“The one in Kreshchatytsky Park?” Iryna asked.
The man nodded. “He said he stayed in the basement under the stage. A big storage space where they keep the puppets. He said it was very private there.”
“Did you check it out?” Scorpion asked.
“Too dangerous. This city is crazy now,” looking out at the dark street. “Soldiers. Black Armbands. Politsiy. I got a wife, kids. I can’t go,” he said, not looking at them.
“We understand,” Iryna said, touching his hand.
“ Ni.” No. “I should have looked. There’s something wrong. They’re good kids,” he said, looking away; in that moment his face seemed older.
W hen they left the cafe, they were followed by two men who stayed well back so their faces could not be seen. They walked quickly down the street’s steep slope to Kontraktova Square, where they waved down a mashrutka that took them to the Metrograd mall in Lva Tolstoho Square. Scorpion wasn’t sure if a dark Lada was following them. Once inside the mall, they started to run, going from one level to another, through stores and out another entrance, then took two taxis, one after another, going in opposite directions before they were sure they had lost whoever had been tailing them.
It took them more than an hour to get back to where they had parked the Volkswagen SUV. But they had wasted their time, Scorpion thought. Because all the approaches to the Puppet Theatre were across open ground. He crouched behind a tree, Iryna next to him, and looked up the snow-covered slope at the shadowy outline of the theatre at the top of the rise. It was completely dark; the only light came from a streetlight that cast the shadows of the building’s spires across the snow.
“What do we do?” Iryna asked.
“You go to Viktor. They need you,” Scorpion said, taking out the Glock and fitting the silencer on it.
“ Gospadi, you don’t know a damn thing about women, do you?” Iryna said through clenched teeth. “I’m not some delicate flower and this matters to me more than you, so I’m coming. Got it?”
“In that case, make yourself useful. Where’s your Beretta?”
“In my purse,” she said, fishing it out.
“Wait three minutes, then follow. Watch where I go in. Don’t make a sound. If anybody gets in your way, don’t hesitate for a second. Kill him. Are we clear?”
They looked at each other. Her face, hard to see in the shadows, was beyond beautiful, he thought. Without a word, he began to move up the open slope. The snow was frozen hard under his boots, and he leaned forward, almost on all fours, to keep his silhouette low. His eyes scanned the castle-that was what it looked like and that was how he had come to think of it-for any light or sign of movement. There were only shadows, the cold wind trailing plumes of snow from the castle spires.
He reached the flat area at the side of the building. Keeping low, he went around to the back, looking for an entryway that Ekaterina’s boyfriend, Fedir, might have used. At the back of the building he saw a basement window, low to the ground. It was locked but it had a top latch that could have been left open at some time. He put his backpack on the ground and felt inside the pack till he found his Leatherman tool, the night vision goggles, and the duct tape.
Using the Leatherman’s awl with the hardened tip as a glass cutter, he cut a circle on the glass and pulled it away from the window with a small wad of duct tape. Reaching through the circular opening, he opened the latch and pushed the window open. When he had the goggles and the Glock in his hand, the safety off, he crawled inside.
He had come in on a worktable in a dark basement room, which was a workshop for building sets. He put on the night vision goggles. Strange cutout shapes stood against the wall, eerie in the green light of the goggles. The room smelled of sawdust and glue.
Scorpion eased down from the table onto his tiptoes, then moved quietly toward a door and pressed his ear against it. He could hear the sound of something, but it made no sense. It sounded like the squeak of a pulley and splashing water. Whatever it was, someone was on the other side of the door. He held the Glock ready.
He turned the handle and inched the door open. The light was bright, blinding his night goggles. He pulled them off, catching a brief glimpse of a room filled with hanging objects; dozens of medieval-looking puppets, witches and ogres, princesses and humanlike animals resembling something out of Grimms’ fairy tales.
