He’d been hit by a bullet. The sound suppressor on the gun that had fired it prevented bystanders from knowing why glass had shattered in front of him.
That’s the last shot they’ll fire, he desperately hoped. Andrei won’t take the chance of a stray bullet hitting the baby.
As he hurried through the crowd, Kagan used his now-awkward left arm to pull down the zipper on his parka. The numbness changed to searing pain. Imagining Andrei, Yakov, and Mikhail scrambling from the van, he shoved the baby under his coat and pulled up the zipper to provide warmth.
Andrei would immediately chase him, Kagan knew. Yakov and perhaps Mikhail would drag Viktor’s body into the van before the pedestrians could realize what had happened and start a panic. Then the two killers would join the hunt.
Andrei’s voice shouted through his earbud.
“ Pyotyr, what the hell are you doing?”
Kagan increased his speed, shouldering past people on the sidewalk.
“ Pyotyr, bring back the package!”
Instead of answering, Kagan took deep breaths and rushed toward the cathedral that towered at the end of the narrow street. The baby nestled against him, warm and surprisingly calm against his stomach.
I’ll protect you, he silently promised. I’ll do everything in my power to keep you safe.
He looked for a police car, tempted to ask for help, but immediately he realized that during the time it would take to explain, Andrei and the others would catch up. They would shoot Kagan and the policeman in the head and take the baby.
Phone for backup, he told himself. Desperate to contact his controllers, he used his stiffening arm to reach for the cell phone in the left pocket of his coat. He felt dizzy when he discovered that the pocket was torn open, that his cell phone was missing, along with his spare ammunition. He remembered something tugging at the side of his coat. Someone must have lunged to try to stop him and snagged that pocket.
Have a plan, a backup plan, and then a backup plan after that. Kagan’s instructors had hammered that into him. Visualize what you’re going to do. Rehearse it in your mind, even if you can’t rehearse it physically. Never do anything without knowing your options.
But Kagan’s decision to take the baby had been made on the spot. Even though he’d agonized about it that afternoon in front of the cathedral’s manger, he hadn’t made up his mind until the moment he’d leaned into the van and told Mikhail, “The baby’s bleeding!”
Where am I going? Kagan thought in desperation.
Ahead, he saw a crowd on the street to the right of the cathedral. Hundreds of people walked with purpose. Under his parka, the baby kicked him, as if urging him to follow.
“ Pyotyr!” Andrei’s angry voice pierced through Kagan’s earbud. “I found your cell phone! You’re on your own! You can’t get help! Bring back the package!”
Breathing hard, wincing from the pain that now swelled his left arm, Kagan kept rushing, trying not to lose his balance on the slippery sidewalk. He heard someone in the crowd talk about Christmas lights on Canyon Road.
The baby kicked him again.
“ Pyotyr, you won’t like what I do to you,” Andrei swore.
The baby whimpered.
“ Don’t cry,” Kagan murmured.
“ I’m doing my best to calm him,” Meredith insisted.
“ I know,” Kagan answered gently.
Muscles tightening, he continued to stare out the window toward the falling snow. He couldn’t suppress the suspicion that somehow the baby was warning him, as crazy as that seemed.
Did I lose more blood than I realized? Am I so light-headed that I’m imagining things?
The baby became quiet again. But Kagan’s muscles didn’t relax.
“ The rest of the story might not be suitable for Christmas Eve,” Kagan said. Hoping to keep the boy intrigued, he added, “Parts of it are what Cole would call gross.”
“ Then I want to hear it,” the boy insisted.
Kagan licked his dry lips. “Okay, but don’t say you weren’t warned.
“ The Magi felt overwhelmed by what the shepherds and Mary had told them. The startling similarities to the story they themselves had told Herod brought them to an extraordinary decision. They violated a primary rule of spy craft and exposed their mission, confessing to Mary that they were foreign operatives pretending to work for Herod.
“‘ We wanted to drive him insane searching for an imaginary newborn king of the Jews,’ they explained. ‘But now we find that the story we invented is true. You can’t stay here. Soon Herod will wonder why we haven’t reported to him. If he learns about your baby from another source, his soldiers will come here and kill you all.’
“ What happened next proves that Mary and the shepherds weren’t part of a rebel scheme. If they’d been rebels, they’d have realized that the Magi were on their side. They’d have admitted they were rebels and tried to join forces with the Magi to weaken Herod.
“ But they didn’t. Instead the two groups separated and fled. The Magi chose a new route eastward toward home and acted as decoys. Meanwhile, Joseph hurried with Mary and Jesus southwest toward Egypt. He claimed that he’d had another dream, this one urging him to take his family and run. A spy would argue that the dream was a cover story to protect the Magi, in case Joseph was caught and questioned. It was believable because, as I mentioned, the house of David-to which Joseph belonged-had a tradition of respecting dreams and acting on them. For the same reason, the Magi claimed that they too had experienced a dream that urged them to return home. If questioned, they could maintain that they weren’t being disloyal to Herod but were simply responding to the same dictates of their faith that had told them to follow the star.
“ Whether Herod would have believed either of these stories is debatable. But at least they had a backup plan.
“ Matthew’s gospel notes that Joseph, Mary, and Jesus fled by night, something the Magi would have urged them to do, teaching them how to cross the desert in the darkness. The Magi themselves disappear at this point, as good spies should. But the man who told me this version of the Christmas story believed that the Magi eventually rejoined Jesus,
Mary, and Joseph in Egypt, teaching them the tricks of tradecraft, such as how to spot signs that they were under surveillance, how to recruit operatives-or what the gospels call disciples-and how to detect double agents.
“ The last part makes me certain that Jesus knew Judas would betray him. Indeed, perhaps Jesus ordered Judas to betray him in order to fulfill a prophecy. The spy world is a complicated place. But this is a Christmas story, not an Easter one.”
Cole interrupted him. “You said you had a theory about why Joseph wasn’t with Mary when the Magi talked to her.”
“ Yes. Given his immense responsibility, Joseph became more a protective agent than a husband and father. While the Magi spoke with Mary, Joseph watched the street outside, on guard against Herod’s soldiers. In the future, he would spend increasingly less time with Mary and Jesus because he was always arranging for their security. Like the Magi, he soon disappears from the gospels completely, as a good security officer should. Nowhere in the gospels is he quoted directly. He hovers invisibly in the background.”
“ But you said there were gross parts,” Cole objected.
“ Several. They all involve Herod. Contrary to what the Magi hoped, he didn’t chase the phantom accounts that popped up here and there all over the country. His erratic behavior didn’t destabilize Israel. Instead he did something so disturbing that no one could have predicted it, even taking into account his past actions.
“ When Herod realized he’d been tricked, his fury prompted him to send his men to Bethlehem and the other villages in that area. The soldiers obeyed his orders and slaughtered every male child who was two years old or less. Herod couldn’t be certain when exactly the new king had been born. By choosing the wide margin of two years, he felt certain he’d eliminated the threat.”
“ Every boy who was two years old or less?” Cole sounded shocked, yet fascinated. “I heard about that, but I never realized… How many boys did he kill?”
