“I’m guessing she didn’t spend much time in this room,” said Berg.
“Probably a safe bet,” said Devin before wandering into the kitchen. “Take a look at this.”
Berg followed him to a hallway off the kitchen, which turned out to be more of a vestibule. A sturdy-looking door stood at the end of the stunted corridor, featuring a dead bolt, a regular keyless doorknob, and a touch pad embedded in the wall next to the doorframe.
“That looks promising,” said Berg.
Devin pulled the satellite phone from one of the duffel bag’s outer pockets and checked the last number he’d dialed. Exhausted from ten sleepless nights, he didn’t trust his memory at this point. He’d inputted the eight-digit code and pressed send so it would appear in his recent calls for easy retrieval.
Devin tapped the screen, activating the digital touch pad. He entered the code and pressed the green SUBMIT icon. A mechanical whirring in the wall behind the touch pad started a moment later, followed by a solid thunk closer to the door. Some kind of power-driven locking mechanism. No wonder she hadn’t invested much in the front door. The screen read OPEN DEAD BOLT, so he took the next step toward the big reveal and dug the keys out of his pocket.
A full minute later—the door wide open—Devin remained in the doorway, still trying to process what he was seeing. Mostly, he was afraid to step inside and get sucked into whatever had so entirely consumed his mother. Helen Gray had renovated the place, spending her available funds on her obsession, instead of the public-facing neighborhood gentrification effort.
All the interior walls had been removed and replaced by a dispersed pattern of cylindrical metal supports, initially giving the space an open feel. The complete absence of windows closed it right back up. If he’d blacked out and woken up in this room, he’d guess it was a basement.
The left wall, extending about twenty-five feet from front to back, consisted of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. From what he could tell, the shelves housed numbered binders. Several hundred if he had to guess. The rear wall, about twelve feet wide, featured a sizable wall-mounted flat-screen television. A recliner and an end table with a lamp sat in front of the television. A short length of string hung down from a square attic door directly above the recliner.
The only other pieces of furniture were a simple black writing desk and chair in the center of the space, facing right—toward the room’s pièce de résistance. A floor-to-ceiling, front-to-back “conspiracy wall,” complete with red strings going in every direction, photographs, headshots, maps, Post-it notes, and newspaper clippings.
The difference between this wall and every wall he’d seen at the FBI or in the movies was that Helen’s wall was meticulously organized. She hadn’t continually tacked items to the wall as they developed, building a shantytown of information. She’d obviously rebuilt this wall dozens, if not hundreds, of times.
“Are you going in?” said Berg.
“I don’t know,” whispered Devin.
The effort that had gone into this project was mind-boggling. The very least he could do was give this a chance. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to enter the room.
“Do you mind if I take a look?”
Devin shook his head and made space for him to squeeze by. Berg walked the length of the conspiracy wall, pausing a few times to stare at the displayed information. When he’d reached the end, he turned and crossed the room, taking in the wall of binders.
“What are we looking at?” asked Devin.
“On the surface, it appears that your mother uncovered an extensive network of Russian sleeper agents,” said Berg. “Far more extensive than anything we’ve ever suspected—assuming this isn’t some kind of elaborate delusion sprinkled with magical conspiracy theory dust. It’s going to take some time to sort this out and draw our own conclusions.”
“Where do we even start?” asked Devin. “How do we begin to make sense of this?”
Berg walked over to the desk and examined a yellow legal pad that sat next to a closed laptop. Tight handwriting covered the top sheet.
“True to form, your mother left instructions,” said Berg, tapping the notepad.
She’d apparently thought of everything, which meant she clearly had understood that she might not come back from whatever she had set out to accomplish by kidnapping Donald Wilson. In other words, Helen Gray had convinced herself that what she had discovered was worth dying for. He stepped inside the room—well aware that the wall could swallow him just the same.