“Oh God, where are you now? Have I not sought you? Have I not trusted you?” Kat rubbed her face with her hands. Sleep tugged at her, but the ache inside would not subside. Just when she needed her faith the most, it seemed to crumble in her grip.
Would she be one of those spiritually poor who turned away from God when life smote them? Would her earthly pain eclipse her heavenly joy? God seemed much closer yesterday morning, when life was in her grip. She closed the Bible. She had few choices here. Either God would come through, or not. But in the end, she could only hang onto hope, or despair would run her over.
As if sparked by her determination to hold onto her unseen God, scripture filled her mind. “Therefore, put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.”
When morning came, she wanted the entire Russian militia, and whoever had decided to stalk her with bullets to see her standing.
The darkness would not overcome. Not when her brain had the power to pray.
She bowed her head. “Show me you haven’t abandoned me, Oh God. Help my faith to grow, and give me strength to stand.”
She found herself curled with her Bible as she opened her eyes to sunshine streaming through filmy orange curtains and across the wooden floor. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes with her fingertips, she sat up. The cold floor on her bare feet jolted her to full consciousness. Outside, the city still slept. She peeked out the window. Dawn glinted on street signs, across car hoods, and turned the windows in the building across the street into fiery gold.
Footsteps in the hallway creaked the wooden planks as someone padded up to the door, Kat tiptoed close and strained to hear voices. She knew Captain Vadeem had posted at least one guard out there, a result of her adamant declaration, articulated in two languages, that she wasn’t leaving Russia.
After all his protection, and convincing hug, he’d turned out to be just like every other Russian male she’d met yesterday. . .cold and rude when he wanted his way. And to think she’d practically cut out her heart and flopped it on the table for him to walk over. Why did she have to tell him her story? “I wanted to find my past.” The sad look in his eyes now made her cringe. At the time, she’d read it as empathy. Poor American girl, searching for her family in Russia. Her throat felt raw, remembering the warm feelings she’d cultivated toward the man when she’d finally stopped sobbing. He’d let her spill her secrets right into the middle of the room, even pulling up a chair, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, and listening. She’d revealed everything, from the mysterious secrets of Grandfather Neumann and the hope that lit when she intercepted the key, to the wretched news about Brother Timofea.
And when she finished, he made a grim face, patted her hand and informed her that she was leaving Russia in the morning.
Her empty stomach twisted, remembering the tone in his voice.
“Will this bed need to be changed today?” The voice of the hall monitor filtered into her room. Kat pressed her ear gently against the paper-thin door.
“Yes,” came the terse reply of the guard, obviously on edge and fatigued by the midnight watch. She tried not to smile at that. “When does the café open, by the way?”
“It’s open now.”
Kat wondered what food would do to her flopping stomach. She knocked on the door, then opened it a crack.
The guard looked worse than he sounded. His eyes, draped in weariness, held no patience. She attacked with a smile. “Can someone get me a cup of cocoa?”
He shook his head. “I’m not allowed to leave you, Zhenshina.” His eyes narrowed, as if she’d committed a felony. She closed the door and leaned against it, a plan forming.
Ten minutes later, fully dressed in a pair of khaki pants and a white polo shirt, hair combed, teeth brushed, and looking as presentable as she could, she again cracked open the door. “I’m dressed. Let’s go.” She stepped out into the hall and ignored his glare. “I want breakfast, and it’s my understanding that I’m not a prisoner. So, protect me, or not, I’m going downstairs.”
She threw her backpack over her shoulder and headed down the hall, her pace a challenge for her stiff muscles. Ignoring the elevator, she took the stairs. She heard his heavy breaths behind her, but didn’t look back.
She found the café tucked into a small room off the lobby. Every plastic chair was empty. Thankful she’d remembered to change money when she returned to the hotel last night, she perched herself on a bar stool and ordered a hot chocolate. The hotel staff had seemed less than eager to accommodate her last night, and she couldn’t blame them after her presence had put one of their rooms out of commission.
