by Jeff Abbott
The Pollitt Family
Rural Virginia, two weeks later
When Iris thought about that dark day, she would focus on a few images: leading her son off the plane, her arm around Grant, murmuring reassurances. She had thought of racing to the park on that morning of Danielle’s murder, shifting into mom mode for her daughter. Staggering away from that private jet was mom mode times a thousand: seeing that reporter Elena Garcia with a cell phone pressed to her ear and steering Grant away from her. She knelt and hugged Grant and kicked the gun away so the police could see her hands were empty. Behind her, back on the plane, she had heard Peter howling in either pain or grief. But pushing past all the chaos was the weight of her child, her son, leaning against her, needing her, drawing strength from her.
“Mom, Mom,” Grant kept whispering, his voice broken, and she told him it was over; it would be all right.
Now she’d find out if she’d told him the truth.
* * *
“As deals go, it’s not bad,” the warning woman explains. Her name is Jill, so she says, and Iris has not seen her since Grant was a baby. Before all this, Iris last saw Jill in a Saint Petersburg café, faking a slight Russian accent, whispering a warning not to proceed with the adoption. “The evidence and the statements from his accomplices clear both your husband and your daughter; the blame is laid on this man known as Patrick Marland, whom Horvath hired as an accomplice. You all move from Austin, drop out of sight for a few years, it’s forgotten. News cycles are measured in minutes now. But we think it’s best you be here, close to the Agency, where the government can offer you protection.”
“And what about Mike? Does his story get buried along with him?”
“The late Mikhail Vladimirovich Ivanov, as we know him. The Russian government isn’t keen on acknowledging that one of their president’s billionaire inner circle and former intelligence officers went back to his active espionage background to exact a personal revenge. And then helped murder American citizens. The Russians will paint him as not close to the president, using criminals like Marland for his scheme and having gone rogue.”
“I just want to understand it…” Iris begins, but then she realizes she understands, at some level, what drove Mike. He wanted his child back. “If he was the father, why didn’t he just say so?”
“Because he knew you would never surrender Grant, and Grant would not go willingly with him. And he wanted to make you pay for Anya’s death. And also because if he had, certain…activities in his past would have come to light, and he couldn’t maintain his billions or his position if they had.” Jill clears her throat. “Years ago, Danielle worked for the CIA as a courier. One of her contacts that she received information from was…Mike. One of the others was Anya, who spied on Mike and his close friends for us.”
“And if he announced we had his son…that would have come out?”
“Yes. Most of the trusted advisers around the Russian president share his background of having worked for the KGB and then becoming powerful leaders of business in Russia. Mike was no different. Except he had shared information with us. He could only gain his son through treachery. So he forced Danielle to help him destroy your family.”
Iris closes her eyes for a moment.
“The flash drive Kyle found in Danielle’s house? It was insurance she thought she could keep to protect herself from Mike. A record of payments made to two Russian agents in the employ of the CIA from years ago, who passed along information to Danielle when she would come to Russia for adoption visits. She used their CIA code names: Lark and Firebird.”
“Anya and Mike—I mean Mikhail.”
“Yes.”
“They both were on the CIA payroll?”
“Mikhail was one of our key assets. He’d been identified as a possible successor to the president. You can imagine our interest in him, and our desire to protect him as a source. Anya we paid to keep an eye on him, to make sure he didn’t lie to us, but he didn’t know that, at least then.”
“That was why you offered us money not to adopt Grant. To keep him in Russia, so she could go back to Mike with a child and be closer to him than ever.”
She nods. “We tried everything to dissuade you.”
“You could have killed us.”
“The operative assigned to follow you…went rogue that day.”
“I saw a picture of him on that flash drive. The man called Marland, standing next to a damaged SUV, just like the one that hit us. Marland was CIA.”
