Scorpion Betrayal (45 page)

He started to signal the waiter for the check when it occurred to him that a bit of arm candy might be useful at the Dacha Club. He motioned to the blonde. She came over and sat down.

“I am hoping you change your mind,
milenky,
my dearest.” She smiled, resting her hand on his thigh.

“What's your name?” he asked.

“Zhana. For you, I am Zhanochka. And you?”

“Damon,” using his cover ID. “I'll give you five thousand rubles to come with me to the Dacha Club. We won't be leaving together. I have business there.”

“Listen, Damonya, my sweetness, give me two hundred euros, I do anything you want, any place you want, any way you want,” she said.

“This isn't love, Zhanochka
golubcha.
One fifty euros and you find your own way home from the Dacha,” he said, taking her hand as he got up. They caught a taxi outside the hotel. It was still raining, the sky the strange tangerine-gray of the long northern twilight. Once inside the taxi, he gave her the money. She counted it and slipped it into her bra. The taxi turned onto the broad Nevsky Prospekt, the lights from the buildings reflected in the rain-slick street.

The taxi pulled up, and even in the rain there was a line of people standing outside the awning entrance to the Dacha Club. With fifty euros to the doorman and Zhanochka on his arm, they walked past the crowd waiting to get in and into the club, its sleek multistoried metal and glass interior pulsating to loud Russian rock music. Zhana began to sway to the music as she walked beside him to the bar. They pushed in between two men, one of whom was big and broad-shouldered, in an Italian leather jacket, with the look of someone in the underworld. A glance at the tattoo on his neck confirmed for Scorpion that he was of the Belaya Energia, a white supremacist gang. The man started to say something harshly, then stopped and smiled when he saw Zhana. They began talking rapidly in Russian, and she indicated Scorpion with a movement of her head.

“He wants me to go with him,” she told Scorpion, nearly shouting to be heard over the noise of the crowd and the music.

“Tell him you're free to do what you want if he'll introduce me to someone,” Scorpion shouted back.

The man laughed and gestured toward the tables near the bar, where there were at least a dozen good-looking women in tight low-cut dresses. “Take you pick,
druk.
No need introduce. Her I take,” the man said in broken English, grabbing
Zhana
by the buttocks and pulling her tight against him. She tried to twist away but he held her tight. Scorpion reached over, pried the man's little finger off her and bent it back nearly to the point of breaking. With his other hand, he grabbed the man's other wrist in a Krav Maga hold so he couldn't use the knife he had pulled out, all of it done so quickly no one else noticed.

“The person I want to see is Vasiliev,” Scorpion said.

The man immediately stopped. “You want see Kiril Andreyevitch?”

“Da,”
Scorpion said, letting him go. The man put the knife away and let
Zhana
loose. She turned and looked warily at Scorpion.

“He not see you. Is Tambov,” the man said, holding the finger that Scorpion had twisted.

“Let's let him decide,
druk.
Tell him it's about a beautiful woman and a shipment in the port. We'll wait for you here.”

The man whispered something to a friend with a badly scarred face, also in a leather jacket, who turned to look at Scorpion, his open shirt revealing the top of a
blatnoi
prison tattoo on his chest. Then the scar-faced man motioned to his friend and the two of them left, weaving their way through the crowd to a glass elevator. Scorpion watched them till Zhana tugged at his arm.

“We should go now,
pozhalsta,
my sweetness,” she said urgently. “I give you back the money. We fuck like crazy. I don't like these
bandity.”

“You go. Keep the money,” Scorpion said, kissing her cheek, his eyes on the crowd in the mirror.

“You sure? I mean it. I don't want no money. I like you,” she said plaintively.

“I don't want you to get hurt. Go,
pozhalsta,”
he said, giving her a little shove, never taking his eye off the crowd in the mirror.

“Da svidaniya, golubchik,”
she said, looking back at him, but this time Scorpion wasn't watching. Instead, he walked up to a striking blonde woman in a Burberry raincoat who had just come into the club. She was standing between two Middle Eastern–looking men in suits, their raincoats over their arms. He made the move as he pretended to squeeze by, deliberately bumping into her.

“Hello, Najla,” he said as her eyes widened at the sight of him.

“Well, if it isn't Herr Crane,” she said, just managing to recover. “Or is it Monsieur McDonald or whatever your name is these days?”

“McDonald'll do. I guess they were right. Everyone does come to the Dacha Club.” He took her arm. The two men started to react, and at a nod from her they stopped. “He's an old friend,” she said to them in Arabic.

“Ismak,
who are you?” one of the men said in Arabic, with what Scorpion thought was a Farsi accent.

“Emam mardar sag ast,”
Scorpion said in Farsi. My name is your mother is a bitch. He added, “We have to talk,” to Najla in English, pulling at her arm. They stood next to a glass wall sparkling with colored lights. The two men watched Scorpion with hard eyes, their hands in their jacket pockets.

“Talk about what? Marseilles?”

“Not here,” he said, looking around.

“Why? Do you want to tie me up again,
liebling
?” Her dark eyes on him, and hearing her call him darling, even though he knew she meant it as little as the hooker, Zhana, sent a tiny electric spark through him.

“Maybe I should've.” He peered at her. “I think I like you better as a brunette.”

“So do I. It was supposed to help disguise me. It seems it didn't work.” She smiled ruefully.

