Scorpion’s head hung down. They’d broken him, he thought. He would’ve said anything to make it stop. No, something inside him said. It’s just retreat. He remembered Shaefer in Afghanistan arguing with a senior officer and quoting Sun Tzu: “To retreat elusively, outspeed them.”
They dragged him back down the corridor to his cell. From somewhere came more screams; someone else being tortured. They threw him back into the cell. Just before they shut the steel door, Kulyakov leaned in.
“You know how they execute people in Lukyanivska? You think it’s picturesque, maybe? They stand you up against a wall at dawn like in the movies? Ni,” he sneered. “They drag you into a tiled room, the floor sloping down to a hole for the blood. They make you kneel and then they shoot you in the back of the head. Pah! ” he said, pointing his finger and making a gunshot sound. “Your sud,” your tribunal, “is tomorrow. Day after, pah!” pointing his finger and making the gun sound again. “Your real name, who you work for, will no longer matter. You are no more.”
The cell door slammed shut with a metal clang, final as death.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Sud
Kyiv, Ukraine
The sud, or tribunal, was held in a whitewashed room somewhere in the bowels of the Lukyanivska prison. They had taken him in shackles, escorted by half a dozen guards, down an elevator. Emerging from it, Scorpion had a sense of being deep underground, of moisture and pipes in the empty concrete corridors. He was in too bad shape to think of escape. Walking was painful, his groin aching badly, in addition to the shackles that made him hobble. They had put his clothes back on him, suit, shoes, shirt, no belt or tie. He must’ve lost a lot of weight in just the few days he had been the prison, he realized, because his clothes hung loosely on him and he had to hold his pants up with his hand.
They sat him in a chair in the middle of the room facing a narrow table. There were two rows of benches behind him. The mussory guards who had brought him down took up places by the door and along the wall, truncheons in their hands. He had hoped he might see Iryna, but there was no sign of her. They waited in silence, just him and the mussory. They don’t want this getting out, he thought. That’s why they had to do it right away; even in the middle of a war.
The door opened and three men, all with short hair and wearing the dark suits favored by Ukrainian nomenclatura officials, came in and took their seats behind the table. The middle suddya, or judge, was a thin, hatchet-faced man with short iron-gray hair. He wore a black tie with the yellow Ukrainian cross, suggesting he belonged to the Chorni Povyazky, and glanced down at the sheaf of papers he had brought in with him. A moment later a woman in a suit, carrying a laptop computer, came in and sat at a side desk, apparently to take notes. A technician entered the room and hooked up a video camcorder pointed at Scorpion. As the technician set up the camera, Kulyakov, also wearing a black suit and Chorni Povyazky tie, came in and sat in a chair on the side.
“Nam skazali, vy ne govoryat na Ukrainskom.” the hatchet-faced suddya said. We have been informed that you do not speak Ukrainian. “So this sud will be conducted in Russian. He glanced at the woman taking notes on the laptop. “For the record, this is a sud authorized by the Sluzhba Bezpeky Ukrayiny,” or SBU, “and the office of the Ukraine President Lavro Davydenko for the purpose of determining the guilt of the prisoner known as Michael Kilbane, also known as Petro Reinert, also the foreign agent Scorpion, in the murder of Yuriy Dmytrovych Cherkesov. The penalty for this crime is death. Let it be noted that this sud has authority to impose this sentence.”
He leaned forward and stared at Scorpion as if through a gun sight.
“You understand, prisoner, here is no prosecution, no defense. We ask questions. You answer. We decide. I am told that you will not reveal your real name or nationality. This is correct?”
“What difference does it make what my real name is?” Scorpion asked.
“A man who will not tell you the truth about his name will not say the truth about many things.”
“You could take it that a man who will not lie about his name will not lie about other things,” Scorpion said.
“But you are known by false names and also the code name Scorpion, da?”
“ Da. ”
“Are you an agent of the CIA or some other Western country? MI-6? DGSE? Mossad?” He pronounced “agent” the Russian way, with a hard g.
“ Nyet. I am an independent. I work for different people.”
“Like a business?”
“It is a business.”
“A good business? You make a lot of money?”
“Sometimes.”
“You work for anyone? So long as they pay?”
“Not anyone.”
“There are people you won’t work for no matter how much they pay?”
“ Eta verna. ” That’s right.
“A spy with morals!” The hatchet-faced suddya smirked, glancing at his fellow judges, who smirked with him. “But you took this assignment?”
“I took an assignment, da.”
“Tak,” the hatchet-faced suddya said, rubbing his hands together like a businessman who wants to make a deal. “Who hired you to assassinate presidential candidate Yuriy Cherkesov?”
“Nikto ne.” No one. “I was hired to prevent his assassination.”
The judges looked at each other.
“Tak vy govorte,” the hatchet-faced suddya said. So you say. “You have admitted killing Cherkesov. We have seen the video.”
“Did you also see the electrodes attached to my genitaliy?”
“That is not relevant. You confessed. That is sufficient here. Who hired you?”
Scorpion shook his head. “I protect my clients. That’s the basis of my business.”
The hatchet-faced suddya’s short laugh cracked sharp as a gunshot. “You really think after this you will still have a business?” He glared at Scorpion. “You will be dead, you mudak spy!”
“Then I’ll be dead,” Scorpion said. “If you want, get the electrodes. I won’t tell you who hired me.”
“Your job was to save Cherkesov?” the hatchet-faced suddya said sarcastically, leaning toward Scorpion.
“It was understood that Cherkesov’s death might lead to great difficulties with Russia. My client wished to prevent this.”
“Not very good at your job, are you?” one of the other judges, a thin man with bloodless lips, put in.
“Not this time,” Scorpion said, thinking how close he had come to pulling it off. Just a few more hours and it would have been over. “I was led to believe that a baklan punk working for the Kozhanovskiy campaign named Sirhiy Pyatov was the assassin. I managed to stop him.”
At this, the judges began to whisper among themselves. The hatchet-faced suddya leafed through the papers in front of him, then looked up.
“This Pyatov was one of those killed at the stadium in Dnipropetrovsk?”
Scorpion nodded.
“Did you kill him?”
“Two militsiyu did. There was much shooting.”
“But you were ready to kill him?”
Scorpion nodded, and the judges looked meaningfully at one another.
“You killed militsiyu and politsiy at the stadium?”
“Two militsiyu. Also several of the Chorni Povyazky, not politsiy.”
“How many Chorni Povyazky?”
Scorpion thought for a moment. “Five,” he said.