By the cool demeanor of the skinny waitress, news traveled quickly. The woman plopped the cocoa down and turned away like Kat might have a contagious airborne disease.
Kat closed her eyes and sipped the cocoa slowly, the warmth seeping into her still-weary bones and the caffeine jump-starting her heart. She just might live through this day.
The cop sat at a table behind her, his angry gaze drilling through the back of her neck. She ordered him a coffee and sent it to his table. He didn’t touch it, perhaps zealous about his on-duty status.
Letting the coffee sit until it had cooled, Kat then rose and sauntered over to his seat. She had to enjoy his shocked look when she leaned one hand on the table. “Tell Captain Vadeem you did a good job last night.”
Then she tipped the table, just enough to spill the coffee down his trousers. Whirling, she ran from the café, his fury echoing in her ears. She slammed out of the hotel doors, and suddenly the only sound was her own thundering heartbeat and the slap of her feet on the sidewalk. She hadn’t won awards on her college track team for nothing. Freedom filled her nose and she ran, nowhere, and safely out of the grip of the Russian militia.
-
“She says she’s here, looking for relatives.” Vadeem rubbed his thumb and forefinger into his weary eyes, seeing only spikes of light against blankness as he pressed the cell phone to his ear. Ryslan’s voice crackled on the other end, sounding a million kilometers away instead of across town at FSB HQ, where he’d spent an obscene portion of the night pushing paperwork. From Vadeem’s position, he gathered that neither man was in a cheery mood. Vadeem’s brain felt filled with wool and every joint ached from sleeping on the fraying armchair down the hall from Grazovich’s room. Thankfully, Pskov’s FSB branch had decided to cooperate with their Moscow big brothers, and set up surveillance on Grazovich so he could get some shut-eye. He didn’t want to know where, or if, Ryslan had finally bedded down.
Despite the relative comfort of the hotel lobby, Vadeem had spent the better part of the wee hours contemplating Ekaterina Moore and her mysterious key, not to mention her amber brown eyes, the touch of her disheveled silky hair against his cheek, and the smell of her skin as she sobbed into his shoulder.
There he went again, entangling himself in her memory. He’d do well to remember that she was probably an arms dealer with a stellar ability to deceive. Physically shaking himself, he tried to focus on Ryslan’s words. “Her parents are dead, but her visa application says she’s part Russian.”
“She said her grandfather is some sort of World War II hero,” Vadeem said. “And she says she came looking for an old monk who sent her a key. Maybe they’re related?”
“A key?” Ryslan’s voice perked up. “What kind of key.”
“Some old relic. She’s wearing it around her neck.” Vadeem stalked to the hallway, peeked down at Grazovich’s room. No movement told him the guy was still in his vodka stupor. “I’ll tell ya, Ryslan, she looked me right in the eye, with tears, and told me that she just wanted to find her ancestors.” He rubbed a tense muscle in the back of his neck, quickly giving up. “She’s got her story cold.”
“What if she’s telling the truth. What if she is related to the old monk?”
“Yeah, and I’m related to the last czar.” Vadeem nodded
at a woman in a rumpled cocktail dress emerging from a room across the hall.
“Well, your highness, think on this. What if her dadushka hooked up with Timofea during the war? We had Americans running all over our borders. Or, better yet, what if he found himself a nice little peasant girl and brought home a Russki souvenir.”
“I thought the Americans stopped at Berlin.”
“Not the partisans. There have always been rumors American OSS ran supplies in and organized missions throughout Estonia and Belorussia. Maybe he hooked up with Timofea through the partisan network. After all, no one can be trusted in war. . .not even a monk!” Ryslan laughed, and in the early morning, it sounded more like a snort.
Vadeem cringed. “So that could be a link to her past.” Although after what she’d told him, the link had obviously been severed. The woman had him convinced, however briefly, that she’d come to visit the old monk. Her tears had certainly felt real—damp and hot. “What do you think about the key? Does it mean anything?”
“Nothing about a key in her file. What’s up with Grazovich.”
“Sleeping like a baby in his room.” Vadeem paced back to the floor lobby, trying to work life back into his muscles.
