Scorpion Winter Read online

  “Kto avtoritet?” Scorpion asked. Who’s the boss? Around him, he could hear the klaxons of militsiyu police vans approaching.

  “Everybody knows. Mogilenko is the pakhan, the boss. Sukin sin, you broke my fingers,” the man said.

  “Good. Where do I find Mogilenko?”

  “Dynamo Club. Mogilenko fix you good, upizdysh,” the man cursed, suggesting Scorpion had sex with his mother.

  But Scorpion had already gotten up. He moved fast, working his way through the crowd. People were lying on the ground or stood around holding handkerchiefs to bloody heads. By the time militsiyu police in riot gear moved in, he had already left the square.

  The Dynamo Club was a multistory building, bright with neon and electric lights, near the end of Khreshchatyk Street by the Bessarabsky Market. A half-dozen unsmiling men, all over six feet and bulky in down jackets, acted as security at the door as a line of people waited to get in. Scorpion got out of the taxi, showed three one-hundred hryvnia bills, pronounced “grivna” and worth about forty dollars, to a doorman with longish hair, and then he was inside, raising his hand to his face so the security camera wouldn’t catch his image.

  Strobe lights flashed in the otherwise dark club, and speakers blasted Eurotrash rock so loud the room shook. It was packed with good-looking women and older men who looked like they could afford them. On red-lit platforms, naked young women swirled on poles, gyrating to the beat. His hand still covering his face, Scorpion made his way through the crowd to the bar.

  He handed another three hundred hryvnia to one of the bartenders, a sexy blonde in a low-cut top that left little doubt about her assets.

  “What you want, golubchik, my darling?” the blonde asked in fractured English.

  “I’m looking for Mogilenko.”

  The blonde recoiled. “You nice-looking guy. Why you want trouble?” she asked, tucking the money in her cleavage.

  “How do I find him?”

  “Listen, my darling, stay here. Plenty beautiful girls. Have good time. Don’t do this,” she said, her eyes wide, watching him.

  “I just need to talk to him,” Scorpion said, handing her one of a number of different business cards he had had made up in Bucharest; this one said his name was Luc Briand from an offshore services company headquartered in Marseilles.

  She motioned him to the side of the bar. “Go away. Now,” she whispered.

  “What’s the problem?” he said.

  “Listen. A year ago, young man come. Same thing. Nice, clean-cut, like you. Ask for Mogilenko. They take to see him. Only Mogilenko thinks this man looks at girlfriend, Valentina. They cut out his eyes, then his khui,” referring to the male organ. “Valentina try to look away. He shoot Valentina in head. Bang! Young guy, bang! Bury them together, man’s khui in her mouth. This is Mogilenko.”

  “Why do you work here?”

  She looked at him. Around them the music and lights pulsed, making patterns of light and shadows on their faces.

  “You new in Ukraine, golubchik. Is not so easy,” she said.

  Scorpion touched her arm. “Just tell me.”

  “You sure you want?”

  Scorpion felt a pang. Forcing the issue with a psycho Ukrainian mafia chief wasn’t the smartest way to go about this. But the clock was ticking. If the assassination was real—and it had to be or Rabinowich wouldn’t have been so desperate—whoever ordered it had two choices: use one of his own or contract the hit with the mafia. He needed to find out which.

  He nodded. said, “Yes, it’s what I want.”

  “You don’t need look,” she said, tucking his card into her cleavage. “He find you.”

  He watched her make a call on a phone by the bar, glancing at his card as she talked. As the strippers wrapped themselves around their poles, he thought about what he was getting into. What was it Shaefer had said? The difference between the SVR, the SBU, and the Ukrainian mafia, that’s a pretty thin line.

  He didn’t have time to finish his drink before two men—one small, one very large, at least six-foot-six, both in unzipped military-style parkas—came up on either side of him. The smaller one showed him a Makarov 9mm pistol tucked in his belt.

  “You come,” he said.

  “We’re going to see Mogilenko?” Scorpion asked.

  “You come,” resting his hand on the gun.

  “Buvay, rodimy,” Scorpion said to the blonde. So long. He smiled at her, but she looked straight through him as though he were already dead.

