In Sheep's Clothing (2 page)

Twenty-four hours earlier
Khabarovsk, Siberia

N
ickolai Shubnikov knew how to whittle away his son Vicktor’s pride with the skill of Michelangelo—one agonizing chip at a time.

“Whoa, Alfred! Slow down.” Vicktor Shubnikov wound the leather leash twice around his grip and dug in, hoping to slow his father’s Great Dane/Clydesdale. The animal dragged him like a nuisance as he plowed through the row of street vendors, chasing an errant smell.

Two years ago Vicktor might have labeled vet duty sweet revenge. Today he called it atonement.

Vicktor dodged a babushka hawking a bouquet of lilacs, jumped another pedaling sunflower seeds, and skidded to a halt before the metal canister belonging to a wrinkled woman selling peroshke. The fried sandwiches laced the air with the
odor of grease and liver. Alfred shoved his wide Dane snout into the sandwich bag.

“Get your beast out of here!” the woman cried. She whacked at Alfred, who didn’t even flinch. Vicktor, however, felt her land a hearty blow on his shoulder.

“C’mon, you mutt.” Vicktor grabbed Alfred’s fraying collar and yanked him away. He thrust the woman a ten-ruble note. She swiped it from his hand.

“Why do you do that to me?” They half trotted down the sidewalk, Vicktor hunched over at the waist and trying to match Alfred’s gait. The dog’s black jowls flopped and his saggy eyes gave no indication of remorse.

Penance.
He cursed the impetuousness that had led to this moment. If only he’d been smarter, faster, wiser, he’d be in Lenin Park on this sunny Sunday, slapping shots against Roman, outscoring the former wing. Or maybe he’d be at Yanna’s volleyball game. The Khabarovsk Amur volleyball team didn’t need help from their fans to bury their opponents—he went for the pure joy of watching Yanna’s power spike.

If only David could see her now.

He checked his watch. Noon. Hopefully Evgeny would be in the office. He hadn’t called ahead, but the vet kept normal business hours, and Sunday had been a working day since Stalin outlawed the religious day of rest some sixty years earlier.

He muscled the Dane toward the dirt path that led to Evgeny’s office. Vicktor had to admire his friend for carving out his dreams into a private practice. He and Vicktor had chewed away long hours in high school, concocting ways to free the laboratory mice from Tatiana Ivanovka’s biology classroom. Between the pranks, however, Evgeny had revealed the love of medicine inherent to true physicians. Why he had gone into animal medicine still baffled Vicktor. Then again, Vicktor had sworn he’d never join the militia, and look where he had ended up.

Evgeny’s office, a tiny green log house, sat lopsided and forlorn in the shadowy cover of three nine-story concrete high-
rises. Vicktor turned up the dirt path and shivered as the sun passed behind a building. He shoved his free hand into his leather jacket pocket, wishing he hadn’t taken out the lining. That morning, during his run, the wink of the sun against a cloudless sky and the fresh breeze smelling of lilac had lulled him into believing winter had finally surrendered to spring in Siberia. He’d jogged home, unzipped the wool lining from his jacket, thrown his
shopka
on the top shelf and kissed winter goodbye. Now, as he approached the office, his lips felt parched from the cold, and a faint musty odor curled his nose, like the smell of moldy clothes sitting in old snow.

The Dane jerked out of Vicktor’s grip and he tripped, glared at the animal and picked up his pace. Of course Alfred would be anxious to see Evgeny; the vet had treated him for nearly ten years.

Two paces before the door, Alfred skidded to a halt, sat on his haunches and growled.

“It’s just a checkup, pal. Cool it.” He patted the dog’s head. Still, the way the door hung ajar raised the fine hairs on the back of Vicktor’s neck. “What do you see?”

Alfred growled again, a threatening rattle in his ancient throat, and curled his lips, showing canines.

“
Tiha.
Quiet, boy,” Vicktor commanded. He paused, took a step toward the door and pushed. The door groaned, as if in warning.

Vicktor recoiled as the smell of rotting flesh hit him. He covered his nose.

Alfred whined.

“Stay,” Vicktor rasped, and looped the leash around the door handle. Gulping a breath, he stepped across the threshold. It took all his military training not to gag at the odor that poured from the room.

