Scorpion Winter

Chapter Nineteen

Zaporozhye

Ukraine

The checkpoint was at the Zaporizka Shosye highway fork on the outskirts of Dnipropetrovsk, just past Babuskinskyi. They were in a district of factories, apartment buildings, and fields covered with snow. Scorpion had hoped to get out of the city before roadblocks were set up, but the politsiy had moved too quickly.

He moved the BMW into a waiting line of trucks, mostly Russian Kamazes and Czech Tatras. The checkpoint blazed in the darkness with light from the politsiy police vans’ headlights shining through the falling snow.

“Do you have a false ID?” he asked Iryna. It was the first time they had spoken since the Stadium. She shook her head no. He looked behind them in the rearview mirror. A big Tatra truck had come up behind, boxing them in. The truck cab was too high for its driver to see into the BMW through the back window.

“There’s a blanket in back. Hide under it on the floor and keep still,” he said.

“What about you?” she asked, still not taking it in. The news they had been listening to on the car radio since leaving the stadium area had stunned her into silence. Cherkesov and three of his aides were dead, including Ihor Oliynyk, the man who brought Scorpion to Gorobets. The bodies of eight more men had been recovered from the tunnel shootout. The election was in chaos. According to Radio Europa News, Kozhanovskiy campaign advisor Iryna Mikhailivna Shevchenko had been seen in the stadium. She, along with a foreign journalist named Mikhail Kilbane, were wanted for questioning.

“I have another ID,” Scorpion said.

“What about Michael Kilbane?”

“He no longer exists. I’m a South African businessman named Peter Reinert.”

“You can do that? Change your identity like that?” snapping her fingers. “Gospadi!”

“You’d better hurry,” he said, checking the mirrors to make sure no one could see. “We’re going to have to move any second.”

“I’m scared,” she said, her eyes wide.

“I know,” he replied, motioning for her to get in back.

She opened the passenger door and got out. A moment later he heard the rear passenger door open and close. There was the sound of rustling as she got under the blanket, then nothing. He glanced back. She was hidden. The truck in front of him began to move, and he eased the BMW forward. His pulse began to race. In his left hand he had his South African passport, in his right, close to his body so it couldn’t be seen by someone looking in, the Glock and five hundred hryvnia, about sixty dollars. Not too much, not too little, for a highway bribe.

He thought about his cover. Downside, he couldn’t disguise that he was a foreigner. Upside, he’d come up with a cover reason to be going to Zaporozhye. The politsiy were looking for two people, not one, so if they didn’t inspect the car, he was okay. Also, they would be looking for them to be heading north, to Kyiv, not south, to Zaporozhye. He didn’t want to think about what would happen if it didn’t work. If they decided to inspect the car and found Iryna, they were as good as dead.

A politseysky policeman bundled against the cold motioned him forward. A second politseysky came around to the passenger side window and peered in. Scorpion rolled down his window. A blast of frigid wind blew snow into the car.

The politseysky said something in Ukrainian. Scorpion smiled and shrugged as if to say he didn’t understand.

“Ya iz Yuzhnoi Afriki,” I am from South Africa, he said in Russian, handing politseysky the passport.

“Why are you going to Zaporozhye?” the man replied in Russian.

“I go see women,” Scorpion said. In his searches on the Internet, he had found it was almost impossible to look up anything on Ukraine without being hit with ads from Ukrainian dating sites for women seeking foreign men. It seemed plausible, he thought. Only a fool hot for finding women would drive at night through the snow to an industrial city like Zaporozhye.

The politseysky smirked and said something to his partner about Scorpion being a bolvan, a dumb jerk. The partner laughed. The politseysky looked at Scorpion’s photo on the passport, comparing it to his face, then said something in Russian too fast for Scorpion to catch.

“Chto? Ya ne ponimayu,” Scorpion said. What? I don’t understand.

“Vyidite iz avtomobilya,” the politseysky said, motioning for him to get out of the car.

Scorpion’s hand passed the money to his left hand and tightened on the Glock. Although it was dark, if he got out they might spot the blood on his jacket. They might inspect the car. He wasn’t going to get out.

