The Right Hand Read Online Free

Christmas morning. You had already figured out all the presents under the tree just by the size of the box.”
    Clay’s mouth disappeared into a thin line. “I wouldn’t know.”
    Adromatov swallowed and frowned for just a moment, sure he had made a gaffe, though unsure how it had happened when things had been going so well. Like a ship correcting its course, he deftly pulled the conversation back on track. “Yes, Nelson confided in me that he believed the story and he wanted to pursue finding this girl, this Marika Csontos. I counseled him to forget it, that it was a fool’s task and he had more important concerns on which to focus his attention. I believe he ignored my advice and spent the last several months doing his best to find the missing Marika. If he located her, I don’t know it. He disappeared from a train traveling between Perm and Omsk.”
    “There’s something between Perm and Omsk?”
    “Ha. Miles and miles of forest and beet fields.”
    “Don’t forget cabbage.”
    “How could I?” Adromatov was delighted that his gaffe didn’t seem to be casting any lingering shadows over his time with the agent. He told himself not to bring up anything involving Clay’s childhood, however innocently or indirectly.
    “The train he was on exploded and derailed.”
    “I read about that in your report. A freight train.”
    Adromatov shrugged. “Not uncommon for a spy to travel this way.”
    Their car pulled up to a blocky, windowless building that looked like so many other Iron Curtain–era edifices in Russia: sexless and stale. Adromatov turned the key and silenced the Volga’s whine.
    “Nelson’s office.”
    “The Russians already pick it over?”
    “The one he uses as a front in downtown St. Petersburg, yes. But they don’t know about this one.”
    Clay liked Adromatov. He wore the spook life as comfortably as broken-in shoes and managed to do it without its seeming like an illusion, a façade. The Russian actually enjoyed it, and Clay wondered if maybe they shared the same secret, the same antidote to fear. Clay was a good spy because he never rattled. And he never rattled because he simply didn’t care whether he lived or died.

Chapter Two
    H E AWOKE not in a jail cell, nor a bunker, nor a hospital bed, but convalescing in a posh hotel suite. He had been drugged; his cotton mouth and throbbing headache made that clear. He turned his head and saw onion domes out the window, an elevated view of the Kremlin. A glass of water awaited his lips on a stand next to the bed. He knew he shouldn’t drink it…had no idea what was in it…but his thirst overwhelmed him. He emptied the glass in two gulps.
    His left leg had been operated upon and was in a cast from his hip to his ankle. Pain emanated from a spot behind his thigh every time his muscles contracted or expanded, which meant always.
    He tried to remember what had happened after he’d spilled out of the burning train car—running, trees, gunshots, falling—​but the images were fuzzy, the way the world had warped when he tried on his father’s glasses as a little boy. He knew the essentials, though: he’d been tricked, trapped, shot, and captured. What would come next? Torture? Then why was he in this hotel room?
    He thought about trying to get out of bed. Could he? Pain shot through his leg as he tensed just to make the effort to roll it over to the edge of the bed. Nausea made the room swim in front of his eyes, and words somehow spoke inside his brain…
    Quit. Just quit and wait.
    …but he swept that exhortation aside. The human brain was a wondrous thing, and somehow the concept of mettle, of indomitability, of valor, had arisen when people had tuned out the brain’s warnings. He could make his legs do this.
    Sweat popped out on his forehead, and it evaporated just as quickly, like water sprayed on a hot pan. He suppressed a scream as his legs finally did as they were told and swung out and over the edge of the bed. He was in a seated