I made a place for you in DivSix, Jimmy, when you were fucking radioactive. This ain’t just your ass on the line. Don’t embarrass me.

Our group and the ESU operators enter a briefing room. Gleason and Manning follow, among other team members, including the dog handlers and communications personnel. The space is crammed and the mood is keyed-up and intense. More than two dozen officers—fortyish detectives from DivSix but mostly young muscular ESU operators—arm themselves and assemble before a briefing panel.

The ESU commander and Gleason take their places before a wall displaying oversized street maps and building diagrams of an area of city streets in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, just a few blocks from Coney Island.

GLEASON

All right, everybody. Listen up.

What exactly, our boss asks the room, constitutes the legal basis for tonight’s warrant service?

Gleason lays it out on wall-mounted briefing boards. My notes:

1. Russian victim #2, Alexsandr Golokoff of Filvovsky Park, Moscow, was murdered at his residence on the night of April 3–4, 2034, sometime between the hours of 2300 and 0200.
2. Air passenger manifests [United, Aeroflot] confirm Alemany Petracek arrival in Moscow @24 hours prior to Golokoff murder—and departure from Moscow Sheremetyevo @8 hours post.
3. Traffic video provided by Moscow police, authenticated by Russian MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs) confirms presence of rental vehicle (UAZ Bukhanka van, Alamo Rent A Car), receipt to Petracek, in victim’s neighborhood at hour of murder.
4. U.S. victim #1, Nathan Davis, DOD 4/9/34, killed at Century Association, Manhattan, 2030 hours.
5. “Yoo-hoo” Petracek MD [metadata] phone log indicates calls from Petracek cell 4/1/34 and 4/4/34 durations 12:14 and 21:34 to Davis’s private number [6 days and 9 days prior to murder]. No intercept tapes.
6. Security video 4/1/34 [9 days before Davis murder] @Davis building shows Petracek enter, sign security log, proceed to Davis residence floor. No interior video.

Much of this evidence, Gleason admits, is circumstantial. What has convinced him (not to mention the judge who okayed the no-knock warrant) that it justifies an ESU service, however, is the confirmation by DivSix Team #1, Silver’s crew, of linkages between Russian victim #2, Alexsandr Golokoff, and U.S. victims #1, Nathan Davis, and #2, Michael Justman—and connections between all three and the Russian security police, the FSB, which has been known to engage the services of American assassins, specifically those associated with Bratva, the “Russian Mafia,” to carry out domestic and overseas espionage and murder.

The link between the three victims?

Climate change.