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  The priest adjusted his collar as he approached. Her entrance had caught him out of uniform, as it were. How had he known… Oh, her headlights had raked a house next to the church, likely the Rectory.

  Tall, in his sixties, the priest had graying hair, combed off his face with his hands. She recognized him as the same priest when she’d been here seven years before, the same priest who’d confirmed a young man who’d grown up to be a mass murderer.

  He made his obeisance, slipped into the pew in front of hers, and turned to study her, his eyes searching her face, possibly wondering where he’d seen her before.

  “It’s late,” he said, but his tone was more welcoming than put-upon.

  “Or early,” she replied, “depending on your perspective.”

  He gave her a warm smile. “So true. What brings you here at this hour?”

  “Peace and quiet.”

  “Nothing more?”

  “I’ve been wondering that myself. I suppose you’ll tell me I must have felt some deep, spiritual need.”

  The priest shrugged. “I don’t have to say anything. Excuse me. Have we met before?”

  “Yes. Briefly, several years ago when I visited someone here in town.”

  His forehead creased as he thought. Realization came to his face. “Yes, of course. You’re his friend Si—”

  “Yes,” she said, cutting him off, not wanting, not able to hear the name spoken.

  “Have you been to the house?” the priest asked.

  “I’ve come from there. I had some things for his father.”

  “How is he?”

  “About as you’d expect.”

  “I offered to be there today, but he wanted to be alone. I’ll stop by later.”

  The priest studied her again, eyes narrowed as if trying to see inside her head.

  “Were you with him when… When it happened?” he asked.

  She wondered, as with her alias, if the priest couldn’t bring himself to speak the dead man’s name.

  “Yes, I was there.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “You know, if someone else asks me that…” She broke off when she remembered she still gripped her gun. She clasped her hands in her lap. “He saw a priest at the end. He had last rites.”

  The priest closed his eyes, and his lips moved. He crossed himself and looked at her again. “I thank God for that, and I thank you for telling me. Those of us who knew him, we’ve all had our moments where we felt we failed him and, therefore, the people he… I’ve searched my memory of every time we ever talked and tried to remember if there was something I said or didn’t say, or should have said.” He shook his head. “Maybe there was nothing any of us could have done to stop him, but, my God, he was such a good kid, and all those people, those children. He loved children, was so patient with them, always said he wanted a dozen of his own. How could he kill children?”

  “He didn’t know children were there,” she said, not disguising her anger.

  The priest raised an eyebrow in skepticism. “Shouldn’t he have found that out?”

  Her hands gripping the back of the pew, she leaned toward him, but he gave her no ground.

  “He told me he didn’t know, and he wouldn’t have lied to me,” she said. “Not like I lied to him. Over and over. It was all a lie, you see. All of it. He trusted me, he cared for me, and all I ever did was lie. All I’ve ever done for two-thirds of my life is lie and live a lie.”

  She gripped the pew harder to keep from shaking in anger. The priest’s face was full of concern, but he said nothing. He allowed his eyes to drift away from her, to the left, and she followed his gaze.

  The confessional? He couldn’t understand her full and sincere confession could take years and required a secular security clearance he didn’t have.

  “It’s up to you,” he said. He stood, went to the confessional, and slipped inside his half.

  She stared at the confessional. She looked again at the Christ.

  She didn’t believe in this, none of this. Superstition was something an intelligent person saw right through. And this priest, so smug in assurance of his higher authority. It might amuse her to watch that conceit fade as she told him how many she’d killed and how and whom.

  No, the arrogance, as usual, was on her part. He’d shown nothing except concern for her and compassion for a young man he thought he’d brought to God, only to have that failure become so public. Her failure was more personal and private and would have to remain that way.

  Except, of course, the confessional was inviolable.

  Was it truly a confession if you didn’t believe?

  Perhaps unburdening herself after so long, regardless of her beliefs or lack thereof, would ease the darkness in her head, the darkness buried there since a moment of perfect hatred six years before.

  Her decision made, she stood and gave the Christ a final, contemptuous glance. If the man, who’d been steadfast in his refusal to acknowledge his role in the death of hundreds could confess minutes before he died, so could she and without death’s being the compelling factor.

  First, she went to light a candle for the memory of the soldier she’d known all too briefly and one for all the souls she’d failed. She went inside the confessional. It felt both alien and familiar, but her spine stayed stiff. She saw the priest’s profile through the grille, and the words wouldn’t come. She knew them. Saying them was the difficulty.

  “Take your time,” the priest murmured. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been, oh, a quarter century or so since my last confession,” she said.

  “Don’t worry. I’m sure you don’t hold the record.”

  “In the interest of both our backsides, Father, why don’t we stick to the last few years? I think you’ll see why.”

  “It’s your confession.”

  She hesitated again, knowing the implications of what she was about to do, but if she told someone…

  “Today,” she began, “rather, yesterday, a man was killed, executed for a horrible crime he committed, but that’s not the issue.”

  “I see. What is the issue?”

  “I could have stopped him.”

  She closed her eyes, the memory of that missed moment when she could have changed the future making her slump.

