Andrei continued to stare out the front window, eyes closed in private anguish.
“It started ten years ago. My brother was arrested for holding an evangelistic meeting. The KGB stormed the place and hauled him and three other brothers away.”
Vicktor nodded, thankful he’d never been on a raid. Without glasnost, Roman could just as easily be sitting in gulag instead of being captain of his COBRA team.
“Like a fool I raced down to KGB headquarters, hoping to bail him out.” Andrei opened his eyes. “They thought I was one of the conspirators against the state and locked me up.” His voice constricted. “They questioned me.”
Vicktor kept his face expressionless, but Andrei’s words turned him inside out. Torture. The KGB, Vicktor’s coworkers, had put Andrei to the vices. He lowered the gun an inch.
Andrei drew in a breath. “In exchange for my life, I agreed to work for the KGB.”
“Your life?” Vicktor frowned.
“My life. They sent my brother to gulag as an example.” His voice shook. “He died there two years later.”
Gracie made a whimpering sound. Vicktor’s gaze snapped to her crumpled face, the tears that edged her eyes.
Andrei jumped him. He grabbed on to the gun and angled it into the seat.
Vicktor slammed his fist into Andrei’s jaw. “Let go!”
Andrei jerked back, blood in his eyes. “You’re going to get us all killed.”
“You’re the one who’s stalking Gracie.”
“I’m trying to keep her alive!”
Vicktor wrenched the gun from Andrei’s grasp. “Sit back, hands on the steering wheel.”
Glowering, Andrei obeyed. “Listen, Shubnikov, you gotta believe me. I’ve been blocking for Gracie since they tried to gun her down. I would never let anyone hurt her.”
Vicktor squinted at him. “What do you call betraying her, spying on her for two years?”
Andrei tightened his jaw. “Protection. I censored the information I sent back. I saw to it that they knew she was harmless.” He stared hard at Gracie. “I took care of her.”
Andrei’s story rang true. Perestroika and glasnost didn’t erase seventy years of suspicion. Americans all over Russia were stalked, spied on, followed. Whoever had assigned Andrei to follow Gracie lived by the old rules. “Who’s your handler?”
Vicktor saw fear flicker in Andrei’s eyes. The chauffeur shook his head.
“Please. I’ll be dead by morning.”
Vicktor glanced at Gracie. Her face was white with agony.
“How did you deliver your information?”
“At first, I called a special number. Now I just get sporadic phone calls and I have to leave my reports at the dead drop.”
“A special number?” A chill crept up Vicktor’s spine. “A KGB number?”
“I don’t know. I called and had to ask for an extension.”
Vicktor fought his racing pulse. “When did you stop calling?”
Andrei blinked slowly, looked down and away. “Years ago.”
“You’re lying. You called that number recently.”
Andrei’s gaze turned icy.
Vicktor forced the words through his dry mouth. “It. Was. You. You’re the one calling Ishkov’s old line. You’re the informant. You called about Evgeny’s murder, about the Youngs, and warned us about Gracie getting shot at at my father’s flat. But…I don’t get it.”
Andrei sat in silence. Then, wretchedly, he said, “I want this to be over. I want Gracie safe, and I want to be done with this disgusting business.”
Vicktor heard indictment in his words. Disgusting business. Vicktor’s business.
Andrei wasn’t the only one who was tired. “Do you know the Wolf?” Vicktor asked.
Andrei’s confused frown seemed genuine.
Vicktor hid his disappointment. “Do you know who killed Evgeny Lakarstin?”
Andrei looked away. “Leonid Krasnov.”
“L-Leonid the Red?” Gracie stammered.
Andrei nodded. “Maybe the vet was his connection to his medicine. Leonid called me the day before Lakarstin’s murder and told me if anything happened to Leonid, to call the number. He was scared. And he asked me if Gracie knew anything about the medical notes Dr. Willie had.”
A muscle tensed in Vicktor’s neck. “Leonid worked for the KGB, too.”
Andrei’s silence answered his question.
“Leonid was a spy?” Gracie blurted in a squeaky tone, as if trying to wrap her brain around the words.
Vicktor sensed the pain in her voice and winced.
