Kate's Gifts

  McDowd frowns, not liking Kate being called “A target.”

  “So now we’ve got Rachel Ray running around about to set off a nuke,” Carpenter breathes.

  “She’s no mass murderer,” McDowd tells them.

  “No, just one at a time,” Edwards responds, gesturing to Kreichek. “Here, have a look at this,” He hands McDowd some sheets of paper. “It’s her rap sheet.”

  The printout is in Russian. Edwards and Linda watch him as he reads, flipping through the pages, seeing his color slowly drain away.

  “Good Christ,” McDowd whispers.

  “Afghanistan?” Edwards laughs, “Her shit makes Abu Ghraib girl look like the sugar plum fairy. She was scareing her own people.”

  McDowd looks at him. “This has to be bullshit.”

  Edwards shrugs. “Who knows? Hard to believe a woman could do that to another woman.”

  McDowd slaps the papers onto Edward’s chest, then walks away. “Thanks,” he says with dripping sarcasm.

  “What’s up, what am I missing?” Carpenter asks.

  “You don’t want to know. Apparently she had some real nasty interrogation techniques, crazy shit.”

  “So, what’s she doing here?”

  “I guess it would have been a shame to waste her, so send her as far away as possible.”

  “Put her where she’d do the least damage, until she had to do the most,” Freaks adds.

  “McDowd’s too close to her,” Edwards warns.

  “How the hell could he have known? We need everyone we got. Besides, his guilt trip will keep him honest…I think.” Freaks says.

  “Let’s hope,” Edwards says, and then turns to Carpenter. “What happened to Haddad?”

  “Good question. His phone goes right to voice mail.”

  Outside, the harvest moon looms in the night sky, and Dan McDowd has a question for it. “Where is she, and what will she do?”

  The file really rattled him. To think that the kind, loving mother and sponsor, the woman he knew and came to care about, had been capable of doing the horrible things that the report revealed. McDowd had heard in the rooms the countless stories of rebirth and redemption. People with bottoms unimaginably low becoming completely different, leading new lives in the world of light instead of darkness. Was her transformation for real, or all an act for the role in which she’d been cast?

  Am I any different? Have I really changed?

  Freaks, Edwards and Carpenter find him on the corner.

  “Hate full moons,” Edwards says.

  Freaks joins in. “Makes people whacky.”

  “Mayo’s pulling together everything he can find on the Wilson woman. You two round up the hubby,” Edwards tells them.

  “I doubt she’ll be going there.”

  “She has to dump the kids somewhere, they’ll just slow her down.” Edwards says.

  “Oh, I get it.” McDowd says indignantly.

  “Hey, it’s business, nothing personal. But, don’t you worry, big guy, we’re better off taking her alive.”

  “Call me when you get down there. You’re the agent in charge on the scene until Haddad shows up,” Carpenter says, patting him on the shoulder as she leaves with Edwards.

  “Come on, let’s roll, Chiller man,” Freaks sighs, bummed over his own B-Team status.

  Carpenter and Edwards walk back to the house.

  “Aren’t you worried about Haddad?” he asks.

  “Yes. We’re trying to GPS track his phone,” she tells him.

  “What about an alert for Wilson?”

  “It’s going out as an Amber Alert. Locate but do not approach. Suspect considered armed and dangerous.”

  Chapter 37

  Kate’s SUV rushes quietly through the suburban back streets, but inside her screaming rants are deafening.

  Screams of anger, “OH, MY FUCKING GOD! WHAT AM I DOING!”

  Screams of agonizing loss, “MY BOYS! MY SWEET BOYS!”

  Screams of rage, “WHY HAVE YOU TAKEN THEM AWAY?”

  And screams of shame, “WHAT HAVE I DONE?”

  Her thoughts and feelings are all over the place. Waves of despair crash into her, slamming her violently. At one point, she almost goes back to get the boys, but she resists the urge. After twenty minutes, all that is left is acceptance. She gave Tom and Robbie life, but now the greatest threat to them is their own mother.

