“Can’t you guess?” he said, pausing at the back door. He cracked it open and peered out at an alleyway piled with snow and trash. He scanned the roofline for snipers. It looked clear. They probably figured three men inside plus the front covered and the element of surprise was more than enough to arrest a man and a woman.
“SBU,” she said.
“Probably,” he nodded. “Let’s go!”
They ran out the door into the alley, slipping in the snow, its surface black with dirt. Scorpion went ahead toward the corner. Iryna followed, her carry-on balanced on her head like an African woman. Scorpion stopped at the corner and, motioning her to keep back, lay down in the snow. With Iryna behind him, breathing hard, he edged forward, peeked around the corner and ducked back.
He stood up and brushed the snow off. “It looks clear, but they’ll be waiting to hear from their men inside. We won’t have much time.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Wait here. Keep out of sight. When you hear a car horn, run toward it and get in. If you hear shooting, go out in the street and run the other way.”
“How will you get a car?” she asked, but Scorpion was already walking quickly down the street path in the snow, his backpack over his shoulder. As soon as he was sure no one was watching, he slipped the Glock into his overcoat pocket.
He spotted a Lada sedan parked by the curb. After trying the driver’s door and finding it locked, he knelt in the street. He didn’t want to smash the car window. There was always the chance of an alarm, and driving in this cold with an open window was not only uncomfortable, it would attract attention. He fished in his backpack for his lock kit, pulled out the Peterson universal key and within seconds opened the car door and got in. Using the kit’s cylinder extractor, he pulled the cylinder from the car’s ignition switch and started the engine with a jiggle of the Peterson key, then unlocked the doors and honked the horn for Iryna.
As he turned the wheel, ready to pull out, he saw her in the rearview mirror, pulling her carry-on toward him through the snow. She was bending over to see which car he was in and he honked again. He felt for the Glock as the seconds ticked by. The rear door opened and she tossed her carry-on in back. As she got in beside him, he spotted two men in the side mirror coming out of the alley.
They saw Iryna get into the car and started running toward them. Before she even closed the door, Scorpion pulled away, the tires slipping on snow and ice. He swerved the Lada into the street and heard shots behind them as he accelerated, skidding, toward the corner. He made a sharp turn, cutting off a snow-covered van, and cut into the lane of cars moving on a wide street thick with slush churned by the traffic.
“Now what?” she breathed.
“Where’s the nearest Metro?”
“I’m not sure. I’m a Right Bank girl. Probably Lisova,” she said, looking back. To their left was a lake or inlet of the Dnieper, the ice frozen solid, and in the distance tall apartment blocks. “I’ve never even been in this part of Kyiv before.”
“We have to get rid of the car,” he said. “They’re probably already calling in a description to the politsiy. We don’t have much time. What did Kozhanovskiy say?”
“I didn’t want to risk his cell. I spoke to Slavo. He says they are all stunned.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Gorobets called Viktor and told him he should agree to a three-week delay in the election for the Svoboda party to pick another candidate.”
“Svoboda meaning Gorobets.”
“Yes.”
“What’s Viktor going to do?”
“Slavo doesn’t know. No one knows what to do. There’s going to be a vote tomorrow in the Verkhovna Rada.” She turned to Scorpion. “I have to go back.”
“They’ll arrest you.”
“No, I’ll get away. I’ll see you later.”
“It’s better if we’re not together,” Scorpion agreed. “Together we’re like a neon sign.”
“Is that what you want?” turning to him.
“What I want is irrelevant.”
“Not to me,” she said, then exclaimed, “Look!”
“What is it?”
“That mashrutka!” she said, pointing at a minibus they were passing, with a hand-lettered sign on its window. “It’s going to the Chernihivska Metro.”
“Okay,” he said, accelerating. He looked for a place to lose the Lada. If he pulled ahead about two blocks, that should give them enough time. He scanned the street ahead. There was a parking space in front of a shoe store. He cut over and swung into the space at an angle.
The two of them jumped out of the car. They grabbed their things from the back of the Lada and ran to the corner, just getting there in time to wave the mashrutka down. It stopped and they squeezed in, breathing hard.
They didn’t speak inside the minibus; anyone could have heard them. A man next to Scorpion was reading a Kyivsky Telegraf, and though he couldn’t read the Ukrainian headlines, he was stunned by the prominently displayed photos of Iryna and him, side by side. His photo was taken from the Canadian passport, which had been scanned at the airport when he first entered the country. He coughed and used his gloved hand to cover his mouth and nose. The noose around them was being drawn tighter and tighter.
The mashrutka stopped by the entrance to the Metro. They got off along with the other passengers, taking the escalator down to the station platform. It was the first chance they had to talk.
Before Scorpion could speak, Iryna said, “I know. I saw the photos in the paper. Now what?”
“After tonight, you’ll have a different identity and it’ll be harder to track us.”
“How?”
“I’ll take care of it. You stay out of it.”
“Because it’s dangerous?”
He didn’t answer.
“Those men, three of them. You killed them,” she said, taking his arm and leaning close so he could hear her as the train approached.
“Yes,” he said.
“It was the way you did it. Just like that,” snapping her fingers.
“What about it?”
“Good,” she said.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Nyvky
Kyiv, Ukraine
It took Scorpion less than an hour to find the podlog. He’d simply hailed a taxi and told the driver to take him to a late night club that was “pryvatnyy,” private, and “ne dlya turistov,” not for tourists.
“This is not club for you, pane. No turistiv. Bad people,” the taxi driver said.
“That’s the kind I’m looking for. Peryeiti,” Scorpion had told him. Go.
The taxi took him to a hole-in-the-wall club called the Crocodile. It was in a square building on a hill in the Verkhny Gorod, near the Golden Gate museum. Once inside, Scorpion told the first prostitute who approached him what he wanted. In exchange for a thousand hryvnia slipped into her cleavage, she came back with a slip of paper with the address of a counterfeiter, a podlog, that she said was named Matviy, who did fake identity cards. He left the club and took the Metro to the Tarasa Shevchenka station in the Podil district, then walked down to a warehouse area near the river.
The street was dark, icy, traffic lights swaying in the wind. He passed an open lot where a shadowy red-lit
