Katarina pleaded with my mother to take me, and never tell me.
Yet a faded memory surfaces. When Consular Petrenko gave the porcelain doll to me, I wasn’t sure what to name her. My mother suggested the name of a ballerina she once knew. A very brave woman, she said. She suggested I name my doll Katarina.
I bite my lip to fight more tears.
It takes several minutes to calm my breath.
My hair is in my face, so I braid it and tie the end with an elastic. I rub my hands to keep warm.
The waiter is nearby, glancing in my direction and smoothing out his apron. I drink my now cold cider, leave a twenty-euro note under the glass because I forgot my coin purse, and exit the café.
The dossier explained who my birth parents are, but now I have more questions.
Across the plaza, beside the church, is an internet café with a painted sign on the window—Open until Midnight.
Inside, the café is crowded with teenagers. An Austrian boy—tight dark jeans, white sneakers, and a black sweater—stands in the corner by the cash register. He catches my eye and motions to an empty slot.
The building is two hundred years old, but the computers are brand-new.
My fingers are clammy and stiff, still trembling—I mistype the name twice.
First, I do a basic search for Anton Katranov. Nothing. I log on to a Russian server. Still nothing. In fact, there is no reference to Anton Katranov anywhere. Next, I type in my birth mother’s name, Katarina Katranov. There is one link to a twenty-five-year-old article in a Bolshoi Ballet Company review. Other than that, there is nothing.
Next, I type in Sergei Abramovich. Tyrant. Oligarch. One of the most feared men in Russia. Directed Russia’s most secret tactical weapons operation …
Austrian Wikipedia has a brief entry on Abramovich: a former Foreign Affairs Director of Russian Intelligence who died of heart failure, ten years ago. Many assumed he would become the next head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. Nothing about defecting. Nothing about Lefortovo Prison.
There is a single grainy picture of him—a shock of dark hair, thick eyebrows, and an aquiline nose.
I click on every citation attached to his profile. I log in to the British Wikipedia page, the German and American ones. The pages are identical. Nothing more than this basic description exists.
I pull out the folder and scan my mother’s dossier.
… had somehow concealed it …
No one within SVR knew about me.
SVR killed my birth parents, killed my brothers, and would have killed me too if they had known I existed, had known I was sleeping in a drawer in the back bedroom.
Katarina asked my parents to take me—and never tell me—so I would be safe. If I didn’t know my identity, I was less likely to be found. Less likely to be killed.
Suddenly, my hex sense flicks on like a switch.
I glance at the door. A man of medium build, wearing a Munich Football jacket, watches me through the glass.
CHAPTER 53
I shut down the computer, yank the cord out from the wall, and scoop my bag onto my shoulder. I push my way to the Austrian boy at the cash register.
“Is there another exit?” I ask in German. Nodding toward the front door, I attempt to look annoyed. “That guy won’t leave me alone.”
The boy looks out the window where the man in the football jacket is still watching me. “Kranker Typ.” The Austrian boy smirks, insulting the man—Creep.
He leads me through a dank office and into a utility room. He unlocks a creaky door that opens into an alley behind the buildings.
“Danke.” I smile.
“Where are you going?” he calls out after me. But I don’t look back. I run through the alley, my boots gripping the ice, until I reach the main cobblestone road circling back to the plaza. Here I turn onto a narrow road off the grassy knoll in the center of town.
I pass a busy nightclub—Spass Nacht, the sign flashes in neon lights. A short line of people linger outside, awaiting ID checks from the burly bouncer in the doorway.
Veering left, I walk briskly in the direction of the train station.
Suddenly, the man in the Munich Football jacket steps out of the shadows.
Halting, I scan my surroundings. Idling at the end of the street, close enough to block my exit, but not close enough to reach me, is a dark Mercedes sedan. I can’t risk it. Munich Jacket is rapidly closing in. His