Susan Downs - Ekaterina

“Well, faith is contagious, and you’d hate to let her get too close. It just might rub off.”

Vadeem closed his eyes. “Not now, Pyotr. Faith isn’t going to help me figure out what an old monk and Kat’s ancestor have in common. Nor will it help me figure out how an art smuggler from Abkhazia is going to fence a four million dollar religious icon.”

“A religious icon? How about sell it back to the Russian church?” Pyotr raised a finger to the bartender. “Mineral water.”

“Oh, we’ll get it back. That’s the problem. We spend a mint trying to track down these artifacts instead of feeding our people. The smuggler finds the goods, takes it out, and holds it ransom. And Russia pays. Why? Because the country is fragmenting before our eyes, and holding onto our past is our only way to save the future. Unfortunately, said funds are used to purchase AK-47’s and even missile launchers… even tanks. Pieces of the Russian arsenal, legal and not. Our problem is, we can’t find the link. Who’s the middleman? Who’s marrying our antiquities smuggler to the weapons dealers? More than once the shipment has gone out the same day as the ransom is paid. Someone knows the pay schedules and our inventory.”

Pyotr popped open the cap on his bottled water and held it in one wide hand. “Sounds like an inside job. Someone’s a traitor.”

The word brought bile up into Vadeem’s throat. “Yeah.”

“A ‘Wrecker’, I guess you’d say.”

Vadeem glared at him. “You don’t know how to back off, do you?”

Pyotr twisted the bottle in his hand, watching it sweat. “You know, some of the members of our own church body were sent to gulag as ‘Wreckers’. Just because you’re labeled as something, doesn’t make it true.”

“How about a believer? Can a person be called a Christian and not be one?”

“Of course. It’s a heart issue. Only God knows a person’s heart. Only He can see if they’ve been saved from sin.”

“And if they haven’t?”

“Well, if someone is a Christian, they have. And if not, they haven’t.”

“But what if,” Vadeem looked away, running his finger along the edge of his shot glass, “someone once called themselves a Christian, and… doesn’t now.”

Pyotr began to pick at the label. “You know, the important thing isn’t whether or not you made a confession of faith one day long ago during a foxhole moment, but rather if Jesus is your Lord today. Do you love God, this moment, this day? Instead of wracking your brain over what you said or did yesterday, you should take a look at your heart right now.”

“What about a person who…” the words burrowed in Vadeem’s chest, unable to surface.

“Is so angry at God he can’t see past his pain to trust, or love God?”

Vadeem looked at him, but didn’t nod. Pyotr continued to pick at the label, tearing it off in tiny sheets. “You ever heard the story of Job, Vadeem?”

Vadeem nodded, slowly.

“Job’s error wasn’t that he was angry at God. Job’s error was that he wanted to hold God accountable. Job wanted answers from God. God never said he’d give us answers for our troubles. He only said he’d be our light in the darkness. That He would give us the strength to hold on and help endure, even set us free from the pain.” He turned to Vadeem. “I have a feeling, Vadeem, you’re like the blind man… stumbling around in darkness. Whether or not you were a Christian before, you need Jesus’ healing now. I don’t know what kind of horror you’ve seen, but I do know that only God can save you. Like the story of Lazarus…”

He reached out and gripped Vadeem’s shoulder, staring at him with shepherd’s eyes. “…Jesus weeps for your pain. And he can raise you from the dead.”

Vadeem closed his eyes, hearing his father’s voice echo from the past. Hold onto your faith, Son. Only then will you see the Glory of God . Perhaps…

“Isn’t it time to take off your grave clothes and be set free?” Pyotr reached over, took the shot glass, and slid it down the bar.

Vadeem watched it go, wishing he could send his despair sailing with it.

“I don’t know, Pyotr. I always thought it would be easier to have faith in God, that he would reach out of heaven and send me a sign that He was there, that He cared. Help me believe in Him or something.”

Pyotr smiled, a slow creep up his face into delight, his eyes twinkling as if with a secret. “Well, He sent you Kat, now, didn’t He?”

Kat carried a cold bottle of Diet Coke, the sum of her breakfast, and padded the down the carpeted hall of the US Embassy, looking for John Watson and his wife. Cityscapes of Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Washington D.C. hung in metal black frames on the wall, reminding her of exactly what she’d left behind. She could barely hear the tangle of street traffic outside, and the sweet redolence of a fresh bouquet of lilacs filled the hall.

She felt light years from the rustic accommodations of the Hotel Rossia, or even the Yfa Intourist. She should have slept well in the lush comfort of the Moscow Hilton, paid for by Senator Watson and his family, but she couldn’t expunge Vadeem Spasonov’s handsome, betraying face from her mind to embrace blissful unconsciousness. She’d seen his wretched expression when she’d slammed the door, and an aggravating mix of regret and iron determination finally drove her from her bed to pace the night away in a swath of frustration across her carpeted floor.

Perhaps putting him a thousand or two miles behind her was for the best, even if she didn’t have the slightest intention of leaving Russia. She’d arrived at that decision somewhere around five A.M., and she wasn’t above hiding in the bathroom from whatever thug Vadeem planned to send to drag her onto the plane. They’d just have to throw her in the slammer.

Her own thoughts whisked the breath right out of her chest. What was she thinking, going up against the FSB? Exhaustion had obviously lulled her into thinking she was some sort of James-Bondish super agent, racing through Russia to save the world. Well, at least her world.

She couldn’t leave, not yet. Not when there were still answers lurking out there. Answers that felt so near she thought she might be able to reach out and touch them. She may have lost the key, her Bible, and her picture, but she still had God on her side.

That, she was sure of. Long after she’d crumpled with frustration in her room, crying, and even sending her boot into the wall with an unsatisfactory thump, she’d turned to the Bible. Thankfully, the Hilton had some faithful Gideons who had thought ahead and stuck a Russian/English New Testament/Psalms translation in the nightstand. It opened right to Psalm 100, like a beacon in a dark night. “For the Lord is good and His love endures forever. His faithfulness continues through all generations.”

God was faithful. She believed it in her heart even before the Almighty chose to save her, scrape after scrape, in Russia. And if they booted her out of the Motherland and barred the doors, God would still be faithful. But the yearning to dig into her past and find her family now burned like a bonfire inside her and she had to believe that God wanted her here. The peace overwhelmed her, nearly made her giddy in her wee-hour exhaustion.

She wasn’t going home. Not unless they gagged her and threw her in the luggage department.

Not that she would put it past Vadeem, the FSB pit bull. She’d have to get out of here soon to dodge him, or his just-as-sinister cohorts.

Kat opened the waiting room door, and stopped short at the delightful sight of Sveta Watson playing with her new son. Gleb had turned into a full-fledged American, complete with jean overalls, a rugby shirt, and adorable little hiking boots. His eyes were wide, but a grin had broken out on his face as his mother played patty-cake with him. Kat had seen many a new mother turn into a pile of nerves and doubt, but Sveta took to it like a mama bear to her cub, knowing exactly how to coax a smile out of the frightened toddler. Delight radiated on the woman’s face as she made baby sounds, bonding with her son despite their language barrier, proving to him that finally, he had a family. Someone to belong to.