Chapter 8
8
Exhausted by their recent trek and by the emotional roller coaster of being with Alex, she crawled into bed while he took a shower and she promptly fell asleep.
She was awakened sometime later by Alex calling her name urgently. “Katie, wake up. Now .” She sat up sharply, but was deeply disoriented for a moment. Hotel room. Dark outside. Crib—oh, yeah. Dawn. Where—oh, yeah. Osh. What?—
“Get up. We have to go right now. Hurry.” Alex didn’t look like he was kidding.
Alarm surged through her, and she was abruptly wide awake and scared stiff. “What’s going on?” she asked as she flew out of bed and yanked on her new clothing.
“I went out for food, and I was followed.” He rushed around the room wiping down surfaces with a handkerchief and stuffing Dawn’s baby gear into the baby bag he’d bought earlier.
“Who followed you?” Americans? Russians? Someone else?
“Gather up our wet clothes. Put them in a bag. We’ll toss them in the trash outside the hotel,” he ordered tersely.
He’d purposely ignored her question of who’d followed him.
Fully into the spirit of holy shit, she snatched up one of the shopping bags and stuffed their wet clothes into it. Into Dawn’s baby bag, she tossed the toothbrushes, razor, and hairbrush he’d bought them.
She followed him quickly from the hotel room. No surprise, he headed for the back of the building and the service elevator. They entered it in tense silence.
The doors whooshed closed and Alex said quickly, “The good news is I don’t think they know I spotted them.”
“And the bad news?” she asked reluctantly.
“It’s a professional surveillance team. We’ll have to use tradecraft. Do exactly what I say. No questions, just do whatever I tell you, no matter how weird it sounds. Okay?”
She nodded, terrified. Tradecraft was the skill set spies used. Where in the hell did he learn—oh, wait. His father. Of course. Daddy must have taught his son the tools of the trade.
But Alex had been a child when he’d lived with Peter Koronov. Who would teach a young boy how to be a spy? And why ?
There was no more time to wonder, for the elevator door opened. Alex headed fast for an exit and she followed him outside. It was cold and her breath hung in the air in a great white cloud. Alex took off down the alley behind the hotel, sticking to the shadows.
She followed, doing her best to be quiet. Thankfully, she’d spent a lot of years skulking in the woods behind her parent’s house, playing hide and seek with her brothers. They always won, of course, but she considered herself reasonably stealthy. But Alex was dead silent in front of her.
He slipped around the corner into the street and she tried to mimic his fluid movement.
“Try to look normal,” he murmured.
Normal. Right. She linked her arm in his and smiled up at him. “Got it. Normal,” she replied under her breath.
They walked for maybe a block when Alex swore quietly. “No good. They’ve spotted us.”
Oh, crap . They walked another fifty feet or so and without warning, Alex, yanked her to the side by her arm. She all but fell over as he dragged her into a convenience store.
Once inside, he turned her loose and took off running for the rear of the store. She regained her balance and raced after him. A startled clerk stared at them. Alex called out something in Russian to the man and the guy pointed. Alex swerved in that direction and she veered after him.
They burst into a dim storeroom, tore through it, and popped out the back door into another alley. A sprint down this one and Alex darted out of the alley. His long legs stretched out as he crossed the street and sprinted into a park of some kind. She pushed hard to keep up with him, and the baby bag banged against her back uncomfortably.
She spared a glance over her shoulder and was dismayed to see two dark figures running behind them. And the tails were closing in on them. Alex sped up even more and she dug deep to keep up with him.
They burst out on the other side of the park and Alex turned left, tearing down a side street and ducking into a restaurant. He said something to the manager and this time threw a handful of cash at the guy, who pointed to the back of the deserted dining room. This time they raced frantically through a kitchen. Alex yelled something to the cooks who called something back to him.
Outside again, into the dark and cold.
“Not much farther,” he grunted at her as they took off running yet again.
Her lungs were starting to close up. Her respiratory tract didn’t like the hot to cold to hot to cold routine. Not to mention the whole mad sprinting thing. She worked out regularly, but not with bad guys chasing her who intended to do who knew what if they caught her.
