David Morrell: The Spy Who Came for Christmas

Kagan couldn’t help glancing behind him: first toward the shadows of the laundry room, where Meredith hid with the baby, and then toward a glow in Ted’s office, presumably caused by a computer screen. He heard Ted’s fingers clicking at a keyboard.

Where’s Cole? he wondered.

“ But if you give me the package,” Andrei’s voice said, “I’ll let the family live.”

“ Even though they’re witnesses?”

“ Only the man saw us. But I’ll make an exception and allow him to live, along with his wife and son. We’ll be out of Santa Fe before the police get organized. I don’t risk much by letting the family survive. It’s my gesture to you, Pyotyr, because I valued your friendship, even though you didn’t value mine. Give me the package. Accept your punishment. Since you apparently have a conscience, at least you’ll know that others won’t suffer because of you.”

“ It’s a baby, Andrei. Not a package. If I do as you ask, what happens to him?”

“ Our clients will keep it, to use it to pressure Hassan into rejecting his cause and going back to being a doctor. That’s a better way than assassinating him and turning him into a martyr. In his speeches, Hassan promises his followers that he’ll be tireless in his pursuit of a lasting peace. When he swears, ‘I’ll never let you down,’ thousands flock to him. If he quits, his followers will be so disillusioned that his cause will wither.”

“ And a year from now? Two years from now? What happens to the child then?” Kagan demanded.

“ Hassan and his wife will be allowed occasional secret visits. There’s a birthmark on its left heel.”

“ Yes. Shaped like a rose.”

“ Proof that it’s still alive, that there hasn’t been a substitution. To keep anything from happening to it, Hassan and his wife won’t dare to take up the cause again.”

“ You keep calling the baby ‘it.’ Not ‘it,’ Andrei. He. A person.”

“ Pyotyr, you know there are only objects. If you’d remembered that, you wouldn’t be having this problem. What’s your real name?”

Kagan ignored the question. He had an urgent one of his own.

“ Hassan’s enemies, will they raise his child?”

“ Yes. Until he’s old enough to be trained as a suicide bomber.”

The statement felt like a blow to Kagan’s stomach. Something in him went numb. Only after a moment did he realize that Andrei had referred to the child as “he,” not “it.”

“ What’s your real name?” Andrei repeated.

Train him to be a suicide bomber? Kagan felt sickened, unable to speak.

Ted crawled from his office and reached Kagan, who tapped the microphone against his leg to prevent Andrei from hearing what Ted whispered.

“ I have phone capability on my computers, but when I tried the Santa Fe police, all I got was a busy signal. The snow must have caused a lot of accidents. I sent an e-mail to people I know in Santa Fe, telling them to contact the police and get a SWAT team here.”

Kagan nodded, doing his best to look optimistic. Still, he couldn’t help thinking, It’s Christmas Eve. Is this the one night of the year when people won’t check their e-mail? Or will their phone calls only jam the 911 phone circuits more? How many hours might it take before the police arrive?

The glow from Ted’s office made him feel exposed. He whispered to Ted. “The light from your monitors. Shut them off.”

Immediately, he stopped tapping the microphone and said to it, “My real name? It’s what I told you. It’s Pyotyr. I didn’t lie about everything. Our friendship’s real.”

“ Of course. And your last name?” Andrei’s voice asked.

“ You know I won’t tell you that. I need to protect my family.”

“ Your family?” Andrei sounded indignant. “You mean you have a wife, and you didn’t tell me?”

“ No! How could I work undercover this long and be married? Don’t you think I want a wife and children like you do? Don’t you think I envy you? My mother and father. They’re my family.”

Kagan said it with a subdued wave of grief. His parents were, in fact, dead-the victims of a drunk driver who’d hit their car head-on two years earlier. But he needed to try to make Andrei relate to him as a person, and parents who were still alive gave him a sympathetic reason not to reveal his last name.

“ And you work for American intelligence?”

“ Yes.”

“ You admit it. Finally, some truth.”

“ Andrei, remember the day we drove down to the gun dealer in Maryland to pick up that load of weapons the Pakhan wanted? We made the dealer add our Glocks as a bonus. We spent the afternoon on the firing range, testing who’s a better shot.”

“ And my Glock will be the gun that kills you.”

“ Listen to me. In the last few years, I can’t recall a better afternoon,” Kagan said. He concentrated on the kitchen door, ready to shoot if someone charged in. “I am your friend, Andrei. I was honored to be invited to your home. I felt privileged to be with your wife and daughters. They’re the family I never had. Remember when I saved your life in Colombia?”

“ Don’t make too much of that, Pyotyr.”

Kagan shifted his attention to the shadows in the hallway, listening for someone breaking in.

“ That drug lord was seriously pissed off when he realized the Soviet-era submarine you’d sold him would sink the first time he tried to use it to smuggle cocaine into the United States. I’m the one who spotted the ambush in that parking garage. You were ahead of me and the other men. I could have left you and run like the others did. But I got you out of there when no one else tried.”

“ And as thanks, I’ll make your death instantaneous.”

“ Some things can’t be faked, Andrei. Our friendship is one of them. You’d have sensed immediately if I was playing a game. I never told my controllers about anything that you were personally involved in. I never did anything that put you at risk.”

“ Except when you stole the baby.”

Kagan noticed that Andrei said “the baby” and not “the package.” That gave him a reason to hope.

“ No one is more ruthless than our clients,” Andrei insisted. “If I don’t deliver what they paid us to get, they’ll never stop hunting me. The Pakhan, too, will never stop hunting me.”

“ There’s an alternative!” Kagan kept pacing, checking the kitchen door and the hallway.

“ I can’t imagine what it could be.”

“ Come over to my side.”

“ Your side?”

“ Work for us.”

“ Defect?” Andrei made the concept sound outrageous.

“ Just pretend it’s the Cold War.”

“ Join American intelligence? And you make this proposal on a radio frequency to which my comrades are listening. Is this the quality of tradecraft your controllers taught you?”

“ It’s the only way I have of talking with you! Listen to me, Andrei. Working for my side is better than stealing babies. Don’t you have a personal low, a point beyond which you’d despise yourself? Isn’t there ever a time when you feel ashamed? Worse than that? Disgusted?”

Andrei fell silent.

“ That’s what I’ve been feeling for a very long time,” Kagan continued. “Self-disgust.”

“ I do what’s necessary for business,” Andrei’s voice replied.

“ But there are other ways to earn a living. Your wife doesn’t have any idea how many people you’ve killed to pay for that nice house near the beach. Your daughters don’t know how much blood it took to earn their tuition at that wonderful private school they attend. How do you suppose they’d react if they found out what you really are? One day, government agents will pound on your door. Or else one night, rival gangsters will go to your home and-”