  Chapter Eight

  Patona Bridge

  Kyiv, Ukraine

  “He’s un con, an asshole, Cherkesov, but he will win,” Mogilenko said in French. They were in his office on the top floor of the Dynamo Club. The room was ultra modern. Mogilenko wore Prada tortoise-frame glasses, jeans, and a Ralph Lauren blazer, his long graying hair tied back in a ponytail. He looked more like a fashion designer than the head of Syndikat, Ukraine’s most powerful mafia gang. He sat on a sofa, a bottle of Khortytsya horilka between him and Scorpion. In the plate-glass wall behind Mogilenko, Scorpion could see the lights of the city. Through the thick carpet beneath their feet, he could feel the floor vibrate to the beat of the music below.

  They were not alone. A tall man with prison crosses tattooed on both sides of his neck lounged against the wall. His eyes, along with a Russian SR-1 Gyurza pistol with a silencer, were fixed on Scorpion. Mogilenko introduced him as Andriy la machine. “Because when he eliminates problems, it’s like a machine.” When Mogilenko said that, Andriy didn’t smile.

  “What makes you so sure?” Scorpion replied in French.

  “Les Russes want it,” Mogilenko said. “In this country, when the Russians want something, that’s how it works.”

  “Where’d you learn French?” Scorpion asked.

  “I did my MBA at INSEAD near Paris.”

  “Is that a job requirement for a Syndikat pakhan?”

  “You’d be surprised. Business, as the Americans say, is business. Budmo,” Mogilenko said, pouring Khortytsya for both of them and then drinking. Scorpion took a sip.

  “I was at the Kozhanovskiy rally,” Scorpion said. “Any idea why a bunch of patsani leg-breakers might bring iron bars to a political rally?”

  Mogilenko shrugged. “Maybe someone paid them. I heard one of the Kemo got his fingers broken,” he added, looking straight at Scorpion.

  “Maybe he stuck it where it didn’t belong.”

  “Very likely,” Mogilenko said, nodding.

  “So the Syndikat supports Cherkesov? Is that why somebody sent patsani thugs to the rally?”

  Mogilenko laughed. “Last week we broke up Cherkesov rallies in Kharkov and Donetsk. This week, a Kozhanovskiy rally. We support whoever pays.” He shrugged. “And don’t get taken in by Iryna Shevchenko because of her pretty face. She’s a douleur cuisante,” meaning sharp as a whip.

  “So it’s strictly business. You don’t give a damn who wins?”

  “Whoever wins, we do business.” Mogilenko put his glass down. “And now, monsieur, we’ve had our horilka and our little conversation. So before you go baise-toi, why don’t you tell me what the fuck you really want, upizdysh?” His eyes glittered behind his glasses. The blonde was right, Scorpion thought. He was a psychopath.

  “I’ve been approached for a job,” he said, leaning forward. “Kyiv is Syndikat territoire. I figured I better check with you first.”

  “What job?”

  Scorpion took a deep breath. He was about to cross a red line.

  “Maybe not everyone likes Cherkesov,” he said.

  “Who sent you?” Mogilenko asked, looking at Scorpion as though he were an insect in a science experiment.

  “Sorry. I don’t talk about clients.”

  “I won’t ask twice.” Mogilenko looked at Andriy.

  “You think I’m a mouchard?” Scorpion snapped, using the French slang for stool pigeon.

  “I think, you miserable fils de pute, you made a big mistake. Sortez!” Mogilenko snarled
, gesturing for Scorpion to get out. To Andriy, he said in Russian, “Get rid of him.”

  They went out the back door to an alley that led to the street. There were four of them: Scorpion, Andriy, and the two men in the bulky parkas who had brought Scorpion up to see Mogilenko. The wind had come up. It was very cold. As they walked to a black Mercedes sedan waiting down the block, its engine idling, Scorpion knew that he had made a terrible mistake. It was like that infinitesimal moment when you step on a land mine just before it explodes. If Mogilenko and the Syndikat were involved in the assassination plot, Mogilenko would have tried to get information out of him. If the assassination was news to Mogilenko, he would have tried to coopt him, or tried to use the information to his advantage. But he had done neither.

  Mogilenko was going to get rid of him. Probably to score points with whichever side won, Scorpion thought as he got in the back of the Mercedes, sandwiched between Andriy and the big man. Andriy pressed the muzzle of his silencer against Scorpion’s side.

  The small man got into the front passenger seat next to the driver. He turned around, a gun in his hand. Scorpion’s heart was pounding.

