“It’s my fault,” said Jolene. “I guess I needed to explain to him that it might not be a great idea to stuff half of the team in the same place at the same time. Do you want me to send him back to the hotel?”

“No. He’s a new face to Young,” said Rudd. “We’re the ones that should probably back off.”

“It’s not like we were going to park right next to her and sit there like idiots.”

“I know. I know. Let him know we’re going to circle the lot and head across the street,” said Rudd. “We’ll wait and see where she heads next. If she goes home, he’s off the hook.”

She contacted Walsh, while he turned them around in the parking lot and crossed Broad Street. They waited several minutes in front of the Trader Joe’s until Young got back on the road, headed south. Once she passed downtown Falls Church, Rudd felt pretty confident, based on what Gentry had reported from Whole Foods, that she’d picked up lunch and was headed home. When she turned left off Broad Street onto Noland, he told Jolene to send him back to his hotel. Young’s house was one street over. She was headed home.

“Young is a dead end,” he muttered. “I can feel it.”

“This whole job is a dead end,” said Jolene, betraying a tone he hadn’t heard from her previously.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

She glanced at him. “I mean all of this feels pointless. On purpose.”

“Like we’re being set up for a fall?” asked Rudd.

“A fall from what, though?” said Jolene. “They can’t blame us for losing Gray. We’d need three to four times the number of people to adequately follow him, and even that wouldn’t guarantee full coverage. We’ve both read all the books these former American spies publish. They all managed to meet with their contacts in Moscow after conducting crafty SDRs—even under full KGB or FSB surveillance! I don’t know why they sent us here on this fool’s errand, but there’s a reason, and I suspect the story doesn’t end well for us. They could have dragged in teams from the New York tristate area. Upstate New York and Pennsylvania. New England. But for some reason they dragged the Kentucky-Tennessee crew to DC instead. To work this alone.”

“Maybe we’re not alone,” said Rudd.

“That would actually make the situation worse for us,” she said. “They don’t trust us to work with other teams?”

“I don’t think there’s another team working Gray,” said Rudd. “We would have noticed.”

“Probably,” she said.