“All those coincidences weren’t coincidences. Moving to Waterford wasn’t a coincidence at all.”
“The only coincidence is you fell in love with our recruit, and that’s not good for any of us, least of all him.”
I have to find Aksel. Tell him this before he learns it for himself, before he thinks that I knew, or was involved, or complicit …
Outside, I see the train is descending through the Alps.
Abruptly, I yank my leather bag down from the luggage rack. The contents spill onto the seat—a sweater, a copy of Palace Walk I picked up in Cairo, Vichy face wash.
“Sophia,” my mother says sharply. She looks out through the glass door to the aisle. Apparently, no one is nearby because she turns back toward me, but she doesn’t leave her position guarding the door.
I tear open the Longchamp backpack—it is lighter than my leather duffel—and start shoving everything I need inside.
“Sophia, stop it,” my mother says harshly.
I grasp for anything within reach: my Swedish and South African passports, my FN 5-7, extra ammunition, a dark lipstick, three bricks of euros and three bricks of American dollars from my mother’s handbag.
“I’m leaving. I’m going back to Waterford—”
“Sophia, you can’t.”
“Yes, I can!” Every part of me wants to detonate. I shove in an extra euro brick because the backpack isn’t yet full. “All you tell me is what I can and can’t do, and I’m finished listening to you. Your rules have never protected me. I’m safer without you, and I don’t care anymore what you say or what you’re trying to teach me because I don’t want to be anything like you!”
I slip on my wool coat and fasten the buttons.
“I was kidnapped because of you. I left Waterford because of you. Aksel’s parents are dead because of you! Bekami thinks by capturing me, he can blackmail you into providing him weapons, and I won’t be a part of this anymore! I don’t want to be a part of anything you’re involved in!”
I sling the bag over my shoulder. Their reaction isn’t what I expect. Simultaneously, my parents reach their hands forward, grasping mine. The quick, synchronized movement stuns me.
On my skin, I feel my mother’s delicate fingertips, and below my palm, the chapped, sturdy skin of my father’s thumb.
My mother’s back faces the glass now. I am like a child, cradled between them. But the way they are looking at me … It is as if they are becoming extremely ill, extremely fast. My mother’s face is ashen.
My father is sweating. “There’s more you need to know. About Katranov and St. Petersburg—”
“I don’t care about Katranov or St. Petersburg or any other mission!” I yank back my hand, but my mother keeps me in place, her fingers like a strand of pearls strangling my wrist.
“I care about Aksel! And it doesn’t matter what you tell me unless you explain why you’re determined to destroy my life!” I struggle to free myself of her tight fingers.
My mother speaks first. “After we got him out of St. Petersburg, Anton Katranov was killed, Sophia. I should have protected him. I should have saved them all, but I didn’t. I couldn’t.”
“Let me go!” I say through clenched teeth. “I’m leaving!”
“Sophia, you can’t.” My mother lifts her azure eyes to my father. “You’re in danger—it’s why we’re always here to protect you.”
“I don’t want to be protected!”
Almost imperceptibly my father nods to my mother.
She swallows. “We have to explain …” Her face glistens beneath a film of sweat. Her eyes are blue oceans of sadness.
My father squeezes my hand.
Finally, as if it takes all the breath in her chest to push out the words, my mother speaks clearly to me. “Sophia.” She closes her eyes. “Honey … you’re not our daughter.”
CHAPTER 50
I remember when I dropped into the water in the Indian Ocean and had to count to a hundred before breaking the surface. It was as though all the oxygen had left my lungs, and I would never get it back. I feel that way now—as if I’ll never breathe again.
“Y-y-you’re lying,” I stutter. Losing my balance, I thrust my arm upright and grab hold of the luggage rack.
I heard her wrong. My mother resembles me—wide-set eyes, a similar pale blue color to mine, and freckles across the bridge of her nose. We both have a tall, slender build—people comment on how lucky I am to have her long legs and elegant stride. We have different noses and my lips are fuller, but I look like both of them. I do.
