The Spy Who Came for Christmas (5 page)

^{The baby must have sensed his agitation. When he looked to the right, he felt it kick again, and he headed in that direction.}

^{On each side of the lane, faintly glimpsed decorations glowed beyond fences made from upright wooden tree limbs wired to horizontal poles. From the Santa Fe newspaper, Kagan had learned that the locals called them coyote fences. In the old days, their purpose had been literally to keep out coyotes, and even today, coyotes were a common sight on the outskirts of town.}

^{Kagan thought of predators. Hunters.}

^{But it would take more than a fence to keep these particular hunters out.}

^{* * *}

^{"PAUL, WHAT DO
you know about Brighton Beach?"}

^{"It's next to Coney Island, in Brooklyn, sir. It's also the U.S. home of the Russian Mafia."}

^{"That's correct. In 1917, a lot of Russians immigrated there to escape the Revolution. In the 1990s, so many more Russians went there after the Soviet Union collapsed that they started to call it Little Odessa. Quite a few were gangsters who used to belong to the KGB or the Soviet military, where they learned skills that make them especially dangerous.}

^{"It's possible to romanticize Italian mobsters to the point that we think of them as Marlon Brando and Al Pacino in
The Godfather.
But
Russian
gangsters are in a class of their own. 'Socio- pathic' doesn't begin to describe them. They have no scruples, no shame, no code of honor. They'll do anything for money. There's no line they won't cross and no limit to their brutality.}

^{"An Italian gangster might suddenly feel patriotic and refuse if, say, Middle Eastern terrorists offered to pay to get a bunch of rocket launchers or a dirty bomb into the United States. But Russian mobsters'll take the money, do the job, and just get out of the way when the explosions start."}

^{* * *}

^{"COLE, WATCH
the window," the boy's mother said. "Warn me if you see your father coming back."}

^{Obeying, the boy stared into the semidarkness. Christmas lights outside the front door reflected off the snow and revealed that the lane was empty. He heard his mother pulling suitcases from under the bed in the master bedroom. He listened as she opened drawers and removed clothes.}

^{Cole pushed his glasses closer to his eyes, working to keep his vision focused. Tension nauseated him. Even if he did see his father returning home, what good would
that
do? he wondered. He could shout to warn his mother. So what? The doors were locked, but his father had a key. In the end, they wouldn't be able to stop him from getting inside. How would his father react when he saw the suitcases filled with clothes?}

^{I won't let him hit her again!
Cole thought.}

^{He limped to the rear of the living room and turned right to go down the hallway. At the end of the hall, he peered to}

^{the left, into the master bedroom, where his mother leaned over the bed. She was too busy packing to notice him. He turned to the right and entered his own bedroom, where he reached behind the door and gripped the baseball bat that his father had given him for his birthday in September. Not that the gift mattered. Lately, his father seldom found time to play with him.}

^{Quiet, he returned to the living room, opened a closet next to the front door, and took out his coat. Its zipper made a clacking noise against the side of the closet.}

^"Cole?"

^{His fingers cramped on the coat.}

^{"What is it, Mom?"}

^{"The suitcases are packed. I'm a little more tired than I thought. We won't be able to leave for an hour or so, until cars are allowed on Canyon Road. I'm going to lie down."}

^{"Are you okay?"}

^{"I just need to rest. Let me know when it's ten o'clock. Or if you see him coming back."}

^{Cole tightened his grip on the baseball bat.}

^{"Don't worry, Mom. I'm here."}

^{* * *}

^{RAGING, ANDREI
charged through the smoke of the snow- smothered fire. People gaped toward the commotion behind}

^{him. The second German shepherd was growling now, the boy crying, the parents and the dog owner arguing loudly.}

^{The bystanders formed a wall that Andrei rammed through. He made no pretense of using his cell phone. If people thought he was talking to himself, it no longer mattered that he attracted attention.}

^{"The target's gone!" he shouted into the microphone hidden under his ski jacket's zipper.}

^{"Gone?"
The accented voice bellowed through Andrei's earbud.}

^{"The crowd shielded him! He ducked away!" Andrei stared furiously ahead, but he didn't see any disturbance in the crowd, no sign of anyone shoving people aside or rushing forward.}

