13 |

Off-the-books Operations Center
Outside Bethesda, Maryland

 

Leroux yawned and stretched, looking about the small room to see what had awoken him. Three more gentle taps on the door answered his question.

“Enter.”

The door opened and Sonya Tong stepped into the darkness, silhouetted by the light of Kane’s private operation. “Sorry to wake you, but we’ve got some intel that I think you need to see.”

Leroux stood, forgetting he wasn’t wearing any pants. Sonya quickly turned her head, but not before getting in a good look. “Sorry about that. I’ll meet you in ops in a sec.”

“Yes, sir.”

The door closed, plunging him into complete darkness once again, and he cursed, groping around for his cellphone that he had left on the nightstand. He found it and activated the flashlight then switched on the table lamp.

They were inside two massive, converted shipping containers, buried among hundreds of others, at a storage yard on the outskirts of Bethesda, less than half an hour from Langley. One of the containers was a fully equipped living quarters for four, well stocked with provisions to last months if not longer, the other side jam-packed with a state of the art operations center. Dedicated lines attaching them to the grid and backbone of the Internet gave them access to everything they might need, and Leroux was certain there were also backup generators and satellite access should it become necessary.

Fortunately, Armageddon wasn’t knocking on their door just yet.

He quickly dressed then joined Sonya and Tommy in the ops center. “What did you find?”

Tommy pointed at a screen showing a woman stepping out of a van. Leroux’s eyes narrowed.

“What am I looking at?”

“Remember that explosion last night in Moscow?”

“Yes. Is that the van they used?”

“Yeah. Somebody just posted this video online and it’s going viral. A lot of people are in a huff that Muslims were being blamed without any proof. Looks kinda white, doesn’t she?”

Leroux nodded. “Not exactly the Jihadi type.”

“Nope.”

“Any idea who she is?”

“Not yet, but I’m running her face through my little routine that scours social media for matches. I didn’t want to hack into any of the big guys just yet.”

“Good thinking. But why do you think she has anything to do with what we’re working on?”

Sonya answered his question by bringing up a translated Russian arrest report. “Because of this. Thanks to Kane’s meeting with West, we now know Yury Minkin is involved. I started digging into his background, and couldn’t find anything extraordinary beyond the fact he was once KGB, then made out big in the carving up of state assets after the collapse of the Soviet Union.”

“Which means he must have had something on some powerful people.”

Sonya nodded. “Or was owed big time. Until he was arrested three weeks ago on fraud charges, he appeared squeaky clean for the past twenty-plus years. He owns a massive defense contractor, has loads of deals with the Russian government, and was making a killing off their rearmament plans. All until three weeks ago, when everything came tumbling down on him.”

“Falling out with the Kremlin?”

“That’s what the speculation is, though no one knows quite what it’s over. He’s never shown any interest in politics, keeps a low profile, rarely gives press interviews, and never comments on domestic matters. Nobody knows why the Kremlin would want to take him down.”

Tommy shrugged. “Maybe it is just simple fraud?”

Leroux sat. “It could be, but I don’t believe in coincidences. According to West, this guy was not only in the room, he was giving the briefing. That means he had to be at or near the top of the conspiracy. He gets arrested, three weeks later there’s an attempted poisoning using nerve agents that his company has access to, of a man who wasn’t in the room but had seen the assassin.” He turned to Sonya. “So, what’s the connection between this woman and Minkin?”

“I’m not sure yet, but when Minkin was arrested, there was a separate report filed then retracted, that they were looking for a woman that matches her description. It could be just coincidence, but I know how you feel about them.”

“Okay, let’s start pulling surveillance footage from the day of the arrest, see if we can spot anything. If we can put the same woman in both locations, then we know she’s involved.”

Tommy cracked his knuckles. “Just let me work my magic.”