“Evgeny?” Vicktor surveyed the reception area. Broken glass from the smashed display case crunched under his feet, a cash register lay overturned on a ripped vinyl chair. Whipping out a handkerchief, Vicktor cupped it over his nose and tiptoed
around broken vials of animal narcotics on his way to the examination room.

“Evgeny? It’s Vicktor.”

Silence.

In the examination room, the leather bench where Evgeny examined Alfred on occasion had been slashed, the stuffing pushing through the cut like a festering wound. A jumble of medical utensils gleamed like weapons of war where the sun licked the wooden floor.

He backed out, a sick feeling welling in his gut. He crept toward Evgeny’s office, rueing the creak of floorboards. When he swung the door open, Vicktor’s blood ran cold.

Shards from the ruined glass cabinet littered the carpet. An emptied drawer lay upturned over its contents, a foot-size crater in the middle. Notebooks and ledgers, slashed into pieces, were strewn like stripped leaves. The squash-yellow area rug bled with the black and red dye of crushed pens.

Vicktor ducked back into the hall. “Evgeny?” He heard panic in his voice. He purposely kept few friends, but Chief Veterinarian Evgeny Lakarstin was one of them. With the exception of Roman and Yanna, and two Americans he didn’t acknowledge to his coworkers, he depended on Evgeny. He counted him as the type of
paren
with whom he could share a sauna and shed a few secrets while he sweated.

And in Vicktor’s world, trust wasn’t an easily acquired commodity.

Vicktor headed for the back door leading to the kennels. Even from the hall, the eerie silence gave him chills—no dogs barking, no plaintive mewing.

Two steps before the back entrance, he spied another door to his left. He’d thought it a closet before, had even asked Evgeny about it once. The tall vet had shrugged and said, “Supplies.”

Vicktor’s eyes narrowed, instincts firing. He grabbed the handle. With a squeak the door opened.

He grabbed the door frame and hung on with a white fist as he tore his gaze away, wincing.

Etched in his mind, however, was the image of Evgeny lying in a pool of his own russet-colored blood.

Three hundred people clapping, cheering, for her, Gracie Benson. It just might have been the worst moment of her life.

How she longed to find a safe place and hide from tomorrow.

Gracie stood on the platform in front of the church, listening to the congregation applaud her for two years of missionary work, and felt like a sham. She was a joke, an embarrassment, a failure, and no amount of applause or kind words from Pastor Yuri Mikhailovich could erase that fact. She swallowed hard. She just hoped God wasn’t watching.

She’d had her second chance. And had blown it.

Maybe she could get her job back at Starbucks. She made a mean mocha latte. Her unfinished English degree felt light-years away. She probably couldn’t recite a Robert Frost poem even if the KGB—no, the FSB; wasn’t that their new name?—put her under the bright lights and stuck needles under her toes.

Pastor Yuri shook her hand, his meaty grip slightly sweaty in hers. “Thank you, Gracie, for your hard work. We won’t soon forget it.” His brown eyes, deep and holding a lifetime of spiritual wisdom, settled on her.

She chilled. No, they would forget the vacation Bible school, the children’s bell choir, the Sunday School classes she taught. Despite her two years serving as a short-term missionary in Far East Russia, as soon as her replacement flew in, they would erase Gracie Benson from their minds.

Whereas she would cling to them forever.

Maybe not all of them, but certainly Evelyn and Dr. Willie Young, her coworkers, and definitely Andrei Tallin, the sweet man with nearly palpable affection staring at her from the front row. She tried to ignore the ache in his chestnut-brown eyes. She’d turned down his proposal for marriage only a week ago, and felt like a jerk. The guy had gone above and beyond his job as her chauffeur these past two
years—translator, bodyguard, friend. She’d nearly given her heart to him.

Nearly.

It would be a long time before she trusted a man again. A lifetime, perhaps.

Of all her friends, she would definitely remember Larissa. Larissa Tallin, with honey-sweet brown eyes, tawny hair cut like a man’s, a smile so warm it made Gracie reevaluate every friendship she’d had back in America. The woman had even been thrilled with the cross pendant Gracie had given her, despite Larissa’s atheism. Larissa may have been ten years her senior, but Gracie knew she’d never forget the woman who’d become as close as a sister.

It was because of Larissa that Gracie wept into her pillow every night. What was wrong with her that she couldn’t even lead her best friend to salvation?

Pastor Yuri finished his farewell speech and again reached for her hand, and Gracie thanked the Lord for making her from stoic Scandinavian stock. She managed a convincing smile.