  “I DIDN’T FUCKING GET SOBER FOR THIS!”

  Cunning, baffling, powerful, and patient, Katrina has waited a long time for this very moment and for the pint bottle of vodka in the bag in behind the seat.

  “I know what you’re thinking. It’s all right, Kate. God doesn’t want you to suffer, you’ve done enough.”

  Usually, Kate would instantly blast such a thought away with a determined NO!

  Not tonight.

  “God will forgive you, Kate. Has he not forgiven all that you’ve done, and still he blessed you with your boys? God forgives all, even to those who hate him, like you.”

  The black pavement under her seems to sparkle in the moonlight while the old hunger grows and her resolve fades.

  “I will forgive you,” soothes Katrina.

  “I won’t be able to forgive myself,” Kate whispers.

  “So you’re better than God? How nice it must be to hold oneself in such high regard!”

  “Fuck you.”

  “So why did you get sober anyway, Kate?” Katrina mocks

  There is no answer, just angry silence.

  “No? Well I’ll tell you, then. It was out of love for your boys. God gave you sobriety because he loves you and your sons. You’ve been a wonderful mom, and they will be wonderful men. Now it’s God’s turn watch over them. Don’t you see? He’s taken that burden away. You’re free.”

  Kate catches herself licking her lips.

  “It’s time for the pain to go away! Don’t you see how wonderful God is? He’s given you the opportunity to do that, because he understands, because he loves you. That bottle has been locked away for years, yet now here it is.”

  Kate didn’t think she had any tears left, but these come because she can almost taste the sting, and feel the wonderful warmth that will follow.

  “There are no coincidences.”

  “No.”

  “You’ve been so good for so long, and as you said yourself, it’s not always about the drink. Even Bill W. begged for one on his deathbed. Do you really think any one who loved him would have denied his last request? I thought we were over deluding ourselves to the truth?”

  Ultimately, Kate believes what she wants to believe. Truth, like religion, is based on personal belief, validated by a conscience, that little voice that divides right from wrong. Now the only voice she hears is Katrina, reminding her that the truth is she’s a drunk. She might regret giving in, but in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t really matter.

  “The ball is over. It’s midnight. It’s time for you to turn back into who you really are. There is no prince coming for you, but in that bag is your glass slipper and it fits you so well.”

  The final barrier is breached, and a single neuron in a dark lonely place inside her brain fires.

  If asked, many alcoholics who have relapsed can offer no explanation for picking up. There is every excuse, and no excuse, but the simplest, truest explanation, is because they want to. It never is, never was, and never will be rational. It is, insanity. That is the nature of the disease, and of Kate’s desire.

  Kate reaches back into the open bag, her hand searching for the bottle while still watching the dark road ahead, but can’t find it. She unbuckles her seat belt and turns around to look, taking her eyes off the road. It’s too dark. Kate glances back to the road before turning on the interior light.

  A deer.

  In the middle of the road. Frozen in her headlights, the glowing green eye shine rapidly closing on her.

  “SHIT.”

  With one hand
, she swerves around it, just missing the huge doe.

  But then her hand slips off the wheel.

  Slamming on the brakes, she frantically fumbles to get a grip. The damp air, combined with fallen leaves, have made the road as slick as ice. Desperately she tries to regain control, working the wheel to get the truck out of its sideways skid, heading directly at a big fat tree.

  “Come on!”

  Impact is moments away. Kate braces. At this speed, without the seat belt, she’ll be thrown through the windshield and killed.

  Not yet.

  Suddenly, the tires find their traction and she steers out of the slide. The truck’s rear fishtails into the tree and bounces off, actually straightening the vehicle again.

  “Not yet!” She laughs.

  The truck slides to a halt on the gravel shoulder. She sits with a white-knuckled grip on the wheel, heart pounding, and breathless, staring straight ahead, and shaking like wet cat. No words yet, no other thoughts, just the hum of the engine and a lazy orange leaf falling through the headlight beams. She looks in the door mirror, and in the full moon light stands the ghostly figure of the deer, still in the road, looking right at her.

