Ekaterina
© 2003 by Susan K Downs and Susan May Warren
ISBN 978-0-9910114-1-4
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.
Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Niv®.. Copyright© 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
For more information about Susan K Downs and Susan May Warren, please access the authors’ Web sites at the following Internet addresses:
www.susankdowns.com
www.susanmaywarren.com
From Susan K. Downs
Dedication:
To my forever-faithful Heavenly Father—who always keeps his word. Thank you for fulfilling in my life the promises you made in Psalm 109. . .to forgive, heal, redeem, crown, satisfy, and renew.
Acknowledgements:
The thrill of seeing a new family born through the miracle of international adoption proved reward enough for those long hours of travel flying across the Atlantic. . .bouncing along unpaved roads. . .jerking over trans-Siberian rails. Still, I never would have guessed back then I’d see those exhausting Russia journeys as blessings in disguise.
Sincere thanks go to:
Lori Stahl, a special adoptive mother who, during her home-study interview, showed me a mysterious old graveside photo of her ancestors that started me thinking—What if. . . ?
Karen Jordan, Igor Korolev, Tatyana Terekhova, Marina Sokolova and the rest of the team on the Russia side of our adoption work. Though we no longer work together, you’ll always be like family to me.
My Spit-n-Polish partner, Susan May Warren, who shares my love of both Russian and heavenly things. I thank God for converging our paths.
Travis, Curtis, Kevin, Kimberly, and Courtney—whether through birth or adoption, when I became your mother, I knew I’d been blessed!
David, my beloved husband and partner in adventure, I can’t wait to see where life’s road takes us next.
From Susan May Warren
Dedication:
To my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, whose arms are always open. I am so grateful.
Acknowledgements:
Every book has a cast of “human angels” behind the scenes.
Luda and Gene Khakhaleva, Artyom and Vova who befriended us and helped our family negotiate the world of Far East Russia. We love you!
Cindy and Alexi Kalinin, my real life Kat and Vadeem (only better, of course).
Costia Utuzh, our dear friend who spent his last days in Q & A sessions about the FSB and COBRAs. We miss you.
Yvonne Howard, missionary and critiquer extraordinaire. Again, what would I do without you?
Susan Downs, sister in Christ and writing buddy. Who knew a birthday greeting would turn into our wildest dreams?
David, Sarah, Peter and Noah—my team at home who keep me smiling. I’m so thankful for your hugs when I push away from the computer.
And a special thank you to Andrew, my strongest supporter, my hero, and my favorite person in the world. I love you.
HEIRS OF ANTON Series
Book One
EKATERINA
“For the Lord is good and His love endures forever. His faithfulness continues through all generations.”
Chapter 1
Kat Moore stared ahead at the customs control booth and tightened her grip on the brass key in her jacket pocket. The key’s teeth bit into her palm’s soft flesh, but the pain shot courage into her veins.
She lifted her chin. Her journey, the one she’d waited for her entire life, could come to a smacking halt in about ten steps.
She tore her gaze away from the steely eyes of a Russian passport official and tried to find comfort in the faces of the other passengers. No one smiled or even met her gaze. Their stoic expressions stiffened a muscle in her neck.
The passengers from the KLM plane stretched in a haphazard line down a chipped, gray hallway in Sheremetova 2, Moscow’s International Airport. The smells of cement, dirt, and fatigue hovered like the presence of Big Brother.
A stiff wind, leftover from some iceberg north of St. Petersburg, whistled in through the metal hanging doors and kicked up dust. Kat pulled her jacket around her and mentally flogged the person who’d written “warm and sunny in June,” in her travel guidebook. They would probably describe the Artic as “mildly chilly on overcast days.”
The line moved one step forward. Kat shoved her backpack along the floor with a toe, just escaping a nudge from the young lady behind her, the one wrapped in a black leather jacket and sporting a fake blonde hairpiece.
Nine more steps. Kat’s stomach tangled and she fought her racing heartbeat.
She’d obviously checked her sanity, along with her baggage, back in New York City. The shadows coloring the gray stucco walls did nothing to argue that point. This dungeon’s gloom, barely fractured by a high-hanging chandelier, even barred entry to the rose-colored dawn she’d seen creeping over the eastern Moscow skyline as they landed. Kat couldn’t delete the image that ran through her mind of prisoners lining up for execution.
Dust hung like Spanish moss from the ceiling, a steel canopy of what looked like discarded shell casings of a bygone war, and sent chills up her spine. “God, I sure hope you can still see me, because I could use a friend right now.”
She should have listened to Matthew. He was her common sense, the weight that kept her from taking off with her dreams. “You go hunting up the past, you’ll just find trouble.” His voice reverberated like a bass drum through her mind as she stared heavenward.
What had possessed her to think she could traipse around a country that still sent shivers down her spine when she heard the throaty growl of the word, “Russhhha?” Shivers, yes, and curiosity. Somewhere, Mother Russia secreted Kat’s family tree. The key in her pocket would unlock the mystery.