Alex turned one more corner and they tore down a residential street. Row houses lined the block, maybe five stories tall, and old looking. He screeched to a stop without warning beside an ancient Volkswagen and bit out, “Keep watch.”
She was more than glad to stand there, huffing hard. Meanwhile, Alex shocked her by pulling out his pistol and bashing the VW window with its butt. He let himself into the car fast and gestured for her to get in. She raced around to the passenger side and climbed in. He thrust Dawn at her and bent down to hotwire the car. In under a minute, the engine sputtered to life and he pulled away from the curb.
It was viciously cold with the wind whipping through the car, and she tucked Dawn inside her coat and held her close. The baby kept sleeping, though, so Katie guessed she must be warm enough for now.
“We’ve got to ditch this car. The broken window is too obvious,” Alex said.
“Then why did you steal it?”
“You couldn’t run forever, and neither could I with the baby.”
“Where are we headed?”
“Airport. Lots of cars there.”
She frowned, not understanding.
“Watch behind us for any car that follows us for more than a few minutes.”
It was hard to track individual cars at night using only glimpses of vehicles as they passed under the sparse street lights. But as best she could tell, no one followed them.
When they arrived at the airport, Alex guided the car into the long term-parking lot like a normal traveler and took the ticket from the automatic dispenser. He parked at the back of the lot and they got out.
“Start trying door handles until you find an unlocked one,” he instructed under his breath. “If I tell you to get down, do it fast. I’ll be watching the exit gate attendant.”
They commenced creeping around the dark parking lot and she only had to dive for cover twice before Alex murmured, “Bingo.”
He slipped into a small Fiat via the unlocked driver’s side door and unlocked the passenger door for her. He tore apart the steering column and hotwired the car, then did his best to more or less put the car back together. He handed her the parking ticket, which had conveniently been left on the dashboard for them. He started the car and docilely pulled up to the gate attendant.
Katie contained her shock as he casually pulled cash out of his wallet and paid the parking fee. He said something that sounded like good night to the attendant and drove out as pretty as he pleased.
“Now where?” she asked in minor shock. They’d just stolen two cars.
“Tashkent.”
“Pardon me if my geography has failed me, but that isn’t in Kyrgyzstan.”
“Correct. It’s the capital of Uzbekistan. But it’s quite a bit closer than Bishkek, which is the capital of Kyrgyzstan, and Tashkent does not lie across mountains on a dodgy highway with fractious weather. If we’re lucky, our tails are Kyrgyz nationals and won’t be able to follow us into Uzbekistan. The two countries don’t like each other and our tails should get stopped at the border. Since we’re traveling on U.S. passports, the Uzbeki’s shouldn’t hassle us.”
She was sure she’d seen him give the Kyrgyz customs guy a Russian passport—dark red with an embossed gold double-headed eagle and totally unlike her dark blue U.S. passport—but she elected not to bring that up just now. Not until she had a better idea of just how dangerous Alex would become if he thought she’d turned on him.
“Watch the rear view mirror. Check for any cars that follow us for a long time.”
“What constitutes a long time?”
“More than, say, five minutes,” he answered absently. He steered the car across Osh and headed west on a four-lane road that rapidly became a two-lane road. “Anyone back there?” he asked her for about the third time.
“Road’s empty. What’s the local time? The streets are deserted.”
“It’s about midnight. And it’s a weeknight in a region with a large Muslim population. Not exactly a party crowd. I think we’re clear for now.”
She nodded and turned to face forward in her seat. “Okay Alex. I’m on your side. But I think it’s time for you to start talking. Who are you, and what the hell’s going on?”
* * *
Alex winced at the questions but couldn’t blame her for asking them. Problem was, very little of his life was on his list of things he was willing to talk about. Still, he did owe her a few answers, at least.
“I haven’t lied to you about anything. As the whole world knows, my father was a Russian spy who was caught when I was a kid. I got sent to boarding school, and from there got sent to college.”
“Harvard.”
“That’s correct.”
“Why math?”
“My father insisted on it. And I was reasonably good at it.”
She snorted at that. “Reasonably?”
“Yes,” he replied mildly.
“How did you end up being a doctor, then?”