My father starts to speak. “This is difficult—”
I flee to the bathroom and vomit into the toilet. My hair gets caught in it, and tears run down my face. Before I know it, I am choking and sobbing.
Leaning against the wall, I close my eyes. My backpack slides off my shoulder and onto my wrist. I drop it to the floor, slumping down after it.
I fold myself into the tightest shape I can manage; I can’t stop shaking.
After a few minutes, I manage to stand. I swish clean water around in my mouth and spit it into the sink. I rinse my soiled hair in the faucet and push it back from my face. Holding myself upright at the counter, I use both hands to steady myself. I stare in the mirror.
How can I ever face them again? Has my entire life been a lie?
I lunge for the toilet and it starts all over again.
After I’ve cleaned myself off a second time, there is a rap on the door. My father steps inside the cramped bathroom. His eyes are moist.
“We know you need time,” he says. “We never knew how to tell you, or when.”
“Or if,” I say bitingly.
His large hand crosses in front of my face. Through my tangled wet hair, I watch him place a sealed, faded folder from the safe on the counter. It’s labeled in Cyrillic.
“When you’re ready, read this. It will help you understand.”
I glare at him. “Who are my parents?”
His gray eyes don’t leave mine. His skin is pallid.
“Where are they?” I demand.
He turns to leave the bathroom and stops with his hand resting on the doorknob. “We love you, Sophia. With every fiber of our beings, we love you. Unconditionally.”
His words light a fire in my veins, scorching my skin.
I throw the folder at him, screaming, “You’ve lied to me my whole life!”
My father’s eyes are wet and pained. How can he be hurting right now? He chose to keep this information from me. He’s the one who lied.
He glances at my backpack on the floor, then his eyes resettle on mine. “Just read it.” His voice is unusually raspy, like his throat has been grated by sandpaper.
He closes the door behind him.
I don’t read it.
Time passes. I stand, numb.
Soon, the intercom announces that the train is approaching Hütteldorf, a few kilometers southwest of Vienna. Beyond the small window, the countryside has transformed into rows of Bavarian half-timbered buildings adjacent to modern complexes of concrete.
I glance at my watch—22:00.
My decision isn’t a decision at all; it is a reaction. An expulsion.
I stuff the folder into my backpack and turn on the tap. I flush the toilet again, hoping the noise will give me time.
I lift the escape hatch on the bathroom window. Hesitating, I wait for a sound—no siren blares. Cold air and snow whip me. With my backpack slung securely over my shoulders, I wriggle through the window and land on the grated platform at the back of the train.
Years ago my father instructed me how to fall while skiing, skydiving, horseback riding. It’s all the same—curl, and land rolling.
Standing on the platform, I throw the Longchamp backpack as far out to the side as I can, then I leap from the back of the train.
CHAPTER 51
Landing in a rolling mess on the earth, I wince at the impact. Eleven days after the attack at Aksel’s, my wounds aren’t yet hea
led. Nonetheless a quick glance to my thigh assures me—no blood.
I make it to my feet, strap on my backpack, and dart down the embankment. Scanning the stars, I head east, toward the dim lights of town.
Before I have time to fully process what I’ve done, I cross the dark, manicured grounds of a park surrounding an old castle—the sign reads Schloss Wolfersberg.
I run along a lamplit street, ducking into an alley every time headlights near me.
I don’t exactly pass for a jogger—I am carrying a backpack and wearing black boots over my leggings. The last thing I want is for a police officer to stop me.
Betrayal. Devastation. Dozens of languages and I can’t think of a strong enough word to express what I feel.
I reach a row of mustard-yellow painted buildings and enter a marble-laid plaza with a fountain in the center and a cathedral towering over it—Hütteldorf is a typical Austrian town.
I walk beside a stone wall. All sense of clarity has been stripped from me. My stomach churns, my hands quiver uncontrollably.