“Did he contact her again?”
“Yes, although I didn’t get much of the conversation. I’ve never met anyone with her tvordost. She didn’t even blink when I showed her the picture.”
“He looks a lot different now. A plastic surgeon is a terrorist’s best friend. You think she’s on the level?
Hearing his partner suggest it aloud fertilized all Vadeem’s gut instincts. He did wonder, think, well okay, maybe just a teensy bit, that Miss Ekaterina Moore might be exactly who she played herself to be.
A naïve, gutsy, in-trouble tourist.
“I don’t know.”
Ryslan said nothing, but in the silence, Vadeem heard his own voice, calling himself a fool. If this Americanka had nothing to do with the General’s smuggling plot, then the real fence was out there—without even a hint of FSB surveillance. Vadeem wanted to bang his head against the wall.
“You’d better keep her in your sights, just to make sure,” Ryslan said quietly, fatigue weighing his tone. “I’ll watch the general.”
“I’m putting her on a plane today.” Vadeem tried not to remember her pitiful pleading, her tears, the way she hit him in the chest when he’d turned off what little part of his heart he could still feel and stood his ground. Yes, she’d chipped away at his gut instincts with her sob story. So much so, he spent the night wondering how a woman with such honest honey-brown eyes could lie like a serpent and wishing, in the darkest corner of his soul, that he was wrong.
The sooner he got her out of Russia—and his mind—the sooner he could tail Grazovich with a vengeance. “If she’s his contact, the general will start getting jumpy.”
“Are you sure that’s the best thing?” Ryslan asked. “If you’re right, she could lead us right to our source.”
. . .Or down a rabbit trail that would cost him precious weeks of investigation. Besides. . . “Someone tried to mow her down last night in her hotel room. She’s not staying in Russia.”
He heard Ryslan swallow. “Just don’t blow this, Vadeem. Remember your priorities.” He clicked off the line.
Vadeem pocketed his cell phone, thankful the call had at least roused him early enough to get a cup of coffee before he had to wake poor Miss Moore.
“Captain Spasonov!”
The tone put to his name notched his pulse up a beat. He didn’t like the hue of the sergeant’s pallor nor the beads of sweat trickling down his wide face.
Vadeem’s stomach clenched, and he instinctively knew before the agent said it.
“She’s gone. The American has escaped.”
Chapter 5
Vadeem leaned against the gate of the monastery cemetery, watching Ekaterina Moore trace her finger across the lettering on a simple gravestone. How long had he been watching her? He’d memorized the taut set of her jaw as she lifted her face occasionally into the morning sun, the red lines etched down her cheeks, her shoulders, slightly slumped, her long legs pulled up to her chest and locked with a firm arm.
If she was an arms dealer, she had her alibi down to a science. The wind from the Velikaya River, not far off, teased the hair around her face, now turned bronze by the remnant hues of dawn.
She looked so bereft, his fury had disintegrated long ago. She wore a face that said her hopes had turned to ashes. He had a look of his own, just like it, tucked deep into his past. Perhaps that was why he felt his suspicions dissolving like badly set holidyetz – Russian meat gelatin.
It didn’t help that he understood exactly what she was searching for. Identity. Family. A connection. He’d listened to her story last night with more than a healthy dose of empathy, and hated himself for having to be the bad guy. And the way she’d leaned forward and let herself cry in his arms. . .well, it made him feel something he’d long forgotten.
Needed.
But he couldn’t sacrifice Miss Moore to soothe the demons from his past. Grazovich obviously wanted something, and Vadeem couldn’t chance letting her get in the smuggler’s sights. She’d be flying back to New York by tomorrow morning.
Then Ekaterina Moore, suspected arms dealer, likely tourist, would be out of the equation.
He waited until she looked toward the rocky cliffs that formed a natural fence between the river and monastery grounds. Then, he edged out into the cemetery. He kept his hands in his pockets, but every muscle bunched, ready to spring should she see him and try to flee.
A meadowlark called Vadeem’s presence, but Miss Moore didn’t budge. He drew closer, and his shadow betrayed him. She stiffened.