If Grandfather had been just a smidgen more forthcoming about the secrets surrounding her Neumann ancestors, perhaps she wouldn’t be trying to resurrect her rusty Russian and dog-earing the pages of her passport with her thumb. Edward Neumann had always been a miser with answers to her questions like, “How did Grandmother die?” or “Did she have caramel colored hair, like me and Mommy?” Of course, twenty years later, she discovered why he dodged her inquiries with the agility of a rugby player. Not that the new information ebbed her flow of questions.
However impossible, her mother had inherited her Grandfather’s stubborn streak, the one that kept Kat out of every meaningful conversation—especially the ones that ended with muttered phrases like, “she’s too young,” or “it’s too dangerous.”
Now, as she looked for light in the overhead shadows, she wondered if they both hadn’t been right.
The line moved forward. Kat dodged the woman breathing down her neck, and nearly kicked her backpack into the heels of the well-dressed man in front of her. Tall and muscular in a black trench coat, he looked about fifty. Turning, he glanced at her pack, then at her, his dark brown eyes harsh. He wore his shoulder-length, gray-streaked black hair combed back from the deep forehead of someone with Slavic descent.
A blush burned Kat’s cheeks. She offered an apologetic smile.
To her amazement, he smiled back, little lines crinkling arou
nd his eyes as he did it. “No problem,” he said in English.
Relief poured through Kat. “Thank you.” She flicked a look at the customs official. “Have you done this before?”
He gave a wry chuckle. “Too many times.” A foreign accent laced his English, enough to give it an intriguing lilt. “Don’t worry. The trick is to look past them. Fix on a spot behind their heads and, whatever you do, don’t smile.”
“Why not?”
He grinned and leaned close. “Smilers have a reason to smile. . .and usually it isn’t a good one.”
Kat nodded, eyes wide. Okay, so she still had a few things to learn about international travel. She thought she’d prepped pretty well. Russian guidebooks, novels, history textbooks, and insights into the Russian culture crammed her bookshelf in her Nyack, New York apartment. She’d taken a refresher course in Russian and discovered that the language of her great-grandparents came back like an echo. She’d even purchased a travel water filter, designed to keep Russia’s bacteria out of her veins. But nowhere did it tell her not to smile. Her hand tightened around the key.
The line moved forward. Kat’s heart moved up into her throat. She tried to swallow it down as the customs officer’s glance settled on her. She stared at her new hiking boots, hoping she didn’t look somehow suspicious.
If only she’d inherited the chutzpah that made her grandfather a World War II hero--a status he’d quickly deny. The Medal of Honor he kept tucked way in his nightstand probably had something to do with his stash of secrets. . .ones she was well on her way to unwrapping.
Before she opened the rumpled package, she sounded out a halting translation of the Russian return address: T. Petrov, from a monastery somewhere near Pskov, Russia. She knew in her heart that this parcel, posted over a year prior and littered with more than a dozen different postmarks, held the key to her past. She just couldn’t believe her eyes when an actual key fell out.
The brass key had already opened doors.
She even thought she saw a crack in Grandfather’s permanently shuttered emotions. And, when he’d met her at the airport and handed her a yellowing photograph, she’d glimpsed a sadness in his eyes so profound, her heart wept. Grandfather always said he’d lost his heart in the war, but she’d never seen the agony of his loss until that day.
Kat had memorized the old photo on the eternal flight over the ocean, hoping to see herself in one of the faces. Two women stood next to a grave, one of them supposedly a distant relation of hers. Their faces were drawn, as if they’d just buried a child or a father. The words written on the back, in Russian, gave no clues.
For the Lord is good and His love endures forever. His faithfulness continues through all generations. --Psalm 100.
Perhaps, between the picture and the key, she’d find what she’d longed for her entire life—her family tree, her ancestors, her heritage.
The man in front of her stepped over the yellow line to the passport control booth. Kat hauled up her backpack, flung it over her shoulder, narrowly missing the beauty behind her, and shuffled up to the painted yellow boundary. One more step and she’d cross over into the past. She already felt like she’d stepped into a time warp, perhaps a World War II action movie, complete with soldiers wielding AK-47’s and clad in iron gray uniforms. She wondered what it would be like to work as a spy or a covert operator in a foreign country.
Wouldn’t Matthew cringe if he knew her thoughts? As an ER doc, Matthew’s idea of off-hour’s adventure consisted of ordering green peppers and onions on his plain pepperoni pizza. She smiled, then quickly smothered it, lest one of the storm troopers decide to take her expression as a villainous sign. Still, the image of Matthew tickled a place inside her as she pictured his always-perfect grin dimmed at the thought of his innocent little girlfriend longing for a life of adventure. No, make that ex-girlfriend, as of two days ago.
“Slyedushi!”
Kat swallowed hard at the command of the beefy soldier standing next to the booth. Scraping up her composure, she stepped forward and shoved her passport through the slitted portal in the thick glass. A wide-faced woman snatched the document up without so much as a nod of acknowledgment to Kat.
Don’t smile. Don’t smile. She stared at the passport official. . .at her chubby hands leafing through Kat’s empty passport. . .at her bushy gray frown as she scrutinized Kat’s visa picture. The woman looked up to compare Kat’s appearance to the photo. Kat met her gaze with a blank face and congratulated herself.
