“ Are you all right?” Meredith asked.
“ Couldn’t be better,” he lied. “Tell me about the Christmas rose.”
“ You really want to know?”
“ Believe me, I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.”
“ Well, it’s a type of evergreen,” Meredith said.
Kagan nodded, encouraging her to continue.
“ In Europe, some areas grow it easily in winter. It adjusts to the cold and often blooms around Christmastime. Clumps of large white flowers.”
“ Then I wasn’t hallucinating.”
“ There’s even a legend about it.”
“ Tell me.”
“ A little girl saw the gifts that the wise men had given the baby Jesus: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”
“ And?” Kagan wanted to keep her talking.
“ The little girl wept because she didn’t have anything of her own to give. Then an angel appeared, brushed snow from the ground, and touched the exposed soil. The little girl noticed that where her tears had fallen, white flowers grew. Now she had something to give the baby: a Christmas rose.”
Kagan gathered the energy to stand. Keeping a careful distance from the kitchen window, he looked for shadows moving in the falling snow.
“ White flowers. That’s what I saw.”
“ In Los Angeles, I liked to garden,” Meredith continued. “I’d heard about Christmas roses, but I’d never been able to grow them. When we moved here, that new start I told you about was on my mind, and I decided to try again. A clerk at a local plant nursery said I was wasting my time because they’re not suited for the thin, rocky soil we have here, but I guess I thought that if I could get one to grow, it would be a sign, something to show that Ted and I really had put our troubles behind us. Not exactly a miracle, but kind of, and the Christmas rose really did bloom. It… ”
Meredith’s voice dropped.
“ I’m sorry,” Kagan said.
“ I guess it’s just a stubborn flower. Tomorrow, Cole and I will move out.” The significance of the word seemed to strike her. “Tomorrow.”
Allow her to hope, Kagan thought. “In the morning, I’ll help you.”
As snow kept falling, Brody bent forward and used a gloved finger to draw the diagram of the house. “Cole’s room is in front on the right. There’s a bathroom next to it.” He indicated a door in a hallway. “Then there’s the living room.”
Andrei, Mikhail, and Yakov stood next to Brody, studying the shadowy lines in the snow.
“ And in back?” Andrei prompted him.
“ Master bedroom on the right,” Brody said. “It has a bathroom you can reach only from the master bedroom. Then there’s my office-in back of the living room.”
“ The kitchen’s on the left as I face the house? What’s behind it?” Andrei asked.
“ A laundry room and another bathroom.”
Lots of bathrooms, Andrei thought. Even after having lived in the United States for ten years, he still hadn’t gotten used to all the bathrooms. When he was a boy, he and his mother had shared one with six other families.
“ Show us where every window is.”
Brody did so.
“ In the back,” Andrei said, “is there anything one of our team can stand on to look inside the house? He might be able to get a sense of what’s happening in there.”
Brody indicated the middle of the back of the house. “There’s a brick patio with an overhang. We have a barbecue grill and a metal table with metal chairs. Someone could easily move a chair to a window and stand on it.”
“ Good. Now show us where every outside door is.”
Brody added to the diagram. “When the SWAT team gets here, they’re not just going to charge in, I hope. If there’s shooting, Meredith and Cole might-”
“ Don’t worry. Our men are professionals. They don’t shoot randomly. They make sure they’ve got the correct target, and even then, they don’t shoot unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
“ If anything happens to my wife and son… What did this guy do?”
“ He held up a liquor store.”
“ You mean he’s got a gun?”
“ Please keep your voice down, Mr. Brody. Yes, we suspect he’s armed.”
Brody groaned. “If I hadn’t lost my temper-if I hadn’t left them alone…” A thought made him straighten. “Maybe he’ll listen to reason. Maybe you can negotiate and stop this from getting out of control.”
“ That’s hard to do without a phone. But there might be another possibility…”
Brody stepped toward him. “What?”
“ It’s risky.”
“ Tell me what it is.”
“ It could be that I was wrong,” Andrei began.
“ What do you mean? Wrong about what?”
“ Not letting you go inside.”
Brody shook his head in confusion. “But you said that if I went in there, I wouldn’t do any good. I’d just become another hostage.”
“ That was before you told me the phones aren’t working. We need to negotiate with him, and you’re the perfect person for that. You’ve got every reason to walk up to the house. When your wife explains who you are, the gunman won’t suspect you’re working with us. Detective Hardy will equip you with a miniature microphone and earbud.”
“ Earbud?”
“ A tiny earplug that works as a radio receiver. The microphone will allow us to hear everything you say in there, and maybe what the gunman says. Through the earbud, I’ll be able to give you instructions.”
“ About what?”
“ Things I want you to notice. By now, he probably rigged some kind of defense system. Booby traps. It would be natural for you to show surprise if you saw anything unusual. Your questions wouldn’t arouse his suspicion. That’ll give the SWAT team an idea of what to expect if they need to go in.”
“ Go in?” Brody looked alarmed again. “You mean they’ll break down the doors and-”
“ Maybe it won’t come to that.” Andrei spread his hands in a reassuring way, seeking to calm him. “You’re a smart man. You might be able to persuade him to allow you and your family to leave.”
Brody let the thought work on him.
“ Yeah.” He sounded hopeful. “I can try to make him listen to reason.”
“ Exactly.”
“ But what if he won’t agree?”
“ I always have a backup plan. In that case, if he won’t let you and your family go, the microphone and the earbud will give me a chance to negotiate directly with him.”
Brody seemed paralyzed by the dilemma. Finally, he asked, “You really think this can work?”
“ The suspect has numerous arrests for robbery, but he’s never shot anyone. I don’t know why he’d be stupid enough to start now. There’s a good chance to bring this to a successful conclusion. The question is, are you willing to do your best to save your wife and son?”
“ My best to save them? Hell, I’m the reason they’re in danger. If I hadn’t gotten drunk and lost my temper, we’d all behaving a good time at a party.”
Andrei put a consoling hand on Brody’s shoulder.
“ Then maybe it’s time to make things right.”
“Pyotyr, the day after Christmas, Hassan, his wife, and his newborn son will use a private jet to fly back to the Middle East.
“ As a present to his wife, though-the last luxury she’ll have for a long time-he’s arranged for his family to spend four days in a suite at a hotel on Santa Fe’s Plaza. The baby has three bodyguards and a nursemaid. With the child well protected, the wife will perhaps feel less nervous about leaving the hotel and going out to view the famed seasonal decorations in the city.
“ Santa Fe is the capital of New Mexico. At eight P.M. on Christmas Eve, Hassan and his wife will be driven to a reception at the governor’s mansion fifteen blocks away. There, amid numerous television cameras, he’ll make an impassioned speech about his goals in the Middle East.
“ Even though he’s a Muslim, he’ll use Christmas Eve to argue for mutual understanding and tolerance. He’ll use his exceptional speaking ability to talk about the child of peace, who happens to be his son but who represents every Palestinian child. He’ll tell the world that he’s taking the newborn baby back to the Middle East as a symbol of his hope for the future of all children in the region. He’ll argue passionately that if people truly love their children, they’ll do everything possible to demand a lasting truce.