The Spy Who Came for Christmas Read online

Yeah, they came from the East all right, Kagan thought. In his weakened condition, the incense-like smell of the bonfires reminded him of the gifts the three Magi had brought to the baby Jesus: frankincense for a priest, gold for a king, and myrrh, an embalming perfume for one who is to die.

  But not what’s under my parka, Kagan thought. By God, I’ll do anything to make sure it doesn’t die.

  * * * * *

  “PAUL, WE HAVE a new assignment for you. How’s your Russian?”

  “It’s good, sir. My parents were afraid to speak it, even in secret. But after the Soviet Union collapsed, all of a sudden it was the only language they spoke around the house. The urge to use it had built up during the years they were in hiding. I needed to learn Russian so I could understand what they said.”

  “Your file says they defected to the United States in 1976.”

  “That’s right. They were part of the Soviet gymnastics team sent to the summer Olympics in Montreal. They managed to slip away from their handlers, reached the American consulate, and requested political asylum.”

  “Interesting that they chose the U.S. instead of Canada.”

  “I think they worried that Canada’s winters would be as cold as those in their former home in Leningrad.”

  “I was hoping you’d tell me they admired the American way of life.”

  “They did, sir, especially Florida, where they went to live and never felt cold again.”

  “Florida? I had an assignment there one Christmas. All that sun and sand, the mood didn’t work. They never felt cold? I assume you mean except for the Cold War.”

  “Yes, sir. The Soviets never stopped searching for defectors, especially ones who’d made international headlines. Despite the new identities the State Department gave them, my parents were always afraid they’d be tracked down.”

  “Their original names were Irina and Vladimir Kozlov?”

  “Correct.”

  “Changed to Kagan?”

  “Yes, sir. Gymnastics was their passion, but they soon realized they could never compete again. The risk of discovery was too great. They didn’t even dare go into a gymnasium and practice their moves. They knew they wouldn’t be able to resist doing their best, and if people saw how amazing they were, word would have spread. Perhaps to the wrong people. My parents were too terrified to take the chance. Suppressing their talents broke their spirit. That was the price of their freedom.”

  “They could have won gold medals?”

  “Almost certainly. But they defected because of me. Relationships between male and female gymnasts were strictly forbidden, but somehow they managed to find time to sneak away and be by themselves. Perhaps if the opportunity hadn’t seemed so rare, they might not have ... Well, in any case, when my mother realized she was pregnant, she knew that the Soviets would insist she have an abortion, to keep her in competition. She was determined not to let that happen.”

  “Only teenagers—they grew up fast.”

  “They were so paranoid about KGB agents grabbing us in the middle of the night that they raised me to be suspicious of everyone, to study everything wherever I went, and to watch for anybody who seemed out of place. As I grew up, I thought it was a normal way to live, always keeping secrets.”

  “So it was natural for you to become a spy.”

  * * * * *

  “COLE’S BEEN throwing up,” the man said into the telephone, taking care not to make his words sound forced. “Some kind of stomach bug. I’m afraid we can’t come to the party. . . .Yes, I’m sorry, too. It’s an awful way to spend Christmas Eve. ...I’ll tell him. Thanks.”

  He pressed the dial-tone button, then picked up a hammer from the counter and smashed the phone into pieces—just as he’d done with the phone in his office and the one in the master bedroom.

  Chunks of plastic flew across the kitchen.

  “There,” the man said unsteadily. He dropped the hammer, opened a woman’s purse that was lying on the counter, and took out a cell phone, shoving it into his coat pocket. “That takes care of everything.” He crossed the kitchen and yanked open the side door, the motion so violent that it sucked snow into the house. While the flakes settled over the woman lying on the floor, he raged outside and slammed the door behind him.

  Pressed against a kitchen cupboard, the boy was so stunned that for a moment he couldn’t speak. Finally, he found his voice.

  “Mom?” Tears burned his eyes. “Are you okay?” He moved toward her. Although the heel on his right shoe was higher than the one on the left, it didn’t fully compensate for his short right leg, giving him a slight limp.

  He knelt and touched her arm, feeling dampness where the snow that had blown in was already melting on her.

  “I’m . . .” His mother took a deep breath and found the strength to raise herself to a sitting position. “I’m . . . going to be all right.” Her right hand touched the side of her cheek, causing her to wince. “Get me . . . some ice cubes, would you, sweetheart? Put them in a dishcloth.”

  Moving quickly despite his limp, the boy grabbed a dishtowel from the counter and went to the side-by-side. He tugged the freezer door open, reaching in. The ice cubes chilled his fingers. While his mother groaned, making the effort to stand, he wrapped the ice cubes in the towel and hurried back to her.