“You're hard to miss,” he said.

“How did you find me?”

“Airport security camera in Turin.”

“Of course. One always underestimates the Americans. But I should never underestimate you, should I?” she said, looking into his eyes.

“Don't play me, Najla. We need to talk—without your gorillas,” he added, glancing at the two men. “Where can we go?”

“Just like a man! We find each other again, like a miracle, and all you want is to get a room.”

“Or maybe a ship. You like ships, don't you? First the
Zaina,
then the
Shiraz Se,”
he said, grabbing her arm. She looked stunned.

“I can't talk now,” she said, trying to pull away.

“Not this time, Najla. Or is it Brynna?” Scorpion said, tightening his grip. He saw the two men start to move and he got ready for it. Najla stared at him, her eyes dark, unreadable. Then Scorpion felt a hard poke in his back.

“Go away,” he said, not turning around. The poke came again.

“Vasiliev wants to see you,” the scar-faced man said. His friend and another tough-looking man stood next to him.

“I'm busy,” Scorpion said.

“Kiril Andreyevitch is not the kind of man you keep waiting,” the scar-faced man said, showing Scorpion a gun in a shoulder holster. Scorpion looked at Najla. She leaned close, as if to kiss him.

“Diese männer sind Iranier,”
she said. These men are Iranians. “They are forcing me to go with them. We're meeting Chechens in the Summer Garden by the Coffee House in two hours. For God's sake, help me,” she whispered in his ear in German. She looked into his eyes and kissed him full on the lips.

“Come,” said one of the Iranians, pulling her away.

“Mein Gott!”
she said, looking wistfully at Scorpion. “How did we land in the middle of this?”

“I'll see you,” Scorpion said, watching her as she stood looking tiny between the two Iranians.

“Will you?” Najla said as the three Tambov gangsters closed around Scorpion.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The Summer Garden, Saint Petersburg, Russia

S
corpion came up to street level from the Gostiny Dvor station. It was almost dark, a hint of light lingering on the horizon as he crossed Sadovaya Ulitsa. Although the rain had stopped, the air was wet and the street glistened under the streetlights. He caught a gypsy Lada taxi and took it through the empty streets and across the bridge to the Summer Garden. The park was deserted, the wrought-iron gate dripping wet as he pushed it open. Inside, a plastic map on a post showed where the Coffee House was. The path through the overhanging trees was barely visible in the near darkness and there were a hundred places for an ambush. They had picked the perfect spot, he thought. Scorpion took out Ivanov's gun and clicked off the safety.

They would expect him to take the most direct path. Instead, he set off toward one side of the park. He would circle around and approach the Coffee House from the opposite Neva side of the park. Seeing the shadow of a figure cast by a streetlamp, Scorpion instantly snapped into shooting position before he realized it was a Grecian statue on a pedestal beside the path. He studied the dim outlines of the trees. Realizing it was too dangerous to stay on the paved path, he stepped off and moved through the dark tangle of the trees, thick as a forest, the ground soft and carpeted with wet leaves underfoot. He thought about Najla and the feel of her lips and the closeness of her body when she kissed him at the club. Even now he still didn't know if she was playing him. Even if she was, he didn't know if he had it in him to kill her.

Vasiliev had been another surprise, he thought, pushing silently through the wet branches. They had taken him to the second floor of the club to a private elevator that required a key and a number code to enter. The elevator took them up two floors to a hallway carpeted with Persian rugs and lined with expensive oil paintings; landscapes by Levitan and portraits by Serov from the Soviet era. Two men in suits stood by a metal detector like those in an airport. He had emptied his pockets, including the gun, into a plastic tray.

“Paspart,”
one of the men said.

Scorpion handed him his McDonald passport, which the man pressed on a scanning machine. Then he went through the detector and one of the men pressed a button next to a steel door that looked like it had been designed to survive a bomb blast. They waited while someone inside checked the security camera and buzzed them in.

Scorpion walked in alone, the others taking their places in the hallway beside the door as it closed behind him. Inside, Vasiliev sat behind a Louis XV desk in an office that could have been a library in an English manor house, if not for the bank of TV flat screens arrayed on one wall and a row of computers on a table. Vasiliev wore gold-rimmed glasses and an impeccable Armani suit. He looked like a banker, sitting with his left hand resting on the desk, until Scorpion realized that although lifelike, the hand was artificial. A tough-looking Russian with prison tattoos and a shaved head sat next to the wall behind Scorpion, holding a Beretta pistol with a silencer in his lap.

Vasiliev said something in Russian as Scorpion sat down.

“Izvinitye,
I only speak a little Russian,” Scorpion said.

“Mr. McDonald,” Vasiliev said in good but heavily accented English, “you said something about moving an item through the port and a beautiful woman. It aroused my curiosity.”

“It was meant to. I need to locate a shipment. The woman, I've already located.”

“Ah.” Vasiliev tilted his head. “Where is she?”

“Downstairs, or at least she was till your men pulled me away. What someone told me was right. Everyone comes to the Dacha Club.”

“The Dacha is like the turnstile of the New Russia. Sooner or later everyone must pass through—and pay the toll,” Vasiliev said. “She is beautiful, of course, this woman. Otherwise, you would hardly risk talking to me about it. Suppose I take her from you?”

“She can look out for herself,” Scorpion said. “She is dangerous, even for the Tambov.”