Zero Day, стр. 26
Slowly, he got up, and rubbed his neck against Yona’s calves. Then he climbed on the couch and started to knead the cushion. He curled up next to Yona and went to sleep.
“I think we made a connection,” Yona said to no one.
Hot tea came.
“Do you have family?” Yona asked through her phone translator.
“Two sons. They moved away,” she said quietly. “I may need to move too.”
“Why?”
“I can no longer afford this house. My son has been paying for this house, but his business is not good this year.”
Yona didn’t ask what his son did. It was none of her business.
However, the house…
“Are you selling the house?” Yona asked.
“I have thought of it.”
“How old is this house?”
“Three hundred years old.”
“Wow.” Yona was thinking there’d be a lot of germs in this house.
“I want to rent the upstairs rooms out because I cannot climb the stairs any more.”
That got Yona thinking. Working for Dmitri, she was location independent. She could live in Prague, couldn’t she? She’d have to get a long-term visa or residency permit. Perhaps she could test out a visit first.
She could have stayed in Vienna after they captured Aspasia and Ulysses. However, those two people had been sent to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. It was a slightly different court than where Kelvin was today.
“I don’t know how long I will be here,” Yona said. “But maybe I can rent a room upstairs for three months.”
Ninety days should be enough.
After that, she could either go home to Israel or see where Dmitri wanted her to work next.
Chapter 24
For the next three years, every Tuesday night before the lights were turned off in his cell, Kelvin found himself writing another letter to Yona.
Sometimes the letters were short, just a couple of sentences. Sometimes they were long.
Once a week, without fail, he’d write to her.
After collecting a month’s worth of letters—four a month—he would send the bulk mail to a post office box that Dmitri had designated in Vienna. And he would not call her by her name, only an initial.
Truth be told, he couldn’t be sure Yona had read any of his letters, because she rarely replied except for the cards that she sent at Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, and on his birthday.
She had said in one of her earlier letters that she had asked Leland about celebrations and holidays in the USA so that she could send him some encouragement.
Kelvin would rather that Yona wrote more frequently, but he knew that working for Dmitri might muzzle her freedom. To protect her anonymity in town and elsewhere, Yona could not visit him at the prison.
Perhaps it also followed that she sent him infrequent cards that had no return address.
Tonight, Kelvin couldn’t finish his letter. Something bothered him, distracted him. That something was a card he had received that afternoon.
He pulled out the card from the back of his Bible.
It was from Reuel, the one who got away three years before. The one whom Yona could still be looking for.
How are you? Hope you’re well.
Kelvin hardly knew the man except for those weeks Kelvin had been held captive in the castle outside Prague, when Reuel had forced him and his colleagues to hijack the new network that Ulysses was trying to use to run his underground operations.
Kelvin was glad he had helped thwart Ulysses’s plan to become the next Molyneux. That had reduced his prison time.
Aspasia and Molyneux now shared the same prison location outside Vienna, while no one knew where they had taken Ulysses.
Word was that the FSB wanted to talk to him. Didn’t they want to talk to Reuel too?
Kelvin wondered how to tell Dmitri that Reuel knew where Kelvin was.
Would it even matter to Dmitri if I live or die?
That was a good question.
He put Reuel’s card into the envelope meant for Yona’s letter, and sealed it. Then he decided not to send it. He put the sealed envelope back into the back flaps of his worn Bible.
The lights went out before he could get back to his letter to Yona. Just as well. He couldn’t remember what he wanted to say to her tonight.
To make it worse, he had been so distracted by Reuel’s card that he forgot to read his Bible. Now it was too dark.
He stretched out on his hard bed. No roommates. No one else there but occasional rats that scurried about.
He was used to rats since they were the same type of rats as in that abandoned building in Prague he had hidden in three years before.
Staring at the dark ceiling, he tried to recall the verse he’d read that morning. He had read 1 John 1:8-9 so many times that he decided to memorize it.
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Kelvin had asked multiple times for God to forgive him. Sometimes he didn’t feel like he had been forgiven of his sins, but that verse assured him that he had to put aside his feelings and trust God by faith. If God said He would forgive him of his sins, He would.
Kelvin closed his eyes and prayed for everyone on his daily prayer list. Primarily he prayed for Yona, Leland, Cayson, Dmitri, and Dario. Not having any family of his own, these people at his work were his family.
Before he could say amen, he fell asleep peacefully.
Chapter 25
A few weeks later, Kelvin was glad he hadn’t sent Reuel’s card to Dmitri.
One fine day, while he was busy living his life in solitary confinement, the CIA showed up at the prison to see him.
Dario de la Cruz hadn’t come alone. His colleague only introduced himself as Leonid, but he was clearly FSB.
Kelvin could see all sorts of leverage there with the way the FSB had treated him three years before.
“Two years off?” Kelvin