  “You’re always a help,” she murmured. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.” She put the ice pack against her cheek. Blood from her lips smeared the cloth.

  Music played in the background, a jolly man singing, “Here comes Santa Claus.” In the living room, logs crackled in the fireplace. Lights glowed on the Christmas tree. Colorfully wrapped presents lay under it. They only made the boy feel worse.

  “Should I call the hospital?” he asked.

  “The phones are broken.”

  “I can go down the street and try to find a pay phone, or ask a neighbor.”

  “Don’t. I want you to stay close.”

  “But your cheek...”

  “The ice is helping.”

  The boy frowned toward the nearly empty whiskey bottle on the counter.

  “He promised.”

  “Yes,” the woman said. “He promised.” She took another deep breath. “Well...” She stood straighter, mustering determination. “We can’t let him ruin our Christmas Eve. I’ll...” She searched for an idea, but the look on her face told the boy she had trouble concentrating. “I’ll make us some hot cocoa.”

  “Mom, you ought to sit down.”

  “I’m fine. All I need are some aspirins.”

  “Let me make the cocoa.”

  Still holding the ice pack to her cheek, she studied him.

  “Yes, I don’t know what I’d do without you.” When she smiled, the effort hurt her injured cheek, and she winced again. She peered down. “My dress...” Its green had blood on it. “I’d better put on something else. Can’t spend Christmas Eve looking like this.”

  The boy watched as she wavered into the living room, along the hallway, and into the bedroom on the left.

  The music changed to “Frosty, the Snowman.”

  Cole limped into the living room and stared at the Christmas tree. He turned to the right toward the big picture window and peered out toward the falling snow.

  Behind his eyeglasses, tears blurred what he saw. Nonetheless, he was able to distinguish the footprints in the snow where his father had crossed the front yard and opened the gate. The lane beyond the fence was deserted. The cheerless lights from the Christmas tree in the living room reflected off the inside of the window.

  He promised, the boy thought. He promised!

  * * * * *

  ANDREI MOVED closer through the crowd, only ten people away now. The snowfall persisted, dimming the candles that burned in the paper bags along the street, deepening the shadows, providing cover. Almost perfect, he thought.

  Music drifted from an art gallery, carolers singing, “Oh, little town of Bethlehem.”

  Again, Andrei heard the accented voice
coming from the earbud under his watchman’s cap. The Pakhan’s angry tone was loud enough to hurt Andrei’s eardrums. “We need to assume Pyotyr’s a mole.”

  Pyotyr, Andrei thought bitterly. Of course, given what had happened, that surely wasn’t the target’s real name.

  It was a measure of the Pakhan’s anger that he’d stopped speaking in euphemisms. “The son of a bliatz probably belongs to law enforcement or American intelligence. But after everything we made him do to prove himself, I don’t understand why he waited until now to make his move. Why this assignment?”

  Maybe there were other times, Andrei thought. He recalled the failed missions and suddenly wondered if Pyotyr had been responsible for them.

  The voice raged, “At least you found his cell phone. If help hasn’t reached him by now, he probably doesn’t have a way to send for it.”

  Yes, you’re on your own, my friend, Andrei thought. Ten more steps and I’ve got you.

  “This is your fault,” the Pakhan’s voice roared. “Make it right!”

  Andrei thought back to when Pyotyr had arrived in Brighton Beach ten months earlier. Able to speak only Russian, the newcomer had kept to himself, earning money no one knew how. Always distrustful of outsiders, Andrei had followed him one night and watched as Pyotyr had used a pistol to rob a liquor store in the Bronx, beating a customer who resisted.

  The next night, Andrei had seen him mug two drunks outside a bar in Queens. The night after that, he’d watched Pyotyr hold up an all-night convenience store in Brooklyn and pistol-whip a clerk so hard that blood spattered the window. Reporting this information to his Pakhan, Andrei had been ordered to warn the newcomer that he couldn’t do any job without permission and that the Pakhan wanted a

  percentage.

  Pyotyr had been furious, demanding to meet this all-powerful man who told everyone what to do.

  “I worked away from the neighborhood. It’s none of his business.”

  “It will be if the police follow you here.”

  “I don’t make mistakes.”

  “Nice to meet someone who’s perfect.”

  “Listen to me. I got along all my life on my own. I don’t take orders from anybody.”

  “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 attentio
n.”

  “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.”

  “He promised I wouldn’t be bored.”