David Morrell - The Spy Who Came for Christmas

And my family, Andrei thought. If the Pakhan can’t find me, he’ll go after my wife and daughters.

“ Then what do you suggest?” Mikhail wanted to know.

“ We’ll approach the house from three sides,” Andrei decided. “Pyotyr can’t defend it from every angle. At least two of us are bound to get in.”

“ Those are pretty good odds, as long as I’m not the one who gets shot,” Yakov said.

“ Pyotyr’s wounded and weak from blood loss,” Andrei countered. “His aim will be affected. There’s a high probability that all of us will get out of this alive.”

“‘ High probability’ doesn’t fill me with confidence. Whoever goes in from the front takes the greatest risk. How do we decide who-”

“ The two of you sound like old women. I’ll take the front,” Andrei said irritably.

They stared at him.

“ Pyotyr knows I’m the one he has the most reason to fear. I’ll show myself in front of the house. He’ll be distracted. That gives the two of you a better chance to get inside from different directions. If we synchronize the attack precisely-”

“ We have company,” Yakov warned.

Andrei pivoted toward the lane. At first, he worried that police were arriving. But the figure he saw was alone, plodding through the snow: a man wearing a buttoned pale-gray coat and a hat with built-in earflaps. He walked with his head so low that he looked weary.

The holiday blues? Andrei wondered. Or maybe he’s just protecting his face from the snow.

A further thought occurred to him.

Maybe this is a policeman putting on some kind of act. If so, he won’t be alone. He’ll be setting up a trap.

Andrei thought of the Pakhan, of the clients, of Pyotyr.

Of his wife and daughters.

The man trudged closer, angling toward the opposite side of the lane, toward the gate.

I’ll take the risk, Andrei decided.

“ We’re going to Santa Fe for a baby?”

“ Yes, Pyotyr. For the child of peace.”

“ I don’t understand.”

“ Don’t you read the newspapers? Don’t you watch the news on television?”

“ The news? Bah. Everything they tell us here is propaganda, the same as it was back in Russia.”

“ Then you’ve never heard of Ahmed Hassan?”

“ Is that the child’s name?”

“ The father’s. He’s an obstetrician.”

“ Andrei, my English isn’t…”

“ Hassan delivers babies. He’s a surgeon who once specialized in treating Palestinians who were shot in gunfights with Israelis.

Over the years, he operated on two thousand combat patients. ‘But nothing got better,’ he said. So he changed his specialty and became a baby doctor. Thousands of children are in the world because of him, far more than all the gunshot patients he treated. As he tells his followers, he chose life instead of death, hope instead of hate.”

“ His followers? You make Hassan sound like some kind of religious leader.”

“ In a way, he is. Although he doesn’t have any religious authority, his speeches are so impassioned that a great many people are inspired by his sheer presence. He speaks like a prophet and attracts more disciples every day. They believe he has a vision. He preaches that war between Palestinians and Israelis will destroy the region and the rest of the world with it. Many-those who are tired of the decades of killing and destruction-agree with him.

“‘ The children,’ Hassan reminds them. ‘Think of our children. If we truly love them, if we treasure them as much as we claim to, we’ll give them a future and create a lasting peace.’”

“ Peace. You used that word to describe the baby.”

“ Yes, Pyotyr. The child of peace. Hassan’s child. His enemies are paying us three million dollars to steal it for them.”

“ The layout of the house?” Meredith sounded troubled.

“ Why do you need to know that?”

In the shadowy kitchen, Kagan saw her outline sit tensely straighter as she held the tiny glass to the baby’s lips.

“ No special reason,” he answered. “Just a standard precaution. A way to fill the time.”

“ Precaution?”

“ So I can anticipate.”

“ Anticipate what? You heard Cole. The man’s gone.”

“ Probably. The thing is, it’s always a good idea to have a backup plan.”

In the meager light, Kagan couldn’t see Meredith’s eyes, but he was certain that she studied him nervously. The silhouette of her head nodded toward a dark archway next to a recessed side-by-side refrigerator-freezer at the back of the kitchen.

“ The furnace and laundry room are through that arch,” she said. “There’s also a small bathroom, just a toilet and sink.”

“ Any windows back there?”

“ No.”

Kagan was grateful for that small blessing. “What about the rest of the house? Cole said his room is in front.”

“ Yes. In front there’s the living room, a bathroom, and then Cole’s room.”

“ What about in back?”

“ Ted’s office is behind the living room. The master bedroom is next to that.”

“ Across from Cole’s room?”

“ Yes. At the end of a hallway that divides that part of the house.

“ How many outside doors do you have?”

Kagan noticed that Meredith’s voice wavered as the logic behind his questions became impossible to ignore.

“ Three. The front door, the side door here in the kitchen, and one through Ted’s office. It leads to a back garden.”

“ What about an outside entrance to the basement?”

“ There isn’t a basement. Most Santa Fe houses are built on slabs.”

Another thing not to worry about, Kagan thought. “Attic?”

“ Not with the flat roof.”

“ The door in Ted’s office, is it wood or sliding glass?”

“ Wood.”

At least they can’t break through easily, Kagan thought. “Is it locked?”

“ Yes. I checked it when I thought we were leaving the house to go to the party. Then I checked it again after Ted… left.”

“ What about the other doors?” Kagan went over and examined the one in the kitchen, confirming that it was secured.

“ After Ted lost his temper, believe me, all the doors are locked.”

Kagan took another wary look out the kitchen window.

“ He wasn’t always like this,” Meredith said.

“ How so?” Kagan encouraged her to keep talking in the hope that it would distract her.

“ He knows he has a drinking problem. When we moved here from Los Angeles, he was determined to make a new start. In fact, that’s why we came here. Last spring, he visited Santa Fe for a business conference. The night he returned, all he could talk about were the mountains and the light and how the air’s so clean you can see forever. He kept saying the state’s called the ‘Land of Enchantment.’ I understood. We definitely needed some magic.”

“ So you moved here?” Kagan prompted her.

“ Two months later, in June, we were living in this house. On the Fourth of July, I remember, there was a pancake breakfast on the Plaza, thousands of people enjoying themselves. We sat under the trees and watched musicians playing bluegrass songs on the bandstand. People were dancing, having a wonderful time. Ted looked at me with a big smile and said, ‘It’s Independence Day, I promise.’

“ Twice a week, he went to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. We spent a lot of time as a family. We hiked in the ski basin. We drove across the valley to Los Alamos to see where they invented the atomic bomb. We explored the cliff ruins in Bandolier Canyon. Spanish Market, Indian Market, Fiesta. It was the best summer of my life.

“ In September, Ted had some business pressures that stopped him from spending time with us. I didn’t complain. The bills need to be paid. I did my part and got a job at one of the museums. At Thanksgiving, he brought home a bottle of wine. I must have looked upset because he said, ‘Hey, it’s not even red wine. It’s white. It’s nothing. I’ve been working seven days a week. What’s a turkey dinner without a little white wine?’”