Jill looks uncomfortable for a moment, then takes a deep breath. “Yes. He was very protective of Ivanov. An asset like Ivanov was unique. What if the Russian president has a heart attack? Ivanov was one of the five top contenders to be next in line back then. But Anya had already burned her bridges with the orphanage system the first time. They weren’t going to give her back Sasha when she decided she’d be better off going back to Ivanov.”
Iris stares at her.
Jill shakes her head. “They were really a pair. The high-placed Russian billionaire whom we couldn’t bribe, but we could let him invest and grow his money in the West, where other Russians couldn’t get ahold of it if he fell from power, and the poor young model who loved him but became increasingly unstable under the pressure. You know, Danielle could never meet directly with Mike. He’d send people to her hotel. Those guys going to hotels full of Western business types wasn’t suspicious.”
“And Marland was CIA. But here he was working for Mike…”
“Yes. Marland was a former field operative in Russia who became Mike’s handler after we dropped Danielle when Anya died. His real name was Patrick Crawford. He got close…too close, too chummy with Mike. Marland was greedy. Marland would keep him informed of certain CIA activities in Russia or neighboring countries, and Mike used the information to stay in power, to expand his influence. And he set up very nice financial accounts for Marland under a range of names. Marland left the CIA with no crimes proven, but under a cloud. Before he left, he managed to get the Agency’s forensic file with photos and details of the team’s processing of the scene in the abandoned town after Danielle reported that Anya was dead—a murder she blamed on you and Kyle.”
“That’s who Danielle called…a CIA team. To clean up the mess.”
“And to document it. When Marland finally acquired the CIA file a couple of years ago, he sold it to Mikhail, who decided he wanted his biological son back…but was not going to risk asking you for permission to see him. I’m not sure if he was driven more by love or a sense of outrage that you had taken something that should have been his. He blamed you for Anya’s death, hence you had to suffer. The photos of the cat in the window, the snow, all of that was from the CIA file. Danielle called us to clean up the scene, but we had little time—he owned that land. He’d bought the village to tear it down and build a complex there. I think Anya planned to wait for Mike there, with their child that he didn’t even know about yet. When he saw the CIA report, he must have dug and found her body buried on the edge of the property, and retrieved the bracelet you put back on her wrist.”
“So armed with the CIA report on how Anya had been killed while kidnapping us, he came here under an old Russian intel cover and co-opted Danielle?”
“Yes. He showed up in Austin as Mike Horvath, Canadian investor, with a teenage son in tow and conclusive proof of her involvement in Anya’s death. Obviously that would have destroyed her business and her life here. And we believe, from what Peter told us, that he threatened to kill Ned if she didn’t cooperate. He had her under close surveillance and control. Her phone had been compromised by Russian hackers to monitor her constantly. So she did as he asked. He bought her a house close to you, via this Firebird front company, so you would be neighbors, as he did later for the Butlers. Danielle, under coercion, helped establish Mike as the friendly, trustworthy neighbor. Helped him befriend your family. Helped him get access to your house so he could surveil you either through tampering with your phones or computers or listening devices�
�it won’t surprise me if we find your house is bugged. He had a long game, and having help—Danielle, Marland, and the Butlers—was key to his operation.”
“She could have told us. Warned us.”
“We think she was preparing to… That was why she gave Kyle the burner phone recently. But she never got up her courage to tell Kyle. Her and her son’s lives were at risk.”
“It must have been very lonely for her,” Iris says. For all her anger toward Danielle…this is horrifying to hear. To live this way, in constant fear.