  “What is your name?” the small man said in Russian.

  “Briand. Lucien Briand. In Russian, Lukyan,” Scorpion said.

  “You worried, Lukyan?” indicating the gun.

  “I don’t know. Where are we going?”

  “Make no difference to you pretty yob fucking soon,” the small man said, and the big man next to Scorpion snickered.

  They drove up Khreshchatyk toward the Maidan. The street was lined with Soviet-style buildings, glossy billboards, and shops whose windows reflected the streetlights and the bare winter trees. It was getting late; there were only a few pedestrians. It started to snow.

  “What you want from Mogilenko?” the small man asked.

  “Maybe I wanted to fuck his girlfriend,” Scorpion said.

  The small man grinned widely.

  “You heard that story?”

  “Seems everybody has.”

  “That’s no story, upizdysh. Me and my drooh had to bury those govniuks,” he said, racking the slide on his gun. “You made a big mistake, Lukyan. He’s a crazy guy, that Mogilenko.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Scorpion said, measuring angles and distances with his eyes, barely able to breathe. “I’ll pay you a hundred thousand hryvnia. Each.”

  “No good, Lukyan,” the small man said. “You know what Mogilenko would do to us?”

  “You don’t want to do this. I know people. I’ve got blat,” Scorpion said, meaning influence. He suddenly had a terrible urge to urinate. He was running out of time.

  “You don’t got blat, drooh. Mogilenko, he got the politsiy and half the Verkhovna Rada on his payroll. He got the real blat,” the small man said, rubbing his thumb on his fingers in the universal sign for money.

  They drove onto the entryway to a bridge over the Dnieper River, ice floes floating on the dark water. The roadway was coated with snow, and at that late hour there was almost no traffic. The driver stopped the car midway on the bridge.

  “Get out,” the small man said.

  Chapter Nine

  Pechersk

  Kyiv, Ukraine

  Koichi, his instructor at the Point in North Carolina, used to say there were two key elements to surviving deadly violence: surprise and distance. Scorpion knew he had a better chance inside the Mercedes than outside, where they could shoot him down at a distance of their choosing. The guns were the problem, the big man was just a brute. Makarov pistols had a clumsy grip that made the recoil sloppy. It wouldn’t take much to make the small man miss. The biggest danger was Andriy’s Gyurza pistol with the silencer pressed against his side. The fraction of a second would be critical, he thought as he shouted at the top of his lungs.

  “Pazhalusta! Don’t kill me! I don’t want to die!” he screamed, already moving his right palm as Andriy hesitated, the Krav Maga move causing him to reflexively fire. The bullet tore through the front seat, barely missing the driver. At the same time, Scorpion kicked the front seat hard where the small man was sitting facing to the rear. The shot from Andriy’s Makarov echoed loudly inside the car.

  As Scorpion struggled to complete the Krav Maga sequence, Andriy managed to pull the trigger again. The bullet hit the small man in the shoulder, and he cried out in surprise and pain as Scorpion managed to twist the pistol away from Andriy, then turned the gun and fired. The bullet ripped through Andriy’s hand and into the bridge of his nose, blowing off the back of his head. Before the small man could move, Scorpion fired again, hitting him in the neck. The man stared at him wide-eyed, blood gurgling out of his throat.

  The big man then grabbed Scorpion’s throat in a massive grip, choking him, while reaching with his other hand to grapple for the pistol. He was immensely strong. Scorpion couldn’t move his head. His arm felt like it was caught in a vise. He smashed upward at the man’s chin with his left elbow, and the man merely grunted. Scorpion hit him again, this time in the throat, loosening his grip for a fraction of a second, then he fired, almost blindly. The bullet hit the big man in the eye, killing him instantly. He slumped back, his hand still around Scorpion’s neck.

  The driver had disappeared. The entire fight had taken perhaps five seconds.

  Scorpion pried the big man’s fingers from his neck. The interior of the car smelled of blood and sweat. He shoved Andriy’s body aside and staggered out. He gulped the cold night air in great heaves, his breath coming out in plumes of clouds, staggering to the side of the car and leaning on it to remain standing. He could see the driver near the end of the bridge running back toward the Right Bank of the river, too far away to shoot even if he’d had strength enough to try.