  “Before he murdered?” the priest asked.

  All she could do was nod.

  “How?”

  His voice, ever calm and serene, no judgement implied, loosened something in her chest, and a hardness eased.

  The next words, damning her, came with ease.

  “If I had killed him when I had the chance.”

  Part I

  America’s Holocaust

  1

  The Life of a Suburban Spy

  Eight Years Earlier – 1993

  Northern Virginia

  Yo, give up the keys.”

  Oh, Bloody Hell, Mai Fisher thought and turned to her prospective car-jacker. No more than a child, he wore blue jeans and, beneath a woodland camouflage jacket, a black tee-shirt with a silk-screened image of Adolph Hitler giving a Nazi salute. In the subdued lighting of the shopping mall’s parking garage, the boy’s close-shaven head seemed bald. He sported a swastika earring in his right earlobe.

  She showed him no surprise nor shock—nor fear. She’d seen him skulking by a support column as she walked to the car. She stared at him unblinking, her face expressionless. His fingers curled in a “gimme” gesture, but her glare had some effect. He couldn’t keep eye contact.

  Mai supposed her age (mid-thirties), her slim build, and her casual dress of jeans and a pullover jumper identified her as an “easy” target, but now wasn’t the time to indulge in irony. She took a slight side-step away from her Toyota Four-Runner to give herself more room. She’d had no action in quite a while; this could be fun.

  “Hey, bitch! I said, give up the fucking k-keys,” the kid said, full of bluster but with that barest of
stammers telling her this would not only be easy but fun.

  “Does your mother know you have such a dirty mouth?” Mai asked.

  The sound of her aristocratic, English accent, unfaded after all her years in America made him frown. And twitch. But from behind his back, his other hand emerged, a crude tattoo of a burning cross below his knuckles. He held a nickel-plated .45 caliber, semi-automatic pistol, but his hand shook from its weight. Or he was scared.

  The concrete and steel of the parking garage receded, and she stood in a forest clearing. The cool spring of America gave way to a hot, Balkan summer. A rush of adrenaline heightened her senses as she saw not one but dozens of young men, clad in a mixture of Serb Army cast-off uniforms, jogging suits, and Soviet camouflage, their torsos festooned with AK-47s and RPG launchers. The cars and SUVs became Serbian Army tanks and armored cars. She smelled cordite, the coppery scent of blood.

  Mai blinked, and only the one young man stood before her, the .45 making his arm droop. She pointed to the gun.

  “Are you sure you chambered a round?” she asked.

  His eyes widened and looked from her to the gun.

  “Because if you’re not familiar with semi-autos, you could end up embarrassed when you pull the trigger and it goes click.” She snapped her fingers, and he flinched.

  She front-kicked, the toe of her shoe contacting his wrist. The gun flew from his inexperienced fingers, sailed across the aisle, and skittered over the cement surface with a rasp. The boy clutched his wrist to his chest.

  “You bitch, you broke my… Shit!”

  She pointed her gun at him, a Beretta 92F with a fifteen-round magazine. Eight and one-half inches long, it probably appeared cannon-like to the boy. The Beretta weighed a shade over two and a half pounds, but she held it with long familiarity, two-handed, pointed at his head.

  “I’m close enough,” she said, “a single nine-millimeter bullet will destroy most of your head. They’ll have to identify you from your DNA because your teeth will be decorating the cars behind you.”

  “D-d-d-don’t shoot. Please.”

  “On your stomach. Hands behind your head.”

  He complied, and she stepped closer, foot drawn back to kick him. She stopped when she saw a mall security guard puttering up the ramp in his golf cart. The guard wasn’t much older than the kid on the ground, and he stopped when he saw her gun.

  “This boy tried to rob me,” Mai said. “Use your radio and call a police officer from the substation here.”

  The guard nodded in a series of nervous jerks and began to murmur into his radio. When he finished, Mai said, “Over there between the BMW and the Explorer is his gun. Do you have gloves?”

  Another nervous head bob.

  “Well, put them on and go pick up the gun so the officer will see it when he arrives.”

  As he walked to where the gun lay, the guard tried to keep his eyes on her. He picked up the gun with a thumb and forefinger, holding it at arm’s length.

  The boy on the ground sniffed and shifted to look up at her.

  “Stay still,” Mai said and put her foot between his shoulder blades. She holstered her gun and looked down at him. “Didn’t go quite as you planned, did it? I’ll wager someone told you women focused on shopping were easy targets. Too bad you picked on the wrong woman today.”

  He muttered something, his lips pressed against the concrete.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “An apology isn’t quite going to do it. How old are you?”

  “Fif-fifteen.”

  “You’re not even old enough to drive. Why aren’t you in school? Oh, wait. School sucks, and no one can relate to you, right?”

  He twisted his body to peer at her again. “I’m sorry I bothered you. You’re white. I should have left you alone.”

  Before she could ask what that was about, a county police car pulled up behind the guard’s golf cart. A gray-shirted policeman emerged, gave a glance to Mai, and went to confer with the guard. The cop took the .45 and placed it in his car. He looked again at Mai, eyes narrowed in that typical don’t-give-me-any-shit police expression. He walked toward her, hand resting on his Sig Sauer.