He sighed with relief. She’d skipped over the bad years—the revolt against his father, the drinking and depression and self-destruction, the DUI and jail time. Thank God. “Once my father was repatriated to Russia, I was free to study what I wanted. I shifted over to medicine.”
“Why the obstetrics fellowship?”
He laughed. “All doctors get basic OB training, and I picked up a little extra practical experience so I could come over here on the Doctors Unlimited mission. Actually, delivering babies isn’t that different from trauma medicine. It’s explosive and high-risk and you have to be prepared to react fast.”
“Who were those men chasing us in Osh?”
“I don’t know.”
“Guess.”
He sighed and considered the question. The Big Two were the obvious choices—the CIA and the FSB. It was a toss-up in his mind which bunch was trailing him.
What he couldn’t figure out was why the tails had actually tried to catch him and Katie. Why hadn’t the team just hung back and tracked where he went? Who wanted to actually apprehend him? That was a new and worrisome wrinkle in his ongoing dance with the intelligence services.
Dammit, Katie was still waiting for an answer. That girl was preternaturally patient about getting answers to her questions.
He said carefully, “My best guess is some intelligence agency was tailing us. Which one, I have no idea. Why? Because we’re Americans who came to town on a Russian military aircraft, and that would send up warning flags anywhere on earth.”
She digested that evasive truth in silence, although he could practically hear the wheels turning in her head. If only she were a little less quick on the uptake.
He’d promised her he would never lie to her, and he wouldn’t. It had been a stupid promise, made on impulse, but he was stuck with it, now. Still, it didn’t mean he couldn’t repackage the truth to his advantage.
“How is it you were able to call in that Russian plane to come get us? My brother was a Navy SEAL, and maybe on a mission he could have pulled off something like that. But that would have been the extent of it.”
There was no way to sugar coat the fact that he’d been doing his father a favor by being in Zaghastan in the first place and that the plane was payback. “Family connections,” he said shortly.
“You called Daddy?” she blurted.
He snorted. “I haven’t initiated contact with him in a decade.”
Which wasn’t to say they had communicated. He mentally winced at splitting hairs with Katie. But hell, his entire life was a series of half-truths and evasions. Why should his relationship with her be any different?
He and his father hadn’t shared an honest moment between them in pretty much forever. Peter wanted him to “come home” and become a cryptographer for the FSB or even become a field operative—a spy—for the FSB in America.
But his old man knew not to ask Alex outright to do it. No, it was Peter’s intent to manipulate his son into doing his bidding and not to risk Alex turning him down outright.
His father couldn’t seem to grasp that for Alex, ‘home’ was America. Not Mother Russia.
The last time they’d spoken about him working for the FSB, Alex was eighteen. They’d had a violent shouting match over it, in fact. His father had insisted Alex was Russian in his heart and had wanted no part of hearing that his son preferred the corrupt, capitalist, imperialist regime in the United States.
He’d have thought his father would catch a clue when Alex put himself in jail to avoid the bastard’s aggressive recruiting tactics. But no. Even after four years in jail, his father was still coming after him. Peter had just learned to be more subtle and vicious about it.
Tough. He still felt the same. He was American—even if the U.S. government didn’t trust him any farther than it could throw him. He couldn’t blame the Americans.
“Who was following us back in Zaghastan?” Katie asked, startling him out of his bitter ruminations.
“The guy I jumped was American. I have no idea who he worked for.”
He didn’t mention the burner phone resting in his pocket waiting to ring. He was deeply interested to see who eventually spoke on the other end of that phone.
“Was it just me, or were those rebels who came up the valley the night Dawn was born trying to kill us?” she asked soberly.
“It’s not just you. I thought the same thing.”
“Were they American, too? Did the guy you attacked work with them?”
“I don’t know.” Personally, he doubted it. Given his father’s insistence on telling him about that emergency bunker, he guessed Peter had knowledge of some Russian operation in the Karshan Valley that he’d thought would endanger his boy.
Weird way of showing love for your kid. Knowingly send him into a death trap…but give your kid an escape route. His father was one twisted bastard.
“Why in the world would Americans attack us? Did they not know who we were?”
“Oh, I’m sure they knew exactly who we were.”
Katie’s head whipped toward him. He swore mentally. He probably shouldn’t have said that.
