Scorpion Betrayal

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Saint Petersburg, Russia

The prisoner’s hands were bound and chained to a beam from which he hung naked, like a side of beef, his toes dangling above the cell floor. His head hung loosely from his neck, the face bruised and swollen, and there were red marks on his torso where he had been beaten. The two interrogators, hefty FSB types, attached electrodes to his genitals. One of the interrogators sat down and turned a dial, and the man screamed, his body and bound feet jerking wildly until the electricity stopped and the other interrogator went over and slapped him in the face and asked him something.

Watching it through one-way, soundproof glass, Scorpion said, “We’ve found these methods are iffy in the way of real information, and that’s even before it leaks and the media and the politicians go crazy.”

Ivanov shrugged. “He’s Chechen. Of the Daikhoi teip. They’re tough, these Chechens. To them, a beating is like how you say hello. He won’t tell us anything. We think he’s from a cell of SPIR, the Chechen terrorist group. This,” gesturing at the Chechen writhing and crying out as the current ravaged his privates, “is just for show so he thinks he’s resisted us. Later we give him a shot. We tell him it’s a truth drug, but it’s really just a barbiturate. Once he’s unconscious, we endoscopically insert a tiny tracking transmitter and attach it to the inside of his stomach. In the morning, when he wakes up, we let him go. He doesn’t know we’ve done anything and we don’t have to put surveillance on him or anything. The bug is GPS-based. We can track exactly where he is every second on a laptop computer. Over the course of a week or two he will lead us to his associates, and when we’re ready, we pick them all up.”

“I could use one of those,” Scorpion said.

“Ladno.” Sure. “I’ll see that you get it before you leave. Just don’t use it on one of my people.”

“Tell your people to stay the hell out of my way.”

“Izvinitye, but you aroused our curiosity. Come,” Ivanov said, leading him away from the one-way glass. They walked down a concrete corridor to a steel prison door. Ivanov tapped on the thick door glass and a guard opened it and they stepped into a tiled corridor. They climbed a steel staircase and Ivanov led him to an office with a window that looked out over the Neva River. It was a cool, gray day. Dark clouds were bundled over the buildings along the river, the water dark as the clouds. Ivanov sat down behind the desk wearing the well-tailored suit of a senior apparatchik in the New Russia. He had cold intelligent eyes behind steel-rimmed glasses, his hair iron-gray, and he looked fit for a man in his sixties.

“I’m borrowing this office while I’m in Saint Petersburg. Pozhalsta,” please, he said, gesturing for Scorpion to sit down as an aide came in and put a bottle of vodka and two glasses on the desk. Ivanov filled both glasses to the brim. “This is Stolichnaya Elit. The best. The other Stolichnayas are govno shit. Na sdarovy,” he toasted, raising his glass.

“Budem zdorovy,” Scorpion toasted back. “I’m flattered at the attention.”

This wasn’t the reception he’d expected when they picked him up outside the Astoria Hotel, the black Mercedes sedan swerving to cut off the taxi he just got into, the four tough-looking types who surrounded the taxi, showing him and the driver their guns. He’d gotten into the backseat, sandwiched between two beefy men with the universal look of cops, without any idea who they were or how they’d ID’d him. At first he wasn’t sure if they were FSB or Russian mafia. When he saw the grim red brick prison, he’d expected to be treated more like the poor Chechen bastard whose gonads were being used to complete an electrical circuit. It never occurred to him that Checkmate, Vladimir Ivanov himself, would have come all the way from Moscow just to see him.

“You are too modest, Scorpion. We heard about the Palestinian. My congratulations. As I told your Mr. Harris, we have an interest in this matter.”

“He’s not my Gospodin Harris.”

“So. That is interesting,” Ivanov said, studying him intently. “But I don’t believe you as a double. That would take more than electrodes on your testicles to convince me. I understand New York, but why did the Palestinian also choose Rome?”

“The EU Conference and the Israelis. Cradle of Western civilization. The Vatican, home of Christianity. Take your pick. Maybe they don’t like pasta.”

“Maybe they don’t. So the operation is over. Backs are slapped, champagne corks are popped, politicians and senior officials like myself who had nothing to do with it take the credit. As Voltaire says, all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds. So what is the Scorpion doing in Saint Petersburg?”

“How’d you find me?”

“You’re concerned there’s a mole in the Company? You wouldn’t expect the truth from me on something like that?”

“I wouldn’t expect the truth from you on anything,” Scorpion said, suspecting Ivanov was just fishing with his talk of a mole. The only people on earth who knew he was coming to Russia were him, the Italians, and Rabinowich. It could have been Moretti or one of the Carabinieri, but he didn’t think so, and he knew Dave wouldn’t have betrayed him. How’d they find him?

