At the intersection, the traffic light changed to red. As the snow kept falling, the crowd stopped and formed a dense barrier that prevented the hunter from moving closer to his target.

Suddenly, a man’s voice blurted from an earbud concealed beneath the black watchman’s cap that the hunter wore over his ears.

“Melchior! Status!” the angry voice demanded.

The hunter’s name was Andrei. His employer, a former KGB interrogator, had given him the pseudonym “Melchior” to sanitize the team’s radio communications in case an enemy accessed their frequency. The seemingly nonsensical choice had puzzled Andrei until he’d learned that, according to tradition, Melchior was one of the wise men who’d followed the Christmas star to Bethlehem and discovered the baby Jesus.

A microphone was concealed under the ski-lift tickets attached to the zipper on Andrei’s coat: tickets that were commonplace in this mountain resort. To avoid attracting attention when he replied, he pulled his cell phone from a pants pocket and pretended to talk into it. His breath was white with frost. Although his origins were Russian, his American accent was convincing.

He pressed the microphone to transmit his message.

“Hey, Uncle Harry. I just walked up Alameda Street. I’m on the corner of Paseo de Peralta.” The Spanish name meant “walkway of Peralta” and referred to Santa Fe’s founder, a governor of New Mexico in the early 1600s. “Canyon Road’s across the street. I’ll pick up the package and be at your place in twenty minutes.”

“Do you know where the package is?” The gruff voice made no attempt to conceal its Russian accent, or its impatience.

“Right in front of me,” Andrei pretended to say into his cell phone. “The Christmas decorations are amazing.”

“Our clients will be here any second. Get it back!”

“As soon as my friends catch up to me.”

“Balthazar! Caspar! Status!” the voice demanded.

The unusual pseudonyms were the names that tradition had given to the remaining wise men in the Christmas story.

“Almost there!” another accented voice said through Andrei’s earbud, breathing quickly. “When you grab the package, we’ll block anybody who gets in the way.”

“Good. Tomorrow, we’ll watch football,” Andrei said into the microphone. “See you in a bit, Uncle Harry.”

He wore thin leather shooter’s gloves that provided only brief protection from the cold. As the traffic light changed to green, he returned the phone to his pants pocket, then shoved his hands back into his fleece-lined jacket, warming his fingers.

The crowd proceeded across the street, continuing to shield the target, who was about six feet tall, slender but with surprising strength, as Andrei knew firsthand from missions they’d served on together.

And from what had occurred fifteen minutes earlier.

Dark hair of medium length. Rugged yet pleasant features that witnesses otherwise found hard to describe. In his early thirties.