“I thought I’d find you here,” Vadeem said, and was surprised to hear compassion in his voice.
She hung her head. “I realized I had no where to go. Except here.”
“And home.”
She said nothing but she winced, obviously wounded. He crouched beside her, and gently drew her gaze to his. Pain edged her eyes.
“Maybe Brother Timofea just wanted you to see the place where he lived,” he said in an unfamiliar tone.
“He knew he was dying.” She looked so pitiful, it drew him right in. He felt her pain spear his heart before he could block it. “The monk told me Brother Timofea’s dying wish was that I get the packaged. From the postmark, however, it looked like it took a year to send it. Why? And why was it so important to him that I have an old key?”
“There were no clues in his cell?”
Her hazel eyes darkened. “They told me they cleaned it out long ago. No. Nothing remains except this grave.”
A breeze rode in from the river, bringing with it the fresh, wet smell. Vadeem sat beside her in the grass and read the cement gravestone. “1898-2001. That’s a long time to live.”
“Especially if you’re carrying around a secret.” She worried her lower lip, and it gave her a pensive look. “Do you think he was trying to pass it on to someone else, maybe in absolution?”
“Why you?”
She shook her head. Bags hung in half moons under her eyes, and her face was drawn. “Maybe I’m a relative?”
“To a monk?” He smiled. Her pitiful half-smile drove the spears in further.
Oh, there was only one way out of this, and he knew it.
“I’ll tell you what, Miss Moore. The train for Moscow doesn’t leave until this afternoon. We have at least two hours before we need to head back to Pskov. You promise not to go running off again and we’ll see what we can find out from these brothers between now and then.”
The real smile seemed like a blast of pure sunshine, washing over his wounds. Her eyes lit up, and something jumped to life deep inside his chest. She nodded. “Maybe you should call me Kat.”
Two hours with her would pass like a blink.
He placed a call to the Three-Letter Boys watching Grazovich. The man had dressed, paced his room, and received a ph
one call. They were working on a tap, but so far, they didn’t have a glimmer of a lead on the identity of his contact. “Don’t let him out of your sight.” Vadeem closed the phone and turned his full, and willing, attention on the American with a knack for trouble, telling himself he was only doing his job.
Right. He’d never been good at fooling himself, but he would cling to that rational like a dying man as he followed her fragrance across the cemetery and in through the front gates.
He’d never been inside a monastery before. Not that he’d spent much time availing himself of the opportunity, but when he entered the conclave, his senses awoke and sat at attention. From the manicured lawn, the sound of magpies and sparrows, the smell of spring reaped from the budding lilac, jasmine and cherry blossoms, to the clean, pure whitewash on the buildings, the compound whispered haven. Vadeem rubbed his chest, feeling a pinch deep inside.
Kat seemed to know where she was going. A spring in her step, something new that he wanted to think he’d added, made her seem a carefree tourist bouncing through the campus. He followed her to an office building. Inside, the austere white walls, the planked floor, and the smell of polish whisked him back in time, to the painful halls of his childhood.
Institutions were all the same.
He clenched his jaw. This was no haven.
A tall monk, dressed in the traditional garb of brown tunic and somber expression met them at a reception desk. “Can I help you?’
Vadeem flipped open his identification. The monk met it with a stoic face that had Vadeem wondering how often they had the FSB darken their doors. “We’d like to see the director.”
Efficient as he was stern, the monk had Vadeem and Kat seated inside the rather humble office of Father Lashov within moments. The monk stared out the window, at the limestone formations, his hands tucked into the sleeves of his tunic as he mulled over their situation.
“I don’t know how I can help you.” He turned, and he had the wise eyes Vadeem would associate with a religious man.
Or a seasoned agent. Vadeem tried not to shift under the man’s scrutiny. What was it about men of the cloth that caused panic to climb up his spine? He felt like regurgitating every last secret he’d swallowed over the past twenty years. He gulped the gathering lump in his throat and eked out an FSBish tone.
Ekaterina (Heirs of Anton) Page 5