  “Ma’am,” he said, from a good twenty feet away, “the guard says this kid tried to rob you, and you pulled a gun.”

  “Good day, officer. Yes, that’s what happened. Well, essentially.”

  “Where’s the gun now?”

  “Holstered. Officer, I have all the requisite permits. I’m going to very, very slowly reach into my left jacket pocket and present you with some identification. Are we agreed on that?”

  The cop raised the Sig a few centimeters from his holster, and Mai fought against her training to keep her hands still. He nodded for her to go ahead. Mai did what she’d said she would and held the ID portfolio toward him while she kept her other hand away from her side.

  “Put it on the trunk of that car and slide it closer to me,” the policeman said, pointing to the vehicle next to her.

  She followed his instructions and stood still while he looked over the ID.

  “It says here you work for the United Nations,” he said, his expression now more “so-what.”

  Mindful of the hovering security guard, Mai lowered her voice. “I’m sure you have a process for liaising with intelligence services.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Call your supervisor and ask for confirmation of my identification from your intelligence liaison.”

  “What’s an intelligence liaison?” he asked, though his tone betrayed his bluff.

  “Your supervisor will figure it out.”

  He grinned at her, and… Was that a wink?

  After a brief interlude on his radio, he restrapped his gun in its holster and walked up to her, handing over the ID portfolio.

  “I’ll take the little asshole from here,” he said.

  “I may have damaged his wrist.”

  He gave her an indulgent smirk and knelt to pat the boy down. After cuffing him, the policeman hauled the boy to his feet and recited the Miranda warning in a fast monotone.

  Mai handed the policeman a business card. “When you get him to your lock-up, call this phone number. They’ll arrange a lawyer for the young man. I’ll, of course, call them right away and explain that Officer…?”

  He studied her card. “Who’s Maitland Fisher?”

  “That would be me.”

  “What kind of name is Maitland?”

  “A family one.”

  He smiled at her again and handed over his own card. “So, is this the address for your secret HQ?”

  Mai managed not to roll her eyes. “That’s my business address, Officer…” She looked at his card. “Russell.”

  “I need a statement from you. You can follow me to the nearby station.”

  “May I come by in an hour or so? I have a pressing engagement. I’m sure you’ve heard that before, but I assure you mine is legitimate.”

  He held up her card. “Sure. I know where to find you. Franconia station. Two hours.

  She nodded, not bothering to disabuse him of the fact he’d never find her if she didn’t want that. She watched as he walked the boy to the cruiser. The boy looked back over his shoulder at her, and all she saw was fear.

  From where he’d watched, Alexei Bukharin detached himself from the column he’d leaned against, garment bag over his shoulder. Dressed in a black suit and a charcoal pullover, he moved with an easy, confident stride. His hair was longish for a man soon to be fifty and worn combed back off his broad forehead. Born a blond, he was nearly all gray now, and some gray had faded to white. Tall, handsome, and self-assured in that way bad boys were, that way, which, with few words, got women to do most anything, he wore an amused smile as he approached Mai Fisher and her car. His eyes, hidden by sunglasses, were an unusual shade of vivid blue, sometimes dark enough to be considered violet; other times pale, like glacier ice.

  Mai looked up at him when he drew
near. “I wondered how long you were going to stand there and watch.”

  “Sometimes I like to watch.”

  “And sometimes I need a little more action.”

  “It seems I can’t send you for the car without involving the local politsiya.” He also had an accent, slight but distinctly Russian.

  “I may have erred in purchasing an SUV. They are too popular among urban car-jackers.”

  She used the fob to unlock the Four-Runner’s doors and got behind the wheel.

  Bukharin secured the garment bag in the back of the vehicle and climbed in beside his wife.

  “You know,” he said, “I understand he was a kid, but he was a kid carrying a .45.”

  “I think I noticed that, but how exactly would you have handled it?”

  “I wouldn’t have held a conversation with him about it.” He canted an eyebrow at her, the right one, bisected by an old scar.

  When they emerged from the dim garage into the bright sunlight of an early spring afternoon in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, she replied, “I’ll need to drop you off at the stables for Natalia’s event. I have to go help the local politsiya with their inquiries.”

  “Ah, the life of a suburban spy. Shopping, riding lessons, car-jackings, and carpools.”

  “And after dinner tonight, Natalia asked for some help with science. It’s the advanced placement class, and they’ve touched on physics.”

  “Yes, malen’kaya mat’.” He reached over and squeezed her thigh, let his hand rest there. He slouched in the seat and studied the passing scenery.

  After a moment, Mai said, “You’re pensive.”

  “Four years this week since Peter and Rachael’s car accident.”

  “Yes, I remembered this morning. I wasn’t going to bring it up until Natalia did.”

  “Probably the best approach, but I was thinking more about how we’ve rearranged our priorities.”

  “Oh, massively.”

  He looked at her, watching her sure hands on the steering wheel, smiled when she flipped off a driver who’d tried to cut her off from changing lanes.