David Morrell: The Spy Who Came for Christmas

“ In that case, the Pakhan told me to kill you,” Andrei said matter-of-factly.

“ You can try.”

“ Very amusing.”

“ I mean it. Try. I won’t let that yebanat give me orders.”

“ That’s what I said when I first came to Brighton Beach. But I didn’t have identity papers, and you don’t, either. If I wanted to stay in the United States, I needed the Pakhan to help me, and that meant I needed to go along with whatever the Pakhan told me to do.”

“ There are other Russian communities where I can hide.”

“ And where other Pakhans enforce the same rules. You’re willing to stand up to me. That’s rare. So I’ll give you some valuable advice-it’s easier to do what he says than to force me to kill you. Save me the trouble. Take the jobs he hands out. You’ll earn more than you do holding up liquor stores.”

“ Even after I pay him his cut?”

“ Once he takes his cut and shows who’s boss, he’s generous enough to buy loyalty. Why else do you think I work for him? I don’t like him any more than you do.”

The Pakhan had tested Pyotyr on small jobs and found his ferocity to be so impressive that he’d begun pairing Andrei and Pyotyr on major assignments. For the past six months, the two had spent long hours in vehicles and alleys, had shared motel rooms, and had eaten more breakfasts together than Andrei had ever eaten with his wife. There was something about Pyotyr that impressed Andrei, perhaps because the younger man’s determination and stubbornness reminded him of what he had been like at an earlier time.

In Colombia, if not for you, Pyotyr, that drug lord would have killed me.

What the hell happened tonight? Nobody turns against us. Viktor’s dead because of you. The assignment’s at risk because of you.

Damn it, I invited you into my home. I introduced you to my family. I trusted you when I never trusted anyone.

Be careful, Andrei warned himself. Don’t make this personal.

That’s how mistakes get made. I’ll punish him. Yes, I’ll punish him.

But right now, he’s just a target. Remember that, or he won’t be the only one who’s punished. Pyotyr doesn’t matter. What’s under his coat- that’s what matters.

A teenager nestled a paper bag into a sling attached to a large balloon. A candle glowed inside the bag as the balloon was released and floated upward despite the snowfall.

Carolers sang, “Oh, star of wonder…”

Suddenly, a heavy man wearing a Santa Claus hat bumped against Kagan’s left arm. The intense pain that shot through his wound almost made him groan. For an instant, he feared he was being attacked, but the clumsy man who’d knocked against him plodded on through the crowd. Still, it wouldn’t be long before a real attacker reached him, Kagan knew. He sensed his hunters drawing closer, tightening the trap.

With a determined effort not to look frantic, he scanned the people in front of him and the gaily lit galleries on each side, his senses stretching wider. He shivered from the snow on his unprotected head and wished he could pull up the hood on his parka, but he didn’t dare restrict his vision.

Can’t risk missing a possible escape route, he thought. Need to find cover.

A lane appeared on the left, leading to a cluster of galleries, their Christmas lights haloed by the falling snow. Kagan kept moving forward. A street opened on the right, narrow like Canyon Road, almost as crowded, flanked by bonfires. Feeling the cold spread beneath the partially open zipper of his parka, he almost headed to the right.

The object under his coat squirmed.

No, Kagan decided. That’s not the street I want. We won’t be safe there. We need to find another way.

We.

The weight of the word struck him.

“ Guide us to thy perfect light.”

Wincing from the pain in his arm, he sheltered the baby under his parka and carried him through the snowfall.

“ Paul, your file says your parents became martial artists.”

“ A substitute for gymnastics. Eventually, they earned black belts in karate. Given their fear of the Soviets, it was a good skill to develop. Of course, they never competed. Again, there was too much danger of publicity.”

“ Meanwhile, the State Department bought them a small house where they wanted to live, in Miami.”

“ Yes, sir. They moved there after taking an intensive English-language course. Even years later, they never quite got rid of their Russian accents. As a consequence, they seldom spoke to outsiders. If anyone asked where they came from, they used the cover story the State Department had invented for them and claimed they were the children of Russian immigrants.

“ I can’t imagine how foreign everything must have seemed to them, how confusing and terrifying, all because my mother wouldn’t let the Soviets abort me. Think of it-they were only eighteen. Obviously, they couldn’t afford to own the house we lived in, so they claimed they were renting it. If anyone asked why they’d married so young, they told a version of the truth and said that my mother had gotten pregnant before they were married, that they’d been forced to get married. Of course, they’d really wanted to get married, but putting it that way was embarrassing enough to make people stop asking personal questions.

“ My parents had no skills, apart from gymnastics, so the State Department did the best it could and got my father a job at a landscaping company. When I was a baby, my mother stayed home with me during the day. At night, my father watched me while my mother cleaned offices.”

“ The American Dream. Paul, your file says that they took you with them to the martial-arts classes. You earned a black belt by the time you were fifteen.”

“ That’s correct. Like my parents, I didn’t compete. I didn’t want the attention.”

“ A good instinct for a spy. How were you recruited?”

“ The State Department maintained contact with my parents to make sure there weren’t any problems. Evidently, its intelligence arm saw potential in me because I was good at sticking to the cover story and playing the role I’d been given.”

“ Why didn’t your parents tell you the same lies they told everyone else? You’d never have known their real background. You wouldn’t have been forced to play a role.”

“ They said they needed an extra set of eyes and ears to guard against threats. But I think they had another reason. I think they needed someone with whom they could share their secrets. It was a lonely life for them.

“ My last year of high school, an intelligence officer came to our house and offered to pay all my expenses if I agreed to be educated at the Rocky Mountain Industrial Academy outside Fort Collins, Colorado. That was a big deal. My parents couldn’t afford to send me to college. I was promised a job after I graduated.”

“ Was the recruiter forthright that this was an espionage school and that he was asking you to become an intelligence operative?”

“ He couldn’t have been more direct. His approach was that I could help stop the sort of repression that had caused my parents to live in terror, even after they came to the United States.”

“ An excellent pitch. I’m impressed.”

“ He was a first-rate recruiter. He understood how much I felt indebted to my parents. After all, they’d risked everything for me. It was a house of fear. I grew up hating the Soviets and any other group that made people feel as afraid as we did. The recruiter was right to approach me from that angle. He asked me if I wanted to get even. He asked me if I’d like to make a better world.”

“ So you went to the Rocky Mountain Industrial Academy. I taught there twenty years ago. That brings back a lot of memories.”