“We’re looking for Ekaterina Moore.”
His smile dimmed. What had she done? He looked pointedly at her door, and as if by psychic energy, it opened.
She stood in the doorway, looking every bit like the dream he’d had only moments earlier. Her eyes glowed with anticipation. A smile played on her lips. Dressed crisp and clean in a pair of black jeans and an orange cotton sweater, she’d slicked her hair back in a ponytail and wore just enough make-up for his heart to hurt. She flicked a gaze toward him, and his heart sank.
“Good morning,” he said. “These men are here for you?” He said it like a question, hoping it was some sort of mistake. Please Kat, don’t run to your embassy. Take my advice. Get out of Russia.
She nodded. He felt slapped. He backed away, resisting the urge to hold up his hands in surrender. Instead, he locked his jaw and held out his hand. “Good luck, Kat.”
She took it and held it a moment, saying nothing. But he felt in her grasp everything that had passed between them—from the moment he’d tackled her, protecting her from the bullets in Pskov, to his mortifying reaction in the chapel, to the compassion in her eyes as she held his bleeding head on the dark street. He tightened his grip, and couldn’t stop himself. “Please, don’t do this. I don’t want to see you hurt.”
She yanked her hand away. “My visa says I am here as a tourist. To my understanding, I haven’t broken any laws.” Her eyes glittered. Bold. Hard. She stepped away from him and turned to the black-suited soldiers. “Thank you for coming for me.”
Rough and Tough didn’t even glance at him as they turned and bracketed her with their protection. They walked down the hall, away from the FSB. Away from him.
Vadeem felt freshly punched when she didn’t even turn and look back.
Ilyitch stood on the street corner waiting for the Canadian Bagel Company to fill his order. Ah, capitalism. It brings out the best in a man, he thought as he dangled a key from his thick index finger.
Well, most men. The key’s metal winked gold as it caught the morning sunlight. He swung the shoestring fast and it spiraled around his finger. “I got it.” Ilyitch muttered into the cell phone he held propped to his ear with his shoulder. “And, she’s got a secret.”
Grazovich coughed, his voice harsh and filled with gravel this morning, the after- effects of a full night. “I’ve always told you that your position would be an asset to our situation.”
Ilyitch fought the urge to throw the phone against the wall. Grazovich leapt on every chance to bury his face in the past. Ilyitch ground out his voice. “Her grandfather was a spook. Control agent.”
“CIA?” Now he’d gotten Grazovich’s attention.
“Ran a ring of operatives in the sixties. KGB burned him and his entire ring in 1968. He got away, but we unearthed his assets here. They were executed.”
He enjoyed the long pause on the other end. “The thing is… he came back. In 1970, he showed up in Pskov. KGB picked him up, had him against the ropes when a couple of sleepers, undercover agents, came to life and whisked him out of the country.”
“They get anything out of him?”
“Name and rank. The basics.”
“Hmm.” Grazovich’s antenna had gone up. Ilyitch pictured the general smoothing back his graying hair, pacing the floor as he held the cell phone to his ear.
“There’s more,” and this is going to cost you. “He was OSS. Ran a partisan op out of Pskov during the Patriotic War.”
“Well, isn’t that coincidental?” Grazovich paused long enough to light a cigarette on the other side. Ilyitch heard the scrape as the lighter flared to life. “What would bring an agent back to a country where his cover’s been blown?”
The answer buzzed in the silence between them as Ilyitch smiled. “I think your cousin is right on the money, General.” Big money. Four-million dollars of big money. Ilyitch’s finger began to turn purple from the pressure of the key’s string. “I should have taken the girl. She knows something. Maybe even went into the family business.”
“Find the book. It’s got our answers.”
Ilyitch spat on the ground, and earned a glare from a woman sashaying by in a short black leather skirt and skimpy vest. He ignored her. “What if there isn’t a book? Pumping the girl for her information would be faster.”
“And messier. The FSB is all over her, like a hound to a fox. The last thing we need to do is raise a few heads.”
“Tell your little monk that I’m starting to lose patience.”
“He says he doesn’t know.”
“I told you he was an idiot. Let’s get the girl, and pry it out of her.”
“Okay, calm down. Follow her. See if she’s got the book. If not, bring her to me.” The line clicked off.
Ilyitch snapped the cell phone shut. Morning rush hour in Moscow had traffic snarled, horns on high, motors spitting out exhaust. Pedestrians pushed past him on their trek to the subway. Ilyitch leaned against the building, suddenly feeling old. Five years of running this game his nerves were starting to raze. No, his nerves had been annihilated ten years ago in a renegade prison camp on the Georgian/Abkhazian border. He’d barely slept a night through since. If it weren’t for the filthy General Grazovich and his brother, he’d be rotting in a 3-meter community cell.
Two-million dollars was a good retirement sum for a man who had bartered his soul for a solid meal and a ratty cot. He turned and walked into the Bagel Company. Capitalism had its perks, in more ways than one.
Kat had just taken a giant leap back to reality. A reality, at least, that didn’t knock her to her knees. The smell of brewed coffee, a plate of doughnuts in the middle of an oak coffee table, CNN on the television in the corner, and a fresh copy of People magazine on the end table all told her she was back in the land of the living. Someone with taste had decorated the reception area in the normal colors of navy blue and cranberry. Not a hint of orange or lime green in the entire building. Kat sat back in the navy corduroy armchair, tucked her feet up, and blew on the cup of instant hot cocoa she’d been grateful to find in the well-stocked embassy cafeteria. Across from her, on the plaid sofa, a young couple sat clasping hands, looking infinitely distressed. She knew how they felt.
She didn’t even want to ponder her grandfather’s powerful connections, but the events of this morning crushed any doubts she entertained about his previous profession. Ten minutes on the phone last night with Grandfather Neumann, a man who spent his days beating old Bart Gunderson at chess, and the next morning the CIA—working on the other side of the world—show up at her hotel.
She never thought she’d be so happy to see the US Embassy. Forty-eight hours outside America seemed like a century here in the former Soviet Union.
Kat, what have you discovered? Kat watched the television screen, saw the female reporter’s lips move, but she heard last night’s conversation in her head.
“Oh, Grandfather!” Kat had fought the tremor in her voice. “The key was stolen.”
“Stolen. How?” The connection crackled. Kat kept it short, not wanting to frighten the man. Regardless of what he’d seen in the past, she was his granddaughter, the granddaughter he’d given it all up for, and she knew he’d race to conclusions that might strain his grandfatherly heart.
“I’m okay. It was… stolen. I went to the Pechory monastery.” She opted not to tell him about the shooting in Pskov, or her near miss at the airport. More important wasn’t what had happened to her since arrival in Russia, but what would happen twelve hours from now if Mr. Russian Cop still sat outside her door.