Several restaurants and cafés surrounding the plaza are still open. I enter a café with iron chairs and tables set outside, shielded from the snow by a dark green striped awning. I sit down near one of the heat lamps and order hot cider.
I set my backpack on the chair beside me and pull out the folder.
Do I even want to read it?
Reaching inside, I retrieve two sheets of paper stapled together, carbon copies, yellowed at the edges. An envelope is stapled to both. I detach the envelope and set it on the table.
The top page is a report regarding strategic weapons intelligence—names, departments, drop zones, scientific data, and other details that mean little to me.
On the second page, in black ink, typewritten on a manual typewriter, is a transcript—an excerpt from a debriefing.
This isn’t uncommon. Since any computer can potentially be hacked, and since extremely sensitive information is still stored on paper, a typewriter is simply the fastest way to safely document sensitive information.
But that isn’t the interesting part. The interesting part is my mother’s name, printed near the top of the page.
Embassy of the United States
Stockholm, Sweden
T S 8 4 - C L E A R A N C E
Operation N E M C O V A
TO: B. Alden Andrews, Deputy Director
FR: Case Officer Mary Hepworth (ON-YX)
RE: Transcription of ORAL DEBRIEFING (partial)
Strategic Intent of Operation NEMCOVA-Exfiltration of Anton Katranov
Agent: Anton Katranov—Officer, Foreign Intelligence Directorate, SVR, RUSSIAN FEDERATION
Use: Sub-director under command of Sergei Abramovich
Director-general, Department K, Foreign Affairs Directorate—SVR
Intelligence: Tactical Nuclear Weapons Intelligence
“… Katranov was at a government summit in St. Petersburg when we learned he had been exposed. We had to exfiltrate immediately.
Kent collected Katranov from the summit. I collected Mrs. Katranov and the children from their apartment and we fled separately, reconvening at the Neva river marina.
However, our ‘A’ route, Tallinn, was blocked by Russian security checkpoints, so we proceeded to our ‘B’ route through Helsinki. Awaiting orders, we stopped at a safe house in Kotka …
The green light never came.
We improvised an alternate route, through Stockholm.
It was during this delay that we first learned … The former ballet dancer had somehow concealed it … at the safe house we learned … not only was Mrs. Katranov near full-term pregnant, but the stress of the escape had induced preterm labor.
We procured the services of a discreet Kotka-based midwife … the child was born …
Four days later, Kent went to gather supplies for our journey to Stockholm. I was surveilling the pier when I overheard a fisherman telling two Finnish border guards his boat had been hijacked by ‘Cheka.’ He said two Russians had held him at knifepoint and forced him to bring them to Kotka.
… I knew …
I sprinted back through the woods … {indecipherable} … But I was too late … I halted at the door …
Facedown on the floor, arms outstretched, was the body of Anton Katranov. Behind him were the lifeless bodies of his two boys. And behind them, blocking the entrance to the back bedrooms, lay the crumpled body of Mrs. Katranov.
She moaned. I ran to her. I applied my hands to her bleeding abdomen. I scanned the room for medical supplies.
But I knew what we had, and what we did not. Time.
Mrs. Katranov was bleeding out … {indecipherable} … gurgling blood … she clutched my wrist. “The baby,” she rasped.
Instantly, I leaped over her into the hall and raced to the back bedroom.
Inside a single dresser drawer, on the floor beside the bed, was the delicate body of the Katranovs’ four-day-old baby.
In the middle of this massacre … she was alive … asleep.
I brought the swaddled newborn to Mrs. Katranov. She was losing too much blood; her face was pale; her eyelids fluttered. She pressed her lips to the baby’s forehead. Her eyes clasped desperately onto mine—harmaakarhu silmät—‘mama grizzly eyes,’ they say in Finland …
She pleaded with me to take her … that he must never know … that was the only way … she would live …
As she spoke the door opened behind me. The Cheka had returned. I placed the baby on Mrs. Katranov’s chest.
… I killed both cheka at close range.
