Well, that Tolstoy had obviously known a few things about the hazards of travel, she mused with a smile, as well as the comforts of spirituality.
She thought back to the train ride she had taken just a few months earlier across central Spain, and how from a window she had seen a small rural funeral that had reminded her of the funeral of her grandmother in Mexico many years ago. She thought about the first time she had flown into Kiev and the last time she had flown out. Then she was ten years into the past, a more innocent time, when she was playing soccer at UCLA. Then there was the summer she had spent in France and the summer she had spent in Russia, the experience that had taught her Russian and paved the way for her being assigned to a spiritual shell of a man named Yuri Federov.
The aircraft banked left at Greenland. The flight became bumpy and the seat belt signs came on. She ordered another whiskey, her third, sipped it, and then, exhausted, slipped easily into a short dream at thirty-five thousand feet. She drifted farther into the Russian psyche.
It would have been absurd to suggest that she had any inklings of love for Yuri Federov. So what was it that she felt?
A strange Christian sense of compassion?
The forgiveness that was a foundation of her faith?
The notion that within every human being there is some shred of decency, even if one sometimes needed to search hard to find it?
She supposed that might have been it.
Could she bring herself to say a prayer for his soul?
Silly question: she had already said many.
In time could she forgive Federov, as he had begged her?
In time, she decided, maybe she could forgive anything. But no one ever said it would be easy.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author is grateful to many sources for background and research in this book and the entire trilogy, which is now complete. Among them, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The United States Department of Justice, Wikipedia, The Columbia Encyclopedia, and The Encyclopædia Britannica. The author is also grateful to Esquire magazine and author C. J. Chivers for the excellent article “Power: The Vladimir Putin Story” (Esquire, October 2008) for further background on the current Russian leader and permission to use that article as a source here.
I’m also once again grateful to my good friend and retired diplomat Thomas Ochiltree for his endless insights on international politics and diplomacy and to my wife, Patricia, for her help, advice, and support in more ways than I can ever calculate.
At Zondervan, Andy Meisenheimer and Bob Hudson saved me as usual from my own verbal excesses. Thanks again, guys. But while I’m at it, I should also mention Christine Orejuela-Winkelman, who did the wonderful interior design for this book as well as my two previous ones. Art director Laura Maitner-Mason did the eye-catching cover design here, and Michelle Lenger was the creative director. Thanks for making my words look good on the page. Thanks also to Kathleen Merz, who did the original copy edit on this manuscript; to Karen Statler, editorial manager, who somehow keeps my books on schedule; and also to my friends Jessica Secord and Karwyn Bursma, who make sure I don’t turn invisible after publication. It takes a good team to publish a book, not just an author, so your solid work and efforts are very much appreciated.