There were two hanging objects too big to be puppets. He started toward them when a shadow next to him moved and an iron bar smashed down on his hand, stunning him and causing him to drop the gun. Almost before he could react, a second blow from the iron bar wielded by a big man came down at his head and he barely got his injured hand up in time to block the blow with a forearm. The pain was instantaneous; his entire arm felt numb and useless.
Almost without thinking, Scorpion twisted toward the attacker, closing with him. With a leg sweep, he used his uninjured left elbow to smash into the side of the big man’s neck. The man grunted but didn’t go down. As they fought, they banged against the dangling puppets, which swung and slammed into each other; a forest of grotesque swinging shapes.
“When attacked by surprise, go inside,” his CQC instructor, Koichi, used to say. The big man swung the bar again. Scorpion stepped inside the arc of the swing and kicked at the inside of the man’s knee while grabbing the arm holding the bar. Using the man’s own momentum, Scorpion hurled him with an arm bar twist down to the ground. Before the big man could react, Scorpion kicked him savagely in the side of the head, and using both hands like pointed claws, stabbed down at the big man’s eyes, deep into the sockets, blinding him. The man screamed with pain and rage. He swung the iron bar blindly at Scorpion, who just managed to dodge out of the way.
A second man, who seemed to come out of nowhere, launched a Russian Sambo-style kick at Scorpion’s midsection. With only an instant to counter, he grabbed the man’s foot mid-kick and twisted it violently with both hands, forcing him to the ground. Meanwhile, the big man had gotten to his feet. He couldn’t see and was swinging the iron bar blindly. Scorpion timed his swing, grabbed the man’s arm in mid swing and turned it into a shoulder lock, dislocating the man’s shoulder. He screamed in intense pain as the other man got up.
Scorpion twisted the iron bar out of the big man’s hands and smashed it into the side of his head by the temple as the second man came at him again. Scorpion feinted a high swing then jabbed the iron bar like a fencer’s thrust at his knee, hearing it crack as he sent him down. Incredibly, the big man staggered up again. His good hand grabbed blindly at Scorpion, getting hold of his neck and choking him with crushing strength. Scorpion swung the iron bar with all his might at his temple, landing a blow that sent him crashing to the floor, lifeless. Scorpion whirled with the iron bar to deal with the second man, who was backing away now, getting tangled in the hanging puppets. Scorpion started to look for the Glock, but it was too late.
A third, tall man with thick sandy hair and wearing a black armband had retrieved the Glock. He stood in a shooting stance, the Glock aimed at Scorpion’s chest. A powerful lamp beside him cast the shadows of the swinging puppets, dislodged by the fight, dancing across the room.
Scorpion recognized the sandy-haired man. He had been Gorobets’s aide in the hotel suite in Dnipropetrovsk. For the first time, Scorpion was able to look around. In addition to the puppets, there were two bodies hanging from a ceiling pipe by their necks, the large shapes he had seen earlier. They were clearly dead.
The bodies were those of a young man and woman, both naked, their hands tied and both covered with welts and dark bruises. It took Scorpion a second before, with a shock, he recognized their bloated faces. The young people from the Black Cat cafe: Ekaterina and Fedir.
He had no time to pay attention to them, because there was another woman, also naked. She hung upside down, tied by her feet from a pulley, her long blond hair trailing down into a tub of water filled with chunks of ice. Her body was bruised and cut like the others and her mouth had been taped so no one could hear her scream. The pulley he’d heard earlier had been used to raise or lower her head into the ice water. There were wet rubber gloves lying next to the tub. The sandy-haired man had been holding her head under the water. She was still breathing, her eyes dazed, wild almost to the point of insanity. It took a few seconds till Scorpion recognized her from the photo. It was Alyona.
“Pane Kilbane, we saw you coming,” the sandy-haired man said in English. The damned approaches, Scorpion thought. There was bound to be someone watching.
“Remind me again. What’s your name?” he asked.
“Why?”
“I plan to remember you,” Scorpion said. He sensed the second man coming up behind him.