  That pisses her off. Kate hops out of the truck and, opening the rear door, tears open the bag, grabs the bottle, and storms down the road at the animal.

  “GET the FUCK out of the ROAD!” she rages, launching the bottle at the deer. She instantly regrets it, not because of the booze, but because she might hit the animal. The bottle arcs high into the pale light and shatters with a wet pop between them, showering glistening glass across the road.

  Yet the deer remains, and it gives Kate a chill. She slows to a walk. The animal stands its ground, as if challenging her. About ten yards away, Kate stops. They look at each other, held by an eerie enchantment that gives her goose bumps. The doe lowers her head, and something stirs in the brush at the road’s edge. In the shadows, Kate makes out two fawns.

  “You nearly killed us,” Kate tells the doe, “but you saved my life. Thank you.”

  As the two mothers regard each other, Kate thinks she hears one of the fawns, in Tom’s voice, call out:

  “Come on, Mom!”

  The doe looks in the direction of her young and then back to Kate. She somehow senses concern from the animal, concern about her in some strange maternal empathy.

  “I’ll be all right, go on to your kids.”

  The doe starts to turn away.

  “You know, I envy you,” Kate sighs. “Maybe one day I’ll be able to go back to mine.” The doe raises her head, and with a flick of her white tail, bounds into the woods.

  Once again, Kate is alone, left looking at the broken glass, as booze soaked and shattered as her life. At one time she’d have thought it a waste of good liquor. Instead, she regards it as another gift.

  Getting back into her truck, Kate closes her eyes and whispers, “Thank you.”

  She knows what she has to do. The rest is up to God.

  “This is bigger than me,” Kate concludes, having found her rational self in the quiet, calming eye of her storm. She can hear herself think again because something is missing, and it makes her happy. Katrina is gone.

  For now.

  Part VI

  “The moment I let go of it was the moment I got more than I could handle. The moment I jumped off of it was the moment I touched down.”

  -Thank U

  Alanis Morissette

  Saturday

  Chapter 1

  Kalchuga, Russia

  Fredrik Karlov has a good reason to drop by his boss’s country home for a visit. The two men are not great friends, but also not enemies. Both came up through the ranks, but power is all about whom you know, and what you have on them. Rostov had been closer to the action, and the money, so he was in the catbird seat when it was time for the previous old drunk of a president to get lost.

  President Rostov’s palatial dacha, sits in a stand of white birch trees on the edge of a sparkling lake. Karlov finds him in the large bright kitchen.

  “Ricki, good morning,” Rostov says cheerily.

  “Good morning, thank you for squeezing me in.”

  “Take off your coat, sit. How about some tea?”

  “That would be wonderful, thank you,” Fredrik doesn’t mind so much playing his part of respectful formality. Perhaps one day it will be his turn.

  “So, what’s up? Is this about the arrests in America? Don’t worry, we’ll send some of them here packing!” he asks, putting on the pot.

  Karlov takes a beep breath, “Not exactly. Did Markov tell you about the Buran cell problem?”

  “He mentioned something in passing. Why?”

  Karlov nods. “An old cell has been activated.

  “What?”

  “A GRU operator was sent to the States to stop them. She called upon my people for help. That’s how the FBI found them. Well, now it seems now that the GRU operator sent to do that may actually want the team to succeed.”

  The PM stops what he’s doing, “Why do you say that?” he asks before cracking an egg into the pan.

  Karlov smiles to himself. “Revenge. Do you know what this all means?

  “Do I need to?”

  Karlov shrugs. “Yes. It means that if the Buran cell completes their orders, they will have detonated two tactical nuclear weapons in the United States, most likely in or around Washington, DC.”

  Karlov can see the growing rage. “How did this happen?”

  “Well, to begin with, the teams should have been called back a long time ago. It’s the result of a fuck up by the GRU Second Directorate chief,” Karlov pauses while his boss digests this part, “and the defense minister’s willingness to let it slide.”

