“But the guy’ll see that I’m nervous,” Brody said. “He might suspect that I’m working for you.”
“Of course he’ll see that you’re nervous. That’s the beauty of the situation. You beat up your wife. You’re terrified that she’ll leave you. You come to beg her to forgive you. Then you discover there’s a stranger in the house. Who wouldn’t be nervous? He’ll never guess what’s really going on. Just do what we rehearsed. Tomorrow morning, you and your family can open your Christmas presents. Tonight will be just a bad memory.”
“I hope to God you’re right.”
Andrei gave Brody’s arm an encouraging squeeze.
“You’ll do this perfectly. I have faith in you.”
He watched Brody walk uneasily through the falling snow toward the gate.
The moment Brody was too far away to hear what he said, Andrei turned to his companions.
“Yakov, as soon as Brody’s inside, go to the left side of the house. Mikhail, go to the right. Use one of the metal chairs Brody told us about, and position it under a window in the master bedroom. Because you gave Brody your earbud and microphone, you and I will stay in contact via our cell phones while Yakov monitors the radio conversation. After we learn where the baby is and where the booby traps are, I’ll say, ‘Merry Christmas’ to Brody. That’s my signal to both of you. A second later, I’ll shoot out the front window and attack
through there.
“At the same time, Mikhail, you’ll stand on the metal chair and go through a window in the back bedroom. The noise will keep Pyotyr from hearing Yakov turn the key in the side door and charge in. We’ll be shooting from three different directions. There’ll be so much disruption, Pyotyr won’t know where to turn first. Plus, all those people will be in the way, screaming, panicking, interfering with his aim.
“When I picked up the cell phone Pyotyr lost, I also found his spare magazines. They must have been in the same coat pocket. Without enough ammunition to fight all of us, what chance does he have?”
“You don’t want Brody and his family injured?” Mikhail asked.
“On the contrary. They can’t be allowed to tell the police anything. I want them all dead. Except the baby. We can’t attack until we know where the baby is.”
* * * * *
THE COPPERY ODOR of the nursemaid’s blood filled Kagan’s nostrils. He watched Yakov draw his thumb across the cash in the thick envelope he’d taken from the woman’s corpse.
Andrei held out his hand.
“What?” Yakov asked.
“Our clients might want the bribe money returned to them,” Andrei said. “Give it to me.”
“And if they don’t remember to ask for the money?”
“Then the Pakhan will want his cut.”
Surprising Kagan, it was Viktor who spoke next, not Yakov. “Always the Pakhan,” the gangly newcomer said, holding the baby.
Andrei ignored him. “Yakov, I want the envelope.”
With a sigh, Yakov gave it to him.
“After the Pakhan takes his cut, I’ll divide the money evenly,” Andrei promised.
“We’ll make sure you do.” Viktor tightened his grip on the squirming baby.
Andrei turned toward him. “You’re new, Viktor. You’re still learning how things work here, so I’ll make an exception just this once. But never challenge me again.”
Viktor’s eyes became fierce. “Yakov challenged you also. Give him shit, the same as you do me.”
“Yakov challenged me? I don’t think so.”
Viktor glowered. “Whatever you say.”
“Now you’re getting the idea. Whatever I say.”
The baby whimpered in Viktor’s arms. The sound—and the helplessness it conveyed—stirred something in Kagan.
“Give the package to Mikhail,” Andrei said.
“But I can handle it,” Viktor objected.
“It doesn’t like you. Do as we rehearsed and give the baby to Mikhail before you make it cry.”
Kagan watched Andrei step close to the baby and concentrate on its small, unhappy face. An odd emotion seemed to cross Andrei’s own face, a feeling he apparently found so unusual that it baffled him. As Viktor gave the struggling baby to Mikhail, Andrei shook his head, giving the impression that he forcibly subdued the unfamiliar emotion. He stuffed the envelope into an inside pocket of his ski jacket, then pressed the microphone that was hidden under the ski-lift tickets on the jacket.
“This is Melchior. We have the package. We’re leaving the store. Two minutes.”