When I looked back at Mrs. Katranov she was dead and the newborn was suckling on her lifeless breast. I kissed Mrs. Katranov on the forehead, tucked the newborn inside my coat, and fled …”
Trembling, I snatch up the envelope and slide my fingers along the seal, ripping it open.
I pull out an old color photograph. It is the angled profile of a blond woman with a straight nose and wide-set eyes. Her neck is bent forward, her lips soft, meeting the downy fuzz atop an infant’s head.
I turn the picture over. Inscribed on the back of the photograph in my mother’s neat cursive is a name alongside my own:
Katarina.
CHAPTER 52
Katarina.
I push the tears off my face with my palms. I blink until I can see. I reread the dossier until the last few paragraphs when my vision blurs so badly I have to stop.
Conflicting emotions pummel me from all sides.
My family was murdered, and I lived. I lived. My brothers—I had brothers—died, and I lived.
Furiously, I wipe my eyes with the back of my sleeve.
Katarina pleaded with my mother to take me, and never tell me.
Yet a faded memory surfaces. When Consular Petrenko gave the porcelain doll to me, I wasn’t sure what to name her. My mother suggested the name of a ballerina she once knew. A very brave woman, she said. She suggested I name my doll Katarina.
I bite my lip to fight more tears.
It takes several minutes to calm my breath.
My hair is in my face, so I braid it and tie the end with an elastic. I rub my hands to keep warm.
The waiter is nearby, glancing in my direction and smoothing out his apron. I drink my now cold cider, leave a twenty-euro note under the glass because I forgot my coin purse, and exit the café.
The dossier explained who my birth parents are, but now I have more questions.
Across the plaza, beside the church, is an internet café with a painted sign on the window—Open until Midnight.
Inside, the café is crowded with teenagers. An Austrian boy—tight dark jeans, white sneakers, and a black sweater—stands in the corner by the cash register. He catches my eye and motions to an empty slot.
The building is two hundred years old, but the computers are brand-new.
My fingers are clammy and stiff, still trembling—I mistype the name twice.
First, I do a basic search for Anton Katranov. Nothi
ng. I log on to a Russian server. Still nothing. In fact, there is no reference to Anton Katranov anywhere. Next, I type in my birth mother’s name, Katarina Katranov. There is one link to a twenty-five-year-old article in a Bolshoi Ballet Company review. Other than that, there is nothing.
Next, I type in Sergei Abramovich. Tyrant. Oligarch. One of the most feared men in Russia. Directed Russia’s most secret tactical weapons operation …
Austrian Wikipedia has a brief entry on Abramovich: a former Foreign Affairs Director of Russian Intelligence who died of heart failure, ten years ago. Many assumed he would become the next head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. Nothing about defecting. Nothing about Lefortovo Prison.
There is a single grainy picture of him—a shock of dark hair, thick eyebrows, and an aquiline nose.
I click on every citation attached to his profile. I log in to the British Wikipedia page, the German and American ones. The pages are identical. Nothing more than this basic description exists.
I pull out the folder and scan my mother’s dossier.
… had somehow concealed it …
No one within SVR knew about me.
SVR killed my birth parents, killed my brothers, and would have killed me too if they had known I existed, had known I was sleeping in a drawer in the back bedroom.
Katarina asked my parents to take me—and never tell me—so I would be safe. If I didn’t know my identity, I was less likely to be found. Less likely to be killed.
Suddenly, my hex sense flicks on like a switch.
I glance at the door. A man of medium build, wearing a Munich Football jacket, watches me through the glass.
CHAPTER 53
I shut down the computer, yank the cord out from the wall, and scoop my bag onto my shoulder. I push my way to the Austrian boy at the cash register.
“Is there another exit?” I ask in German. Nodding toward the front door, I attempt to look annoyed. “That guy won’t leave me alone.”
The boy looks out the window where the man in the football jacket is still watching me. “Kranker Typ.” The Austrian boy smirks, insulting the man—Creep.
Girl from Nowhere Page 24