Scorpion Winter Read Online Free PDF Page A

Italian, half in English, about his farmhouse in the mountains, an updated casa colonica that she looked after when he was away, which was much of the time. Then he saw the envelope.
    She had picked it up from the harbormaster’s office. A simple request on a white card engraved with a yacht insignia to meet to “discuss matters of mutual interest” and a phone number. He would need to Google it, but Scorpion thought that the area code was Luxembourg, most likely meaning it was a holding company protected by that country’s secrecy laws.
    â€œWhere’d this come from?” he asked, going deadly still.
    â€œSome sailors in a tender from a yacht brought it. I think they were Russi,” Abrielle said. “Is for a Signor Collins. He is a friend?”
    â€œIs the yacht still there?” Scorpion asked, not answering her. He edged closer to the window and looked out. The piazzetta was empty in the rain. Beyond the buildings and the harbor, there was only the dark sea. Maybe it wasn’t just Alex Station in Yemen that was blown. He had to face the possibility that because of what might have been on Peterman’s laptop, he was blown as well. Christ, had they tracked him to Sardinia?
    Abrielle shook her head. “They said they were heading for Monte Carlo.”
    â€œBig yacht?” he asked.
    â€œ Molto grande . Sixty meters, maybe more,” she said. Scorpion trusted her judgment about the yacht. The Sardinians were used to big expensive boats. Porto Cervo, with its picturesque harbor and multimillion dollar villas with red-tiled roofs on the hills above the town, was the scene of the annual September regatta, when some of the biggest mega yachts and richest people in the world came to party on the Costa Smeralda. There weren’t that many yachts in the world over sixty meters. It meant the note came from someone extremely rich and powerful.
    â€œWhat makes you think they were Russians?”
    She shrugged. “I asked. They said they were Ukraini. It’s a kind of Russi, yes?”
    He told her he was leaving the island. As usual, while he was gone she was to take care of the casa and the two Doberman watchdogs, Hector and Achille. Her face fell when he said he was leaving.
    â€œQuando tornorai?” she asked, a touch wistfully. When will you be back? She had always thought il francese , with his gray eyes, like those of a wolf and that scar over his eye, attractive enough that if he wanted, she would have locked the office door and let him have her right there and then. But he was always leaving.
    â€œA few weeks. I’ll be back soon,” he said, not knowing if he would ever return to Sardinia again.
    D riving back in the rain to his casa colonica away from the coast, Scorpion kept glancing in the rearview mirror. The road wound up into the mountains. He pulled over at a turnout at the edge of a cliff. Grabbing binoculars from the glove compartment, he got out of his Porsche and scanned the hills and the road all the way back to Porto Cervo. It appeared no one was following him. With any luck, he still had time; unless they were waiting for him at the casa . He wondered if he was being paranoid. In his business, the line between paranoia and spycraft was razor thin. He remembered Rabinowich joking once, saying, “Remember, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean someone isn’t out to get you.”
    He looked down again at the card. Just two handwritten lines under a logo from a yacht, the Milena II , getting wet in the rain. For Scorpion , it had red flags all over it.
    First, it had been delivered to the harbormaster in Porto Cervo. That was a backdoor emergency network known only to Rabinowich, and even he didn’t know at any given moment which of several dozen ports in the world, if any, Scorpion might be at. The envelope had been addressed to “Arthur Collins,” a pseudonym for a supposed sailing friend of the Frenchman.