“What about Gennadi and the others?”
“They think we go back Chernobyl.”
They parked next to a shed behind the Palace of Culture, a large building covered with bare trees and shrubs that had sprouted through the concrete. They walked from the car toward an apartment building near the center of the city.
“You don’t want this guy see car. Is dangerous?”
“It could be.” If Shelayev was Spetsnaz-trained, as Scorpion suspected, he was plenty dangerous. Not to mention the skull-crushing.
Dennis stopped walking.
“Maybe five thousand not enough,” he said.
“Maybe it isn’t, but it’s all you’re getting,” Scorpion said, and kept walking. He spotted Gennadi’s minivan moving through the trees and motioned Dennis to take cover with him behind an abandoned kiosk. They watched the minivan drive away. It was like watching the last vestige of civilization leave, he thought.
They resumed walking toward the tall apartment house. The wind had come up. They could hear the same shutter banging. In another hour or so it would be getting dark. They went into the lobby of the apartment house, the floors as usual covered with snow and broken glass and vegetation growing inside, and climbed the stairs to the top floor.
The door to an apartment overlooking much of the city was missing. It had a balcony with a tree growing in the center of it, its branches extending into the living room. They walked through, stepping carefully on the broken glass. This was no place to get a cut.
There was a broken child’s highchair on its side in the kitchen. In another room they found a discarded Misha bear, stuffing coming out of it, lying on the floor. Whoever once lived here had children, Scorpion thought. Dennis put the Geiger counter to the bear. It registered 3.816. No wonder it had been left behind by scavengers. A yellowing magazine on the floor showed a smiling Gorbachev on the cover. Dennis checked the apartment with the Geiger counter. It averaged 1.05 overall; about as good as they were going to get.
After checking an area of the floor with the Geiger counter, they squatted down. Dennis lit a cigarette. Scorpion retrieved the bottle of Nemiroff from his backpack and they each took a swig.
“This guy,” Dennis said. “What he do to you?”
“Nothing. It’s business.”
“Business you risking life for? Is not business,” Dennis said. “He take your woman?” he asked.
Scorpion shook his head. No, but he took Pyatov’s woman, he thought. That might have been the whole problem right there. He took out the button camcorder-a video camcorder disguised as a coat button-and clipped it to his outer jacket. He set it up to record to a flash drive that he put in an inside pocket. Dennis watched.
“What is this?”
“Video camcorder. I’m a lawyer. I need to take this man’s testimony in a case.”
Dennis’s eyes showed he didn’t believe him. Outside, it was getting dark. In winter in this part of the world, night came early. A hawk landed on the tree on the balcony and stared at them. Scorpion stood and it flew away. He walked over to the balcony and looked out at the city. The buildings were becoming dark shapes. He felt Dennis come beside him.
“We need a 360 degree view,” Scorpion said. “Let’s go up on the roof.” They gathered their things and went up. It was colder in the wind. Scorpion stood on the roof slowly rotating to see in every direction. There was nothing. It was a ghost city. Then Dennis nudged him.
“Look,” he said, pointing toward the apartment building with the hammer and sickle symbol on the roof, its outline only dimly visible in the darkness. There was a light glimmering. Scorpion took out his binoculars. The light appeared to be coming from a lantern or a candle in an apartment on the top floor. He put the binoculars back in his pack and got out the Glock. Dennis stared at the gun.
“Time to go,” Scorpion said.
Chapter Thirty-One
Pripyat,
Chernobylska Exclusion Zone
The danger point would be crossing the empty street and the area in front of the building in full view of Shelayev or whoever was in that apartment. Up till then they kept close, moving in the shadows of the buildings. Scorpion had Dennis shut off the Geiger counter beeper. It helped that they wore dark clothes and there were no streetlights of any kind. To be in this city at night was bizarre; a ghost world of ice and darkness, Scorpion thought, forcing his mind back to the target. He had to assume Shelayev was armed. Unless he caught him by surprise, the situation would go out of control as fast as Chernobyl had.
Scorpion studied the building. There was a drift of snow by the front entrance. He put his night vision goggles on and looked for footprints in the snow. There weren’t any. That either meant there was no one there, which wouldn’t explain the light, or that Shelayev had used another entrance. Scorpion looked up at the apartment on the top floor where they had seen the light. He could see no movement. Nothing. There was nothing for it, he thought. They had to cross the street.
Dennis looked up at the building.
“Maybe I go wait in avto,” he said, meaning the Lada.
“Maybe you leave me stranded here with no way to get back,” Scorpion said.
“I am not liking.”
“Neither do I. You want to give me back the five thousand?”
Dennis didn’t say anything. In his mind, Scorpion thought, he’d already spent that money. He nudged Dennis, motioning him to follow. They ran across the street, nearly slipping on the frozen snow.
Dennis followed him to the side of the building. Keeping close to its walls, they went around to the rear entrance. Through the night vision goggles, Scorpion spotted footprints in the snow by the rear entrance. He heard Dennis breathing as he came up behind him. The obvious choice was to go in the back entrance and up the stairs. But Shelayev was Spetsnaz, he thought. He would likely reason that if someone trained was coming after him, they would come in the back way. They had passed a steel fire escape on the side of the building. Scorpion decided to go in that way. He started back toward the fire escape, motioning Dennis to follow.
“Why we going-” Dennis began.
Scorpion clamped his hand over Dennis’s mouth.
“Zatknis!” he hissed into Dennis’s ear. Shut up.
He looked up the ladder at the metal landings above but saw nothing, then tested his weight on the fire escape. Everything was radioactive and had been rotting for a long time but it seemed solid. He put his finger to his lips, then climbed step by step up the fire escape to the second floor. Dennis followed. Their footsteps grated hollowly on the metal stairs. Too loud, Scorpion thought. If he Shelayev was there, he’d know they were coming. They needed to get off the fire escape. A broken window on the landing was open, and Scorpion stepped through it into an empty apartment and onto a snowdrift. Dennis came in behind him. Scorpion motioned for him to follow.
They tiptoed through the apartment trying to avoid crunching on broken glass and went out to the hallway. Even there they could feel the icy wind. Adjusting his night vision goggles, Scorpion started carefully up the hallway stairs. When he reached the top floor, he paused and peered down the hallway, with its glints of broken glass from a faint glow of light coming from the corner apartment. It appeared empty. No cameras, no surveillance, no wires. He stepped into the hallway but stayed close to the wall, not walking down the middle of the corridor. He sensed Dennis behind him, breathing heavily.
Scorpion stopped at the half-open door of the apartment next to the corner apartment. Shelayev was Spetsnaz, he told himself again. He couldn’t go straight in. He turned to Dennis, put his finger to his lips and motioned for him to stay there. Dennis nodded that he understood. Scorpion pressed his ear against the wall but could hear nothing. If someone was in the corner apartment, he wasn’t moving around. He stepped through the half-open door into the next-door apartment, the Glock ready, walked into an empty room and checked the door to
