Yuri stood up from his desk and walked over to greet him. A carafe of vodka and two shot glasses sat on a sprawling coffee table between two oversize blue velvet couches, along with a three-tiered silver stand loaded with finger sandwiches and toasted crostini. Two silver caviar servers flanked the sandwiches. Normally he wouldn’t roll out anything but the vodka for Kuznetzov, but his visit coincided with lunch.
“Grigory! Please come!” said Pichugin, expending all the fake enthusiasm he could muster for the man.
He personally couldn’t stand Kuznetzov, but their fates had been inexorably tied together for two decades. The man had been in the right place at the right time—at the right price. If Yuri had thought he could have run FIREBIRD after the last Directorate’s purge without the general’s help, he would have encased the rotund man in cement after taking over the program and dropped him in the Baltic Sea years ago. The man had proved instrumental during those early years, systematically migrating all control and evidence of the highly compartmentalized secret program out of the GRU’s hands and into Pichugin’s.
He’d be lying if he said he didn’t think of disappearing Kuznetzov in the years immediately following the handover, but FIREBIRD had proved more difficult to manage than Pichugin had assumed—and the general had led him to believe. They needed the GRU’s long-established and expiring network of illegals to pave the way for FIREBIRD’s second generation. To remove any obstacles from their assigned paths.
Pichugin could have attempted to outsource this work, but the GRU operatives had proved their loyalty and effectiveness for decades. He didn’t see any reason to risk the use of men and women whose sole allegiance rested in a bank deposit when he had an army of well-paid idealogues at his disposal.
Kuznetzov emerged indispensable. Even more so when Pichugin brought FIREBIRD and his revised plans for its use to Putin, a mutual confidant and partner in several enterprises at that point. Putin endorsed FIREBIRD’s repurposing without hesitation, ensuring them access to whatever resources they required to make it succeed. Once Putin linked Kuznetzov’s name and face so intimately to FIREBIRD’s success—the general became untouchable.
“Yuri!” said the general, eyeballing the spread. “You shouldn’t have gone to any trouble.”
“I figured I might need to settle my stomach during our chat,” said Pichugin. “This can’t be good.”
The door shut behind Kuznetzov, the security operative leaving them alone.
“Nothing we can’t handle,” he said, taking a seat opposite him across the table.
Pichugin poured two shots of vodka and handed one to the general.
“Za vstrechu,” he said, and they downed a premier version of Russian Standard. “So. Tell me about this problem we can handle but requires you to fly out from Moscow.”
“Devin Gray made some new friends over the past couple of days,” said the general. “Some very deadly and resourceful friends. Do you remember the name Karl Berg?”
“Vaguely,” he said. “CIA?”
“Ex-CIA,” said Kuznetzov. “Pegged to General Terrence Sanderson’s troublemakers.”
“Now that’s a name I’m more familiar with,” said Pichugin. “Never crossed paths with his people, but the name has come up at the highest level before. I thought there was some kind of understanding in place.”
“There is. But this would fall well outside of that back channel deal,” said the general. “For obvious reasons.”
“I suppose it would,” said Pichugin.
“And Sanderson is supposedly retired these days. Richard Farrington reportedly took over what was left of Sanderson’s black ops program. He has apparently rebuilt it to some degree.”
“What happened?”
“The illegals sent to the town house to grab Berg and Gray were killed at the doorstep. All of them dead within seconds. The only survivor was the illegal left to watch Gray’s apartment.”
“I want her dead as soon as possible,” said Pichugin.
“Already taken care of. She’s melting in a barrel of lye as we speak,” said the general. “The real problem is that the GRU team comprised of consulate and NOC operatives was wiped out several blocks away, attempting to intercept Gray. There’s going to be a little bit of a shitstorm at GRU headquarters. Frankly, I’m glad to be out of town right now.”
“There’s going to be a considerable shitstorm,” said Pichugin. “I hope you have your story straight.”