Lypky
Kyiv, Ukraine
She blew into the room telling him he had three minutes. Her armament included a gray Prada suit, pearls, and a Ferragamo purse. Her hair was black and pageboy straight, and her eyes were like no one else’s, a disturbing lapis lazuli blue. Iryna Shevchenko was stunningly beautiful and knew it. Even more, Scorpion thought later, there was something about her. A presence. Even in a room full of people, you wouldn’t be able to take your eyes off her.
She waved away a male aide who had followed her in and sat on a desk.
They were on the top floor of a building on Instytutska in the Lypky district that served as a campaign office. Through the window behind her Scorpion could see buildings, and beyond them the snowy expanse of Pecherska Park and the Dnieper River glazed with ice.
“Mr. Kilbane,” she said, peering at his Reuters badge after they said hello. “They said you were an investigative reporter, Reuters, London. You don’t sound British.”
“Canadian. Where’d you learn your English?” Scorpion asked.
“Benenden and Oxford. Plus some time in Washington,” she said, lighting a cigarette. “What’s this about?”
“There’s a story going around that someone in your campaign is planning to bump off your opponent, Cherkesov. Care to comment?”
“Good God! Where’d you get such a story?” she said, color draining from her face. Her fist clenched and unclenched in her lap.
“Let’s just say a source.”
“What source?”
“Sorry.” He shook his head. “Do you have any comment?”
“It’s a lie. You can’t print that. Barely a week before the election. It would destroy us.”
“It would help,” he said, “if you told me what you knew.”
“Is this coming from the Cherkesov campaign? It’s a plant. Surely you can see that?”
“It’s not coming from your opponents. Is it true?”
She got up from the desk.
“Who’s saying this? Tell me.”
It’s you, he thought. Because eight minutes after he had left the Russian embassy, Gabrilov had made a call on his cell phone that, thanks to the SIM he had replaced in Gabrilov’s cell phone and the software on his laptop, had enabled the NSA to track it to a cell phone registered in her name.
“Suppose I said it was another country that was the source?”
“Who, the Russians? It’s the SVR, isn’t it? Only a fool would believe anything from them,” she said, exhaling a stream of cigarette smoke. “The Russians want Cherkesov to win. They’ll say or do anything.”
“Normally I would agree. Except, one,” he held up a finger, “it’s my job to check it out, and two,” holding up a second finger, “turns out they got it from you.”
“From me? What are you talking about?”
“From a cell phone that belongs to you.”
“That’s impossible! Besides, there are at least a hundred cell phones registered in my name. I bought them for the campaign.”
“What about this one?” Scorpion said, holding up his cell with the number Gabrilov had called displayed on the screen.
Iryna peered intently at it.
“It can’t be,” she said, brushing her hair away from her face. “It’s Alyona, one of my aides.” She looked at him curiously. “How did you get this?”
“How I got it is my business. Is it true?”
“You can’t print this. It’ll kill us,” she said, coming closer. He could smell her perfume. Hermès 24 Faubourg, he thought; hints of orange and jasmine, vanilla and sex.
“It’s my job; providing I can confirm it,” he said.
“You don’t get it, do you?” She shook her head. “If Cherkesov takes power, you think it’ll be like Democrats and Republicans in America? We’ll just call each other nasty names and try to screw each other? If Cherkesov wins, you think he’ll leave us around to oppose him?”
“Sounds like a pretty good motive for murder to me,” Scorpion said, watching her closely.
She stubbed her cigarette out in an ashtray on the desk and looked out the window. “All right, how much?” she said.
“Don’t,” he said sharply, getting up. “I’m not a whore. Don’t play me like one.”
“I’m sorry,” looking straight at him. “Neither am I—despite being a politician,” she said with a wry smile. “What can I do?”
“Tell the truth. Help me get to the bottom of this. For instance, this Alyona. Did you know she was in contact with the SVR?”
Iryna shook her head. “I’ve known her since she was a girl in senior school. She came to work for me as an intern. What you say she’s doing; it’s not possible.”
“You’d be surprised what people will do,” Scorpion said. “I’ve seen them betray their country, husbands, wives, everything they believe in. They do it for love, money, sex, revenge, sometimes out of sheer boredom.”
“Not Alyona,” Iryna said, getting her cell phone out of her handbag. “She’s a serious girl, an artist. She believes in what we’re doing.”
Scorpion grimaced. “So you say. Look, I need to talk to her. Where is she?”
Iryna dialed her cell phone and after a moment said something rapidly in Ukrainian. She listened, then clicked off and looked at Scorpion.
“That’s odd. She was supposed to be in our Saksaganskogo office today. No one seems to know where she is. I should call her fiancé. She’s engaged,” she said, a flicker of a smile lighting her face.
Her male aide walked in then and they spoke in Ukrainian. He handed her a sheaf of papers, pointing at something. She looked at Scorpion.
“We have new numbers,” she explained. “Thirty-four percent for Kozhanovskiy in Kharkov.”
“Doesn’t sound so good.”
“It’s not bad,” she said. “Kharkov is a Cherkesov stronghold. Another minute, Slavo,” she told the aide in English. He glanced curiously at Scorpion as he left.
“Alyona. I need to talk to her. Now,” Scorpion said.
Iryna looked at him as though trying to decide something.
“So how do we do this?” she asked.
“For the moment, I’ll hold off. There’s no story till I find out what’s going on. I’ll keep you as background. An unnamed source. But from now on we stay in touch,” he said, pulling on his jacket.
The male aide, Slavo, had come back. He stood in the door and pointed to his watch. “Iryna, bud’laska,” he said, in accented English. “Viktor Ivanovych is waiting. We must go.” Scorpion assumed he was referring to Kozhanovskiy. She nodded and waited. After a moment, he left.
“All right,” she said. “Meet me tonight. Call me,” writing her cell number on a slip of paper and giving it to him. She started to go, leaving behind a lingering scent of Hermès, then stopped at the door. She had an odd look on her face. “Cherkesov has a big rally in Dnipropetrovsk tomorrow night,” she said. “It would be the perfect place.”
“You mean for the assassination?”
“Yes,” she said, and was gone.