“The group following you?” asked Berg.
“No. I worked a sting at MINERVA, the same night everything went down with my mom. It was a counter-honey-trap operation, except that everyone but the honey trap was in their fifties. I put three of them in the hospital that night; the rest flew out of Dulles the next morning. One of our surveillance teams followed them to the KLM ticket counter.”
“That’s very interesting,” said Berg. “Did MINERVA identify any of them? I know they can be pretty thorough.”
“I don’t know. Everything blew up with my mother right after the operation,” said Devin. “They were reaching out to law enforcement contacts to get some help with fingerprints. None of them carried ID. I can reach out to my boss to see if they found anything.”
“We’ll have to vet him first,” said Berg.
“Yeah,” said Devin. “He fits the profile.”
Marnie ran her fingers through her shoulder-length hair, back and forth, before making two fists in her lap, hands shaking.
“You okay?” asked Devin, wondering if once again he should keep his mouth shut.
“I feel like you guys are talking in code,” said Marnie. “On purpose.”
“We’re not,” said Berg. “It’s too much to explain without showing you. Trust me. This is complicated in an epically bad way.”
“I can’t wait,” said Marnie.
“Neither can I,” said Rich.
“You haven’t seen it yet?” she asked.
“I got Helen’s executive summary,” said Rich. “What she prepared for Devin or whoever took over the fight for her. That was enough to get me out here. Seeing the first Russian team move in was enough to convince me this was real. The last attack? That sealed the deal.”
“I don’t suppose there’s any way I could get my hands on that right now?” she said.
“I have a copy in the glove box,” he said.
“You don’t really have a copy in the glove box,” said Berg.
“I do,” said Rich. “I hate reading on my phone.”
“Marnie. You don’t have to get involved in this any further than I’ve involved you,” said Devin. “We need to get your parents to a safe house or something until Karl can reach out to that group in LA that’s good at hiding people. I’m really sorry about all of this.”
Rich turned in his seat. “I’ve already taken the liberty of making those arrangements. I prepositioned two of my people in Falls Church in case something went wrong tonight. I figured this qualified, so I activated the plan. My team will escort them to a private terminal at Reagan National Airport, where they’ll board a private jet and fly to Los Angeles. Same with your dad, Devin. Unless they refuse. Nobody is forcing anybody to do anything.”
“I need to call them and let them know it’s okay,” said Marnie, pulling out her cell phone.
“One call and then we have to toss that phone,” said Rich.
“We could drop her off at Reagan instead of BWI and grab a few rentals there,” said Scott.
Marnie stopped dialing. “I am not going to LA.”
“You don’t have to stick around,” said Devin. “Seriously. This will more than likely get way uglier.”
“I can guarantee it,” said Rich.
“You’re not getting rid of me that easily,” said Marnie. “I want to see exactly what your mother was up to. To see why the Russians would go this far to bury it.”
“Careful what you wish for,” said Berg. “If you gaze long enough into this abyss—”
“Russians try to kill you?” said Marnie.
“Sounds about right,” said Rich, handing her the document that had started all this.
PART IV
CHAPTER 32
Yuri Pichugin nodded at the squat mercenary standing next to the mahogany door set into the thirty-foot-high white marble wall of the five-thousand-square-foot indoor arboretum, his favorite place to relax in his palace-size mansion on Lake Ladoga. Especially in the winter, when Saint Petersburg became quite dark and dreary. On five-degree, blustery overcast days, the exquisite tropical paradise provided a welcome refuge when he was in town. In fact, he so preferred this space to any other that he’d replicated a small section of his office overlooking the lake in one of the corners of the arboretum, adjacent to the main house.
The ex-GRU Spetsnaz soldier opened the door for his surprise guest. Unexpected in that he’d anticipated receiving a simple phone call confirming that the threat to FIREBIRD had been extinguished. Not a personal visit. General Kuznetzov’s trip obviously heralded bad news. The kind that required a one hundred percent secure method of communication. A face-to-face discussion. The value of which could never be understated, or more importantly—intercepted.