“I suppose it would,” said Pichugin.

“And Sanderson is supposedly retired these days. Richard Farrington reportedly took over what was left of Sanderson’s black ops program. He has apparently rebuilt it to some degree.”

“What happened?”

“The illegals sent to the town house to grab Berg and Gray were killed at the doorstep. All of them dead within seconds. The only survivor was the illegal left to watch Gray’s apartment.”

“I want her dead as soon as possible,” said Pichugin.

“Already taken care of. She’s melting in a barrel of lye as we speak,” said the general. “The real problem is that the GRU team comprised of consulate and NOC operatives was wiped out several blocks away, attempting to intercept Gray. There’s going to be a little bit of a shitstorm at GRU headquarters. Frankly, I’m glad to be out of town right now.”

“There’s going to be a considerable shitstorm,” said Pichugin. “I hope you have your story straight.”

Kuznetzov shrugged. “The illegals team was expendable. I had used them as bait—just in case Gray was onto them. Apparently he was, probably with Berg’s help. The other group’s mission will pass scrutiny, because there will be no scrutiny. I gave it the ‘from the top’ label. I hope it won’t be a problem.”

“I’ll make sure he’s aware of that situation,” said Pichugin, slyly referring to Putin. “I don’t see a problem. But we can’t use any more Russian Federation assets moving forward.”

“Including the old illegals?” asked the general.

“For now. Especially in the DC area,” he said. “I’ll assemble a top-drawer mercenary crew and move them into position to strike when we locate Gray and Berg.”

“Shall I leverage a few of our more well-placed FIREBIRD assets to help expedite the process of finding them? Gray and his new friends obviously know better than to use their credit cards or cell phones.”

“Yes,” said Pichugin. “Devin Gray’s mother has obviously been working on this for some time. The fact that she uncovered Donald Wilson leaves more questions than answers. Like how many more did she discover?”

“I see three scenarios. None of them is good. Unfortunately, we’ll never know which one has materialized, so we have to assume the worst. Best-case scenario is that Kozlov only passed one more name to the Gray woman: Donald Wilson. We know she received at least two names from General Kozlov,” said Kuznetzov. “We deactivated both families six years ago after one of the FIREBIRD assets discovered that both families had been investigated by the FBI in 2003.”

“Remember how close we came to shutting everything down after Kozlov?” asked Pichugin.

“How could I forget?” said the general. “I don’t think I slept for the next two years, waiting for the whole thing to fall apart.”

The general poured more vodka, which they tossed back immediately. Followed by another round.