“I didn’t want to get your hopes up,” said Berg. “But he started moving the pieces into place last night. I knew the specter of a massive Russian sleeper conspiracy would pique his interest. He still wants to dig through all of this with the team to make sure we’re not full of shit.”

“That seems to be everyone’s first reaction to learning about this,” said Devin.

“It’s a big pill to swallow,” said Berg. “I only drove up here out of respect for your mother’s wish to try and keep you from getting yourself killed. I’m not sure this is what she had in mind—but here we are.”

“Thank you for doing this,” said Devin, feeling choked up. “Though I get the feeling this is exactly what she had in mind.”

“You’re probably right,” said Berg. “I had developed a bit of a reputation for working outside of the system toward her later years at the CIA. I wonder if that made a difference. When did she leave exactly?”

“Two thousand nine.”

“Jesus. Yeah. That was one hell of a year. I had gone from director of the Special Operations Group within the Special Activities Division in early 2008 to sitting in an obscure cubicle with nothing of any consequence crossing my desk by the spring of 2009.”

“Wow. That’s one hell of a demotion,” said Devin, feeling kind of awestruck to be in his presence.

He’d presumed that Karl Berg had been some kind of big deal at the CIA at one point, but to find out he’d run the black ops side of the house for the agency? No wonder his mother had asked Karl for this favor.

“What happened, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“True America happened,” said Berg. “Right around the time your mother was ousted, come to think of it. You know, she was still doing really good work for Langley at that point—pet sleeper project aside, which ironically turned out to be her best work. I wonder if her removal wasn’t somehow related, given the fact that one of President Crane’s top advisers was one of those sleepers. True America cleaned house in 2009. It wouldn’t surprise me if whispers of her theory reached the wrong ears, and Sean Walker made sure she was swept up in the political purge.”

“Why did they push you so far out of the fold?” asked Devin.

“True America had some serious skeletons in their closet, and I had one of the keys to that closet,” said Berg. “Anyone with one of those keys was run off the road into a ditch and left there.”

“Did you have anything to do with their downfall?”

“What do you know about that?” asked Berg, raising an eyebrow.

“I heard rumors at SSG that there was more to it than an election fraud scandal,” said Devin. “Something related to the 2007 True America incident.”