“Can’t you guess?” Ivanov teased.

It had to be something obvious, Scorpion thought. To get a Russian visa, he’d provided a photograph, and as they required a local address in Saint Petersburg, he’d made reservations at the Astoria Hotel in the center of town, so if they knew who he was, it would have been easy for them to pick him up. But how did they know who he was and what he looked like? Who could have seen him and taken a photograph without him knowing? Unbidden, an image floated up of a man in shorts and a gaudy shirt watering flowers in a rented villa. Harris! That son of a bitch! Either Harris had sold him out or the safe house in Castelnuovo wasn’t safe.

“You were looking for me. You had a picture of me from Italy and you had software matching it to my visa photograph, probably matching visas from every Russian embassy and consulate in Europe. You went to a lot of trouble,” Scorpion said, putting down the glass of vodka. He’d only sipped it and it had already started to go to his head. Like Ivanov himself, it was smooth as silk.

“Atlichna!” Bravo! “I wish you were a double. Budem.” Ivanov raised his glass to Scorpion and drank. “Except, I owe you from Arabia. You killed several of my men. By rights, I should put a bullet in your head,” he said, opening a drawer and placing a gun on the desk.

“Why don’t you?” Scorpion said, measuring distances and moving his foot back under him so he could spring out of the chair.

“Because I don’t know why you are here in Saint Petersburg. There is also the matter of the missing twenty-one kilos of U-235.”

“No one told you? Not Harris? Not your moles in the AISE and the Italian government? No one?”

Ivanov shook his head.

“It wasn’t there,” Scorpion said. “It was smuggled into Italy through Genoa on a Ukrainian ship, the Zaina, but it wasn’t in the truck they were planning to blow up the Palazzo delle Finanze with. Harris says the talk about uranium was disinformation from you.”

“It wasn’t,” Ivanov said, his eyes icy behind the steel-rimmed glasses.

“I know. There were signature traces of U-235 radiation in the hold of the Zaina and in a warehouse in Turin used by the Palestinian. The U-235 was brought into Italy, but it isn’t there now.”

“Where is it?”

For a moment neither man spoke.

Ivanov leaned forward, his arms on the desk. “You think the uranium is in Saint Petersburg? Should I be worried?”

“Yes.”

Ivanov drummed his fingers on the desk. “Then I can’t put a bullet in your head, can I? Maybe I should have them work you over and implant a bug in you like the Chechen?”

“You don’t want to do that-and I don’t think we have the time,” Scorpion said, glancing at the window. The sky had grown darker. It was going to rain any minute.

“It seems for once we may be on the same side, Amerikanets,” Ivanov said, taking another sip of vodka and refilling both their glasses from the bottle. “Perhaps we can help each other.”

“You can help me by staying out of my way. No surveillance. I can’t have something blown because someone spots one of your mudaki where he shouldn’t be.”

“What are you looking for?”

“A woman.”

“Beautiful?”

“Very.”

“There is no shortage of beautiful women in Saint Petersburg.” Ivanov smiled wryly.

“This one’s not from Saint Petersburg.”

“You should let us help you find her. We could do it quickly, just as we found you.”

“And the moment you do, perhaps a confederate of hers presses ‘Send’ on a cell phone. Then what?”

“And you are the only one who can get close to her. So we must trust you. That is not a condition I am comfortable with.”

“Give me your cell number. If I need you, I’ll call.”

“So apart from the bug, there’s nothing we can do?”

“I need a gun. I left mine in Italy to avoid problems on the plane.”

“Take this. You know it?” Ivanov said, handing him the gun on the desk.

Scorpion nodded. “SR-1 Gyurza, special for the FSB. Eighteen rounds. Armor piercing,” he said, pulling out the clip. “It’s not loaded.”

“I don’t trust you that much. You are not called ‘Scorpion’ for nothing,” Ivanov said, placing three clips of ammunition on the desk.

T he coffee shop in the Vladimirsky Mall looked for all the world like a Russian Starbucks, even to the oval green sign. From behind a pillar on the second floor, Scorpion watched Prosviyenko sit down at an outer table. From a distance, Scorpion couldn’t be sure, but he had to assume the reporter was wired. After twenty minutes Prosviyenko glanced at his watch, got up and started to walk to the mall exit. Scorpion waited to make sure he was alone, then bumped him from behind and said, “Izvinitye,” and then in English as he passed, “Meet me in the men’s toilet.”

