Tatyana went with the receptionist and Roth shook his head as he watched them leave.

He’d just brought an agent of the Main Directorate right into his office. He had nothing to lose, his entire network had been hacked, if she could help find the source, any risk was worth it. But if someone had told him a week earlier that he’d be escorting a Russian agent to the sixth floor, he wouldn’t have believed it in a million years.

He went to the tech team and found the two network analysts. They were both young guys, recent MIT graduates, and Roth hadn’t spent a lot of time getting to know them.

“This is your lucky day, boys,” he said.

They looked up from their screens. They’d been working overtime trying to find the source of the breach and both looked a little worse for wear.

“What do you mean?” one of them said.

“Follow me,” Roth said.

He was painfully aware the rat was still out there and didn’t want to say anything that might be overheard.

“Bring your laptops,” he added.

He led them to the secure room and opened the door.

They were both taken aback by the sight before them.

“Boys, this is Tatyana Aleksandrova,” he said, then turning to Tatyana, “You’ll have to forgive their drooling. It appears they’ve never seen a woman before.”

“Sorry,” one of them said, closing his mouth.

“Tatyana is going to help you trace the breach,” Roth said. “She’s a trained GRU agent with experience of the method used against us.”

The techs nodded.

“None of you leaves this room without my permission,” Roth added. “This stays under wraps.”

He left them to it and went to his office, where he shut the door and picked up the phone.

“Levi Roth for the president,” he said into the receiver.

A moment later, he heard the president’s voice.

“What have you got for me, Levi?”

“Sir, I had a visitor waiting at my house tonight.”

“What visitor?”

“The Russian agent we were trying to make contact with.”

“The one who gave us the vial?”

“Yes, sir.”

“She came to you?”

“She did, sir, and she said she can find out who hacked my network.”

“She’s working on it now?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you think we can trust her?”

“Yes I do, sir.”

“Well keep an eye on her, Levi. And keep me updated. I want to know who the leak is the second you find out.”

“Very good, sir.”

Roth hung up the phone and went back to the conference room.

“How’s it going?” he said as he opened the door.

The two specialists looked up at him from their screens. Tatyana was typing on the keyboard.

“This is the real deal,” one of the analysts said. “It’ll take some time, but she knew how to find the back door.”