Peace? Vadeem nearly threw the book across the hall, furious. Not a word about the crest, but plenty about suffering and pain… and now peace. Vadeem slammed it shut and clenched his jaw.
“Vadeem, are you okay?”
He flinched, then looked up into Kat’s gaze, honey sweet and brimming with concern. “Yes.”
“You look… angry.”
Vadeem took a breath and pasted on a smile. “How did it go in there?” He looked beyond her to the couple who had just exited the courtroom. They were beaming, tears dripped down the woman’s cheeks. “I assume, well?”
Kat smiled, radiant. “They can pick up Gleb tomorrow. Director Shasliva booked them on a late afternoon flight back to Moscow tomorrow.” She touched his arm. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
He handed her the book. “I couldn’t find anything we might use in here.”
She took it, her smile dimming. “Are you sure? Maybe you didn’t look hard enough.”
“I’m sure,” he said, a little too stiffly for his own taste. He looked away but saw her frown and feared she’d seen beyond his words to the wound festering in his soul.
Chapter 14
Vadeem sat in the lobby, hands white, clutching the arms of his chair, looking as if he awaited execution.
Vadeem had to be wrestling demons. Spiritual warfare was the only reason Kat could conjure up that could turn a kind, even gallant man into a sullen tag-along. What had happened to the lion-hearted soldier who had camped outside her door for two nights, dug up her past, and even made her tremble with unspoken emotions?
Kat had to get him inside that church. She’d prayed all day, without ceasing. Even as she made her plea before the Russian judge, her mind, her prayers lingered on Vadeem. She didn’t know why, but some inner, unspoken urge pulsed at her to pray, to plead for help like the persistent widow before the judge’s door in the eighteenth chapter of the Gospel of Luke.
God, I don’t know what is going on, but please help Vadeem find peace. Her heart ached at the agony on his face. He leaned forward and buried his face in his heads, and her spirit groaned.
Had he read something in Anton’s book? She’d entertained misgivings about handing it over him even for the few hours she was in court, but had hoped his sleuthing prowess would catch clues her uninformed eyes would pass over. True to character, he’d taken good care of the book, and passed it back to her moments after she’d exited the courtroom, almost as if he couldn’t wait to get rid of it.
She tugged out the diary and smoothed her hand on the cover. Soft and worn, it wasn’t a heavy book, but it held the weighty secrets of a man’s past. It told the Klassen heritage, one she suddenly longed to claim as her own.
Kat checked her watch. Pyotr was late. She flipped through the book, but the uneven scrawl in early twentieth-century colloquial Russian would take more scrutiny that she could muster at the moment. She tucked the book into her backpack, hoping for a quiet moment tonight to read it.
Perhaps Rina, Pyotr’s mother, could also help illuminate the dark past. She prayed Pyotr was wrong and that Baba Rina’s stories, while wild, might be just what Kat needed to tame the restlessness in her heart.
“Maybe he’s not coming.”
Kat looked up, read the look of hope on Vadeem’s face, and slowly shook her head. “He’ll be here.” She hesitated a moment, then surrendered to the urge and touched his arm. “Vadeem, I think you should come with me. God loves you and He’s waiting for you.”
“I’m not going, Kat.” The tight expression on Vadeem’s face left no room for argument.
Kat nodded, her throat tightening. She sat back, crossed her arms, and prayed for a miracle. Only a holy act of God was going to get Vadeem Spasonov in the church.
But God had been abundant with miracles of late. She tucked her backpack over her shoulder.
Ilyitch sat in the café, cursing his bad luck. Captain Spasonov was on the woman like glue. If Ilyitch didn’t watch it, everything he’d spent the last five years building would explode. The last thing he needed was for the FSB Captain to look up and see him nursing a beer in the hotel café.
Kat had the book. He watched her zip it into her backpack. Across from her, Spasonov looked wrung out, like he’d been dragged behind a Russian Kamaz about a hundred miles. His face was lined, his hair spiking in all directions, his shoulders slumped. He appeared about as capable as a babushka in a fifty-meter dash.
Perfect.
Vadeem leaned against the hood of Pyotr’s ancient blue Zhiguli, crossed his arms, and shot daggers at Kat.
Tears weren’t going to move him. He’d summoned his defenses and planned for her attack.
But her latest tactics left him outflanked and weakening quickly. She wielded her miraculous smile, like a weapon against his icy resolve, and he was melting fast. He ground out another no, desperate for her to comprehen that what she was asking was unthinkable. “I just… can’t.”
Her beautiful smile dimmed. “Don’t go anywhere.”
Relief whooshed through him with a sigh. No, he was resigned to park here for the next three hours in misery, staring at a small, green, log cabin church, listening to believers sing songs that would unravel time and pain and take him to a place he had tried to forget. Her amber eyes committed him to that much. “Don’t worry. I’ll be here when you get back.”
She turned and headed into the church, waiting as a hunched babushka wrapped in wool headscarf and brown polyester coat, shuffled in before her. The door opened, and for a brief moment, the light from inside pushed out into the twilight, illuminating the worn wooden steps.
His light has illuminated my dark paths. He has set me free. Peace can be had for those who have faith. Vadeem opened the diary Kat had left with him, in hopes, he supposed, that if she couldn’t get him inside the church, he might find some spiritual wisdom from her ancestors. She’d practically shoved it in his hands, despite his protests. “There have to be answers in here, Vadeem, and we don’t have time for me to decipher every word like an archeologist. Please, do what you can to figure out what secrets Anton buried in here.”
He opened to the page where he’d left off. Secrets, indeed. How about finding the secret dark path God’s light had illuminated for Kat’s deceased relative?
From what had Anton been set free? The burden of the crest? Or something deeper, more hideous?
Like betraying his family? Vadeem, too had seen a building burn, heard the sounds of anguish echoing into the night. Had Anton been freed from memories and guilt so gut-wrenching it could make a man wake at night, screaming?
Vadeem closed his eyes and pushed back a wave of pain so hot he thought he might gasp.
“Moshchina, could you help me?”
Vadeem opened his eyes.
“You, Moshchina.” A small woman, her skull outlined by baggy skin and a cherry red headscarf, smiled up at him. She leaned heavily on a smooth weathered walking stick, scoliosis wrestling her nearly half over. Her backbone jutted from a thin, gray sweater. Her arthritic hand reached out to his arm, grasping his jacket with thin fingers. “Could you help me?”