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“Slyedushi!”

Kat swallowed hard at the command of the beefy soldier standing next to the booth. Scraping up her composure, she stepped forward and shoved her passport through the slitted portal in the thick glass. A wide-faced woman snatched the document up without so much as a nod of acknowledgment to Kat.

Don’t smile. Don’t smile. She stared at the passport official… at her chubby hands leafing through Kat’s empty passport… at her bushy gray frown as she scrutinized Kat’s visa picture. The woman looked up to compare Kat’s appearance to the photo. Kat met her gaze with a blank face and congratulated herself.

“Purpose of your visit to Russia?” The woman’s wide cheeks jiggled when she talked. Kat blinked, and searched for her voice.

“Uh, personal,” she stammered.

The stamper clinked, and a purple circle appeared on the second page of Kat’s passport. The woman handed it over. “Enjoy your stay in Russia.”

Kat gathered her papers and held them to her chest, over her pounding heart. Yes, oh yes…

“Zis way.” The uniformed soldier gestured to a security scan.

Kat thumped her backpack onto the rolling belt and stepped up to the scanner. She watched her bag pass through, then received a nod from the attendant.

Enter, she thought as she stepped under the gates, your past.

The harsh screech of the security siren stopped her heart cold.

She froze under the arch. The siren blared. Two security officials marched toward her.

The soldier behind them swung his gun off his shoulder.

Then, a hand closed around her arm, yanking her back the way she’d come.

“Zis way, please.”

She looked up into the cold gray eyes of the Russian militia.

———

“Is he through?”

Captain Vadeem Spasonov pulled the binoculars from his eyes, blinking at the sudden change in vision. “Yep. Just before the siren went off.” He scanned the crowd pushing against the glass walls that surrounded the baggage claim area. Families, waiting for loved ones, drivers holding placards with names written on them, interpreters, and business associates barking into cell phones and checking flight schedules, all hoping to catch a glimpse of the arriving passengers. “Any clue who he is meeting?”

Captain Ryslan Khetrov shoved his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket. Vadeem’s partner looked every inch the FSB agent—a member of the international security force of Russia—with his shaved blond hair, square chin, dark eyes, and meaty hands that could probably wrap twice around a man’s neck. Vadeem was never sure if that was a smile or a grimace on the man’s face. He hadn’t known Ryslan long enough to figure it out. Maybe he never would.

“Not a clue this time,” Ryslan answered. “Keep your eyes on him.” He turned his back to Vadeem. “I’ll watch the crowd, see if anyone looks the type to hang out with an Abkhazian gangster.”

Vadeem peered through the glasses. “He’s more than that. He’s looking to restart the war. He’s already purchased an arsenal big enough to put a serious dent in the peace-keeping forces.” He trained his gaze on the tall man in a black trench coat who had stopped mid-stride and now peered back at passport control.

Ivan Grazovich looked like a scholarly professor on sabbatical. Vadeem narrowed his eyes as the man turned, as if checking for someone in the line.

Vadeem couldn’t wait to nail this slime ball who unearthed Russia’s riches and sold them to the highest bidder—most of the time back to the Motherland herself. Grazovich reinvested the cash in renegade Russian artillery, easily had through the Internet or from former comrades holding onto their own personal stash. The irony felt like a blow between the solar plexus. Worse yet, someone inside Russia was helping him escape the Motherland with his treasures tucked in his belt—someone with enough military clout to know where to send the general to shop for tanks and rocket launchers and, most likely, the same someone who knew how to woo Mother Russia into buying back pieces of her past while her children, her future, starved.

So far, the smuggler had been able to sneak out with a 13th century icon of St. Nickolas laden with gold and lapis lazuli stones, a tapestry of Peter the Great woven in 1723, and an Ivan Lulibin goose-egg clock made of pure gold—national treasures they’d recovered, at painful price tags.

Not this time. This time, Vadeem hoped to catch both thief and traitor at their game. The assignment had Medal of Merit possibilities written all over it. Unfortunately, Grazovich and his traitor in crime were as slippery as month-old bacon grease.

Vadeem watched Grazovich stalk back towards the passport booth. “What’s he up to?”

“Let me see.”

Vadeem handed the glasses over to his partner. From their perch in the militia office overlooking customs control, they had an advantageous view of both passenger and greeter. Behind them, security officers scanned computer screens, giving every passenger a double scrutiny. Vadeem wondered if it was the officer behind him or the lady below who had set off the screeching alarm. He noticed rookie Denis leaning over the shoulders of the security team, casually reading each screen. Vadeem hid a smirk. The fresh-out-of-academy recruit with the short black hair and intense hazel eyes rather reminded Vadeem of his early days, when he’d been the wiry, astute, ear-to-the-ground soldier, waiting for the assignment that would make his career.

Vadeem was still waiting.

“He’s walking back through the security arch.”

“What?” Vadeem watched Grazovich as he ran toward a burly female security officer hauling off a terrified American woman. The traveler looked the color of chalk, and she couldn’t quite keep pace with the elephant-legged stride of the guard. Vadeem stepped over to a junior officer manning a computer. “Who is she?”

“Nobody. Says her name is Ekaterina Hope Moore. First time in Russia, not even another country listing on her passport.” The skinny corporal in a gray military shirt typed something. “Says here she’s from New York.”

“Immigrant?”

“Nope, born in Nyack, New York, in the U. S. of A.”

Klasna.” Vadeem gripped the tightening muscles in his neck. “Just what we need, an American trying to hawk some retired military hardware.”

“You think she could be Grazovich’s contact?” This from Denis, who had popped into their huddle.

Vadeem watched the trio below as the guard pulled the American to a table and, throwing the backpack aside, she began to frisk her detainee with the gentleness of a female wrestler. The lady from New York hardly looked like an arms dealer, but then again, innocents made the best mules.

“I want to talk to her.”

“Vadick, don’t scare off Grazovich.” Ryslan grabbed his leather coat sleeve.

Vadeem shrugged out of his grip. “The general doesn’t have a clue who I am. I could be a local taxi driver for all he knows.”

Vadeem, however, knew Ivan Grazovich inside and out. He knew what he liked for breakfast, that he preferred Absolut Vodka over the Russian Smirnoff, that his last girlfriend had been found in a dumpster in Amsterdam. Oh, yes. Although Vadeem had joined the COBRAs, an elite, international crime-stomping task force of the Federal Security Bureau, or FSB, only a month ago, he knew Ivan Grazovich better than he’d known his own parents.