“Vyidite iz avtomobilya!” the politseysky repeated. His partner rapped on the window with a 9mm pistol, indicating that Scorpion should get out.

“Listen, drooh,” Scorpion said in English. “I got a date. Beautiful girl, krasivaya devushka,” making a motion for sex with his left hand, the one with the money. “Pazhalusta, ” he said, Please, and passed the money to the politseysky. The politseysky looked at it, then slid it into his coat pocket. He looked at Scorpion, didn’t say anything, then motioned for him to get out of the car.

Scorpion took a deep breath and stayed seated, his hand tightening on the Glock. He doesn’t want to shoot you, he told himself. Yeah, tell that to him. He knew a shoot-out would be a disaster. He let go of the Glock. Instead, he took out his money and handed the politseysky another five hundred hryvnia.

“Make sexy with Ukraine girls,” the politseysky said, grinning all at once and making a vulgar gesture for intercourse as he took the money. His partner laughed. The politseysky made the gesture again and waved him on. Scorpion put the BMW into gear and drove, forcing himself to breathe normally.

He drove for ten minutes, checking the rearview mirror every few seconds to make sure they weren’t being followed. The highway had been cleared by snowplows, two lanes in each direction, but the snow was making it harder and cutting down the visibility. Because of the roadblock and the weather, there was hardly any traffic.

He pulled off to the side of the road at a spot where the snow didn’t appear too deep and looked around. Except for the highway in his headlights, it was almost impossible to see anything. The land was flat and empty, covered with drifts of snow, the occasional light from a farmhouse gleaming in the darkness like a star. He opened the back door and told Iryna to come back up front. She threw off the blanket and climbed back into the passenger seat. It only took a few seconds, and then they were driving again, the BMW fishtailing till Scorpion got it under control as he pulled back onto the icy highway.

They listened to the news on the car radio. Gorobets, speaking for the Cherkesov campaign, accused the Kozhanovskiy campaign of assassinating Cherkesov and of the massacre at the stadium. Kozhanovskiy denied the charges, but Russian president Evgeni Brabov called the assassination an outrage and threatened that Russia would not stand idly by while innocent Russian-speaking civilians were threatened by a “Kozhanovskiy coup” and “genocide.”

Ukrainian interim President Lavro Davydenko, called for calm and ordered militsiyu police to patrol the streets. The foreigner wanted by the police-a Canadian journalist named Michael Kilbane-and Kozhanovskiy aide Iryna Mikhailivna Shevchenko were considered fugitives. The authorities were moving to charge them in the stadium murders. The politsiy announced they were to be considered armed and dangerous.

Scorpion turned off the radio. The only sound was of the snow tires on the highway.

“I should have listened to you,” Iryna said. “I shouldn’t have come.”

“We got lucky just now,” meaning at the checkpoint. “The good thing about a corrupt country is you can buy anything, even the cops. Especially the cops.”

“Now what?” she asked.

“We have to get back to Kyiv.”

“So why are we going south, to Zaporozhye? Kyiv’s the other way.”

“It’s four hundred kilometers to Kyiv. We’d never make it by road, even if it doesn’t get shut down by the snow. The airports, trains, all public transport will be watched. By this time the militsiyu has locked Dnipropetrovsk down tight as a drum. They’re probably going through every hotel room and apartment rental in the city right now. Not to mention we’ve got the politsiy, the SBU, the Syndikat, probably the SVR and God knows who the hell else after us. Oh, and did I forget to mention I’m with the most recognizable woman in the country?”

“I’ll turn myself in. I’ll tell them you were just trying to save me. Oddly enough, that’s the truth, isn’t it?” she said, looking at him.

“Too late. They’d never let you talk to the press. They’d torture you till you swore you and Kozhanovskiy were behind every assassination in history including Kennedy.”

“So we go south to Zaporozhye because they won’t expect it,” she said, taking a deep breath.

“Plus it’s got an airport. It’s only seventy kilometers. We’ll be there in about forty minutes to an hour, even in this weather. I thought I could get through before they put up roadblocks, but now that we’re through, it’s even better. They won’t be looking for us there.”

“So we get to Zaporozhye. Then what?”

“We go to Kyiv and find out who was really behind Cherkesov’s killing,” he said. “It’s our only chance.”

