“How many people? What kind of security?”
“With all due respect,” Faith said, “we’re going into the woods with a bunch of explosives, breaking into a cabin, spying on the neighbors and then winging it. I know you’re both highly trained professionals used to teams with all kinds of high-tech gadgets, but you have to accept that you don’t have your colleagues or your toys and, no matter how hard we try, we don’t know jack about what we’re really getting into until we get there.” Faith stood and walked over to the crate of landmines. She reached inside and picked one up, surprised it was so light. “We’ve now entered the phase where my specialty pays off, and it’s my turn to play leader. We’re going to fan out and scavenge from these crates and that mess upstairs for anything we think might be remotely useful. We’ll take turns on the shower. I thought I saw some gray coveralls in that pile of old clothes. Commander Summer, I suggest you turn your charms on my mother and see if you can get us some flashlights. A backpack would be really nice. You also better get her phone number and memorize it, just in case you make it out and we don’t. I know your mission specs call for only a couple mines, but as the lead scavenger, I’m going to take a bunch, just in case. We might only need a couple, but you never know. Let’s get a move on. The longer we’ve got on-site, the better the chance our half-assed plan might actually work.”
A few minutes later, Faith scaled the ladder. The secret panel to the orphanage’s basement lifted up just before Faith could push it open. She and her mother paused face-to-face and studied the changes in each other that the years of separation had carved. Faith caught a glimpse of something she hadn’t seen or hadn’t let herself see since she was a child. For a moment the woman before her wasn’t a fundamentalist bigot, but a concerned mother, a mother worried about her child.
Faith looked away and slid back down the ladder to the hidden room. “Summer, I think you’d better go up first. You deal with her.”
“You’re a grown woman. Act like one. Get on up there.”
Faith sighed. She climbed back up.
Mama Whitney held a plate of overstuffed sandwiches. “I don’t know why on earth I was so tickled when you showed up. I nearly had to pinch myself to see if I was dreaming or if after all these years Jesus had finally forgiven me and brought my little girl back to me.”
“Those two brought me here.” Faith nodded down the trapdoor toward Summer and Zara. “If I’d known where they were taking me, we wouldn’t be having this touching reunion.”
“Child, I don’t know whatever happened for the devil to cram so much hatred into you.”
“My childhood pretty much covers it.”
“Honey, I did the best I could in difficult times. Lord knows I’ve made mistakes. It sure wasn’t easy raising a child alone back in those days, particularly with my Calling. When are you ever going to find it in your heart to forgive your mama?”
“That’s a new angle. I didn’t think your God had anything to do with forgiveness.”
“I’ll let that pass. I’ve been worried sick about you. A few weeks ago, a young lady who was the spitting image of you-not in looks, but in how she went around in the world-that dear soul was killed right in front of me and it started me rethinking a lot of things. Now I don’t know what you’re up to, but-”
“You dragged me all over creation acting like I was a ball and chain Jesus had strapped to your ankle to punish you for some unforgivable sin.”
“I know you’re caught up in something with with Yurij Kosyk. I don’t know the whithers and wherefores, but I do know if he’s involved, Lucifer himself isn’t far behind. Either your life or your soul is in danger.”
Faith stared agape. “How the hell do you know about Kosyk or Schmidt or whatever the SOB calls himself?”
Mama Whitney opened her mouth, then closed it. She moved her lips as if talking to herself, all the while shaking her head.
Zara climbed up the ladder behind Faith. “I’d love to let you two play this out in your own time, but we’re on a tight schedule. Your mother met with General Kosyk in Berlin last week. And it was a rather protracted, personal meeting.”
“With Kosyk? How personal?” Faith flashed a startled glance at Zara, then glared at her mother.
Mama Whitney looked away, but Faith saw the tears well up in her eyes.
“Mama, how could you-with him?”
“Honey, try to understand.”
“You swore you’d never be with another man again after Daddy died.”
Tears washed down her mother’s face. “Lord, don’t make me do this.”
“Unless it’s about Daddy, I don’t want to know. I can’t take any more of this today.” Faith turned and rummaged through a box of clothes and held up a pair of coveralls. “Summer, I think these will fit you.”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
EMBASSY OF THE GDR, MOSCOW
7:43 P.M.
Kosyk watched the second hand of his watch circle the dial. In a couple of hours, he would get even with Bogdanov. No one sets up Gregor Y. Kosyk. The bitch Bogdanov had manipulated events for him to take the fall for losing the Americans. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed she had known they were going to escape. She had probably even helped them. He would take care of Bogdanov soon enough.
Within twelve hours, the putsch would be in progress and the socialist world would be saved-only Kosyk didn’t want the entire old order to be restored. The moribund GDR leadership had squelched his ambitions too many times, but not again, not this time. With a precisely timed phone call, he would set their plans in motion-a few hours prematurely. He picked up the heavy gray receiver and dialed the secure line to the head of the Ministry for State Security in Berlin.
“Mielke,” the MfS chief answered.
“Your shopping list is complete, but your favorite shop closed earlier than expected. It reopens in the morning with new stock.”
“You’re absolutely certain it’s closed?”
“Positively.”
Mielke hung up on Gregor Kosyk for the last time.
Kosyk knew that Mielke was now relaying the news of Gorbachev’s death to Honecker. Within hours, Honecker would order the air corridors to West Berlin sealed off. After the last West Berlin U-Bahn car crept under GDR territory around one the next morning, soldiers would open the long-sealed stations along the two routes crossing beneath their capital and soon afterward their soldiers would pour from West Berlin U-Bahn stations like rats fleeing the sewer. Kosyk wished he could witness the collapse of the Anti-Fascist Protection Wall as the GDR’s military pushed into West Berlin. But even more than that, Kosyk wanted to see Honecker’s and Mielke’s faces when they realized they had no diversion of chaos in Moscow and no hope of Soviet backing. He wondered how long it would take for them to figure out they had unilaterally begun a war with the Americans.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Whether you like it or not, history is on our side.
We will bury you.
– KHRUSHCHEV
NORTH OF MOSCOW
8:59 P.M.
On a dirt road a few kilometers from Stukoi’s dacha, Faith steadied the flashlight while Zara and Summer reached into access panels in the Zil’s trunk. Faith’s thoughts were still with her mother. She knew it was childish to want her mother to be with no one but her father-even though he’d been gone for thirty years. She’d hardly admit it to herself and definitely not to Summer, but somewhere deep inside she believed that finding her father would make everything right with her family again. If only he’d been there when she was growing up to temper her mother’s zeal. Now, when she was so close to finding him, her mother ruined everything by having an affair with another man-and not just any man: Kosyk, the Stasi general, the terrorist, the man who threatened to kill her. With a shudder of guilt, she hated her mother even more.