David Morrell: The Spy Who Came for Christmas

Andrei hurried into the lane. Behind him, muffled footsteps raced between the galleries, Mikhail and Yakov joining him.

“ Those other routes are dead ends,” Mikhail reported.

They assessed the lane. There wasn’t much activity since most people preferred the attractions on Canyon Road.

Responding to their military background, they spread out. Andrei took the middle position and replaced his. 22 Beretta with the powerful 10-millimeter Glock. He moved slowly, carefully, straining his eyes to study everything through the haze of the falling snow.

Yakov spoke in a low voice. “Too many footprints. We can’t tell which are his.”

“ At least not yet,” Andrei murmured, searching for blood.

“ He might try to ambush us,” Mikhail said.

“ In that case, we’ve got him,” Andrei replied. “The way we’re spread out, he can’t take all of us before we return fire. But I’m not worried about an ambush. He won’t risk putting the child in danger, not while he still has strength to try to get it out of here.”

Andrei was reminded of something a soldier, one of his mother’s numerous boyfriends, had taught him when they’d gone on a hunting trip. The soldier had hoped the expedition would impress Andrei’s mother. The soldier’s unit was one of the first to be sent to Afghanistan in 1979, and Andrei had never seen him again. But because he and his mother had lived near a Soviet military base, there’d been many other soldiers to replace the man who’d left, and they were the only fathers Andrei had known.

Andrei had never forgotten that particular hunting trip. The soldier had taught him something that had turned out to be a life lesson. A wounded animal keeps running until weakness forces it to go to ground. Only when it’s cornered will it fight.

In what seemed increasingly to be a labyrinth, Kagan plodded through the snowfall. Its muted whisper made him feel as if something were wrong with his hearing, as if he were trapped in a snow globe. Because he still couldn’t risk raising his hood and impairing his peripheral vision, he allowed the snow to accumulate on his head. Periodically, he brushed it off. Nonetheless, his scalp felt frozen.

On the ground in front of him, the footprints were becoming less frequent, branching off to warm-looking homes behind fences and walls. Soon, his would be the only footprints remaining. He prayed that the snow would fill them before his hunters figured out which direction he’d taken.

As the baby squirmed under his parka, he shivered and thought, I risked my life for you. I could have walked away and disappeared. God knows, I was ready. I’ve been through more than anyone could imagine. I found terrorist threats no one would have dreamed of.

But to maintain my cover, I did things no one should have been forced to do.

He thought of the clerk he’d pistol-whipped while robbing an all-night convenience store in Brooklyn. His purpose had been to demonstrate his ferocity to Andrei, who-he knew-had followed him and was watching from across the street.

The clerk had spent two weeks in a hospital.

He thought of the restaurant owner whose front teeth he’d pulled out with pliers, when the Pakhan had wanted the man punished for failing to make a loan payment. Somehow, the man’s screams hadn’t prevented Kagan from hearing the clatter of the teeth when he’d dropped them to the floor.

He thought of the legs he’d broken and the homes he’d burned, the cars whose brakes he’d caused to fail and the water faucets he’d opened in the middle of the night, flooding businesses whose owners had refused to pay protection money. Again and again, he’d been compelled to prove himself to the Pakhan, to be increasingly brutal in order to gain admission to the inner circle and search for connections between Middle Eastern terrorists and the Russian mob.

He recalled how adamantly his mission controllers had refused to pull him out. There was always something bigger, something more dangerous that they needed him to pursue. They seemed determined to involve him in the mission forever, no matter how deeply he descended into hell.

Not any longer, Kagan mentally told the baby. It’s finished. I ended it because of you. Did I blow my cover because I wanted out or because you’re worth the price?

His weariness was such that, when the baby twisted against him, he almost believed it was assuring him that he’d done the right thing.

Lord help me, I hope so, he thought.

In the blue haze of the snowfall, he peered down and noticed that there was only one set of footprints ahead of him now.

Worse, they came in his direction.

And they were half full.

My tracks’ll be obvious, he thought, feeling a deeper chill.

Suddenly, his dizziness from blood loss threw him off balance. Feeling the baby kick under his parka, he held it firmly with his good arm and jerked out his injured one to balance himself. He groaned from the pain but managed not to fall.

Rapid clouds of frosted breath came from his mouth. The cold mountain air made his tongue dry. He moved forward again, parallel to the footprints, hoping to make it appear that someone had left home to look at the decorations on Canyon Road and had recently come back, that the two sets of prints belonged to the same person, leaving and returning.

Still dizzy, he reached a gate on his left. Beyond it, the faint footprints came from the side of a one-story adobe house. Its support beams projected from the flat roof in the manner of Native America pueblos. A covered porch stretched from one side of the house to the other. But they don’t call it a porch here, a hotel clerk had told him. It’s called a -

Stop losing focus! Kagan thought in dismay. His sense of being trapped in a snow globe had become so strong that it seemed as if the rest of the neighborhood no longer existed, that this house was the only place in the world. As he stared, it began to resemble a holiday postcard. A pine-bough wreath was on the front door. A row of colored lights hung above it. To the right, a window revealed a dark living room illuminated by a fire in a hearth and lights on a Christmas tree. He smelled the peppery fragrance of pinon smoke coming from the chimney.

The only house in the world? Don’t I wish, he thought.

The baby moved under his parka, and Kagan wondered if it sensed how exhausted he was, that he would soon collapse, that this house was their only chance. He stepped closer to the upright cedar limbs of a coyote fence, straining to see if there was any movement in the shadows beyond the main window.

To the left, a light glowed behind another window, this one small. Kagan saw a suggestion of cupboards and concluded that the light was in the kitchen, but he still didn’t notice any activity. The place seemed deserted.

Maybe the tracks belong to someone who lives here alone, Kagan thought. Maybe he or she went for a walk and turned the kitchen light on to make it appear that the house is occupied.

But misgivings made Kagan frown. Would someone have gone out and left a fire in the hearth? It’s not something I’d do, he decided. No, I can’t assume the house is deserted.

He directed his weary gaze farther to the left, where he saw a snow-obscured shed and a garage. I can try to hide there, he thought. Maybe it’ll appear as if the tracks belong to someone who returned to the side door of the house. He glanced behind him, worried that his hunters would suddenly appear, phantoms racing through the snowfall, guns raised, overwhelming him.

Continuing to use his good arm to secure the baby under his parka, he reached his wounded one toward the gate’s metal bolt. He bit his lip in a useless effort to distract himself from the pain. Then he tugged the bolt to the side and pushed the gate open.