^{Pyotyr, where did you go?
he thought urgently.}

^{"The package!" the voice yelled. "Everything depends on getting it back! This is
your
fault! You vouched for him! You assured me I could trust him! You
hooyesos,
bring back what he stole!"}

^{Andrei bristled. No one insulted him. From his earliest years on the streets of Grozny, he'd learned that disrespect could never be tolerated. If anybody other than the Pakhan had called him that . . .}

^{Breathing quickly, he scanned the buildings on the left side of Canyon Road. They formed a wall. But to his right, several galleries had walkways between them. That was the only escape route.}

^{His two teammates ran up behind him.}

^{"Over there!" Andrei yelled, too hurried to recall the code names they'd been given. "Mikhail, take the first walkway! Yakov, take the second! I'll take the third!"}

^{They rushed forward, ignoring the alarmed looks people gave them.}

^{As the snow kept falling, Andrei raced along the third walkway. Christmas lights blinked in a gallery window. He passed a side door that was open, hearing a woman complain, ". . . almost knocked me over! What's the matter with people? This is the one night we ought to slow down. It's Christmas Eve, for God's sake."}

^{Andrei ran into a back courtyard, where a man and woman stood in front of a flickering display of Santa's reindeer and sled. They looked angry about his intrusion, as if this wasn't the first time they'd been startled tonight.}

^{"I'm with the police! Did a man run through here?"}

^{"That way!" The woman pointed toward a lane. "Scared the hell out of us."}

^{Andrei hurried into the lane. Behind him, muffled footsteps raced between the galleries, Mikhail and Yakov joining him.}

^{"Those other routes are dead ends," Mikhail reported.}

^{They assessed the lane. There wasn't much activity since most people preferred the attractions on Canyon Road.}

^{Responding to their military background, they spread out. Andrei took the middle position and replaced his .22 Beretta with the powerful 10-millimeter Glock. He moved slowly, carefully, straining his eyes to study everything through the haze of the falling snow.}

^{Yakov spoke in a low voice. "Too many footprints. We can't tell which are his."}

^{'At least not yet," Andrei murmured, searching for blood.}

^{"He might try to ambush us," Mikhail said.}

^{"In that case, we've got him," Andrei replied. "The way we're spread out, he can't take all of us before we return fire. But I'm not worried about an ambush. He won't risk putting the child in danger, not while he still has strength to try to get it out of here."}

^{Andrei was reminded of something a soldier, one of his mother's numerous boyfriends, had taught him when they'd gone on a hunting trip. The soldier had hoped the expedition would impress Andrei's mother. The soldier's unit was one of the first to be sent to Afghanistan in 1979, and Andrei had never seen him again. But because he and his mother had lived near a Soviet military base, there'd been many other soldiers to replace the man who'd left, and they were the only fathers Andrei had known.}

^{Andrei had never forgotten that particular hunting trip. The soldier had taught him something that had turned out to be a life lesson.
A wounded animal keeps running until weakness forces it to go to ground. Only when it's cornered will it fight.}

^{* * *}

^{IN WHAT SEEMED
increasingly to be a labyrinth, Kagan plodded through the snowfall. Its muted whisper made him feel as if something were wrong with his hearing, as if he were trapped in a snow globe. Because he still couldn't risk}

^{raising his hood and impairing his peripheral vision, he allowed the snow to accumulate on his head. Periodically, he brushed it off. Nonetheless, his scalp felt frozen.}

^{On the ground in front of him, the footprints were becoming less frequent, branching off to warm-looking homes behind fences and walls. Soon, his would be the only footprints remaining. He prayed that the snow would fill them before his hunters figured out which direction he'd taken.}

^{As the baby squirmed under his parka, he shivered and thought,
I risked my life for you. I could have walked away and disappeared. God knows, I was ready. I've been through more than anyone could imagine. I found terrorist threats no one would have dreamed of.}

^{But to maintain my cover, I did things no one should have been forced to do.}

^{He thought of the clerk he'd pistol-whipped while robbing an all-night convenience store in Brooklyn. His purpose had been to demonstrate his ferocity to Andrei, who--he knew-- had followed him and was watching from across the street.}

^{The clerk had spent two weeks in a hospital.}