“We think that Mike ordered Marland to kill Danielle when she finally rebelled against his control. We think the burner phone she gave Kyle was to communicate with him where Mike couldn’t know. She didn’t want to have an affair with Kyle; when she found out that her son was enmeshed in a drug scheme, she could see it was a revenge play not against just your family, but hers as well. She wanted to find a way to warn you all without putting your family and hers in mortal danger. If she warned Kyle, she risked her son’s death. She was trying to figure out how to do it, how to contact him, how to tell him without him freaking out that Sasha’s father was mounting an intelligence operation against your family. I believe when she threatened to go to the police to protect Ned—then her usefulness was done. She may not have even known her old colleague Marland was the drug dealer. He killed her, using pipe Mike had stolen from your house at some point. He must have called the one number in the burner phone he found in her pocket and realized it belonged to Kyle. Kyle told the police the truth, that he got an early-morning call from her burner…but not that Marland hung up when he realized it was Kyle on the other end. Then they knew they had to escalate the attack against your family.”
Iris feels cold in a way she hasn’t felt since the awful moments in Bukharin, with Anya dying in the snow.
“But they couldn’t remove the listening devices in her house until Ned left the house with your daughter. That’s what Marland was doing when your husband went inside Danielle’s house—cleaning up the evidence, making sure nothing could point to them because they still had to destroy your family. Marland beat Kyle and then told Mike about bloodying him in the bag, and that was a perfect way for the murder weapon to be produced. They planned long term, but they took advantage of sudden opportunities. Very good at his job.”
Iris can’t quite bear the admiration in Jill’s voice and she looks away.
“What about Peter?” She hates Mike, Marland, the Butlers…but she feels sorry for Peter.
Jill takes a deep breath. “What Peter told Grant on the plane is true. He is Anya’s older son. Your child’s half brother. We just confirmed it with DNA testing.”
Iris takes a deep breath. All this time…his own brother, right there. Grant had slashed Peter’s arm to get free from the room.
“Anya had a series of tumultuous relationships among the Russian elite before Mike. She was his mistress who made his unhappy marriage bearable. She had Peter, fathered in another relationship, and she gave him up for adoption as the father would give no support. She got Peter back, then got cold feet again and returned him. But Peter was never adopted by a family. After Anya’s death, we believe Mike learned about Peter and adopted him, as a way of honoring Anya. But he did so under his Mike Horvath name, which he had used in intelligence operations against Canada. Peter Horvath was raised by Mike in Toronto, where Mike established a second household that his Russian wife didn’t know about. After his wife unexpectedly died, he was free to move between both lives as Mike and Mikhail as he liked. But he got Russian intelligence hackers to train Peter and used Peter to reach out via email to your son, as Anya, sending those pictures and messages to slowly break down Grant. Peter was helping his adoptive father destroy your lives. His loyalty to Mike was absolute and unquestioning.”
“But Peter talked about losing his mother.”
“He has very few memories of Anya, but I know he felt her loss.” Jill clears her throat. “That so many images and details of Anya’s life were scrubbed off the internet—Peter told us his father asked him to do that. To help erase his mother’s presence.”
Iris feels ill. “Grant asked Peter for help.”
“Of course. He was a trusted fellow teenager with the know-how; Grant probably wouldn’t have gone to an adult. Peter was the perfect confidant—actively hacking your family’s computers and phone, and better yet, Peter could tell Grant any lie or truth about the hacking that helped their cause, and Grant would believe him. Peter told Grant what their father wanted Grant told. Bits and pieces of the story—emails from Saint Petersburg, hints of lies told by you—to warm Grant up to the idea of his Russian father.”
“What will happen to Peter?”
“The Russians don’t want him; he’s no longer a citizen, and they’ve frozen all of Mike’s financial accounts that they can reach. Grant is his sole relative. He has no one else. He’ll face charges here and probably be deported back to Canada.”
Iris closes her eyes. “He did the same to me with my phone. Pretended to break into that phone of Marland’s and shattered my world with those texts supposedly from Anya.”
“All communications to Marland and the Butlers from ‘Anya’ were from Mike. That was Mike’s alias in the operation, one designed to unnerve you if you discovered it.”
“I don’t think they thought I would do anything but run.”
“And that way they could have easily gotten rid of you. They didn’t need to frame you for a crime.”
“So who killed Marland? One of the Butlers? Peter?” The thought that Mike would order his own son to commit murder chills her.
