Scorpion Betrayal (44 page)

“The EU Conference and the Israelis. Cradle of Western civilization. The Vatican, home of Christianity. Take your pick. Maybe they don't like pasta.”

“Maybe they don't. So the operation is over. Backs are slapped, champagne corks are popped, politicians and senior officials like myself who had nothing to do with it take the credit. As Voltaire says, all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds. So what is the Scorpion doing in Saint Petersburg?”

“How'd you find me?”

“You're concerned there's a mole in the Company? You wouldn't expect the truth from me on something like that?”

“I wouldn't expect the truth from you on anything,” Scorpion said, suspecting Ivanov was just fishing with his talk of a mole. The only people on earth who knew he was coming to Russia were him, the Italians, and Rabinowich. It could have been Moretti or one of the Carabinieri, but he didn't think so, and he knew Dave wouldn't have betrayed him. How'd they find him?

“Can't you guess?” Ivanov teased.

It had to be something obvious, Scorpion thought. To get a Russian visa, he'd provided a photograph, and as they required a local address in Saint Petersburg, he'd made reservations at the Astoria Hotel in the center of town, so if they knew who he was, it would have been easy for them to pick him up. But how did they know who he was and what he looked like? Who could have seen him and taken a photograph without him knowing? Unbidden, an image floated up of a man in shorts and a gaudy shirt watering flowers in a rented villa. Harris! That son of a bitch! Either Harris had sold him out or the safe house in Castelnuovo wasn't safe.

“You were looking for me. You had a picture of me from Italy and you had software matching it to my visa photograph, probably matching visas from every Russian embassy and consulate in Europe. You went to a lot of trouble,” Scorpion said, putting down the glass of vodka. He'd only sipped it and it had already started to go to his head. Like Ivanov himself, it was smooth as silk.

“Atlichna!”
Bravo! “I wish you were a double.
Budem.”
Ivanov raised his glass to Scorpion and drank. “Except, I owe you from Arabia. You killed several of my men. By rights, I should put a bullet in your head,” he said, opening a drawer and placing a gun on the desk.

“Why don't you?” Scorpion said, measuring distances and moving his foot back under him so he could spring out of the chair.

“Because I don't know why you are here in Saint Petersburg. There is also the matter of the missing twenty-one kilos of U-235.”

“No one told you? Not Harris? Not your moles in the AISE and the Italian government? No one?”

Ivanov shook his head.

“It wasn't there,” Scorpion said. “It was smuggled into Italy through Genoa on a Ukrainian ship, the
Zaina,
but it wasn't in the truck they were planning to blow up the Palazzo delle Finanze with. Harris says the talk about uranium was disinformation from you.”

“It wasn't,” Ivanov said, his eyes icy behind the steel-rimmed glasses.

“I know. There were signature traces of U-235 radiation in the hold of the
Zaina
and in a warehouse in Turin used by the Palestinian. The U-235 was brought into Italy, but it isn't there now.”

“Where is it?”

For a moment neither man spoke.

Ivanov leaned forward, his arms on the desk. “You think the uranium is in Saint Petersburg? Should I be worried?”

“Yes.”

Ivanov drummed his fingers on the desk. “Then I can't put a bullet in your head, can I? Maybe I should have them work you over and implant a bug in you like the Chechen?”

“You don't want to do that—and I don't think we have the time,” Scorpion said, glancing at the window. The sky had grown darker. It was going to rain any minute.

“It seems for once we may be on the same side, Amerikanets,” Ivanov said, taking another sip of vodka and refilling both their glasses from the bottle. “Perhaps we can help each other.”

“You can help me by staying out of my way. No surveillance. I can't have something blown because someone spots one of your
mudaki
where he shouldn't be.”

“What are you looking for?”

“A woman.”

“Beautiful?”

“Very.”

“There is no shortage of beautiful women in Saint Petersburg.” Ivanov smiled wryly.

“This one's not from Saint Petersburg.”

“You should let us help you find her. We could do it quickly, just as we found you.”

