“Piroshki, maybe,” said Berg. “Every eastern European country has a version of pierogi.”
“Sounds the same,” said Rich.
“Not even close. It’s a sweet or savory stuffed bun, panfried right before serving. To die for,” said Berg. “But I doubt that’s how Pichugin rose so quickly into the highest stratosphere of Russian power and wealth. I think the Belsky family originally bought the land, on behalf of the Soviets, for the original summer camp. Maybe they were secret Communists. Maybe they got paid. Who knows?”
“They sound like opportunists,” said Devin.
“Communists. Opportunists. All the same in the end,” said Berg. “Whatever the deal is—the Belskys turn the land over to the GRU, or whoever is running the sleeper network, and everything runs smoothly. The second generation is indoctrinated and trained at the camp before being launched into the world. Then things go dormant for a while, waiting for the third generation. Somewhere along the line, the Belskys figure out a way to cash out of this valuable possession.”
“Opportunism at its finest,” said Rich.
“It has to be Pichugin. I just don’t know how he got his mitts on the program. That’s the missing link here. How did the sleeper program come into his possession? Unless the Russian Federation outsourced it to him, and he’s just a proxy. My gut tells me it’s the other way around.”
“Why don’t we just go after Pichugin?” asked Devin.
Rich took over from there.
“First. His entire network of businesses is located in Russia or former Soviet satellite countries. We’ve operated in Russia before, but not in a while—and it’s far easier said than done. Second. The guy owns the largest private military contracting agency in the world. He supplies entire mercenary paramilitary units to the highest bidders around the world. Putin allegedly uses Pichugin’s forces when he’s looking for plausible deniability about Russia’s involvement in a conflict, like the eastern Ukraine front, Crimean Peninsula, or Syria. We’d need a small army of our own to go after him.”
“They all have their weaknesses,” said Berg. “We’ve hit harder targets than Pichugin.”
“Only as a last resort,” said Rich.
“Fair enough,” said Berg.
“How did you piece together the link between Belsky’s company and Pichugin’s?”
“A hunch,” said Berg. “Firebird Development was kind of a dead end. An anonymous Delaware corporation, with its listing agent registered as another anonymous Delaware corporation. Classic hide-the-owner shell game. With Russia on my mind, I ran a search through the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control public database to see if Firebird Development was on their sanctions list. Stab in the dark.”
“Bingo?” said Devin.
“Big time,” said Berg. “Firebird Development popped up on Yuri Pichugin’s asset list. Pichugin had been sanctioned through the Magnitsky Act in early 2013, which bans him from entering the United States and freezes all of his US-based assets, including Firebird Development. I found Andrei and Viktor Belsky listed in the sanction filing as the previous owners. Apparently, the US Treasury Department cut through the corporate shell game and surfaced their names. A quick Google search confirmed that the Belskys had indeed moved up in the world.”
“This is a head-scratcher,” said Devin. “I mean . . . how do we use that information? Try to get the Treasury Department interested?”
“We don’t have anything to offer them. They did their job. Firebird Development’s assets, if any still exist, are frozen in accordance with the Magnitsky Act ruling,” said Berg.
“It didn’t look like they’d skipped a beat, other than reduced attendance,” said Devin.
“Kids these days. Addicted to their phones and social media,” said Rich. “In the seventies and eighties you still had a shot at brainwashing people.”
“I’d laugh if it weren’t so true,” said Berg. “I’m going to reach out to someone in Russia who might be able to help. It’s a long shot, but I’m convinced it’s an opportunity to unravel the entire sleeper network. Sergei Kozlov, the GRU general who passed information to your mother in Saint Petersburg, knew more than three names. He likely had access to the entire roster. That’s what I suspect he was going to offer the CIA—but he never got past the second meeting. Kozlov may not have been the only senior-level officer at the GRU with access to that information. I’m hoping my contact can point us in the right direction—so we can arrange a chat with one of those officers.”