“What about the election? The Russians?”

“Same thing. The only way Kozhanovskiy has a chance, and to try to stop the war, is to solve this thing.”

The snow made driving treacherous, even with all-wheel-drive. He peered through the arcs of the windshield wipers and tried to stay in the tire tracks made by trucks far ahead. There was almost no traffic except for the headlights of an occasional truck coming the other way. She lit a cigarette.

“The Chorni Povyazky killed Pyatov?” Iryna asked.

“It was the militsiyu. ”

“Did Pyatov say anything about who is behind this?”

“We only had a few seconds before they came in.”

“And Alyona? What did he do with her?” she asked, not looking at him.

“He seemed confused. Almost as if he didn’t know what I was talking about.”

“Did you believe him?”

“No,” he said, and shook his head. He didn’t want to tell her what Pyatov had actually said. It was bothering him. A loose end that didn’t fit. “He was just starting to talk when they killed him.”

“Christ, what a mess.” She looked at him. “I don’t even know what to call you now.”

“Peter.”

“You saved my life. I’m grateful, but I don’t know who you are. You’re like a ghost. I don’t know how to do this.”

“If we get captured,” he said, “the less you know about me the better.”

“We were set up, weren’t we?”

He nodded, then checked the rearview mirror. There were headlights behind them in the distance. He’d have to keep an eye on it.

“Who did it?” she asked.

“When we find that out, we’ll have our assassin,” he said.

Following the GPS, he drove across a steel bridge over the river and down Lenina Prospekt, the main avenue of Zaporozhye. The street was wide and gleamed with electric lights from advertising signs and buildings. As with Kyiv and Dnipropetrovsk, the sidewalks were lined with winter-bare trees and crowded with cars, yellow trolley buses, and mashrutkas, despite the falling snow.

“What do we do first?” she asked.

“Change the image. Get rid of the car,” he said, making a turn to go around the block to make sure they weren’t being followed. After several more turns, the GPS squawking, and he was sure there were no trailing headlights, he drove to a big Trade Ukraina shopping center and pulled into the parking garage.

“Take everything,” he told her, getting out and grabbing his backpack from the trunk. “We’re leaving the car here. Use your hat to wipe everything down.”

They went over everything they had touched, stopping when anyone was near to make sure they weren’t seen doing it. He had Iryna put her Ushanka hat back on with a scarf over the lower part of her face so no one would recognize her. When they were finished, he locked the car and they walked into the mall.

Most of the stores and cafes were still open. On the second floor, they found a beauty supply and wig store. They went in and bought some things, then went shopping for clothes. When they were finished, they stopped in a cafe where Scorpion checked for rental apartments on his laptop. They found one not far from the mall and Iryna called. By the time they left the mall pulling new carry-ons, she was wearing a curly-haired redheaded wig and steel-rim glasses under her Ushanka hat. Scorpion wore a suit under a new overcoat and a peaked Cossack-style fur hat. He carried his old clothes, including the bloody jacket, in a plastic bag.

The snow was still falling.

“You think there’ll be a flight tonight?” she asked.

“Not in this,” he said, indicating the snow.

They walked on side streets near the mall. Scorpion left the bag of old clothes in a trash bin behind an apartment house. He dropped the BMW keys along with his Michael Kilbane passport and press pass torn into pieces in a sewer opening. They walked to the rental apartment in the snow.

The rental was in a Soviet-style brick apartment building on Stalevarov Street, just a block from Lenina Prospekt. The apartment concierge met them at the front door. He was a fat balding man in a Metalist Kharkov soccer sweatshirt. He showed them an apartment on the fifth floor, the living room window looking down at a lone street lamp in the snow-empty street. It was four hundred hryvnia a night. Scorpion told him they’d take it for a week for 2,500 hryvnia.

The concierge asked for their identity cards.

“No identity cards, no questions, no militsiyu,” Scorpion said. He added an additional two thousand hryvnia to the money he held out.

Iryna said something to the man in Ukrainian and he nodded, a smirk on his face as he took the money. After he left, she told Scorpion, “I told him we were both married to other people. I don’t think we’re the first to use this place for sex. That-and the money.”

“He didn’t seem to recognize you,” Scorpion said.