“And the moment you do, perhaps a confederate of hers presses ‘Send' on a cell phone. Then what?”

“And you are the only one who can get close to her. So we must trust you. That is not a condition I am comfortable with.”

“Give me your cell number. If I need you, I'll call.”

“So apart from the bug, there's nothing we can do?”

“I need a gun. I left mine in Italy to avoid problems on the plane.”

“Take this. You know it?” Ivanov said, handing him the gun on the desk.

Scorpion nodded. “SR-1 Gyurza, special for the FSB. Eighteen rounds. Armor piercing,” he said, pulling out the clip. “It's not loaded.”

“I don't trust you that much. You are not called ‘Scorpion' for nothing,” Ivanov said, placing three clips of ammunition on the desk.

T
he coffee shop in the Vladimirsky Mall looked for all the world like a Russian Starbucks, even to the oval green sign. From behind a pillar on the second floor, Scorpion watched Prosviyenko sit down at an outer table. From a distance, Scorpion couldn't be sure, but he had to assume the reporter was wired. After twenty minutes Prosviyenko glanced at his watch, got up and started to walk to the mall exit. Scorpion waited to make sure he was alone, then bumped him from behind and said,
“Izvinitye,”
and then in English as he passed, “Meet me in the men's toilet.”

As soon as Prosviyenko entered the bathroom, Scorpion told him to empty his pockets and open his shirt. Scorpion remembered Koenig telling him that local reporters who knew their beats could be invaluable sources of information, but you had to be careful they didn't make you the story.

“Is this necessary?” Prosviyenko said, keeping his hands in his pockets. He was tall, fair-haired, with the jeans-and-tweed-jacket look of a young professor. A man came out of a stall and looked at the two men, then went to the basin to wash his hands.

“I need to know if you're wired.”

“Suppose I don't want to open my shirt?”

“Da svidaniya,”
goodbye, Scorpion said, and started to walk out.

“You said you had a story,” Prosviyenko called out.

“There's no story. I just want some information and I'm willing to pay for it. Say five thousand rubles for a few minutes, ten thousand, if it's worth my time.” Scorpion wasn't sure how much local print reporters made, but it couldn't be that much.

“Ten thousand?” Prosviyenko said. He emptied his pockets and opened his shirt, letting Scorpion pat him down. The man washing his hands made a face as he watched them in the mirror, his expression suggesting he thought they were fairies, then he went out. “Do we do it here?”

“There's a pub on the third floor. Meet me,” Scorpion said, and walked out. Five minutes later they were sitting opposite each other, Scorpion facing the concourse to make sure no one was paying attention to them.

“You mentioned money,” Prosviyenko said after the waitress brought them bottles of Baltika beer.

“I did,” Scorpion said, and reaching over to shake Prosviyenko's hand, pressed the folded-up rubles into his hand.

“What do you want to talk about?”

“I saw in the
Saint Petersburg Times
where you covered a story on corruption in the port, only you were careful not to name names.”

Prosviyenko put down his bottle of Baltika. “You know what means
‘zamochit'
?”

“You mean, to kill?”

“It means literally to piss on someone. Among the
blatnoi
—the criminals—it means, yes, to kill. Don't think I didn't get little anonymous phone calls even when I didn't name names. Here.” He put the five thousand rubles on the table. “Take it back. You don't know who you are dealing with.”

“Keep the money. I just need to ask you a question. You decide if you want to answer. You know the port?”

“Which one?”

“Ekateringofskiy Basin.” There were three separate ports in the Saint Petersburg complex on the Gulf of Finland, west of the city. Scorpion had checked with the port before the FSB picked him up. The
Shiraz Se
had berthed at the Ekateringofskiy wharves and left port yesterday. With the hotel concierge's help, he'd hired a Russian temporary secretary and had her contact all the funeral homes in Saint Petersburg. There was nothing about a Pyotr Escher or a body having been brought in by anyone named Escher to any funeral home in Saint Petersburg during the past week. Nor were there any hotels or apartments for rent where a Brynna Escher had registered. He didn't tell the secretary about the name Kafoury, because he didn't want the FSB to get it. Both Najla and the coffin had disappeared as soon as she left Pulkovo Airport. The only lead he had left was the port. “Suppose I had some contraband, something serious I had to get through customs and out of the port. Who would I need to talk to?”

