Scorpion Winter

Chapter Seventeen

Kharkovskaya

Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine

“Why are we meeting here?” Iryna asked. They were in a booth at the Paradise, a strip club on Kharkovskaya near the Dnieper River. By her tone, Scorpion could tell she was annoyed. On the street outside, it was growing dark, the wind whipping snow and grit from factory smokestacks into the faces of passersby. Inside the club, except for the spotlights on two completely nude women onstage, it was so dark it was almost impossible to see.

“No one would look for you here,” he said. “Besides, this is a Syndikat club. I had to be here to meet somebody.”

“Why?”

“Assume we’re right; Pyatov is the assassin. If you were him, how would you go about it? We agreed he’s not the suicide type, so no bomber vests or close-up shooting, where he gets gunned down by Black Armbands. There’s nothing in his background to suggest sniper expertise, and explosives are tricky and unreliable. Even if they work, you don’t always get the right person. But I had to make sure that wasn’t his plan. Earlier, I met someone here.”

“Odd place for a business meeting,” she said, checking out the dancers on the stage.

“Not for these types.”

“What types?”

“He’s called ‘Bohdan.’ ”

“Bohdan what?”

“Just ‘Bohdan.’ These types don’t have last names. He’s what the blatnoi call a makler- a fixer.”

“I’ve heard the term,” she said. “Why do you need him?”

“If anyone was going to be getting a high-powered rifle or explosives through the Syndikat here in Dnipropetrovsk, he would know.”

“And?”

“Nothing.” Scorpion shook his head.

“Do you believe him?”

“Hard to say, but I offered him enough money and came well-recommended enough, which means dangerous enough, that he had every reason to tell me.”

“Did he believe you?”

“He believed my money,” he replied, not telling her how it had actually gone down.

He had met Bohdan at the same table two hours earlier, and assumed the man was known here. Bohdan was short, with ferretlike features and dark little eyes that darted about constantly, never still. He had a nervous tic of rubbing his fingers together as if continually signaling money. Scorpion had used Mogilenko’s name, implying to Bohdan that he was an out-of-town hit man brought in by the Syndikat’s Mogilenko, and that Bohdan better tell him the truth or he would be the target instead of Pyatov.

“They say Mogilenko looks for a foreigner, a Frenchie,” Bohdan had told Scorpion, counting the money he’d given him faster than a bank machine. “He’s ochen serdit.” Really angry. “Says he will chop pieces from this Frenchie and feed it to his cat every day for a year. They look everywhere.”

“That so?”

“Foreigner like you,” Bohdan said, counting the money a second time.

“Good thing I’m not French,” Scorpion said, reaching for his pocketknife.

“For you, very good,” Bohdan agreed, his fingers making the sign for money again, Scorpion putting another thousand hryvnia on the table. When Bohdan reached for it, Scorpion pierced the back of his hand with his pocketknife, trapping it on the table.

“I’m a Kiwi,” Scorpion said.

“What’s that?” Bohdan asked, wincing.

“From New Zealand. Good to remember.”

“Sure,” Bohdan said, wincing again. “Wherever the yob that is.”

“Far away.”

“I understand. Vy ne frantsuzy,” you are not French, Bohdan said in Russian.

Scorpion pulled the knife out and put it away. He called one of the girls over and asked for a handkerchief. If Bohdan holding his hand bleeding was an unusual sight here, she didn’t say anything about it.

“So did he tell you anything, this makler?” Iryna asked now, raising her voice. The music was blaring so loud it was hard for them to hear each other.

“Not much,” Scorpion said. “No one’s bought a high-powered rifle or explosives in the past week. What about your mole?”

“She saw Pyatov yesterday.”

“Where?”

“Cherkesov’s hotel. The lobby.”

“The one on Voroghilov Street?” Cherkesov’s Dnipropetrovsk headquarters; where Scorpion had met with Gorobets.

“Mmm,” she nodded, lighting a cigarette, the match flaring in the darkness.

“What else?”

“She doesn’t know. If he’s not going to use a rifle or explosives, how’s he going to do it?”

“With this,” Scorpion said, taking one of the black armbands with the yellow Ukrainian cross out of his pocket.

Iryna looked at him, her eyes reflecting the light from the stage in the darkness.

“Where’d you get that?” she asked.

“From Oliynyk, one of their campaign leaders here. I’m their pal, their drooh.”

“Are you?” she said, and he could hear the fear in her voice.

“Don’t be stupid.”

According to the TV and Internet, there had been street fighting all over Ukraine between supporters of Kozhanovskiy and the Black Armbands. In Kyiv and Dnipropetrovsk, Black Armbands had smashed Jewish shop windows. In Kharkov, three students and one Black Armband had been killed in a riot near the National University. Scorpion had seen it on TV that afternoon at the car rental shop where he’d rented a BMW 328i all-wheel-drive in case he needed a getaway through the snow from the stadium.

“They should shoot them all,” the car rental manager had said, referring to the TV.

“Who?” Scorpion had asked.

“Those studentov,” meaning the students supporting Kozhanovskiy. “All they do is make trouble. They should get a job, have to work like every Vasja Pupkin, instead of all the time marching, making trouble. Am I right, bratan?” meaning bro, clapping Scorpion on the shoulder.

Later, trying out the BMW’s AWD on the slushy streets on the way to his RDV at the Paradise Club, he had seen groups of Black Armbands brandishing clubs and spoiling for a fight heading toward Maidan Zhovtneva, October Square, the main square in Dnipropetrovsk.

“We have to fight them,” Iryna said, sitting next to him in the club. “If we let the Chorni Povyazky go unopposed, people will be afraid to even show up to vote.”

“I don’t think you should come to the stadium,” Scorpion said.

“Now who’s being stupid?” Iryna said. “All you’ve got is a photo and a hunch. I’ve seen Pyatov. Hell, I was the one who hired him! You need me. Anyway, it’s settled. I’m coming.”

“You’re too well known. How long do you think it’ll be before someone in the crowd recognizes you?”

“I brought these,” she said, taking black plastic-rimmed glasses out of her handbag and putting them on. “What do you think?”

With her blond wig and bright red lipstick, he thought it made her look like a schoolteacher moonlighting as a hooker.

“Perfect if you want to give blowjobs to professors,” he said. “Go back to the campaign, Iryna. Now, while you still can.”

“No,” she said softly. He had to strain over the loudspeaker music to hear her. “This is my fight, my country. If you don’t let me come, I’ll take off the disguise and walk in there openly.”

In spite of the glasses, Scorpion could see the bravery shining in her eyes. She’s bluffing, he thought. Or crazy. Either way, she was a hell of a woman. He couldn’t just leave her as a loose end. He waved at one of the dancers with a surgically enhanced chest, wearing nothing but a G-string the size of dental floss. When she came over, he ordered Nemiroff for both of them.

“What’s this?” Iryna asked when the dancer brought the drinks.

“Might as well, because the odds are we’re both going to die tonight. You, almost certainly.”

“In that case, za zdorowya ta scasty vam!” she toasted. Health and good luck.

“We’ll need it,” Scorpion said.