As soon as Prosviyenko entered the bathroom, Scorpion told him to empty his pockets and open his shirt. Scorpion remembered Koenig telling him that local reporters who knew their beats could be invaluable sources of information, but you had to be careful they didn’t make you the story.

“Is this necessary?” Prosviyenko said, keeping his hands in his pockets. He was tall, fair-haired, with the jeans-and-tweed-jacket look of a young professor. A man came out of a stall and looked at the two men, then went to the basin to wash his hands.

“I need to know if you’re wired.”

“Suppose I don’t want to open my shirt?”

“Da svidaniya,” goodbye, Scorpion said, and started to walk out.

“You said you had a story,” Prosviyenko called out.

“There’s no story. I just want some information and I’m willing to pay for it. Say five thousand rubles for a few minutes, ten thousand, if it’s worth my time.” Scorpion wasn’t sure how much local print reporters made, but it couldn’t be that much.

“Ten thousand?” Prosviyenko said. He emptied his pockets and opened his shirt, letting Scorpion pat him down. The man washing his hands made a face as he watched them in the mirror, his expression suggesting he thought they were fairies, then he went out. “Do we do it here?”

“There’s a pub on the third floor. Meet me,” Scorpion said, and walked out. Five minutes later they were sitting opposite each other, Scorpion facing the concourse to make sure no one was paying attention to them.

“You mentioned money,” Prosviyenko said after the waitress brought them bottles of Baltika beer.

“I did,” Scorpion said, and reaching over to shake Prosviyenko’s hand, pressed the folded-up rubles into his hand.

“What do you want to talk about?”

“I saw in the Saint Petersburg Times where you covered a story on corruption in the port, only you were careful not to name names.”

Prosviyenko put down his bottle of Baltika. “You know what means ‘zamochit’?”

“You mean, to kill?”

“It means literally to piss on someone. Among the blatnoi — the criminals-it means, yes, to kill. Don’t think I didn’t get little anonymous phone calls even when I didn’t name names. Here.” He put the five thousand rubles on the table. “Take it back. You don’t know who you are dealing with.”

“Keep the money. I just need to ask you a question. You decide if you want to answer. You know the port?”

“Which one?”

“Ekateringofskiy Basin.” There were three separate ports in the Saint Petersburg complex on the Gulf of Finland, west of the city. Scorpion had checked with the port before the FSB picked him up. The Shiraz Se had berthed at the Ekateringofskiy wharves and left port yesterday. With the hotel concierge’s help, he’d hired a Russian temporary secretary and had her contact all the funeral homes in Saint Petersburg. There was nothing about a Pyotr Escher or a body having been brought in by anyone named Escher to any funeral home in Saint Petersburg during the past week. Nor were there any hotels or apartments for rent where a Brynna Escher had registered. He didn’t tell the secretary about the name Kafoury, because he didn’t want the FSB to get it. Both Najla and the coffin had disappeared as soon as she left Pulkovo Airport. The only lead he had left was the port. “Suppose I had some contraband, something serious I had to get through customs and out of the port. Who would I need to talk to?”

“Drugs? There are plenty of fartsovchiki. The city is full of them.”

“Something bigger, more difficult. I need someone who can get things done, someone with real blat,” meaning connections.

Prosviyenko leaned closer. “You mean the Tambov mafia? Listen, mister. This is not tourist Russia we’re talking about. If you want to die, there are better ways to do it than to deal with Tambov.”

“Who’s the boss, the pakhan? Who do I need to talk to?”

“You mean Vasiliev? Everyone knows of Kiril Andreyevitch Vasiliev. You don’t have to pay me for that, mister. But no one gets to see him, understand? If half the stories about him are true, believe me, you don’t want to see him.”

“Where would I find him or someone close to him?”

“Listen, this is crazy. What is this about?”

“I’m looking for someone. A woman who may have asked the same questions.”

“You care for this woman?” Prosviyenko asked. Scorpion nodded, thinking that ironically enough, it was true. “Try the Dacha Club on the Nevsky Prospekt,” he said. “Go after eleven. Pozhalsta, don’t mention my name.”

“Spasiba,” thanks, Scorpion said, passing the additional five thousand rubles to him on the tabletop. The reporter put his hand on it and slipped it into his pocket.

“Don’t thank me. Believe me, telling you about Vasiliev, I didn’t do you any favors. So there’s no story, just you looking for a woman who is a smuggler?”

Scorpion hesitated. “It’s complicated.”

“With women, what isn’t?” Prosviyenko shrugged. “Fsyevo kharoshiva!” Good luck! “Listen, there are many beautiful women at the Dacha. Maybe you will see her, maybe someone else. Sooner or later everyone goes there.”

