Miss Renquist stood and pushed in her chair. Kat watched her walk over to the window and stare out, rubbing her hands on thin arms. She wondered how long this American had lived in Moscow.
“The couple you saw in the other room. He’s the son of Senator Watson from Ohio. He and his wife are here to adopt a baby.” She turned, and rubbed her forehead. “They’ve run into a snag.”
“Do they have their paperwork from the States?”
“Yes, translated and in triplicate.”
“Well, what is the problem then?”
“The agency representative they were working with in Russia just landed in the hospital with appendicitis.”
Kat made face. “Here, in Moscow? Ouch.” No wonder Miss Renquist looked wrung out. “It can’t be that hard to find another agent.”
“You’d be surprised. Russia isn’t entirely pro-adoption, and very few regions are even consenting to international adoptions. Thankfully, the orphanage in which the Watson’s child lives has been a forerunner and, because of your agency’s reputation, I believe they would agree to work with you. It takes a special touch to work with these orphanage directors. It wasn’t so long ago that Russia believed we abducted their children and did medical experiments on them.”
Kat flinched. But she, too, had heard the tales of propaganda designed to keep Russia’s orphans safely inside the Motherland.
“I’m afraid we need your expertise,” Renquist continued. “This is their second trip in-country. If it doesn’t happen this time…”
The woman didn’t have to finish for Kat to grasp her meaning. The distressed woman in the lobby was one unfortunate step shy of losing the child she’d longed for.
“But I’ve never worked in the field before. I don’t really know what I’m doing.”
“You speak Russian. They have their paperwork, and your agency has the legal standing. Just travel with the Watsons to the orphanage, meet with the director, go with them to court for the adoption finalization, and bring the baby back to Moscow. We‘ll process the baby’s immigrant visa here. We’ve already cleared the paperwork, so it’ll a three-day job at most, and I think, from looking at your file, you can handle it.”
She had a file at the embassy? Kat chewed her bottom lip.
“In the meantime, we’ll hunt up your Magda for you.”
Kat fingered the picture, drawn to the faces, wondering if one of them could be Grandfather’s lost love. “Where am I going?”
Vadeem slammed his fist into the punching bag, feeling his frustration scream through his tense muscles. Bam! For Mr. Rough. Bam! For Mr. Tough. Bam! For Ekaterina Moore and the way she could chew up a man and spit him out without a second glance. Bam! Bam! And two for Grazovich, the man he should be chasing instead of figuring out how he was going to storm into the American embassy, escape the Marine posted at the front desk, dodge the staff in the foyer, and wrestle a kicking and screaming Kat Moore under the steel gate before it crashed down on his head—and his career.
Bam!
“You planning on coming in to work today?” Ryslan leaned against the doorframe, nursing a bottle of lemonade.
Bam! “What are you doing here?” He didn’t ask his partner how he got in.
“Where’s the girl?” Ryslan looked crisp this morning, dressed in black suit pants and a matching leather jacket. He was all angled planes and ferocity. Rough and Tough would have thought twice about whisking Kat away under Ryslan’s nose.
Bam!
“She’s at the embassy.” Vadeem jogged in place for a moment, then lowered his hands. Ryslan picked at the paper label on the lemonade bottle.
“Is she leaving?”
Vadeem worked off his gloves and dropped them on the floor. “I don’t know.” He picked up a towel, scrubbed it across his face, and draped it over his shoulders. “And, I don’t care.” He flopped down on his sofa, a utilitarian black vinyl piece he’d picked up second-hand. The cool fabric sent a chill down his bare back. “They picked her up like she was the First Lady and I haven’t seen her since.”
“Hmm.” Ryslan paced across the room and stared out the window. “What’s Grazovich up to?”
“Sleeping off last night’s party.” Vadeem noticed an odor rising off the sofa. If he didn’t get a shower soon, he was going to alienate even himself. He pushed himself up, feeling his muscles starting to bunch after the abrupt halt in his workout. He stretched from side to side. “Any leads on the weapons contact?”
“We have a guy watching Bartyk in St. Pete, and our man on Fitzkov in Novosibersk hasn’t moved. Then again, he could be buying from a legitimate dealer. You can order Russian weapons off the Internet these days.” Ryslan grimaced. “Don’t you just love capitalism?”
Vadeem winced. Just because Russia was broke didn’t mean they had to parcel off their future. It burned him to see his country surrendering to despair. “Doesn’t it bother you even a little that Grazovich risked his neck to pull her out of customs police, just so she could sight-see around Pskov?” Vadeem shoved a hand through his hair and grimaced as it came back slimy. Shower. Now.
“What about that key? Did you ever find out what it unlocks?” Ryslan turned and finished off his lemonade.
“She doesn’t even know. Probably the deluded musings of an old man.” But from the description of the young monk, Timofea hadn’t sounded deluded. Fulfill the promise. It seemed eerily sane, in a cryptic sort of way.
“And you’re just going to let her go? I don’t know Vadeem. I got a gut feeling on this.”
Vadeem had more than that. Gut, heart, and soul feelings. He put a hand to his chest, remembering those amber brown eyes that drilled into him and left him gasping. That sweet smile, so hard earned, but delicate and warm when he draped his coat over her shoulders and when he’d said good-bye. Such a smile could entrance a man…
Vadeem slammed his fist again into the bag. Yes, that’s exactly what she’d done. Entranced him. And he’d nearly fallen face first into her little trap. The key gone, gullible Vadeem will simply rifle through top-secret files, totally abandon his common sense, his focus, his job, and help her uncover her family secrets.
Bam!
“I need a shower,” Vadeem said. “I’ll be in later.”
“You want me to assign another agent to tag along after her?”
“No, forget her. I’m going back to Pskov to keep my eyes on Grazovich. Whatever he wanted with her, he’s obviously lost interest.”
Ryslan saluted him with the empty bottle. “So be it, Comrade. Miss Moore is officially on her own.”
Chapter 10
Kat gripped the armrests with white knuckles. Flying on a 757 was one thing. Safe, like sitting in a giant movie theater where they served drinks and dinner then, eight hours and two movies later, she exited into a surreal foreign world, a continuation of the movie she entered on the plane.
But this little puddle jumper, an AN-2 biplane that looked like something out of an Indiana Jones movie, obliterated any elements of the surreal she’d experienced on her commercial flight. This reality of flying meant her stomach lodged in her throat, her heartbeat charged into overdrive, and her ears filled with the high-pitched whine of the engine. And she’d never before had the privilege of flying with a goat strapped in the seat behind her. The odor of a few dozen layers of barnyard filth had long since numbed her sense of smell. She just prayed the odor had not also latched itself irrevocably onto her attire.
They were going down. She could tell by the ache in her head. Please, let us be landing and not crashing. Across the aisle, Sveta and John Watson looked worse for the wear. Sveta had her fingers curled around her husband’s grip, her other hand white as it grasped the armrest. Her head lolled back against the headrest, her face pale and framed by blonde hair that had lost its life. She had beautiful brown eyes, Kat remembered, and the gratefulness in Sveta’s small voice told Kat she’d made the right decision. God worked in mysterious ways. That’s what Mrs. Watson had said, and Kat wholeheartedly agreed. She liked the petite woman, and her husband, John—Mr. Senator’s son. He seemed a kind fellow, perhaps shell-shocked and fighting impatience, but he, too, had given Kat a warm handshake. “I don’t know what we would have done if you hadn’t come along.”