Ekaterina (2 page)

Don’t smile. Don’t smile.
She stared at the passport official. . .at her chubby hands leafing through Kat’s empty passport. . .at her bushy gray frown as she scrutinized Kat’s visa picture. The woman looked up to compare Kat’s appearance to the photo. Kat met her gaze with a blank face and congratulated herself.

“Purpose of your visit to Russia?” The woman’s wide cheeks jiggled when she talked. Kat blinked, and searched for her voice.

“Uh, personal,” she stammered.

The stamper clinked, and a purple circle appeared on the second page of Kat’s passport. The woman handed it over. “Enjoy your stay in Russia.”

Kat gathered her papers and held them to her chest, over her pounding heart.
Yes, oh yes. . .

“Zis way.” The uniformed soldier gestured to a security scan.

Kat thumped her backpack onto the rolling belt and stepped up to the scanner. She watched her bag pass through, then received a nod from the attendant.

Enter,
she thought as she stepped under the gates,
your past.

The harsh screech of the security siren stopped her heart cold.

She froze under the arch. The siren blared. Two security officials marched toward her.

The soldier behind them swung his gun off his shoulder.

Then, a hand closed around her arm, yanking her back the way she’d come.

“Zis way, please.”

She looked up into the cold gray eyes of the Russian militia.

-

“Is he through?”

Captain Vadeem Spasonov pulled the binoculars from his eyes, blinking at the sudden change in vision. “Yep. Just before the siren went off.” He scanned the crowd pushing against the glass walls that surrounded the baggage claim area. Families, waiting for loved ones, drivers holding placards with names written on them, interpreters, and business associates barking into cell phones and checking flight schedules, all hoping to catch a glimpse of the arriving passengers. “Any clue who he is meeting?”

Captain Ryslan Khetrov shoved his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket. Vadeem’s partner looked every inch the FSB agent—a member of the international security force of Russia—with his shaved blond hair, square chin, dark eyes, and meaty hands that could probably wrap twice around a man’s neck. Vadeem was never sure if that was a smile or a grimace on the man’s face. He hadn’t known Ryslan long enough to figure it out. Maybe he never would.

“Not a clue this time,” Ryslan answered. “Keep your eyes on him.” He turned his back to Vadeem. “I’ll watch the crowd, see if anyone looks the type to hang out with an Abkhazian gangster.”

Vadeem peered through the glasses. “He’s more than that. He’s looking to restart the war. He’s already purchased an arsenal big enough to put a serious dent in the peace-keeping forces.” He trained his gaze on the tall man in a black trench coat who had stopped mid-stride and now peered back at passport control.

Ivan Grazovich looked like a scholarly professor on sabbatical. Vadeem narrowed his eyes as the man turned, as if checking for someone in the line.

Vadeem couldn’t wait to nail this slime ball who unearthed Russia’s riches and sold them to the highest bidder—most of the time back to the Motherland herself. Grazovich reinvested the cash in renegade Russian artillery, easily had through the Internet or from former comrades holding onto their own personal stash. The irony felt like a blow between the solar plexus. Worse yet, someone inside Russia was helping him escape the Motherland with his treasures tucked in his belt—someone with enough military clout to know where to send the general to shop for tanks and rocket launchers and, most likely, the same someone who knew how to woo Mother Russia into buying back pieces of her past while her children, her future, starved.

So far, the smuggler had been able to sneak out with a 13
^th
century icon of St. Nickolas laden with gold and lapis lazuli stones, a tapestry of Peter the Great woven in 1723, and an Ivan Lulibin goose-egg clock made of pure gold—national treasures they’d recovered, at painful price tags.

Not this time. This time, Vadeem hoped to catch both thief and traitor at their game. The assignment had Medal of Merit possibilities written all over it. Unfortunately, Grazovich and his traitor in crime were as slippery as month-old bacon grease.

Vadeem watched Grazovich stalk back towards the passport booth. “What’s he up to?”

“Let me see.”