T he bar in the Astoria was leather and glass, subdued lights reflecting off drinks, expensive-looking women in designer dresses perched on stools, looking for business. One of them, a pretty blonde in her early twenties, kept looking over at Scorpion until finally he shook his head no and she shrugged and smiled as if to say, “You can’t blame a girl for trying.” He sent the waiter over to tell her he was buying her a drink but that he wasn’t available. When the waiter told her, she raised her glass to him.

Cheers! she mouthed.

Za Vas! he mouthed back, raising his glass. He watched the rain streak the window in the gray twilight. It wasn’t close enough to summer for the White Nights, when it barely got dark, but it was late enough in spring so that although it was ten in the evening, it was still light outside. He sat sipping Stolichnaya Elit over ice and tried to work it out. He badly needed to talk to Rabinowich.

In the taxi on his way to meet the secretary he had hired, he tried calling him, but the cell phone number had been disconnected. At the secretary’s office he’d tried to track the transmission center from which Rabinowich’s last call had originated, the one he got in Frankfurt, but the best he could do was to be told that the message had been sent from somewhere in the Middle East. Perhaps Rabinowich had gone to Egypt, where the operation started, or else Israel. If it was Israel, was the Mossad involved? That was assuming that he had gone to the Middle East instead of Hawaii, or hadn’t just turned in the SIM on a disposable phone.

What was Rabinowich trying to tell him about the Twelfth Imam? If the Iranians wanted to attack through a proxy, why against Russia, Hezbollah and Iran’s supplier? Unless Russia had reneged on a deal. Suppose the twenty-one kilos hadn’t been stolen. What if it had been made to look stolen to cover Russia’s dealings with Iran, and suppose it wasn’t supposed to be twenty-one kilos of U-235 but fifty or a hundred kilos, or a plutonium plant or S-300 missiles, or God knew what, and the Russians had reneged on the deal? What then? The Iranian Revolutionary Guards were like any other strong-arm outfit. They couldn’t allow themselves to be cheated. They’d have to send a message. That was a possibility, he thought. That Hassani was the diversion, Najla, the enforcer.

He started to signal the waiter for the check when it occurred to him that a bit of arm candy might be useful at the Dacha Club. He motioned to the blonde. She came over and sat down.

“I am hoping you change your mind, milenky, my dearest.” She smiled, resting her hand on his thigh.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Zhana. For you, I am Zhanochka. And you?”

“Damon,” using his cover ID. “I’ll give you five thousand rubles to come with me to the Dacha Club. We won’t be leaving together. I have business there.”

“Listen, Damonya, my sweetness, give me two hundred euros, I do anything you want, any place you want, any way you want,” she said.

“This isn’t love, Zhanochka golubcha. One fifty euros and you find your own way home from the Dacha,” he said, taking her hand as he got up. They caught a taxi outside the hotel. It was still raining, the sky the strange tangerine-gray of the long northern twilight. Once inside the taxi, he gave her the money. She counted it and slipped it into her bra. The taxi turned onto the broad Nevsky Prospekt, the lights from the buildings reflected in the rain-slick street.

The taxi pulled up, and even in the rain there was a line of people standing outside the awning entrance to the Dacha Club. With fifty euros to the doorman and Zhanochka on his arm, they walked past the crowd waiting to get in and into the club, its sleek multistoried metal and glass interior pulsating to loud Russian rock music. Zhana began to sway to the music as she walked beside him to the bar. They pushed in between two men, one of whom was big and broad-shouldered, in an Italian leather jacket, with the look of someone in the underworld. A glance at the tattoo on his neck confirmed for Scorpion that he was of the Belaya Energia, a white supremacist gang. The man started to say something harshly, then stopped and smiled when he saw Zhana. They began talking rapidly in Russian, and she indicated Scorpion with a movement of her head.

“He wants me to go with him,” she told Scorpion, nearly shouting to be heard over the noise of the crowd and the music.

“Tell him you’re free to do what you want if he’ll introduce me to someone,” Scorpion shouted back.

The man laughed and gestured toward the tables near the bar, where there were at least a dozen good-looking women in tight low-cut dresses. “Take you pick, druk. No need introduce. Her I take,” the man said in broken English, grabbing Zhana by the buttocks and pulling her tight against him. She tried to twist away but he held her tight. Scorpion reached over, pried the man’s little finger off her and bent it back nearly to the point of breaking. With his other hand, he grabbed the man’s other wrist in a Krav Maga hold so he couldn’t use the knife he had pulled out, all of it done so quickly no one else noticed.

“The person I want to see is Vasiliev,” Scorpion said.

