Summer scooped up the gun and stepped over the body. Faith hesitated until Zara nudged her. She hugged the doorframe to scoot around him. They raced through the lobby. No sign of backups was visible through the double glass doors, so they ran from the building toward the car. Zara veered toward the guard shack.
“Pick me up on the way. I have to get his security log,” Zara said.
Summer hopped into the car and drove to the gate.
Zara slumped against the guard shack, logbook in hand. Faith jumped from the car and helped her inside, where she collapsed into the seat. Tires screeched as Summer pulled through the gate. Sirens wailed in the distance.
“I need fluids and something to eat. It’s bleeding again.”
“Here. I lifted a Snickers from a desk drawer.” Faith handed her the candy.
“Which way?” Summer said as the car roared down the empty street.
“Get off the main road. Turn left into this alley.” Zara ripped open the bar and threw the wrapper onto the cluttered floorboard.
“Let’s go back to the orphanage to regroup. I need to see my mother.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
NADEZHDA ORPHANAGE, MOSCOW
1:30 A.M.
“Lordy, lordy.” Margaret shook her head when she saw the three of them; it wouldn’t have surprised her if they had been in Hades, wrestling the devil himself for the Keys to the Kingdom. Faith and Summer were a fright, and the Russian girl was pressing bloody rags against her arm. Faith took a step toward her and then stopped herself. She tensed up. Margaret examined her face. She recognized the look in her little girl when her eyes were begging to express something she didn’t know how to say. “Sweet pea, is there something you want to tell me?”
Faith nodded, tears filling her eyes. She took a deep breath and held it. “Forgive me,” she said as she burst into tears and grabbed her mother in a desperate hug.
“Thank You, Jesus,” Margaret whispered over and over again as she held her daughter for the first time in more than fifteen years.
“Mama, I understand now why you always acted the way you did toward me. I was a constant reminder of how you’d strayed-a curse from God.” Faith stopped crying and stepped away from her. “I know about Daddy.”
“Honey, I was young. I didn’t understand like I do now that you’re God’s greatest gift to me. I’m sorry.”
“What’s happened, happened.”
“You should know we were engaged, or I thought we were. I was on my first mission abroad in Berlin-that was before the Wall went up. Yurij was a communist zealot, and he pretended to let me lead him to the Lord. He was so suave, so cosmopolitan; I fell for him like a lovestruck schoolgirl. When he found out you were on the way, he confessed he was married and working undercover for the Stasi. He broke my heart and I know I did his, too. Yurij’s not the kind of man who would blow his cover even if his life depended on it, but he did for me. The hardest thing was that we had to play it out for several more weeks so the Stasi didn’t find out he had up and told me. It would’ve ruined his career.”
“Why did you ever do that?” Zara interrupted.
“I was afraid of him for both myself and my baby. Nothing comes between that man and his climb to the top. I woke up one morning and he was gone and a little note was on the pillow: ’We never had a chance, but we made ourselves one.’ That man had the heart of a poet. I kept that note in my Bible for years until one day it disappeared.”
“I took it, Mama, years ago. I’m sorry. I’d watched you read it and finger it and I knew it was from Daddy. I wanted something from him, some connection to him.”
“I know you did, honey. I found it with your favorite maps and let you keep it.”
“He tried to kill me, but I…” Faith choked on the words. “I killed Daddy.”
“You’re talking nonsense, child.” Margaret turned her head toward Summer. He shrugged and glanced away. Margaret paused for a moment while she blinked back tears. “Then I’m sure he deserved it. He always did.”
They showered, cleaned and dressed Zara’s wound, then met Mama Whitney in the basement with her famous biscuits and redeye gravy. They slurped them down while highlighting the events that led up to Faith’s action.
“We still have to figure out how we’re going to get close to GUM in the morning to stop the assassination,” Zara said.
“You can’t get through because of the May Day parade. By now they’ve thrown up control points around the Kremlin, allowing only people with special invites to get by,” Mama Whitney said.
“I could get through in uniform, but you two wouldn’t.”
“I know people here who’ll sell me KGB uniforms,” Faith said, her mouth still full.
“Your old contacts have been burned by now.”
“I can get what you need, but I doubt I could rustle them up in time,” Mama Whitney said.
“And even if we all made it past the checkpoints, we still have to break into GUM in front of thousands waiting for the parade.” Zara studied Summer as he sopped up the last drops of gravy with a biscuit.
“Let’s approach this like a smuggler.” Faith wiped gravy from the corner of her mouth. “When all entrances are being watched-”
“You take goods in something so commonplace, no one would ever think twice or if they did, they wouldn’t get what it really is,” Mama Whitney said.
“Nice in theory, but they’re closed tomorrow. No deliveries.” Zara yawned.
“GUM has hot water, doesn’t it?” Faith said.
“I’d assume.” Zara set her plate on a stack of old shoes.
“Well, then,” Faith said. “Maybe we need to think more from the rat’s point of view.”
4:49 A.M.
A miserable walk through a sweltering, damp tunnel of the Moscow hot-water system was almost a relief after the two hours of restless anxiety on the hard brick floor under the orphanage. The sweat and grime from the sultry tunnel hid all hints of their brief showers. The biscuits and redeye gravy were a dull memory; Faith could only taste dust. She shined the flashlight ahead of them, searching for the fittings and valves that served as landmarks on the crude map her mother had provided them. The main pipes were large enough Faith could easily have walked upright inside, but the dark tunnels had only enough room for them to go single-file beside the hot pipes. Her sides ached. At least she didn’t have a chunk of lead lodged in her bicep or a gash in her forearm. She admired Zara and Summer for their silent endurance, but she secretly wished they would say something so she didn’t have to keep her own complaints to herself, bottled up along with her fears. A cat-sized rat scurried in front of them and then lurked under the raised pipe.
“So, how are we doing, comrade navigator? I just hit fifteen hundred paces since the last turn.” Summer stopped.
Zara held a flashlight above the drawing. “We should be coming up on some stairs anytime. When we find them, four hundred meters to go until we cross over.”
They walked onward. Within a few minutes, Faith shined the light on a metal ladder. “Guess that’s our stairway. Reset your count.”
“We should notice two fittings close together where the smaller pipes branch out. Something called a flange,” Zara said without referring to her map.
“A flange is just a collar at the end of a pipe where two mate,” Summer said.
“As if we haven’t seen a billion of those junctures already,” Faith said.
“The ladder’s at fifteen hundred fifty-three paces,” Summer said with a rhythm that betrayed he was counting as he spoke. “We’ve been pretty consistent at running around ten percent over the specs. I say we’ll find the juncture around four hundred forty paces from here.”