“Purpose of your visit to Russia?” The woman’s wide cheeks jiggled when she talked. Kat blinked, and searched for her voice.
“Uh, personal,” she stammered.
The stamper clinked, and a purple circle appeared on the second page of Kat’s passport. The woman handed it over. “Enjoy your stay in Russia.”
Kat gathered her papers and held them to her chest, over her pounding heart. Yes, oh yes. . .
“Zis way.” The uniformed soldier gestured to a security scan.
Kat thumped her backpack onto the rolling belt and stepped up to the scanner. She watched her bag pass through, then received a nod from the attendant.
Enter, she thought as she stepped under the gates, your past.
The harsh screech of the security siren stopped her heart cold.
She froze under the arch. The siren blared. Two security officials marched toward her.
The soldier behind them swung his gun off his shoulder.
Then, a hand closed around her arm, yanking her back the way she’d come.
“Zis way, please.”
She looked up into the cold gray eyes of the Russian militia.
-
“Is he through?”
Captain Vadeem Spasonov pulled the binoculars from his eyes, blinking at the sudden change in vision. “Yep. Just before the siren went off.” He scanned the crowd pushing against the glass walls that surrounded the baggage claim area. Families, waiting for loved ones, drivers holding placards with names written on them, interpreters, and business associates barking into cell phones and checking flight schedules, all hoping to catch a glimpse of the arriving passengers. “Any clue who he is meeting?”
Captain Ryslan Khetrov shoved his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket. Vadeem’s partner looked every inch the FSB agent—a member of the international security force of Russia—with his shaved blond hair, square chin, dark eyes, and meaty hands that could probably wrap twice around a man’s neck. Vadeem was never sure if that was a smile or a grimace on the man’s face. He hadn’t known Ryslan long enough to figure it out. Maybe he never would.
“Not a clue this time,” Ryslan answered. “Keep your eyes on him.” He turned his back to Vadeem. “I’ll watch the crowd, see if anyone looks the type to hang out with an Abkhazian gangster.”
Vadeem peered through the glasses. “He’s more than that. He’s looking to restart the war. He’s already purchased an arsenal big enough to put a serious dent in the peace-keeping forces.” He trained his gaze on the tall man in a black trench coat who had stopped mid-stride and now peered back at passport control.
Ivan Grazovich looked like a scholarly professor on sabbatical. Vadeem narrowed his eyes as the man turned, as if checking for someone in the line.
Vadeem couldn’t wait to nail this slime ball who unearthed Russia’s riches and sold them to the highest bidder—most of the time back to the Motherland herself. Grazovich reinvested the cash in renegade Russian artillery, easily had through the Internet or from former comrades holding onto their own personal stash. The irony felt like a blow between the solar plexus. Worse yet, someone inside Russia was helping him escape the Motherland with his treasures tucked in his belt—someone with enough military clout to know where to send the general to shop for tanks and rocket launchers and, most likely, the same someone who knew how to woo Mother Russia into buying back pieces of her past while her children, her future, starved.
So far, the smuggler had been able to sneak out with a 13th centur
y icon of St. Nickolas laden with gold and lapis lazuli stones, a tapestry of Peter the Great woven in 1723, and an Ivan Lulibin goose-egg clock made of pure gold—national treasures they’d recovered, at painful price tags.
Not this time. This time, Vadeem hoped to catch both thief and traitor at their game. The assignment had Medal of Merit possibilities written all over it. Unfortunately, Grazovich and his traitor in crime were as slippery as month-old bacon grease.
Vadeem watched Grazovich stalk back towards the passport booth. “What’s he up to?”
“Let me see.”
Vadeem handed the glasses over to his partner. From their perch in the militia office overlooking customs control, they had an advantageous view of both passenger and greeter. Behind them, security officers scanned computer screens, giving every passenger a double scrutiny. Vadeem wondered if it was the officer behind him or the lady below who had set off the screeching alarm. He noticed rookie Denis leaning over the shoulders of the security team, casually reading each screen. Vadeem hid a smirk. The fresh-out-of-academy recruit with the short black hair and intense hazel eyes rather reminded Vadeem of his early days, when he’d been the wiry, astute, ear-to-the-ground soldier, waiting for the assignment that would make his career.
Vadeem was still waiting.
“He’s walking back through the security arch.”
“What?” Vadeem watched Grazovich as he ran toward a burly female security officer hauling off a terrified American woman. The traveler looked the color of chalk, and she couldn’t quite keep pace with the elephant-legged stride of the guard. Vadeem stepped over to a junior officer manning a computer. “Who is she?”
“Nobody. Says her name is Ekaterina Hope Moore. First time in Russia, not even another country listing on her passport.” The skinny corporal in a gray military shirt typed something. “Says here she’s from New York.”
“Immigrant?”
“Nope, born in Nyack, New York, in the U. S. of A.”
“Klasna.” Vadeem gripped the tightening muscles in his neck. “Just what we need, an American trying to hawk some retired military hardware.”
Ekaterina (Heirs of Anton) Page 1