Viktor and Yakov opened the bedroom door and checked to make certain the hallway was deserted before stepping out of the room. They put their weapons in their coats and motioned for Mikhail to follow with the baby. Kagan and Andrei went last, concealing their pistols, making sure the door was locked behind them.
As they’d rehearsed, Kagan hung a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the doorknob. The television continued to murmur in the suite, the elderly man’s voice still maintaining that he was Santa Claus.
They went down the curved staircase and walked along the carpeted hallway, passing the desk where the receptionist had greeted them before Mikhail had killed her.
Viktor opened the security door that isolated this exclusive group of rooms from the rest of the hotel. Keeping Mikhail and the baby in the middle, the group passed the elevator, opened a fire door, and went down a harshly lit concrete stairwell. As they descended, they took off their latex gloves and put on their outdoor ones.
The baby’s whimper echoed amid their scraping footsteps.
“This is Melchior. One minute till arrival,” Andrei said to his microphone.
Three floors down, they reached the street level. Here a security camera was aimed at the corridor. They kept their heads down and tightened their two-one-two formation, partially shielding Mikhail in the middle so the camera couldn’t see the baby in his arms.
Through a glass door—the side exit from the hotel—Kagan saw snow falling past murky streetlights. Warmly dressed people walked past the window. Beyond vehicles parked along the curb, a dark van suddenly stopped.
I can’t do this, Kagan thought.
That afternoon, for a long time, he’d knelt in the nearby cathedral and stared at a manger scene, trying to tell himself that his controllers were absolutely right, that the innocent lives he’d saved were all that mattered. “Bring me home,” he’d begged them in dead-drop messages during the past three months. Sometimes he’d managed to slip away from Andrei and risk phone calls. But there had always been some reason his controllers couldn’t bring him in. He was too well placed, they’d insisted. No one could ever hope to penetrate the Russian mob so deeply. If he disappeared, the Russians would realize he was a spy, making it more dangerous to try to infiltrate another operative into the heart of their organization.
“Then fake my death,” Kagan had urged them. “The Russians won’t suspect I was a mole if they think I’m dead.” But his controllers had talked of new rumors, about plastic explosives, hand-held missiles, and biological weapons being smuggled in via ports controlled by the Odessa Mafia. They’d reminded him of all the innocent lives he had an obligation to save.
Meanwhile, he’d obeyed the Pakhan’s orders to burn homes, break arms and legs, yank out teeth, and beat up women. More of his soul had disintegrated.
Viktor and Yakov stepped from the hotel and looked both ways, staring at pedestrians in the shadowy snowfall. With a nod, they signaled to Mikhail to carry the baby outside. Andrei and Kagan followed.
Kagan’s cheeks felt cold. His stomach felt colder.
Too much, he thought. No more.
The group passed between snow-covered cars parked along the curb. Headlights glowed in the street. Reaching the van, Viktor pulled its side door open. Yakov scrambled in. Mikhail approached with the baby. Andrei and Kagan followed.
The baby squirmed in Mikhail’s arms.
I wanted to make the world better, Kagan thought.
The baby cried. M
ikhail held it with one arm while using his free hand to grip an armrest in the van and climb in.
“Don’t drop it,” Andrei warned.
I wanted to fight the kind of men who made my parents afraid for so many years, Kagan thought.
The baby struggled as Mikhail sat next to Yakov opposite the side door.
And now I’m no different from the people I set out to fight.
Kagan let Andrei climb in next. With the middle seat occupied, Andrei was forced to squeeze toward the seat in the back.
I’ve beaten. I’ve tortured. I’ve killed, Kagan thought. But by God, this is one thing I won’t do.
He leaned into the van, as if to reach for an armrest and climb all the way in. His heart pounding, he pointed in feigned alarm.
“What happened to the baby? It’s bleeding!”
“What?” Mikhail asked. “Where?” He opened his arms to examine the child.
Kagan grabbed it, surged back from the open door, felt Viktor behind him, and swung. Something tugged violently at his coat, but only for a moment. With both arms gripping the baby, Kagan focused on his right elbow. He pivoted with such force that when the tip of the elbow struck Viktor’s nose, he felt the bones crack. They shattered and propelled inward with such power that Kagan knew they’d pierced Viktor’s brain.