“We figure the KGB has spies assigned to all the missionaries.”
Vicktor shook his head. “Can’t be true. We’re past that.”
Andrei shrugged. “I’m still getting phone calls.”
Vicktor chewed the inside of his mouth. “So Leonid the Red killed Evgeny. Why? Who killed Leonid?”
“I’m not sure.”
Vicktor glared at him, feeling sick. “And the Youngs?”
Andrei’s face twisted. He gazed out the window, beyond Vicktor. “I was trying to protect them. I didn’t realize the medicine meant that much. I still wonder if he knew…”
Gracie gasped.
Vicktor clenched his teeth, wanting to hit something, like a chauffeur, until this pain in his chest dulled. “You killed them,” he said quietly.
“No. But I saw them die. Leonid killed them.”
The pain in Gracie’s moan was so palpable, Vicktor felt it in his gut.
“Did you warn us of the attack on my father?” Vicktor asked, trying not to look at Gracie.
“I had no choice.” Andrei’s eyes glistened. “I don’t want Gracie to die. Nothing she has is worth that.”
He bowed his head, and Vicktor could see Andrei battle his emotions.
Andrei shook his head. “I want out.” His eyes shimmered. “They are killing my friends. They want their information, and unless Gracie gives it to them, she’s going to die.”
“I don’t have anything! I don’t know what they want.”
Gracie’s wretched-sounding tone made Vicktor flinch.
Andrei looked at her, his expression pleading. “Gracie, they know you have it. I came to get you—”
“To turn her in?”
“No! To warn her…to warn you.” Andrei’s face sagged, aging quickly. Exhaustion hung in bags under his eyes.
“I thought if we could find it, we could use it to bargain for her life. I thought I could protect her. But, when they came after me at my mother’s house, I knew. They don’t care if they kill me, or her.” His voice dropped to an agonized rasp. “I should have let you protect her from the first moment. I just didn’t know who to trust.”
Vicktor’s mind went back to the moment in Gracie’s flat, when he’d wondered whom Andrei had been working for.
The man had put himself between Gracie and the rest of the world because he loved this American woman. Vicktor lowered his gun slightly.
“We need to find what they want. I’ll bargain with them, give you enough time to get Gracie out of the country.” He looked away, out the window. “After that, I’ll tell you everything. I don’t care what happens to me, as long as Gracie is safe.”
The hollow look on Andrei’s face eroded Vicktor’s resolve.
“Listen,” Andrei said, his tone earnest. “They’re after information that links Gracie to Dr. Willie and Leonid. Maybe it’s the medical notes Leonid mentioned. Some sort of formula?”
“He has medical notes on his computer,” said Vicktor. “But I don’t think that’s what they’re after. There weren’t any formulas, just records.”
He lowered the gun and rested it on his lap. Andrei’s eyes tracked to it.
“The computer was on at the crime scene,” Vicktor continued. “If the information was there, the chase would be over.” Medical notes. His memory ranged back to Evgeny’s crime scene, the charred notebook in the trash can. “Maybe there aren’t any notes.”
“Yes, there are,” Gracie said starkly.
Vicktor tightened his grip on the weapon and looked at her.
“Evelyn gave me a bunch of letters and a package to send in the States. There was a package addressed to a cancer hospital in Minnesota. I packed it to take home.”
Vicktor shook his head. “Your place was searched, remember? It wasn’t there.”
Gracie leaned forward, her hands white on the seat. “Because my suitcases weren’t there. I took them to Aeroflot to be weighed. We brought them home with us.”
Vicktor’s mouth opened in mute realization.
“They’re still at the flat,” Andrei said grimly.
Vicktor swallowed, glanced at Gracie. “Go,” he said to Andrei.
Andrei turned and popped the car into drive. Momentum pressed them back into the seat.
“Where are we going?” Gracie asked in a whisper-thin voice.
“Home.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
She had to be shattered. Glancing at Gracie’s hunched figure in the back seat, Vicktor noted that she looked wrung-out and defeated as she rubbed her upper arms and stared wanly out the window. He reached for her hand and snagged only air. She didn’t even glance in his direction. He ached for her. He would be eviscerated if Roman, Yanna or David ever betrayed him the way Andrei had her.
