Slava Bohu,” Iryna said. God bless. She kissed Pani Shulhaska on the forehead and held her hand for a moment. Afterward, she joined Scorpion outside the church. Although it was early afternoon, the winter sky was already growing dark. It was very cold.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  “If we find out what happened to Alyona, we’ll find Shelayev,” Scorpion said.

  “It’s getting late,” Iryna said, looking at the sky.

  “I know,” he said, shivering inside his overcoat.

  The wind blew snow from the trees in the park across the way.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Kreshchatytsky Park

  Kyiv, Ukraine

  All the approaches were bad ones. The Puppet Theatre, looking like a miniature castle with spires, stood alone on a hill in the middle of a park, a large public space near the river. The steps and walkways leading up to the theatre were covered with snow. Footprints showed that people had come this way even though the theatre was closed mid-week. On a wooded slope away from the steps, Scorpion spotted two pairs of footprints in the snow; two people, one close behind the other. An unusual way of walking, he thought, unless someone was walking behind a captive.

  The park was deserted. As the crisis escalated, people were leaving the city. Coming into Kyiv, Scorpion and Iryna had passed cars going the other way. A long line of army tanks and trucks were parked single file on Prospekt Akademika Glushkova. On the main street, Khreshchatyk, soldiers and Black Armbands patrolled silently as nearly empty mashrutkas went by. The shoppers were gone, the stores shuttered. Scorpion could feel the city’s fear, as real as the icy wind.

  At a traffic light, a uniformed politseysky stared curiously at their SUV, reminding Scorpion that in spite of the crisis, the police were still hunting them. To be stopped now would be a disaster. The man studied them, while Scorpion kept his hand on the Glock in his holster. All they had going for them, he thought, was his mustache and her stupid blond wig. Iryna saw the politseysky watching them and quickly turned away. Scorpion could see the man shifting his weight, trying to make up his mind. He had just started toward them when the light changed and Scorpion drove on. When they were a block away, he and Iryna looked at each other, neither of them saying a word.

  They left the SUV on a side street near the top of the hill and walked down Andriyivsky Uzviz to the Black Cat theatre café. The café was open, light from the window spilling out in the early darkness. Inside, there was only one customer, an old man smoking his pipe and reading a book by the window. A bald man Scorpion had never seen before was behind the counter. The woodsman puppet he remembered from his last visit still hung beside the stage, only now it was in shadow, making it look odd, more sinister.

  “De Ekaterina?” Scorpion asked the bald man behind the counter. Where is Ekaterina?

  “Ya ne znayu,” I don’t know, the man said, eying them suspiciously. “Who are you?”

  “We’re friends of Alyona and Ekaterina,” Iryna explained. “We were wondering if you had seen them.”

  The man wiped his hands on his apron.

  “Are you ordering?” he asked, glancing over at the old man by the window.

  “We’ll have the borscht,” Scorpion said, following his look.

  “And chay,” Iryna said, ordering tea as they sat at a table away from the old man.

  A few minutes later the bald man brought them two steaming bowls of borscht. He came back with their tea and black bread and butter, sat down at their table and motioned them close.

  “Be careful what you say,” he whispered in passable English. “I don’t know this guy,” indicating the old man. “He is just coming the past three nights.” He looked at Iryna, obviously recognizing her. “I knew your batco,” your papa. “He was a good man, a patriot.”

  She looked around as if ready to flee.

  “It’s okay,” the bald man said, edging even closer. “I tell no one.”

  “What about Ekaterina or the young man who was here a few days ago?” Scorpion asked while eating.

  “Ah, her drooh, Fedir.” The man nodded. “I haven’t
heard from either of them. Not in two days. I was hoping you knew something. We had to close the show.” He shrugged. “As if with the crisis, anybody was coming anyway.”

  “So all three of them have disappeared?” Iryna whispered to him. “What about Ekaterina’s apartment?”

  The man shook his head.

  “Do you have any idea where they could have gone?” Scorpion asked.

  The old man by the window tapped his pipe on the side of the table. He closed his book, and leaving a few coins in a saucer on the table, stood up. He put on his overcoat, scarf, and hat. Before he left, he looked at each of them in turn, as if memorizing their features.

  “I don’t like that guy,” the bald man said.

  “No,” Scorpion agreed, making a mental note to make doubly sure there were no tails when they left. “What about Ekaterina?”

  The bald man motioned them closer.

  “I remembered something Fedir said about a year ago. He had no place to stay and he told me he’d found a way into the Lyalkovy Teatr.” The Puppet Theatre.

  “The one in Kreshchatytsky Park?” Iryna asked.

  The man nodded. “He said he stayed in the basement under the stage. A big storage space where they keep the puppets. He said it was very private there.”

  “Did you check it out?” Scorpion asked.

  “Too dangerous. This city is crazy now,” looking out at the dark street. “Soldiers. Black Armbands. Politsiy. I got a wife, kids. I can’t go,” he said, not looking at them.

  “We understand,” Iryna said, touching his hand.

  “Ni.” No. “I should have looked. There’s something wrong. They’re good kids,” he said, looking away; in that moment his face seemed older.

  When they left the café, they were followed by two men who stayed well back so their faces could not be seen. They walked quickly down the street’s steep slope to Kontraktova Square, where they waved down a mashrutka that took them to the Metrograd mall in Lva Tolstoho Square. Scorpion wasn’t sure if a dark Lada was following them. Once inside the mall, they started to run, going from one level to another, through stores and out another entrance, then took two taxis, one after another, going in opposite directions before they were sure they had lost whoever had been tailing them.