“He was actually born in East Germany when the Wall was still up but came to the United States for college under a special program in place at the time. He went to Ohio State, same as you, Decker.”
“How does that make sense?” asked Lancaster. “That a guy from that part of the world can just come here like that and go to school?”
“Well, he didn’t come in announcing himself as a spy, and maybe then he wasn’t technically one. He was a student with all the proper credentials and visas. And it showed him coming in from West Germany, not East Germany. Don’t know how they managed that, but they did. He graduated and returned home. Sometime after that is when we believe he became associated with the KGB, or at least Mossad believes that.”
“No, he was probably recruited by them before he came here for school, just so he could spy on us,” said Jamison.
“That may be. Anyway, after the Wall came down, he officially became part of the FSB, the KGB’s successor. He apparently worked very closely with a lot of the upper-echelon players there. Then he vanished. So, for the last twenty-odd years, no one knew where he was.”
Decker said, “Well, he ended up in Burlington running a restaurant, and has for the last fifteen years. That would tie in with a Russian oligarch bankrolling Rachel Katz.”
Lancaster said, “He didn’t sound Russian when we met with him. He seemed pretty American to me. Whatever that means,” she added.
“That’s the point,” said Decker. “They don’t all sound like villains from James Bond films. They’re supposed to blend in and seem just like everyone else. And his time in the U.S. allowed him to do that. It made him very valuable.”
Bogart said, “It’s more than that, actually. We dug deeper and found out that Egorshin’s mother, interestingly enough, was American. She was a defector after World War II. She sought asylum in Moscow and married a Russian, Anatoly Egorshin. He was an officer in the Russian army during World War II and afterward worked for the Soviet regime in East Germany.”
“Like father, like son. And his mother could have taught him American ways and speech then,” said Decker. “And that probably helped him adapt when he came here for college, and also when he returned to Burlington to operate the spy ring.”
“I’m sure all of that made him even more valuable to the Soviets, and then the Russians,” added Bogart.
“Have we made any progress on all the people they’ve placed over the years?” asked Lancaster.
“It’s complicated. There were no records of those people at the Grill, just the ones they were still ‘processing.’ And they’ve all vanished, as have the kitchen staff. We’ll interview the other wait staff who weren’t part of the operation. They may be able to tell us something that will help us track them down. And we do have an opportunity, though, in that Gardiner placed a lot of these people. We’re going to reach out to as many places as we can to determine if they hired any of his recruits.”
“If they’re still there,” said Decker. “They may have all made a run for it.”
“That could be. If so, at least we’re rid of them, which is something. But we’ll reverse engineer this thing as best we can. Even if we can’t locate these folks, we can at least assess the damage they might have done at their jobs and try to turn that around.”
“It’s a long shot, but it’s all we have right now,” conceded Decker.
Natty said to Decker, “Now I know why you took my gun. I would’ve shot the sonofabitch.”
“I know.” Decker took out Natty’s pistol and handed it back to him.
“Why would Childress have done this?” asked Natty.
“Why else? Money. I think when we dig into his finances, we’ll find some secret accounts flush with cash.”
“Do you think Childress has been working with them all this time?” asked Lancaster.
“Think back thirteen years ago, Mary.”
“Okay, the four murders.”
“We were newly minted homicide detectives.”
“Right.”
“So brand-new detectives were sent out on a four-person murder scene with no seasoned detective to head up the investigation.”
She glanced at Natty. “That’s right. There were more senior detectives available to investigate the case. Including you, Blake.”
Decker said, “I looked back through the records from that night. You want to guess who assigned us to that case?”
Miller said disgustedly, “Childress, when he was heading up the detective division.”
“That’s right. He wanted inexperienced people on that case who would jump all over the forensic evidence that had been planted and never look anywhere else.”
Decker glanced at Natty. “You might have seen what we didn’t see back then, Natty.”
“Maybe, maybe not. But I wouldn’t have figured it out all these years later, I can tell you that. Not like you did.”
“Well, hindsight is twenty-twenty. And I didn’t figure it out in time to save Meryl Hawkins.”
Bogart said, “We’ll keep looking for Egorshin and Gardiner and the rest. In the meantime, you all have to be on your top guard. From everything we know so far, you blew up a substantial spy ring operating in this country. The odds are these people will hightail it out of the country to live to fight another day.”
Decker said, “But there’s always a chance that they’re going to hang back and exact their revenge. That’s sort of a very KGB thing to do.”
“Exactly,” said Bogart. “In fact, there’s no reason for you to stay around, Decker.”
“No, there’s unfinished business I have to take care of.”
“Like what?” asked Bogart.
“Meryl Hawkins.”
“You can’t bring him back to life.”
“No, but I can do the next best thing.”
Chapter 77
Both men stirred when her eyes fluttered open.
Decker and Mars were sitting next to Rachel Katz’s bed in a hospital room that had no windows, for obvious reasons. Mitzi Gardiner had been moved to another windowless room, which was also heavily protected by both local police and FBI agents. They were taking no chances now.
Mars stood and took her hand. “Hey, how do you feel?” he asked.
She slowly nodded and managed a weak smile. “Better.” She glanced at Decker and her expression grew solemn. “How much do you know?” she asked cautiously.
“Well, Bill Peyton is really a Russian named Yuri Egorshin, and Brad Gardiner has been placing Egorshin’s spies all over the country for years now from an operation initiated at the American Grill. And we also know about the secret room underneath your restaurant where they create fake identities, backgrounds, and maybe even faces for these folks. Other than that, not much.”
Katz put a hand to her face and groaned. She finally withdrew her hand and looked at the lines and tubes running over her body.
“Am I going to recover?”
“Yes, you are,” said Mars. “We were just waiting for you to fully wake up.”
Her mouth quivered. “I don’t know what to say.”
“I’ll take a shade of the truth,” said Decker. “Unless you want to tell us the whole thing.”
“Can you lift my head a bit?”
Mars hit the bed control to accomplish this.
After she was settled, Katz drew a long breath. “The first thing you have to understand is that when I married David, I knew about none of this. There’s still a lot I don’t know.”
“He’d already opened the Grill before you met,” said Decker.
“Yes. And our life was good. We had the restaurant and I had my business. And he was already working on other projects. Everything was aboveboard, at least as far as I knew.”
“And then the meeting with Don Richards?”