He sighed. “Like I said before. I have enemies. I don’t think that team was attacking you. I think they were attacking me.”
“Who specifically would attack you and why ?”
“I already told you. I don’t know.” He had his suspicions about both, but he wasn’t about to share those with her. The less she knew of him, the less danger she would be in.
Thankfully, a brightly lit border crossing loomed ahead of them, effectively distracting her. He passed both of their passports and the birth certificate he’d filled out for Dawn through his window to the border guard.
The fellow gave them a little grief over him signing the baby’s birth certificate until he explained that he was a doctor and showed the guy his medical pack. But soon enough, they were speeding onward into the night. Hopefully, minus their Kyrgyz tails.
Tashkent was a larger city than Osh, somewhat more modern, but it, too, suffered from a general sense of post-Soviet decay. Independence might have been emotionally satisfying to the southern states of the former USSR, but economically, it hadn’t been kind to them.
It was nearing dawn as he chose a random hotel in Tashkent because of its covered parking garage. No sense flaunting their stolen car. He would sell it tomorrow onto the black market where no one would be inclined to tell any authorities where it had come from.
He woke Katie gently, and she stumbled into the lobby with him. She was alert enough to frown when he pulled out five hundred American greenbacks to pay for the room and pay for the clerk’s discretion, but she didn’t comment on it.
He took Dawn from her, mixed baby formula from the can he’d bought back in Osh and gave the baby a bottle—in an actual baby bottle—while Katie collapsed in bed.
He had to admit, there was something deeply calming about holding a baby and feeding it. The sense of protectiveness that flowed through him was frankly shocking.
He changed Dawn and laid her on several blankets on the floor that she wouldn’t suffocate herself on. With a sigh of relief, he crawled into bed beside Katie. Almost immediately she rolled over and draped her sleeping self over him.
He tensed at first. He made a policy of never sleeping with his women. But she was not one of the prostitutes from his past, and she seemed to genuinely like him. If only she knew what she was getting into, she wouldn’t feel so charitable towards him.
Resolved to enjoy this novel, what-it-would-be-like-to-have-a-family experience, he closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep with a woman in his arms.
Katie took the next shift feeding Dawn and he took the following one. The three of them slept nearly twelve hours, and it was dark again outside when they finally roused for good.
“Feel better?” he asked Katie as she smiled sleepily at him from her pillow.
“Yes. Much. You?”
“Mmm hmm.” Come to think of it, he hadn’t been this relaxed for as long as he could remember. “Interested in some supper?”
“I’m starving,” she declared.
He laughed at her infectious good cheer. “Are you always so chipper when you wake up?”
“Pretty much. Are you always so cranky?”
“Pretty much.”
She laughed at him and rolled out of bed. “I call dibs on the bathroom,” she sang.
He lounged in bed and turned on the television. He found a Russian news channel and watched it lazily. Interesting how no news outlet had picked up on the use of attack drones in Zaghastan against civilians. Had it happened in any other country in the region, there would have been an international outcry over it.
Hypocrites , he mentally accused the newscasters.
Katie’s voice drifted out of the bathroom as she sang a pop song in the bath. Something about halos.
For an angel, Katie was pretty hot. He couldn’t recall ever reminiscing about non-sex with a woman before, but he was definitely enjoying the memory of her swollen, hot flesh dancing on his fingers while she moaned her pleasure. Dammit. He was going to need a cold shower when it was his turn in the bathroom.
Katie eventually emerged wrapped in one of the hotel’s bathrobes, her skin rosy and dewy. She was beautiful completely devoid of make-up. He watched her fondly as she cooed at Dawn, who was awake and learning how to wave her arms and legs around. A natural mother, Katie was.
He took a shower that relieved the worst of his frustration and shaved with the razor Katie had snagged when they fled Osh. He toweled dry and dressed, eager to spend the evening with her. She was a constant source of surprise to him.
The concierge recommended a good restaurant within walking distance where Dawn would be welcome. They were most of the way to the place before Alex’s internal warning system fired off. Loudly.
“Keep walking like everything’s fine,” he murmured to Katie from behind a pasted on smile.
“Everything is fine, isn’t it?”
“Nope. We’ve got company.”