Vadeem handed the glasses over to his partner. From their perch in the militia office overlooking customs control, they had an advantageous view of both passenger and greeter. Behind them, security officers scanned computer screens, giving every passenger a double scrutiny. Vadeem wondered if it was the officer behind him or the lady below who had set off the screeching alarm. He noticed rookie Denis leaning over the shoulders of the security team, casually reading each screen. Vadeem hid a smirk. The fresh-out-of-academy recruit with the short black hair and intense hazel eyes rather reminded Vadeem of his early days, when he’d been the wiry, astute, ear-to-the-ground soldier, waiting for the assignment that would make his career.

Vadeem was still waiting.

“He’s walking back through the security arch.”

“What?” Vadeem watched Grazovich as he ran toward a burly female security officer hauling off a terrified American woman. The traveler looked the color of chalk, and she couldn’t quite keep pace with the elephant-legged stride of the guard. Vadeem stepped over to a junior officer manning a computer. “Who is she?”

“Nobody. Says her name is Ekaterina Hope Moore. First time in Russia, not even another country listing on her passport.” The skinny corporal in a gray military shirt typed something. “Says here she’s from New York.”

“Immigrant?”

“Nope, born in Nyack, New York, in the U. S. of A.”

“
Klasna.
” Vadeem gripped the tightening muscles in his neck. “Just what we need, an American trying to hawk some retired military hardware.”

“You think she could be Grazovich’s contact?” This from Denis, who had popped into their huddle.

Vadeem watched the trio below as the guard pulled the American to a table and, throwing the backpack aside, she began to frisk her detainee with the gentleness of a female wrestler. The lady from New York hardly looked like an arms dealer, but then again, innocents made the best mules.

“I want to talk to her.”

“Vadick, don’t scare off Grazovich.” Ryslan grabbed his leather coat sleeve.

Vadeem shrugged out of his grip. “The general doesn’t have a clue who I am. I could be a local taxi driver for all he knows.”

Vadeem, however, knew Ivan Grazovich inside and out. He knew what he liked for breakfast, that he preferred Absolut Vodka over the Russian Smirnoff, that his last girlfriend had been found in a dumpster in Amsterdam. Oh, yes. Although Vadeem had joined the COBRAs, an elite, international crime-stomping task force of the Federal Security Bureau, or FSB, only a month ago, he knew Ivan Grazovich better than he’d known his own parents.

The thought made him wince. Even the little he could remember about his parents was fading after twenty years. He’d spent most of his life memorizing the daily habits of the current ward nurse in his orphanage rather than gleaning the finer points of manhood from a father. The difference meant he learned more about how to read people in a flash than how to build a relationship—a lesson he’d taken to heart and practiced well as his stint as a Red Beret in the new Russian Army. He could count his close friends on his closed fist, and he liked it that way.

He’d learned at the sturdy age of eight the high cost of friendship and had veered an unwavering course around it ever since. Ryslan, his partner of three weeks, was the closest thing he had to a buddy, and even that thought wasn’t appetizing when he had to choose between an unscheduled Saturday afternoon hike through Moscow’s Gregarin Park or stacking shots of vodka at the local FSB night dive with Ryslan and his COBRA pals.

Not that belonging to the elite group of COBRAs didn’t have its merits. With the right moves, he could have any number of women lining up to melt his cold exterior. But they only saw a man whose physique reflected familiarity with the rigors of a regular PT schedule. And their brand of friendship left his gut pinging with emptiness. He’d pass on the ladies, the buddies, and, as for the COBRAs, well maybe a high-profile arrest would do what the vodka shots and false camaraderie couldn’t—earn their respect.

“Just keep your eyes on him.” Vadeem shrugged out of his leather jacket, reached over, and pulled a militia uniform jacket off a coat tree. Grabbing the hat off the corporal, he snuggled it down over his head. “If she is involved, I’ll know.”

Ryslan harrumphed as he left the militia booth.

