Andrei pounded on the middle door a third time, saying, “Housekeeping!” in a loud voice while Kagan and Mikhail hurried into the room on the right. As the nursemaid had promised, the connecting door was open. Kagan pretended that the bed was in his way, allowing Mikhail to charge ahead and crouch, firing upward toward chest and head level in the middle room.
Mikhail’s sound suppressor made the shots barely audible. Amid the smell of burned gunpowder, Kagan hurried next to him and fired upward, his bullets striking bodyguards who were in effect already dead. In the opposite open doorway, Yakov and Viktor crouched and also fired upward, the angle of their aim preventing them from being caught in a crossfire.
Blood spurted from the three bodyguards. Groaning, they fell in a cluster, one of them landing on the other two.
Mikhail stepped into the room and shot each man in the head.
Kagan ran back through the bedroom toward the door he’d shoved open. He leaned into the corridor and motioned for Andrei to enter. The moment Andrei hurried past him, Kagan tore off the plastic strip attached to the side of the door, allowing the latch to function again. He shut the door and turned the dead bolt, then followed Andrei into the middle room, where the coppery smell of blood was now strong.
They stepped over the bodies and joined the rest of the team in the third bedroom, the outer door to which Yakov had closed and locked.
Andrei knocked three times on the bathroom door, twice, then once, completing the all-clear signal.
After a pause, the door was unlocked. As it came open, Kagan saw a Palestinian woman. Her veil made it difficult to tell how old she was or what she looked like, but she had dark, expressive eyes that communicated her nervousness. She wore a black head scarf and a modest, loose black dress.
She held an Arab baby in her arms. The child wore a blue sleeper and was wrapped in a blanket.
Frightened, the woman looked past Andrei and his men toward the middle room.
“ It’s finished,” Andrei said.
She knew enough English to understand.
Andrei held out a thick envelope. “Here’s the remainder of what you’re owed. Give us the baby.”
The woman frowned at the envelope, as if wishing that she’d never agreed to be part of this.
“ Take the money,” Andrei said. “You earned it. Go far away.”
The woman hesitated.
“ Viktor,” Andrei said, “get the baby from her.”
Viktor did what he was told. The infant sensed the less comforting grip and squirmed.
The woman looked troubled.
“ Don’t worry. He’ll be fine,” Andrei assured her.
As she took the envelope, Yakov shot her twice in the chest and once in the head. She toppled back, landing on the white tiles of the bathroom floor. Yakov stepped over her blood and yanked the envelope from her hand.
“ The next part of the story isn’t in Matthew’s gospel,” Kagan said. “It’s in Luke’s, where we’re told that the Roman emperor issued a census decree.”
He swallowed coffee. Needing the energy it provided, he felt his dry mouth absorb the hot liquid. His right hand remained on the pistol in his lap.
“ The census was important for a lot of reasons. It established a population base on which Rome could demand taxes from Israel. But it also forced the Jews to travel, sometimes far, and thus reminded them that they were at the emperor’s beck and call.”
“ Why were they forced to travel?” Cole asked.
“ Because each family had to register according to the tribe-what they called the house-that the husband belonged to. To do that, they needed to go to whatever town was originally associated with that tribe. This is where Mary and Joseph get involved. They lived to the north in Nazareth, but Joseph belonged to the house of David, and the town associated with David was Bethlehem, seventy-five miles to the south. It was a difficult journey over several deep canyons. To complicate matters, Mary was far along in her pregnancy, which meant that they needed to be careful, taking even longer than usual to get there. As a consequence, when they finally reached Bethlehem, a lot of people had arrived sooner, and there weren’t any places for them to stay. No room at the inn, as Luke’s gospel says.”
In the darkness, Kagan finished the coffee and leaned down, ignoring the pain in his wounded arm as he set the cup on the floor. But he never took his eyes from the window. Now the snow fell so thickly that the fence was a blur.
“ Mary and Joseph were reduced to sleeping in a stable. Mary gave birth there, and the only spot to put the baby was a manger. That’s a trough from which animals eat. If you ever go to Bethlehem, Cole, you’ll find a cave that’s advertised as the place where Jesus was born. Maybe it’s true. Bethlehem has a lot of limestone slopes, and in those days, people carved stables into the limestone. I like the idea of a cave. It’s more defensible than a mere stable.
The creche next to your Christmas tree has the Magi in the stable, greeting Mary, Joseph, and the newborn Jesus. But that wasn’t the case. Matthew says the Magi entered a house, where they found Jesus and his mother. Similar details suggest that the Magi arrived some time after Jesus was born.
“ The moment they got to Bethlehem, they did what Herod expected, asking about newborn children and whether there were any unusual circumstances about the birth. If you want my opinion, the last thing they anticipated was to find evidence supporting their story. Their purpose was to give disinformation to Herod and back it up by any means possible. So when they heard about a birth in a stable, they probably decided it was the kind of detail they could use-a great king born in humble conditions. The contrast with Herod’s greed would drive him crazy.
“ But as the Magi checked further, trying to manufacture an elaborate hoax to continue fooling Herod, they heard about something else that was unusual about the birth, and that changed everything for them.”
“ What was it?” Cole asked.
“ Something that involved the other group in the creche next to your Christmas tree. You already mentioned them.”
“ The shepherds?”
“ Yes. Word had spread through Bethlehem about something weird that had happened to the shepherds. The night the baby was born, they were out in a dark field, tending their sheep, when a mysterious figure suddenly appeared, surrounded by a blazing light. The figure told them to rejoice, to go into Bethlehem and look for a newborn baby in a stable, for this baby was special, a savior. Abruptly, other brilliant figures appeared to the shepherds, announcing, ‘Glory to God in the highest. Peace on Earth.’ Then they all vanished, leaving the shepherds alone in the dark.
“ Frankly, Cole, if that had happened to me, I think I might have had a heart attack. But the shepherds were made of stronger stuff. They adjusted to their shock and were so curious that they decided to go into Bethlehem to see if what the mysterious figure had told them was true. Just as predicted, they found the baby in the stable.
“ That’s what the Magi heard the villagers talking about. Immediately, they asked where they could find the shepherds and were given directions to the field where the vision had supposedly happened. There they got the story firsthand. It was exactly the sort of event that would have held their attention. Remember, the Magi believed in magic. Intrigued, they asked where the stable was, where they could find the baby, but as Matthew’s gospel indicates, by then Mary and Jesus were in a house.
“ It’s interesting that the gospel doesn’t mention Joseph at this point. I have a theory about him, but I’ll save it until later. For now, the important thing is that the Magi were experts in elicitation.”
“ I don’t know what that is,” Cole said.
“ It’s the art of making people trust you so much that they volunteer information they normally wouldn’t feel comfortable revealing. By subtly imitating speech patterns and body movements, even the way people breathe, you can make strangers feel as if they’ve known you for a very long time. The Magi were so skilled at it that they persuaded Mary to tell them some very personal details. Among other things, she described how visions had come to her, similar to the apparitions the shepherds had seen in the field. She explained that when she and Joseph were engaged to be married… Meredith, how frankly can I talk about the pregnancy?”