“Drugs? There are plenty of
fartsovchiki.
The city is full of them.”

“Something bigger, more difficult. I need someone who can get things done, someone with real
blat,”
meaning connections.

Prosviyenko leaned closer. “You mean the Tambov mafia? Listen, mister. This is not tourist Russia we're talking about. If you want to die, there are better ways to do it than to deal with Tambov.”

“Who's the boss, the
pakhan?
Who do I need to talk to?”

“You mean Vasiliev? Everyone knows of Kiril Andreyevitch Vasiliev. You don't have to pay me for that, mister. But no one gets to see him, understand? If half the stories about him are true, believe me, you don't want to see him.”

“Where would I find him or someone close to him?”

“Listen, this is crazy. What is this about?”

“I'm looking for someone. A woman who may have asked the same questions.”

“You care for this woman?” Prosviyenko asked. Scorpion nodded, thinking that ironically enough, it was true. “Try the Dacha Club on the Nevsky Prospekt,” he said. “Go after eleven.
Pozhalsta,
don't mention my name.”

“Spasiba,”
thanks, Scorpion said, passing the additional five thousand rubles to him on the tabletop. The reporter put his hand on it and slipped it into his pocket.

“Don't thank me. Believe me, telling you about Vasiliev, I didn't do you any favors. So there's no story, just you looking for a woman who is a smuggler?”

Scorpion hesitated. “It's complicated.”

“With women, what isn't?” Prosviyenko shrugged.
“Fsyevo kharoshiva!”
Good luck! “Listen, there are many beautiful women at the Dacha. Maybe you will see her, maybe someone else. Sooner or later everyone goes there.”

T
he bar in the Astoria was leather and glass, subdued lights reflecting off drinks, expensive-looking women in designer dresses perched on stools, looking for business. One of them, a pretty blonde in her early twenties, kept looking over at Scorpion until finally he shook his head no and she shrugged and smiled as if to say, “You can't blame a girl for trying.” He sent the waiter over to tell her he was buying her a drink but that he wasn't available. When the waiter told her, she raised her glass to him.

Cheers!
she mouthed.

Za Vas!
he mouthed back, raising his glass. He watched the rain streak the window in the gray twilight. It wasn't close enough to summer for the White Nights, when it barely got dark, but it was late enough in spring so that although it was ten in the evening, it was still light outside. He sat sipping Stolichnaya Elit over ice and tried to work it out. He badly needed to talk to Rabinowich.

In the taxi on his way to meet the secretary he had hired, he tried calling him, but the cell phone number had been disconnected. At the secretary's office he'd tried to track the transmission center from which Rabinowich's last call had originated, the one he got in Frankfurt, but the best he could do was to be told that the message had been sent from somewhere in the Middle East. Perhaps Rabinowich had gone to Egypt, where the operation started, or else Israel. If it was Israel, was the Mossad involved? That was assuming that he had gone to the Middle East instead of Hawaii, or hadn't just turned in the SIM on a disposable phone.

What was Rabinowich trying to tell him about the Twelfth Imam? If the Iranians wanted to attack through a proxy, why against Russia, Hezbollah and Iran's supplier? Unless Russia had reneged on a deal. Suppose the twenty-one kilos hadn't been stolen. What if it had been made to look stolen to cover Russia's dealings with Iran, and suppose it wasn't supposed to be twenty-one kilos of U-235 but fifty or a hundred kilos, or a plutonium plant or S-300 missiles, or God knew what, and the Russians had reneged on the deal? What then? The Iranian Revolutionary Guards were like any other strong-arm outfit. They couldn't allow themselves to be cheated. They'd have to send a message. That was a possibility, he thought. That Hassani was the diversion, Najla, the enforcer.