She’d promised Lourds that she wouldn’t send it in without his approval—of the release, not the words. The only reason she had agreed to that was because she wanted the whole story, not half of one.
The frustrating thing was that the half of a story she had was really exciting. It was also daunting to write. Nearly all of it was autobiographical, with her firmly in the main viewpoint. She wasn’t comfortable doing that, and most news stories weren’t written in such a fashion.
But this one necessitated it.
The honesty she was forced to employ to get the story told was draining. It was much easier to tell a story outside herself, to simply group the facts into a fashion that made reading and understanding easy for a reader.
Taking the reader along as a co-adventurer was much more difficult. She didn’t like the proximity between her and the story. In many ways, she was the story. Her pages told of her personal changes during the course of Boris Glukov’s murder and the fear she’d had as she and Lourds had escaped the killer at the dig site. The words kept the memories far too sharp to suit her. She could just read a paragraph and be right back there.
She’d made notes about Lourds’s elaboration on the scrolls but knew she’d have to do more research to fully understand what he’d been talking about. And then she was probably going to relay everything pretty much the way he had.
Unless her editor cut her word count.
That would be a pain. Just the thought was enough to depress her and take some of the joy from her writing.
She stared at the blinking cursor on the screen.
Don’t think about that. Focus on the story right now. Focus on staying alive. That should keep you interested.
She opened up her mail client and discovered she had e-mail from her editor.
Anna—
How is it going? I have not heard anything from you. You are not answering your phone.
It is hard to keep you updated when I’m running for my life, Kirill. Anna didn’t reply with that, but she wanted to. Checking her phone, she noticed she had missed seven of his calls. She had been purposely avoiding him because she was bursting to tell the real story.
When are you returning to Moscow? I am growing anxious, and the newspaper can’t afford to keep you over there for an extended period.
Right now, I’m not costing you anything. When you’re running from a killer, you learn to live cheaply. She was also thankful she had fallen in with Lourds and the ANA. If she’d had to put herself up at the moment, things would have been far too expensive.
Let me know when you can. I’m looking forward to more of your story. We have several interested readers who are writing in to make sure you are all right.
If there is anything you need, please let me know.
Kirill
Anna took pride in the mention of the readers. She was hooking people with her story. Of course, that was easy to do. CNN was still running footage of the attack, and Thomas Lourds was a public figure who had gone missing.
With her.
She smiled at that, but she didn’t forget that somewhere out there, a killer was searching for them, just waiting for her and Lourds to make a mistake.
***
Zoar Shar (Old City)
Inside the small apartment in a building built at the foothills of the mountains on the western side of the Old City, Linko stared at the computer screen on the small table. The FSB intelligence division had bugged Kirill Filatova’s computers at home and at the office. He was Anna Cherkshan’s editor.
Linko had not told the intelligence division why he had needed the computers hacked. He did not have to. They were employed to do the things people like him demanded they do.
Thirty minutes passed, and Anna Cherkshan made no reply.
Linko didn’t know if the woman was somewhere without access to the Internet, or if the most recent attack had driven her underground. So far, he still had not tried to intercept the young woman’s phone because he was afraid General Cherkshan would discover that.
Growing irritated at watching the unchanging screen, Linko rose from the hard chair. One of the other agents he had at his disposal quietly took his place.
The apartment was small and felt claustrophobic. It was rundown and old, not a place he wanted to be for any length of time. A sliding door opened onto a small balcony that