Epilogue

Greg and Anne settled back into their life in Vermont, but besides his duties as a professor in the English Department at Middlebury, Greg worked on the book with Gospodja Pleshkova over the next four months, keeping her busy with his questions, but letting her rest just enough to recover after each of her sessions of chemotherapy at the Rudolfinerhaus. Her cancer receded, and they were doubly happy when the manuscript, Katerina, Beria’s Slave, was picked up by a major New York publisher. The executives of the company had such high hopes for the book, that they even flew Julia and her mother over for the book launch.

Anne and Greg completed the arrangements for the foundation, which they named the Katerina Foundation, in honor of Julia’s aunt, seeding it with an initial total of twenty-three million dollars, with the prospect that additional funds would be forthcoming from the sale of the yacht and the penthouse suite, as well as further reparations from the Polyakov empire. The foundation’s first disbursement was for Nadia’s studies at the Institute of Physics and Technology in Moscow, and for her to be able to live in the capital and travel home often to see her parents.

The search continued internationally for Billy and Polyakov, but both the ginger-haired terrorist and the arms merchant continued to elude justice.

In spite of Boris Polyakov’s threat, Anne and Greg suffered no Litvinenko-type repercussions in Vermont.

Was this a sign, they wondered, that, as they resumed their activities, the rogue former FSB band around the Polyakov brothers and their evil buddies who ran much of Russia no longer felt threatened by them?

There was no way to tell from where and when the next threat would come, though.