116

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS—4 JUNE

United flight 743 from Reagan National landed at O’Hare at 9:55 a.m.

Marjorie Ryker and Maya Emerson gathered their suitcases from baggage claim, then took the private car service that the Garcias had arranged. By noon they had checked into their suites on the top floor of the Four Seasons Hotel. Both Marjorie and Maya had repeatedly protested the extravagance, but the Garcias were insistent. They wanted this to be a weekend to remember and said their guests should stop worrying about the cost and just enjoy themselves.

The ladies finally gave in and accepted the lavish generosity, with one exception. Rather than eating something fancy at the hotel, Maya wondered if they could simply get some famous Chicago-style deep-dish pizza for lunch. The Garcias laughed and accepted her conditions.

In a cab on the way to the original Pizzeria Uno, Marjorie tried to reach Marcus again. She had been trying to reach him for days, but he never answered his phone. She did not want to leave a voice message or send a text. She wanted to tell him personally, to surprise him, and encourage him that such a sweet and unexpected reconciliation between her and the Garcias was really in motion. But yet again, Marcus did not pick up.

She was not particularly worried about her son. And she was grateful no one back at Bolling had stopped her from traveling on her own. The chief of security on the base had told her that neither the Iranians nor Kairos had any idea where she was now and couldn’t possibly track her personally. It was staying in Colorado in houses that could be easily identified that presented the main threat to the family.

That said, Marjorie had to admit she was growing irritated. The boy was busy. This much she understood. But too busy to return his mother’s calls?

✭

THE BRONX

As they feared, the day had been a complete waste.

“This thing is airtight,” Callaghan said of the security in and around Yankee Stadium. “The NEST teams haven’t turned up anything here. If these guys are going to strike, it’s going to be in Chicago.”

Jenny agreed. “It’s almost midnight,” she told Marcus. “We’re wasting time. We should be in Illinois.”

Geoff concurred. Pete, however, made the case to stay in New York until the Mass on Friday night was over. He had family in the area, and he wanted to do everything in his power to protect the lives of his kids.

Marcus was conflicted. He and the team were bone-tired. They had spent another fruitless day hunting ghosts. Now they were back at some lousy Best Western eating cold pizza and accomplishing nothing. There had been no attacks in Washington. Nor in Miami. Nor in Houston. So far, the papal visit was going smoothly, safely, and on time. But they were hardly in the clear. The event at Yankee Stadium was set to begin in eighteen hours. And then there was Soldier Field.

To their bewilderment, the imminent threat of attack by two and possibly more Kairos cells had still not made the news, aside from a plethora of rumors and heightened threat alerts that kept people buzzing on social media. Miraculously, the presence of two sets of nuclear devices on American soil had also not made the news.

With nerves strained, the discussion over whether to stay in the Bronx or head immediately to Chicago was becoming heated. Then Marcus’s secure satellite phone rang. It was Annie.

“Martha just landed at Andrews,” she said without small talk.

“And?”

“Her talks with Petrovsky were about as tense as they get, but in the end, they may have worked. The second she stepped off the plane, she got a call from Nikolay Kropatkin,” she explained, referring to the Russian spy chief. “For starters, he confirmed that until recently, Abu Nakba was in Iran, but he departed for the Hindu Kush region of Afghanistan two days ago.”

The team was arguing so loudly now about whether to stay in the Bronx or leave for Chicago that Marcus could barely hear Annie. Stepping out onto the balcony, he asked her if the Russians were tracking the Kairos leader.

“Kropatkin says no. What’s more, he insists that the IRGC doesn’t know where he is or how to contact him. The old man contacts them when he wants to communicate; otherwise it’s radio silence.”

“Liars.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Annie said. “But Kropatkin gave Martha a half-dozen satellite phone accounts that they know for a fact are used by Kairos operatives.”

“How do they know?”

“Because apparently Luganov ordered the FSB to provide Russian-built satphones to Kairos for the exclusive use of Kairos’s top command. Kropatkin claims that this all happened under his predecessor, Dmitri Nimkov, without his knowledge. But regardless, Noah just cross-checked the serial numbers of the phones. He says one of the phones was used by Abu Nakba himself in Libya. He also says the SEALs pulled the remains of a second Russian satphone out of the Ghat compound, but it was too damaged to get any data off it.”

“What about the other four?” Marcus pressed.

“I just spoke with NSA,” Annie replied. “They say three of the phones have not been used in weeks, but they’ll start monitoring them and checking past usage.”

“And the fourth?”

“That’s why I’m calling,” Annie said. “The account is active. The phone was used yesterday, and it’s in Chicago.”