  Opening the driver’s door, he looked in. The small man was sprawled against the passenger door, bubbles forming in the blood from his neck. He was still alive, his eyes on Scorpion as he raised the gun. Scorpion saw the eyes go dead as he put a bullet into the center of the small man’s forehead.

  The engine was still running. He got in, put the car in gear, made a slippery U-turn in the snow and drove back across the bridge. Coming off the roadway, he scanned the streets for the driver, but he had gotten away. He knew he should track him down, but there wasn’t time. He had to get rid of the Lucien Briand ID and the Mercedes with the bodies, and find a place to dump the car. He wiped prints off anything he had touched in the Mercedes and left it on a residential street off Moskovska Avenue, ripped up the Briand ID and dropped the car keys into a trashcan by an apartment building and the pieces of ID into a curb flood drain.

  He’d screwed it up, he thought. Less than one day in the country and he’d made an enemy of the Syndikat. The only good thing was that they thought he was a Frenchman named Briand, who no longer existed. He considered aborting the mission and getting out while he still could. It was just Ukraine. Then he reminded himself that Rabinowich, whom he respected, had gone to a great deal of trouble to get him involved. There was a whole hell of a lot more to this.

  The funny part—and he had to suppress an almost hysterical laugh—was that what he’d initially thought of as the most dangerous part of the night was still ahead.

  The signal was a ribbon tied on a lamppost near the steps, indicating a pickup. Good old Shaefer, he thought. The dead drop was under a bench in the amphitheatre in Pechersk Landscape Park near the river. It was after eleven and the paths were deserted, although fartsovchiki drug dealers were known to do business in the park at night. Scorpion waited in the shadows. It was snowing heavily. At the top of the snow-covered slope, the gold-domed Pecherska Lavra Monastery, a Kyiv landmark, was illuminated by floodlights. He untied the ribbon and let the night breeze carry it away.

  From where he stood he could see the giant Rodina Mat statue of the Motherland, defending her country with a sword. Facing east, his apartment concierge had joked—the joke being that although built by the Soviets, she was looking east as if to defend Ukraine against Rus
sia instead of against the Nazis. He studied the footprints in the snow by the bench. The falling snow would fill them in. That was good. It would fill in his footprints as well.

  He watched the shadows around the amphitheatre area. It looked clear to approach, but still he waited, shivering inside his overcoat. His meeting with Mogilenko had accomplished one thing. It confirmed that the assassination plot was real. Mogilenko hadn’t been surprised. That meant he already knew about it, probably either from Cherkesov’s people or the SVR.

  Assumption: Cherkesov had probably hired Syndikat and Kemo goons to break up the Kozhanovskiy rally. Second assumption: Mogilenko knew about the plot but had questions. That’s why he had agreed to meet with him. If that was true, it meant Mogilenko and the Ukrainian mafia knew about it, but they hadn’t been contracted to do it themselves or they would have wanted to keep him alive, to either find out what he knew or use him to play one side against the other. Although, Scorpion had to admit, it was all speculation; there were a hell of a lot of ifs.

  Checking the shadows one last time, he walked to the first bench near the steps and felt underneath for something buried in the ground. He had to pull off his gloves to feel through the snow and the frozen ground. The cold was intense; the snow burned his fingers. Maybe it wasn’t there, he thought as he dug for it. Then his fingers touched something: a metal ring. He pulled hard, yanking out a wedge-shaped box—called a “spike”—buried in the snow-covered ground.

  He rubbed his frozen hands to warm them, then opened the spike. Inside was a Glock 9 x 19mm pistol, four standard seventeen-round magazines and four thirty-two-round extended clips, cell phones, SIM cards, bugs, a button spy video camcorder, NSA software on a flash drive, and other equipment. It was good to have a decent weapon again, he thought, loading and checking the Glock. When he was done, he put his gloves back on, forced the spike back into the ground under the bench, spread snow over it and left.

  He headed up the hill past the church. It was too late for the Metro to be running, so he walked until he caught a late night mashrutka minibus on Povstannya. It was nearly empty and smelled of cigarettes and wet clothes. As the minibus moved through the snowy street, he thought about his next move. The obvious candidate for someone with a motive to get rid of Cherkesov was his opponent, Kozhanovskiy, but all the information about a plot had come to the billionaire, Akhnetzov, from the SVR; and if his assumption was right, had been transmitted to Mogilenko from the same source.