Scorpion Winter (17 page)

“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

T
he 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?” Scorpion 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

A
ll 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.

T
hey 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.

W
hen 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.

It took them more than an hour to get back to where they had parked the Volkswagen SUV. But they had wasted their time, Scorpion thought. Because all the approaches to the Puppet Theatre were across open ground. He crouched behind a tree, Iryna next to him, and looked up the snow-covered slope at the shadowy outline of the theatre at the top of the rise. It was completely dark; the only light came from a streetlight that cast the shadows of the building's spires across the snow.

“What do we do?” Iryna asked.

“You go to Viktor. They need you,” Scorpion said, taking out the Glock and fitting the silencer on it.

“
Gospadi
, you don't know a damn thing about women, do you?” Iryna said through clenched teeth. “I'm not some delicate flower and this matters to me more than you, so I'm coming. Got it?”

“In that case, make yourself useful. Where's your Beretta?”

“In my purse,” she said, fishing it out.

“Wait three minutes, then follow. Watch where I go in. Don't make a sound. If anybody gets in your way, don't hesitate for a second. Kill him. Are we clear?”

They looked at each other. Her face, hard to see in the shadows, was beyond beautiful, he thought. Without a word, he began to move up the open slope. The snow was frozen hard under his boots, and he leaned forward, almost on all fours, to keep his silhouette low. His eyes scanned the castle—that was what it looked like and that was how he had come to think of it—for any light or sign of movement. There were only shadows, the cold wind trailing plumes of snow from the castle spires.

He reached the flat area at the side of the building. Keeping low, he went around to the back, looking for an entryway that Ekaterina's boyfriend, Fedir, might have used. At the back of the building he saw a basement window, low to the ground. It was locked but it had a top latch that could have been left open at some time. He put his backpack on the ground and felt inside the pack till he found his Leatherman tool, the night vision goggles, and the duct tape.

Using the Leatherman's awl with the hardened tip as a glass cutter, he cut a circle on the glass and pulled it away from the window with a small wad of duct tape. Reaching through the circular opening, he opened the latch and pushed the window open. When he had the goggles and the Glock in his hand, the safety off, he crawled inside.

He had come in on a worktable in a dark basement room, which was a workshop for building sets. He put on the night vision goggles. Strange cutout shapes stood against the wall, eerie in the green light of the goggles. The room smelled of sawdust and glue.

Scorpion eased down from the table onto his tiptoes, then moved quietly toward a door and pressed his ear against it. He could hear the sound of something, but it made no sense. It sounded like the squeak of a pulley and splashing water. Whatever it was, someone was on the other side of the door. He held the Glock ready.

He turned the handle and inched the door open. The light was bright, blinding his night goggles. He pulled them off, catching a brief glimpse of a room filled with hanging objects; dozens of medieval-looking puppets, witches and ogres, princesses and humanlike animals resembling something out of Grimms' fairy tales.

There were two hanging objects too big to be puppets. He started toward them when a shadow next to him moved and an iron bar smashed down on his hand, stunning him and causing him to drop the gun. Almost before he could react, a second blow from the iron bar wielded by a big man came down at his head and he barely got his injured hand up in time to block the blow with a forearm. The pain was instantaneous; his entire arm felt numb and useless.

Almost without thinking, Scorpion twisted toward the attacker, closing with him. With a leg sweep, he used his uninjured left elbow to smash into the side of the big man's neck. The man grunted but didn't go down. As they fought, they banged against the dangling puppets, which swung and slammed into each other; a forest of grotesque swinging shapes.

“When attacked by surprise, go inside,” his CQC instructor, Koichi, used to say. The big man swung the bar again. Scorpion stepped inside the arc of the swing and kicked at the inside of the man's knee while grabbing the arm holding the bar. Using the man's own momentum, Scorpion hurled him with an arm bar twist down to the ground. Before the big man could react, Scorpion kicked him savagely in the side of the head, and using both hands like pointed claws, stabbed down at the big man's eyes, deep into the sockets, blinding him. The man screamed with pain and rage. He swung the iron bar blindly at Scorpion, who just managed to dodge out of the way.

A second man, who seemed to come out of nowhere, launched a Russian Sambo-style kick at Scorpion's midsection. With only an instant to counter, he grabbed the man's foot mid-kick and twisted it violently with both hands, forcing him to the ground. Meanwhile, the big man had gotten to his feet. He couldn't see and was swinging the iron bar blindly. Scorpion timed his swing, grabbed the man's arm in mid swing and turned it into a shoulder lock, dislocating the man's shoulder. He screamed in intense pain as the other man got up.

Scorpion twisted the iron bar out of the big man's hands and smashed it into the side of his head by the temple as the second man came at him again. Scorpion feinted a high swing then jabbed the iron bar like a fencer's thrust at his knee, hearing it crack as he sent him down. Incredibly, the big man staggered up again. His good hand grabbed blindly at Scorpion, getting hold of his neck and choking him with crushing strength. Scorpion swung the iron bar with all his might at his temple, landing a blow that sent him crashing to the floor, lifeless. Scorpion whirled with the iron bar to deal with the second man, who was backing away now, getting tangled in the hanging puppets. Scorpion started to look for the Glock, but it was too late.

A third, tall man with thick sandy hair and wearing a black armband had retrieved the Glock. He stood in a shooting stance, the Glock aimed at Scorpion's chest. A powerful lamp beside him cast the shadows of the swinging puppets, dislodged by the fight, dancing across the room.

Scorpion recognized the sandy-haired man. He had been Gorobets's aide in the hotel suite in Dnipropetrovsk. For the first time, Scorpion was able to look around. In addition to the puppets, there were two bodies hanging from a ceiling pipe by their necks, the large shapes he had seen earlier. They were clearly dead.

The bodies were those of a young man and woman, both naked, their hands tied and both covered with welts and dark bruises. It took Scorpion a second before, with a shock, he recognized their bloated faces. The young people from the Black Cat café: Ekaterina and Fedir.

He had no time to pay attention to them, because there was another woman, also naked. She hung upside down, tied by her feet from a pulley, her long blond hair trailing down into a tub of water filled with chunks of ice. Her body was bruised and cut like the others and her mouth had been taped so no one could hear her scream. The pulley he'd heard earlier had been used to raise or lower her head into the ice water. There were wet rubber gloves lying next to the tub. The sandy-haired man had been holding her head under the water. She was still breathing, her eyes dazed, wild almost to the point of insanity. It took a few seconds till Scorpion recognized her from the photo. It was Alyona.

“Pane Kilbane, we saw you coming,” the sandy-haired man said in English. The damned approaches, Scorpion thought. There was bound to be someone watching.

“Remind me again. What's your name?” he asked.

“Why?”

“I plan to remember you,” Scorpion said. He sensed the second man coming up behind him.

“I'm Kulyakov,” the sandy-haired man said. “I want you to remember me. Do you know Alyona?”

“Only by her photo in the Chorna Kishka café,” he said, so if she were listening she would know he knew who she was and that he was there to help. Unless her mind, after what they had done to her, was too far gone.