Hearing shouts of alarm coming from the open van, he charged up the street, veered between cars at the curb, reached the sidewalk, and shouted for pedestrians to get out of his way. All at once, his left arm jerked, then became numb.
He’d been hit by a bullet. The sound suppressor on the gun that had fired it prevented bystanders from knowing why glass had shattered in front of him.
That’s the last shot they’ll fire, he desperately hoped. Andrei won’t take the chance of a stray bullet hitting the baby.
As he hurried through the crowd, Kagan used his now-awkward left arm to pull down the zipper on his parka. The numbness changed to searing pain. Imagining Andrei, Yakov, and Mikhail scrambling from the van, he shoved the baby under his coat and pulled up the zipper to provide warmth.
Andrei would immediately chase him, Kagan knew. Yakov and perhaps Mikhail would drag Viktor’s body into the van before the pedestrians could realize what had happened and start a panic. Then the two killers would join the hunt.
Andrei’s voice shouted through his earbud.
“Pyotyr, what the hell are you doing?”
Kagan increased his speed, shouldering past people on the sidewalk.
“Pyotyr, bring back the package!”
Instead of answering, Kagan took deep breaths and rushed toward the cathedral that towered at the end of the narrow street. The baby nestled against him, warm and surprisingly calm against his stomach.
I’ll protect you, he silently promised. I’ll do everything in my power to keep you safe.
He looked for a police car, tempted to ask for help, but immediately he realized that during the time it would take to explain, Andrei and the others would catch up. They would shoot Kagan and the policeman in the head and take the baby.
Phone for backup, he told himself. Desperate to contact his controllers, he used his stiffening arm to reach for the cell phone in the left pocket of his coat. He felt dizzy when he discovered that the pocket was torn open, that his cell phone was missing, along with his spare ammunition. He remembered something tugging at the side of his coat. Someone must have lunged to try to stop him and snagged that pocket.
Have a plan, a backup plan, and then a backup plan after that. Kagan’s instructors had hammered that into him. Visualize what you’re going to do. Rehearse it in your mind, even if you can’t rehearse it physically. Never do anything without knowing your options.
But Kagan’s decision to take the baby had been made on the spot. Even though he’d agonized about it that afternoon in front of the cathedral’s manger, he hadn’t made up his mind until the moment he’d leaned into the van and told Mikhail, “The baby’s bleeding!”
Where am I going? Kagan thought in desperation.
Ahead, he saw a crowd on the street to the right of the cathedral. Hundreds of people walked with purpose. Under his parka, the baby kicked him, as if urging him to follow.
“Pyotyr!” Andrei’s angry voice pierced through Kagan’s earbud. “I found your cell phone! You’re on your own! You can’t get help! Bring back the package!”
Breathing hard, wincing from the pain that now swelled his left arm, Kagan kept rushing, trying not to lose his balance on the slippery sidewalk. He heard someone in the crowd talk about Christmas lights on Canyon Road.
The baby kicked him again.
“Pyotyr, you won’t like what I do to you,” Andrei swore.
* * * * *
THE BABY WHIMPERED.
“Don’t cry,” Kagan murmured.
“I’m doing my best to calm him,” Meredith insisted.
“I know,” Kagan answered gently.
Muscles tightening, he continued to stare out the window toward the falling snow. He couldn’t suppress the suspicion that somehow the baby was warning him, as crazy as that seemed.
Did I lose more blood than I realized? Am I so light-headed that I’m imagining things?
The baby became quiet again. But Kagan’s muscles didn’t relax.
“The rest of the story might not be suitable for Christmas Eve,” Kagan said. Hoping to keep the boy intrigued, he added, “Parts of it are what Cole would call gross.”
“Then I want to hear it,” the boy insisted.
Kagan licked his dry lips. “Okay, but don’t say you weren’t warned.
