Kosyk spun around and fired at the same instant Zara lunged, spoiling his aim. Still, he kept the gun pointed at Faith. He smiled coldly. “Drop it.” Kosyk motioned with the gun and spoke to Zara. “Over there, beside her.”
Zara kept her hands visible as she inched toward Faith.
Faith turned to Zara for her lead, but glimpsed fear in her eyes. Faith knew it was over-at least for one of them, and Faith was the one facing the barrel of the gun. She trembled and the blood rushed from her head. She couldn’t pass out now, not when she was so close to the truth. She forced a deep breath. Mustering all her self-control, she looked Kosyk in the eyes and said, “I know you’re going to kill me. At least tell me what happened to my father. Where is he? What did you do to him?”
“You really don’t know, do you?” He smirked and turned toward Zara. “You’ve figured it out, haven’t you, Bogdanov?”
Faith jerked her head around toward Zara and then slowly turned back to him.
Kosyk spoke. “It was impossible for your father to stay with your mother. He always told her, ‘We had no chance, but we-’ “
“ ‘But we made ourselves one.’ ” A chill ran through her body as Faith recited the lines she had studied so often for comfort, for clues. She could see her father’s bold strokes in his old-fashioned German handwriting. “How the hell do you know those words? They’re from the only thing I’ve ever had that was written by my father.” She searched his face for answers and she found them-in his wide cheekbones, in his high forehead and in the familiar way he cocked his head a little to the left. “You?”
“I offered you the opportunity to learn from me. You rejected it.” His eye twitched.
“What did you do to my mother? Blackmail her? Rape her?”
“You were a love child. I was assigned an undercover mission to penetrate an imperialist front organization in Berlin-West that was a CIA springboard for subversive activities in the republic. My orders were to position myself as close as I could to the ringleader. I couldn’t have gotten much closer.” He laughed.
“You deceived her and used her.”
“Never. I never used Maggie.” He raised his voice. “I was always fond of Maggie, but she was a missionary and I was a career officer in the Ministry for State Security. Our love could never be.”
“You can murder your own child in cold blood?”
“With regret. I’d planned on letting the Russians take care of you, but their usual sloppiness leaves me with little choice. Understand that tomorrow I’ll be leader of communist Germany and I can’t afford a capitalist bastard-no matter how lovely she is.” He reached forward and stroked Faith’s hair. “Before you die, forgive your mother. A Bible smuggler couldn’t have the child of a godless communist any more than an MfS general could claim an American daughter. What happened wasn’t Maggie’s fault. You were a child of the Cold War.” He paused. The moonlight caught his eyes and glistened on the tears that welled up inside them. “Join me.”
“I can’t.” Faith choked on the words.
“Then turn around. Both of you. Now!”
“No. If you’re going to murder your own daughter, you’ll have to do it while looking me in the eye.”
He paused for a few seconds as he studied her eyes and then he pulled back the hammer of the gun.
A white flash lit up the night and a fireball consumed the dacha. The concussion shook the ground. Kosyk jerked his head around in time for the second blast. At that moment Zara struck his arm, knocking the pistol to the ground. They scrambled for the weapon as flaming debris rained down around them. He grabbed the gun. Zara held on to his arm, struggling to keep him from pointing it at her, but he was stronger.
For the first time in her life, Faith wished her father dead. He was no longer the hero she imagined, but a scoundrel, a terrorist mastermind, a Stasi controller willing to sacrifice his own daughter to politics. He had betrayed her fantasy. He had betrayed her mother. He had betrayed her. Just as Kosyk started to pull the trigger, Faith smashed the brick into his skull.
Faith cradled the bloody brick while Zara fussed with the body. She had his nose, narrow, turned up a little at the end. The eyes definitely weren’t hers, set back and with dark baggy circles under them.
Zara took the brick from her hands and tossed it into the river. Rings of ripples floated like ghosts across the still water. Faith watched them hit the bank and return in wave after wave to the center, crossing through one another over and over again until they were no more.
“He’s unconscious but not dead, if you need to say something to him for your own sake. Brain hemorrhages can take a while, and they’re not always fatal.”
Faith dropped to her knees, clutched her father and sobbed. “We had no chance.”
Where the hell is Faith? Summer looked at his watch for the hundredth time, although he had an excellent internal chronometer and was keenly aware of exactly how much time had elapsed. He’d listened as the shouts in Russian faded into moans, but didn’t hear her. He should have gone to the car, but he couldn’t leave her. He’d never forgive himself if something happened to her. Then he heard a rustle in the woods below his position, coming up from the river. He slid behind the burnt-out structure and waited for the target to emerge. Please be her.
Two figures stumbled through the woods, not even trying to conceal themselves. He aimed around the corner of the building. Flames lit up the night and he could make out the comrade leading Faith toward him. She stumbled as if injured. He rushed to her. “Where’s she hurt?”
“She found her father.”
Summer mouthed, “Kosyk?”
Zara nodded. “We have to get out of here. The drivers.”
Summer stuck the gun in his pocket and picked Faith up, hoisting her over his shoulder. He was relived to feel her body against his and didn’t want to ever let go.
They ran down the driveway toward the car. Three-quarters of the way down the path, a gun fired and they dropped to the ground.
“Get her to the car. I’ll draw their fire and cover you,” Zara said.
“Careful, comrade.” Summer carried Faith toward the road.
“Go!” Zara crouched behind a tree, reached around and fired off two shots. The drivers returned fire. She hit the ground and crawled to the next tree. She looked around and could make out three figures in the shifting flames. One was headed into the woods to outflank her, so she fired at him and then saw him drop. She shot at the others and sprinted several meters, unloading her Makarov as she ran. She dived onto the ground. Automatic-weapons fire erupted. She slinked along the ground as quickly as she could with at least fifty meters until the road. Bullets sprayed a nearby tree, turning bark into pulp.
A gun resounded from the woods near the road. The commander. Someone screamed and the weapons fire stopped. She stood and ran toward the road. Like lightning branching across a night sky, pain suddenly radiated through her right arm, and then she heard the whizzing sound of the shot catch up with her. She spun around and emptied the magazine in the direction of the fire until a man let out an involuntary yelp of pain. Zara held her arm and ran, arriving at the Zil at the same time as Summer.
Automatic gunfire punctuated the night as she jumped into the passenger seat. “You drive. I’m hit.”
Summer hit the gas. The tires spun, stuck in the soft mud. The engine roared, but it wasn’t loud enough to hide the sound of the nearing Kalashnikov.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
BERLIN AIR CORRIDOR
10:14 P.M. (12:14 A.M. MOSCOW TIME)
The 727 descended to nine thousand feet for the final crossing over East Germany to West Berlin. The day of milk hauls between West Berlin and West Germany had been long and uneventful, save for a bird strike in the late afternoon that threw them off schedule by nearly an hour. Frosty yawned as he scanned his console, all instruments reading within normal parameters. He knew his days were numbered as a Pan Am flight engineer. Flight engineers were slowly going extinct, thanks to declining profit margins and the genius of Boeing and Airbus designers. Modern jetliners had automated so many of the calculations that were the bread and butter of the flight engineer that even the latest models of the complex 747 had forgone their need. Sure, he was a pilot and could always become a first officer, but he was happiest as an engineer.