The first hint of dawn pushed over the horizon beyond the river. The car idled, waiting for the morning ferry. Andrei lay slumped in the driver’s seat, his arms banded across his chest, his face hidden.
A spring chill seeped into the car and up Vicktor’s spine. Sleep lay like sandbags over his eyes but he sat board-straight in the driver’s seat, holding the gun loosely in his lap. His gaze went from Gracie to Andrei. Not a word had passed between them during the hour-long ride to the ferryboat platform across the river from Khabarovsk. Andrei had stared straight ahead, face void of expression, while Gracie slumped in her seat, twirled her hair and avoided Vicktor’s searching looks.
He wanted to throw Andrei in the trunk and hold Gracie until the world righted itself. She had to hate the man she had called best friend, even if the guy had spent the last few days trying to save her life.
He should have seen through Andrei’s veneer of loyalty. Vicktor was a trained agent and had been duped like a first-year rookie. Idiot! Just wait until Roman, or Arkady…or his father found out. Vicktor’s grip tightened on the gun as he forced a cleansing breath.
A flock of sparrows began an early morning song as the sky turned periwinkle. Vicktor looked at Gracie. Her head drooped. He smiled. Sleep, Gracie. Today you’ll be flying home to safety. To peace. His throat went dry. His grand master plan centered on flagging down a plane, shoving her aboard, and getting her as far away from Russia as he could.
As far away from him as he could…
Because, although she had told him her awful, rip-his-heart-through-his-ribs truth, she didn’t want him to be a part of her life.
At least, not the way he wanted to be.
He closed his eyes, painfully aware that she’d done something dangerous to him. Like, made him feel alive and not nearly as tired or hopeless as he had been a week ago.
Her head bobbed forward and her hair fell across her face. He resisted the urge to brush her silky strands back, rub the softness against his fingers.
No, after her history, he wouldn’t touch her again without a written, signed-in-triplicate invitation.
You need more than me and Yanna, Mae and David. You need a Savior. And you need the love of a good woman.
Roman’s words. Pointed. Painful.
Vicktor glanced at Gracie, remembering his own words. In general, women can’t be trusted.
Oh, yeah. Gracie had about as much deceit in her as a nun. On the contrary, her honesty made him flinch.
Like her admitting she’d been raped. That revelation turned him inside out, and as he let that ugly image sweep through his brain, he felt himself shake.
Why, why did God let bad things happen to good people while the rest of the world didn’t get what they deserve?
Like him, for example. By rights he should be the one hobbling around on a cane. He pushed the thought from his brain before it could consume him.
A snore emerged from Andrei’s corner of the car. Vicktor bristled and shot a look at the double-crosser.
Who was Andrei’s boss? The Wolf? Utuzh had agreed the corpses were the handiwork of the notorious serial killer. Still, the idea that Andrei was the Wolf’s pawn seemed a stretch.
Only, what if Andrei’s boss was not only the Wolf, but also KGB? Vicktor rubbed his eyes.
He could use a little help.
You have the truth, Vicktor, it’s right in front of you.
Even more than truth, Vicktor suddenly wanted hope—hope that things would improve for himself, for his father. Hope that his life wasn’t a waste. Hope that he’d see his mother again.
And that was what Gracie emanated. Hope.
The ferry’s whistle split the air. Vicktor pried open his eyes and spied a slow-moving car ferry chugging toward shore.
It shouldn’t be too hard to get into Gracie’s flat. She had the keys and his men had kept it under surveillance since Tuesday. Hopefully there was still a sentry there.
They should be in and out in a matter of minutes.
They? As in he and Andrei? Fatigue had obviously numbed Vicktor’s brain. How stupid could he be? Andrei hadn’t come to warn them—but to ambush them. The chauffeur may have duped Gracie for two years, but it took only two days for Andrei to completely string along a trained agent with years of military experience.
Andrei probably already had men at her flat waiting to gun them down the minute Gracie retrieved the package. On the other hand, if Vicktor left Gracie in the car, with or without Andrei, one of Andrei’s henchmen could kidnap her and ransom her life for the information.