“The Magi felt overwhelmed by what the shepherds and Mary had told them. The startling similarities to the story they themselves had told Herod brought them to an extraordinary decision. They violated a primary rule of spy craft and exposed their mission, confessing to Mary that they were foreign operatives pretending to work for Herod.
“‘We wanted to drive him insane searching for an imaginary newborn king of the Jews,’ they explained. ‘But now we find that the story we invented is true. You can’t stay here. Soon Herod will wonder why we haven’t reported to him. If he learns about your baby from another source, his soldiers will come here and kill you all.’
“What happened next proves that Mary and the shepherds weren’t part of a rebel scheme. If they’d been rebels, they’d have realized that the Magi were on their side. They’d have admitted they were rebels and tried to join forces with the Magi to weaken Herod.
“But they didn’t. Instead the two groups separated and fled. The Magi chose a new route eastward toward home and acted as decoys. Meanwhile, Joseph hurried with Mary and Jesus southwest toward Egypt. He claimed that he’d had another dream, this one urging him to take his family and run. A spy would argue that the dream was a cover story to protect the Magi, in case Joseph was caught and questioned. It was believable because, as I mentioned, the house of David—to which Joseph belonged—had a tradition of respecting dreams and acting on them. For the same reason, the Magi claimed that they too had experienced a dream that urged them to return home. If questioned, they could maintain that they weren’t being disloyal to Herod but were simply responding to the same dictates of their faith that had told them to follow the star.
“Whether Herod would have believed either of these stories is debatable. But at least they had a backup plan.
“Matthew’s gospel notes that Joseph, Mary, and Jesus fled by night, something the Magi would have urged them to do, teaching them how to cross the desert in the darkness. The Magi themselves disappear at this point, as good spies should. But the man who told me this version of the Christmas story believed that the Magi eventually rejoined Jesus,
Mary, and Joseph in Egypt, teaching them the tricks of tradecraft, such as how to spot signs that they were under surveillance, how to recruit operatives—or what the gospels call disciples—and how to detect double agents.
“The last part makes me certain that Jesus knew Judas would betray
him. Indeed, perhaps Jesus ordered Judas to betray him in order to fulfill a prophecy. The spy world is a complicated place. But this is a Christmas story, not an Easter one.”
Cole interrupted him. “You said you had a theory about why Joseph wasn’t with Mary when the Magi talked to her.”
“Yes. Given his immense responsibility, Joseph became more a protective agent than a husband and father. While the Magi spoke with Mary, Joseph watched the street outside, on guard against Herod’s soldiers. In the future, he would spend increasingly less time with Mary and Jesus because he was always arranging for their security. Like the Magi, he soon disappears from the gospels completely, as a good security officer should. Nowhere in the gospels is he quoted directly. He hovers invisibly in the background.”
“But you said there were gross parts,” Cole objected.
“Several. They all involve Herod. Contrary to what the Magi hoped, he didn’t chase the phantom accounts that popped up here and there all over the country. His erratic behavior didn’t destabilize Israel. Instead he did something so disturbing that no one could have predicted it, even taking into account his past actions.
“When Herod realized he’d been tricked, his fury prompted him to send his men to Bethlehem and the other villages in that area. The soldiers obeyed his orders and slaughtered every male child who was two years old or less. Herod couldn’t be certain when exactly the new king had been born. By choosing the wide margin of two years, he felt certain he’d eliminated the threat.”
“Every boy who was two years old or less?” Cole sounded shocked, yet fascinated. “I heard about that, but I never realized . . . How many boys did he kill?”
“Perhaps as many as a hundred. Tradition says it was a far greater number, but the population of the area that included Bethlehem wasn’t large enough for there to be thousands of children. Even so, the mass murder of a hundred children would have felt like thousands. The effect on the region was catastrophic.
“If a revolution was indeed being planned, this slaughter of children was so startling that now no one dared move against Herod. How can you fight someone so psychotic that, in his will, he had made arrangements for several hundred men to have their throats slit at his funeral? He gave that order because he wanted tears to be shed at his death. It didn’t matter if the tears were for him or for the slaughtered men. All he cared about was that his subjects would be grief-stricken.