Vadeem buttoned the jacket over his black pullover as he thumped down the stairs, hoping Grazovich didn’t notice his black jeans and loafers instead of the standard issue military grays and black boots.

The American’s confused voice lifted over the cluster of officers as she gestured to something in her hand. He approached the tallest officer, who stood a few feet back. “What’s up?”

“An American. She set off the alarm with some sort of souvenir she had in her coat pocket.”

“What is it?”

“Looks like a key.” The official moved away, and Vadeem got a full view of the hapless arms dealer. She looked about as sinister as his grandmother, if he had one. Her tousled hair, the color of caramel, fell over her face in thick strands, and a button on her white blouse had come undone. Her jacket, a glaring red affair that screamed “tourist!” hung off her shoulders, weighted down on one side by a bulging backpack that skimmed the carry-on limit. Fear filled those big amber eyes, and for a moment they looked up, and caught him staring at her.

Her expression was so desperate it rattled his resolve to hike her back to one of the dusty offices and put her thumbs to the screws.

“Please, gentlemen, return this woman’s key and let her be.” Ivan Grazovich, smuggler and terrorist to the rescue.

Vadeem’s eyes narrowed, seeing the way the gangster moved close and tucked an arm around the lady’s waist. “She’s with me,” Grazovich said.

A tall soldier with gray eyes gave Grazovich a hard look. “And who are you?” Vadeem stepped closer, gaze pinned to the woman, and watched the way her blue eyes widened in shock? Or relief?

Oh, she was about as innocent as Comrade Stalin.

“Leave the woman alone, gentlemen. Haven’t you terrified her enough for one day?” Grazovich smiled. Mr. Good Will.

Vadeem repulsed the urge to grab the smuggler by the cuff of his starched white dress shirt, or his black trench coat, and wrestle the truth out of him with the blunt end of his Makarov.

Instead Vadeem strode forward and hooked a hand around the woman’s arm. “You can wait for her past customs,” he clipped at Grazovich. Then, ignoring the man’s glower, he towed Miss Arms Dealer through the crowd and into the inner sanctum of Militia Border Control.

-

Ilyitch stood in the shadows and watched the FSB agent tow the American into his custody. A sick feeling welled in his gut. She’d taken the bait, and now all their hard work, the waiting, the plotting would disintegrate under the scrutiny of Russia’s finest. They would confiscate her belongings, ship her stateside on the next available transport and, with her, his hope of wiggling out from under the general’s thumb. Every time Grazovich set foot on Russian soil, Ilyitch took a quick and painful survey of his rubles, no, dollars, and cursed the balance. He needed Grazovich to be right. Ilyitch didn’t have time, patience, or luck to waste chasing after a fable.

Especially with the FSB on their trail. Ilyitch noticed Grazovich watching the FSB spectacle. An ugly smear masqueraded as a smile on the smuggler’s face. Again, Ilyitch would have to yank Grazovich out of the hole he’d dug. And then he’d have to baby-sit, hoping the general avoided trouble. . .like seducing, or worse, an American on her first day in town, at least until she helped them unlock the secrets of the monk.

Ilyitch turned and shoved his fists into his jacket pockets, ruing the day he’d met the general, and every day he’d known him since.

Chapter 2

Ten paces into custody, Kat’s voice caught up to her. The first thing it addressed was the six-foot-two-inch military henchman’s grasp on her arm. “Let me go!”

Her cry emerged in English—her Russian having deserted her—but to her utter shock, the bully bit out a terse, “No.”

In English. She stumbled along with him down the cold cement corridor, not sure what emotion won the battle—fear, anger or shock. Her heart drummed a beat of terror against her ribs, her breath snagged somewhere in the land of freedom behind her.

“In here, please.”

Again, English. . .and manners? She glowered at the creep, despite the fact her legs had turned numb, and let him muscle her into a room. Barren except for a warped wooden table and two decrepit chairs, the gray tomb reeked of KGB menace. Mr. Militia released her and she stood there, one hand nursing the tenderness in her arm, trying to dredge up a coherent thought.