Page 64 of Thresholds

I went on squinting at the road ahead, breathing slowly and worrying the rosary beads between my fingers to displace some of the pain streaking through my body. If I could get to the port, I could gethome.

I walked with purpose, careful to keep my eyes down and my steps confident. I was playing the part of a local, one who wouldn't normally draw the attention of the heavily armed law enforcement agents on everycorner.

It wasn't supposed to go down this way. I figured that was how all agents prefaced their debriefs of operations gone bad. I wouldn't know. My operations never wentbad.

Untilnow.

I'd been working this assignment for almost two years. Two years of cohabitation and marital bliss with awoman. Even if that woman was also a highly skilled operative, it was one hell of a long-running hetero con. Two years of chipping away at Moscow's society circles, playing the part of the eccentric antiquities dealer who also trafficked in weapons of war. Two years of planting seeds and watching themgerminate.

There was no reason for this operation to fall apart weeks before we were due to get out of town. Our work was airtight and the information we'd gathered was solid gold. There were bumps in the road, for sure, but that was the way with every hop. This hop had been one of the good ones. Difficult, exhausting, grueling—but one of the good ones, until I woke up in a dirt-floored dungeon with my hands and feet shackled to an ancient stonewall.

I stifled a laugh at that. My father liked to say that if you thought an operation was going well, you weren't payingattention.

I had paid attention. I knew this operation, every corner and seam ofit.

If I made it home, I was certain he'd tell me Ihadn't.

A large family came around the corner, and I spared them a warm glance. "God be with you," I said in Russian, affecting my most provincial accent. Nuns didn't rock the upper-crust city accent I'd employed during my timehere.

They nodded, mumbling the blessing back to me. I hunched into my habit, hoping to obscure some of my height. Nuns weren't six-three.

My thumb and forefinger rolled to another bead as the pain of bone-on-bone radiated up my arm and into my shoulder. I was furious about that. The motherfucker who broke it didn't know what the hell he was doing. He just wailed on me with a lead pipe as if that was going to yield any actionable information. Talk about amateur hour. I needed the use of both arms right now, and I didn't have it because some foot soldier with anger issues didn't like it when I told him his mother was bad inbed.

I pressed the pad of my thumb into a rosary bead as a gust of nausea threatened to knock me over. I continued walking, my gaze trained on the stories-high cargo ships and cranes looming tall over Kola Bay. I was almost there, and breathed a small sigh ofrelief.

A liquefied natural gas tanker was leaving from Murmansk this morning, one with a crew that knew how to look the other way for the right price. The tanker was set to sail around Scandinavia to the Atlantic, and make several stops along the east coast of North America. If I could get on that tanker, I could send word to my handlers. They needed to pull their operatives out of the country and turn down the volume on current assignments, and prepare for the disproportionate response headed theirway.

I picked up my pace as I marched through the rows and lanes of shipping containers. Unsurprisingly, I was the only nun in sight, a spectacle in a sea of metal and machinery. The roughnecks and longshoremen eyed me as I passed, and I offered the sign of the cross in response. Something about that gesture, coupled with my rosary beads and exaggerated hunch, earned tolerant nods from themen.

When I reached the far edge of the port, I lifted my arm in greeting to the quartermaster. He eyed me with an appropriate amount of suspicion as I moved toward him. From the habit's deep pockets, I retrieved a small coin purse. It was lined with enough cash to ensure passage to North America, and a little more to keep the questions at aminimum.

No, I hadn't robbed the convent. Even spies had standards. Most of the cash was courtesy of the secret police I took down on my way out of their black site last night. At the off chance the bills were tagged and traceable, I turned them over in small towns throughout the region. Now, all the money was clean and I was a matter of steps away from surviving the worst of thisordeal.

"A beautiful day the Lord has granted us," I said to him, that provincial accent heavier than ever. I worried my beads, forcing his attention there rather than my face. "Do you have room for onemore?"

He regarded me for a long minute in which I debated whether I could strangle him without arousing the notice of the other dockworkers and then stow away aboard the tanker. The short answer was yes, Icoulddo that, but no, it wasn't a wisemove.

"Room," he repeated, pulling the beanie from his head and wiping his hands on the wool. "Headed for America, you know. I have space for one more on deck five, but only deck five. Nothingless."

In other words, he wanted at least five thousand Americandollars.

I held out the coin purse. "You're a true servant of our heavenly Father, my child." If I hadn't been holding back a roar of pain, I would've laughed at myself. I figured I'd laugh later, when a steady stream of morphine was coursing through my veins and my humerus bone wasn't trying to tear through my skin. I'd laugh about this whole fuckingthing.

Thankfully, the quartermaster wasn't listening to a word I said. He was concerned only with thumbing through the money. He mouthed the numbers as he counted his head bobbing as he neared five thousand. His eyes lit up when he hit six, and then popped right out of his greedy skull when he closed in onseven.

Every payoff was associated with a moment, a beat where the deal could progress as planned or everything could go pear-shaped. This was that moment. The quartermaster was gripping the cash and sizing me up, debating whether he could shake me down or hold me hostage for more. If I knew his type, I knew he was also thinking about dragging a blade across my throat and throwing me overboard once we leftport.

And there was nothing I could do about it. Couldn't reason my way around it. Couldn't walk away. I had to wait itout.

He gestured to the medallions hanging from the rosary beads. "Saint Nicholas," he said, pinching one of the charms between his grubby fingers. "Watches over the seafarers,yeah?"

"The seafarers, yes, of course," I replied. I shook the beads at him. "I've been calling upon Saint Nicholas for safepassage."

He unzipped his coat and peeled back several layers of thermal shirts to reveal his bare chest. He pointed to an old tattoo. "Saint Nicholas." He tipped his head to the gangplank. "Be well,Sister."

I offered him a grateful smile and started up theramp.

Now, I only needed to survive the rest of this journey. I was one step closer but still an ocean away from the other side of this mission. If I made it home, I was taking a long-ass vacation. I was due for some sun, sand, and a sexyman.

"If," I murmured to myself, laughing as much as my broken body would allow. "I'm getting home if I have to steer this motherfuckermyself."

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