“The wig,” she said, taking it off along with the glasses. “But I still need something in case I have to get rid of the wig,” she added, sitting in front of a mirror, a towel wrapped around her neck. She took out a scissors she’d bought in the beauty supply store and began cutting her hair. Scorpion watched her, then checked for cargo flights to Kyiv on his laptop. There was an old-fashioned TV in the living room. He turned it on.

They found a news channel. Kozhanovskiy and Gorobets had accused each other of staging the assassination to win the election. Gorobets demanded a postponement so the Svoboda party could select another candidate. Open fighting had broken out between the Chorni Povyazky and Kozhanovskiy supporters in every major city in Ukraine. A female reporter interviewed a Black Armband who stared menacingly into the camera and said that if they found Iryna Shevchenko or the foreigner before the militsiyu did, they’d know what to do to them. For a moment Iryna stopped working. She and Scorpion looked at each other in the mirror.

Scorpion helped cut her hair in the back. When she was done, the change was incredible. She had a short pixie cut and bangs slanting sideways across her forehead, which made her look almost completely different and yet unbelievably sexy.

“I feel naked. It’s not too awful, is it?” she asked.

He had never seen anyone so beautiful. The world had shrunk to just two of them. Everything that had happened, the stadium, the shootings in the tunnel, their desperate escape, seemed to come together like a thunderclap. He couldn’t stop himself, was no longer in control. He grabbed her and kissed her hard. She kissed him back hungrily and they staggered toward the bed. They pulled at each other’s clothes and bodies. It was as if they couldn’t get enough of each other. It was like madness. They tumbled onto the bed naked and she grabbed at his hips, pulling him into her. Even inside her, he couldn’t get enough of her. When they finished, they lay there, gasping.

“ Gospadi, what was that?” she said.

“I don’t know.”

“What do we do?” she asked, her eyes reflecting the light from the living room.

“I don’t know that either,” unable to take his eyes off her. In the middle of this mission with the whole world against them, this was crazy, he told himself.

“You have to tell me something,” she said. “Anything. I can’t keep going with somebody whose name changes by the minute, who might disappear forever any second. Do you have a code name or something?”

He hesitated. “Scorpion,” he said finally.

“It’s horrible,” she said, making a face.

“I chose it.”

“Why?” She lit a cigarette and lay on one elbow, watching him.

“When I was a boy, the man who became the closest thing I ever had to a father used to call me ‘Little Scorpion,’ ” he said.

“I don’t understand. Why would he say such a thing?”

Scorpion thought about his real father lying facedown in the sand, of the Saar raiders, the “wolves” of the Arabian desert, who had killed his father and tried to kill him too, and how Sheikh Zaid had saved him and, when the sheikh tried to touch his dead father, he had stabbed the sheikh with his Boy Scout knife. That’s when Sheikh Zaid had called him Little Scorpion for the first time.

“Long story,” Scorpion said now. He became aware of the news announcer’s voice from the TV in the living room. “What’s he saying?” he asked.

“The Russians are moving large numbers of troops and tanks to the Ukrainian border. I can’t believe this,” she said, stubbing out her cigarette. “Maybe the snow will slow them down.”

“Maybe,” he said.

That night he dreamt about Arabia. He was in Sheikh Zaid’s tent, sitting by the fire at night, the way it was when he was a child. He was telling Sheikh Zaid he had found a woman. The sheikh told him that before he could marry he first had to find out who he was, the same question Iryna kept asking. He couldn’t tell her, he told the sheikh. Someone, some thing, had been pursuing him since Yemen. The tent grew dark. He could no longer see Sheikh Zaid. His enemies were getting closer; he could feel them right behind him in the darkness. He started to turn around…

He awoke suddenly in the middle of the night reaching for the Glock under his pillow. The apartment was freezing cold. Iryna lay next to him. Even asleep she was unbelievably beautiful. She looked like she was dreaming; perhaps of snow slowing the Russian troops. He got out of bed and went to the bathroom. After washing his hands in ice-cold water, he went to the window. It was covered over with frost. He rubbed a circle on the window with his hand and peered out.

The street was white with snow and empty under the streetlight.

It had stopped snowing.