  “Go on.”

  “Buran operators do not retire. They are terminated, and for good reason. A former communications officer for a Buran team sold his old team’s activation code to the Iranians.” Karlov hands Rostov a picture. “Sasha Malekov was the son of Petre Kurtsin.”

  Karlov can clearly see that he’s rattled. “I have provided the Americans with the complete information they need to find the team members. Now we have to think of the very real possibility of what the U.S. will do when our nukes detonate on American soil.”

  “My God, they have to know this is an accident!”

  “I’m sure that will be of great comfort to them,” Karlov replies with sarcasm.

  “Markov assured me it wasn’t a threat.”

  “Too bad you believed him.”

  “What do we do?”

  “Well, I think I can say confidently that neither of us wants to fight a thermonuclear war, but it’s going to cost us one way or another.”

  Rostov can no longer mistake the gravity of the situation, and Karlov is glad he isn’t in Rostov’s shoes.

  “That’s even too much for me. Fuck it. Now what?

  “Pray for a miracle,” Karlov suggests.

  Chapter 2

  The Warehouse

  Kate pulls around to the back of the old warehouse by the loading docks. She warily eyes the open doors and trunk of a dark blue Crown Victoria bearing New York plates parked there. Next to one of the bay doors is an RV, with luggage waiting to be loaded. It seems Stani is ready to go. She pulls out her gun and chambers a round, then shoves it into her jacket pocket and heads to the RV.

  “Stani, you in here? It’s Katrina,” she says, climbing cautiously inside.

  Empty. She turns to exit, but suddenly stops, thinking of the contents of her bag. “Perhaps I should leave this here.” Pleased by the thought, Kate removes a pair of thermoses and stashes them under the kitchen sink, then takes her bag to the coat closet and throws it in. On the shelf she eyes a bottle of booze. “Jesus! Is there no escaping this stuff?” she asks, slamming the door shut.

  She heads into the warehouse to find Stani by the stairs. “He must have cameras…”

  “Good, our Katrina! No
w the party can begin,” he smiles, waving a bottle. He seems drunk and looks sweaty. “Of them all, I knew I could depend on you.”

  Kate slings her large bag off her shoulder. “Someone tried to kill me.”

  Stani’s smile vanishes. “When?’

  “Just hours ago, at my home.”

  “Really! Americans, probably C.I.A.”

  “No. He spoke Russian. Where are the others? Have they shown up yet?” she asks.

  “No. Come, I want to show you something,” he says, gesturing for her to follow.

  “He said the mission is terminated, and they were wiping us all out!”

  “A trick, just what our teachers had warned us about, but yet here you are!”

  His limp is much worse and she can smell the infection. The body of his friend is still dumped at the bottom of the stairs, now with a blanket over his head. “I killed him, but there must be more. Where did that police car come from?”

  He backs out of the door to let her pass. “An intruder, see?”

  Sitting on the floor, handcuffed to a pipe, is a man in an FBI raid jacket. He turns to look at her. His face is a bloody mess.

  “I tried to shoot him, but his vest is very good,” he smiles, tossing Haddad’s I.D. onto the table. The picture bears little resemblance to the guy now.

  “They know where we are!” she says with a start.

  “Doubtful. If they did, they would have been here by now.”

  “But his phone…”

  He holds up a small electronic device. “Cell phone jammer. I’m afraid he’s all alone, and so are we, Katrina, apparently just as you wanted.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” She doesn’t like his tone.

  “You’ve been a very busy girl. Eddy I could understand, he never did like you, but Val and Misha? That was an unpleasant surprise,” he leers.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You killed them, I saw you. Now I suppose you’re going to kill me.”

  “That’s insane. Your leg is making you think crazy things, Stani. Let me look at it,” she says.

  It’s the only rational explanation for his rambling. Then he points to the laptop on the table, unnoticed by her until now. On the screen is a grainy image taken from the video at Eddy’s shop. A blond-haired woman stands over a body on the floor.