Why, oh why, did Russia have to obey their visa laws? It wasn’t like they took any other laws seriously.

The clapping died as she found her seat next to Dr. Willie and Evelyn, career missionaries and the lucky ones who got to stay. The successful missionaries who changed lives and made a furrow in the eternal landscape of the soul.

Gracie’s heart felt like it weighed a million pounds and sweat beaded her brow as she stood for Yuri’s presermon prayer. The sun poured through the lace curtains of the log church, heating the room like a sauna, despite the lingering chill outside. Still, most babushkas huddled under three layers of wool and headscarves, relying on the masses of clothing as a bulwark against an early death. Gracie shifted in her denim dress, feeling rumpled, hot and empty. She’d leave more than her emotions flopping and bleeding in the former Soviet Union. She’d leave her hopes for a new Gracie. Her dream for a fresh start.

She sat, and Pastor Yuri began his sermon. Yuri’s venerable presence on the podium as he gripped the lectern and moved into his impassioned speech reminded her that he had been her champion. He’d stood up for her a year ago when her one-year visa expired, working some behind-the-scenes magic that allowed her to stay. He’d been encouraging, and, although she couldn’t understand everything he said, she felt as if he somehow appreciated her. His handshake and solemn eyes had to mean something.

She might have impressed the pastor, but he didn’t know the truth. Unless over the next five days before her departure her ministry took a hundred-and-eighty-degree about-face and she turned into Billy Graham or D. L. Moody, she’d be returning to the States the same scarred failure she was when she left it. Only this time, she’d be out of second chances.

As if reading her thoughts, Evelyn reached out and wrapped her soft, wrinkled hand around Gracie’s. “You’ll be okay, honey,” she whispered.

Gracie looked away, blinked tears.

Unless she figured out a way to stay and keep fighting for redemption, not likely.

The fact the militia had sent Chief Arkady Sturnin in response to Vicktor’s call meant two things. Either they’d forgiven Vicktor for the past, or the chief was the only one in the office.

Yeah, like Vicktor had to guess at the right answer.

“He was a friend of yours?” Arkady’s cigarette bobbed between his lips as he talked. The ash dropped onto the linoleum and sizzled in a muddy puddle.

Scowling, Vicktor waved the smoke away and watched the forensics team prepare Dr. Evgeny Lakarstin’s remains for the morgue. Although every door in the clinic had been propped open, the odor from the wreckage of medicines embedded the blue walls, the muddy wooden floor, the cracked plaster ceiling. Nausea dogged him as Vicktor watched the mortal remains of his friend manhandled.

“Yeah.”

“Funny no one found him before this.” Arkady’s bulldog face jiggled when he spoke. “Did you have an appointment?”

Vicktor worked a nagging muscle in the back of his neck. “No, I just stopped by. My father said Alfred’s been a bit droopy.”

“With a mug like that, doesn’t he always look droopy?” Arkady guffawed at his joke.

Vicktor clenched his jaw.

“Have you been to the kennels?” Arkady asked, his laughter dying.

“Yeah. Right after I called you. It’s not pretty. Every animal has been gutted.”

Arkady toyed with his Bond cigarette, squashing fuzzy eyebrows into one wide brush as he scanned the small clinic.

“What do you suppose this is?” The old man bent over to finger a wad of soggy papers, grunting as he went down, sounding every bit of his nearly sixty years.

Vicktor winced with remorse. Arkady had aged a century since the Wolf incident. Another residual casualty, another cop paying for Vicktor’s impulsiveness and reckless pride.

“I don’t know,” Vicktor answered thinly as he stalked back to the lab.

A fog of saline and alcohol hung low and heavy. Vicktor put a hand to his nose as he stood in the doorway watching technicians gather evidence from the black lab table and smearing it on glass slides. Every vial had been smashed, and a gooey amber liquid covered the table like syrup. What had Evgeny been cooking up in here?

“Vicktor Nickolaiovich.” Thankfully, the technicians still gave him respect, using his full name to address him. The technician motioned to him, then crouched behind the lab door.

Vicktor crossed the room and knelt beside him, arms hanging over his knees. The man peered into a thin metal bucket.

“What are we looking at?”

“Ashes.” The tech wiggled the can. The orange peels at the bottom shifted and Vicktor made out a thin layer of charred paper, curled as if peeled from a block of chocolate.

“What is it?”