The man immediately stopped. “You want see Kiril Andreyevitch?”

“Da,” Scorpion said, letting him go. The man put the knife away and let Zhana loose. She turned and looked warily at Scorpion.

“He not see you. Is Tambov,” the man said, holding the finger that Scorpion had twisted.

“Let’s let him decide, druk. Tell him it’s about a beautiful woman and a shipment in the port. We’ll wait for you here.”

The man whispered something to a friend with a badly scarred face, also in a leather jacket, who turned to look at Scorpion, his open shirt revealing the top of a blatnoi prison tattoo on his chest. Then the scar-faced man motioned to his friend and the two of them left, weaving their way through the crowd to a glass elevator. Scorpion watched them till Zhana tugged at his arm.

“We should go now, pozhalsta, my sweetness,” she said urgently. “I give you back the money. We fuck like crazy. I don’t like these bandity.”

“You go. Keep the money,” Scorpion said, kissing her cheek, his eyes on the crowd in the mirror.

“You sure? I mean it. I don’t want no money. I like you,” she said plaintively.

“I don’t want you to get hurt. Go, pozhalsta,” he said, giving her a little shove, never taking his eye off the crowd in the mirror.

“Da svidaniya, golubchik,” she said, looking back at him, but this time Scorpion wasn’t watching. Instead, he walked up to a striking blonde woman in a Burberry raincoat who had just come into the club. She was standing between two Middle Eastern-looking men in suits, their raincoats over their arms. He made the move as he pretended to squeeze by, deliberately bumping into her.

“Hello, Najla,” he said as her eyes widened at the sight of him.

“Well, if it isn’t Herr Crane,” she said, just managing to recover. “Or is it Monsieur McDonald or whatever your name is these days?”

“McDonald’ll do. I guess they were right. Everyone does come to the Dacha Club.” He took her arm. The two men started to react, and at a nod from her they stopped. “He’s an old friend,” she said to them in Arabic.

“Ismak, who are you?” one of the men said in Arabic, with what Scorpion thought was a Farsi accent.

“Emam mardar sag ast,” Scorpion said in Farsi. My name is your mother is a bitch. He added, “We have to talk,” to Najla in English, pulling at her arm. They stood next to a glass wall sparkling with colored lights. The two men watched Scorpion with hard eyes, their hands in their jacket pockets.

“Talk about what? Marseilles?”

“Not here,” he said, looking around.

“Why? Do you want to tie me up again, liebling?” Her dark eyes on him, and hearing her call him darling, even though he knew she meant it as little as the hooker, Zhana, sent a tiny electric spark through him.

“Maybe I should’ve.” He peered at her. “I think I like you better as a brunette.”

“So do I. It was supposed to help disguise me. It seems it didn’t work.” She smiled ruefully.

“You’re hard to miss,” he said.

“How did you find me?”

“Airport security camera in Turin.”

“Of course. One always underestimates the Americans. But I should never underestimate you, should I?” she said, looking into his eyes.

“Don’t play me, Najla. We need to talk-without your gorillas,” he added, glancing at the two men. “Where can we go?”

“Just like a man! We find each other again, like a miracle, and all you want is to get a room.”

“Or maybe a ship. You like ships, don’t you? First the Zaina, then the Shiraz Se,” he said, grabbing her arm. She looked stunned.

“I can’t talk now,” she said, trying to pull away.

“Not this time, Najla. Or is it Brynna?” Scorpion said, tightening his grip. He saw the two men start to move and he got ready for it. Najla stared at him, her eyes dark, unreadable. Then Scorpion felt a hard poke in his back.

“Go away,” he said, not turning around. The poke came again.

“Vasiliev wants to see you,” the scar-faced man said. His friend and another tough-looking man stood next to him.

“I’m busy,” Scorpion said.

“Kiril Andreyevitch is not the kind of man you keep waiting,” the scar-faced man said, showing Scorpion a gun in a shoulder holster. Scorpion looked at Najla. She leaned close, as if to kiss him.

“Diese manner sind Iranier,” she said. These men are Iranians. “They are forcing me to go with them. We’re meeting Chechens in the Summer Garden by the Coffee House in two hours. For God’s sake, help me,” she whispered in his ear in German. She looked into his eyes and kissed him full on the lips.

“Come,” said one of the Iranians, pulling her away.

“Mein Gott!” she said, looking wistfully at Scorpion. “How did we land in the middle of this?”

“I’ll see you,” Scorpion said, watching her as she stood looking tiny between the two Iranians.

“Will you?” Najla said as the three Tambov gangsters closed around Scorpion.