“The Butlers say it was Mike himself. He knew the neighborhood; it was easy for Butler to direct the patrols away from the house while Marland and Julia were there. Plus, we’ve seen his Russian intel files. Mike was skilled in using a knife for assassination. Marland got used. The video on his phone that he had of Kyle and Danielle leaving that so frightened your daughter? The time stamp had been digitally stripped, but it was from last Halloween. The two of them went out to walk the neighborhood and hang out with other parents supervising the trick-or-treating.”
It was a Winding Creek tradition—parents walking, sometimes drinking a glass of wine, keeping a distant eye on the kids. “Yes. I remember that. I left before Kyle did. Neither wore a costume. Mike was there that evening, too. A big group of us.”
“Mike must have filmed them walking then and tried to make Julia think it was from the night of the murder. He had Steve Butler primed to ‘discover’ Julia at the scene of the crime. That was the actual purpose of his neighborhood watch—to catch Julia as soon as Marland was killed and make her look guilty.”
“He killed him in the few minutes Julia was upstairs?”
“He was a pro and he knew that was his chance. He eliminates someone who could testify against him and takes another huge step in his revenge.”
Iris meets Jill’s gaze with her own. “A pointless revenge. Anya’s death was an accident.”
“But who really pulled that trigger? You or Danielle?”
“Does it matter?”
“Your husband was very ready to sacrifice himself for you, Iris. Kyle put everything on the line to protect you all.”
“I know. I love him so much.”
“That’s sweet. But it makes me wonder. Was that devotion because Kyle knew something you’d done in the past for the whole family, something that he felt he owed you for?”
Iris dares a smile and says, “We’re a team. Always.”
“This journal that ‘Anya’ mentions in the emails. Danielle must have told him about it. I’m sure he wanted to read it.”
Iris won’t look at Jill. “I don’t know what you mean. If I had kept a journal, it would have been to give to my son if I ever had to dissuade him from going back to Russia. To help him understand why he absolutely could not. What the stakes would be.”
Jill waits for her to say more, but Iris doesn’t. Finally Jill says:
“But you shot Mike.”
“Yes,” Iris says immediately. “I feared for my life and my son’s life.”
“The pilot and the Russian nurse aboard didn’t see that.”
“That nurse drugged and tried to hang my daughter on Mike’s orders. She’s not exactly a credible source.”
Jill shrugs. “The pilot had shut the cockpit door to protect himself, and the nurse says she was prepping a syringe to sedate you. No one saw the shooting but you and Grant.” Jill says this, like she hasn’t already read it in the report, like saying it aloud in front of Iris might pry off new information.
“I shot him dead,” Iris says. “Never ask me again.”
* * *
The safe house is in the Virginia countryside. The morning mist burns away and the January sunshine is bright. Iris likes to sit on the porch (she never thought a safe house could have a porch, but this one does, enclosed with bulletproof glass) and drink her coffee and think about what her family will do next.
For now, the kids are being privately tutored by a teacher provided by the Agency, and Kyle is taking a break from work. Iris stands on the porch, watching her two children on the lawn below the backyard deck. Julia looks healthy again, her cheeks flushed as she and her brother toss a football between them. Grant looks…Grant looks like Anya, that poor lost soul, misled by Danielle, used by people higher than her both here and in Russia. The woman who changed her mind, who maybe was scared to leave Mike, or scared to stay and keep spying on him and wasn’t afraid to kill to get her baby back. She aches for Anya now. Mike had been assessed as a potential heir to the Russian president. The pressure on Anya must have been intense. Grant’s going to look more and more Anya’s son the older he gets, her loveliness strong in his face.
She loves both her children so much.
Kyle brings her coffee, and they stand together at the railing. It’s been hard to talk, shell-shocked as they both are by the truth about their child, about their friends, about the past.
“He understands why you lied. To protect him. But you can’t protect him from the aftereffects.”