Vicktor needed backup. He reached for his cell phone. His thumb hovered over the keypad.
What if Andrei was not working for the FSB, but for some former KGB agent?
The collapse of Communism had hung hundreds of undercover KGB agents out to dry, leaving the new guard to deal with the backlash. Burrowed in their undercover trenches, most had tentatively surrendered, only to be quietly retired and removed from service. Many, however, had simply vanished. Dug in deep, they’d refused to surface. Dead maybe. Or addicted to their assigned lifestyle. All of them, however, were spies abandoned by their network, given their walking papers without so much as a gold watch for their years of loyal, stealthy service.
He would hate to meet one of the agents behind a Dumpster on a dark night. An animal in a corner has nothing to lose by pouncing.
If Andrei was connected to an old KGB agent, a swarm of ambitious FSB agents descending on Gracie’s flat would alert Andrei’s contact and destroy Vicktor’s opportunity to unearth him.
Vicktor’s brain throbbed with unimaginable possibilities. He focused on one thought—whoever was behind the lies, the betrayal and the secrecy was a murderer. And in today’s Russia, the former USSR, a murderer paid for his crimes.
Andrei’s chest rose and fell, his breath steaming a patch of window. Sunlight glossed the car hood.
Vicktor stared at Andrei, remembering the agony in his eyes as he’d admitted the truth. It had strummed a chord of sympathy. Vicktor had no doubt that he, too, would have sacrificed his honor to save Gracie, the woman he loved—
Where had that come from? Vicktor had definitely jumped into the realm of fatigue-induced insanity.
He and Gracie had about as much chance together as his father had of becoming a cop again.
There he went again, wishing for the never-weres-nor-could-bes.
Another horn sounded as the barge edged near shore. Vicktor reached over and shook Andrei, not gently.
Gracie’s building shadowed a sleepy courtyard. The bread kiosk window was latched tight, but a green truck had backed up to the side door. Vicktor opened his car door and
the smell of fresh bread taunted his empty stomach. Vicktor ignored it and beckoned to Andrei.
The chauffeur’s face was waxed white with fear, which, in Vicktor’s estimation, was a good sign.
In the back seat, Gracie was also a shade lighter. Both hands gripped Vicktor’s gun. Her tired green eyes blinked in shock. “I can’t do this, Vicktor.”
Vicktor opened her door, keeping one eye on Andrei, who shifted from one foot to the other. “I know you hate it, Gracie, but it’s the only way. Lock the doors, and if anyone comes, just point the gun. I’ll be right back.” He crouched beside her, touched her arm. It shook.
“Do it for me,” he said quietly, hoping she wouldn’t see fear in his eyes.
“I’m not shooting anyone.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“Hurry.” She put her hand on his and squeezed.
Words caught in his chest and he nodded.
She flashed him a quivering smile. “Be careful.”
Today, his middle name was Careful. At least until he got Gracie on the plane for America. After that, he wasn’t making any promises.
Vicktor glanced at Andrei. “Give the keys to Gracie.”
Andrei obliged. The men closed the doors and Gracie locked them.
Then, with Andrei a pace in front of him, Vicktor strode toward the entrance to Gracie’s flat.
Gracie turned the black gun over in her hands and wondered when she had abandoned her common sense. There was no way she was going to kill someone. Kneecaps. If she was being threatened, she might be willing to shoot at someone’s kneecaps. In all likelihood, she’d miss and end up shooting herself.
Her best weapon was, without a doubt, prayer.
Gracie watched Vicktor and Andrei disappear into the shadowed entrance of her building. Then she leaned her head back against the seat.
“Lord, I don’t know what is going on in there. I don’t know why Vicktor is so afraid. I don’t even know what to believe about what Andrei said, but You know, and I ask for Your presence here with us, with me, with Vicktor and with Andrei. Please help them get this information so I can get safely home.” She paused and listened to the sound of the bread truck doors squeal on their hinges. “Lord, whatever lies ahead, I thank You for sending me to Russia, for allowing me to meet Vicktor, and…Andrei.” Gracie swallowed, hard. “Please, help me to forgive Andrei. Please protect him.” The bread truck began to pull away, and in its wake, wrens chattered their goodbyes.
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