Chapter 57

CHAPTER 57

B ETHESDA , M ARYLAND

"No way," Maggie exclaimed as one of her Russia House analysts handed her a sealed manila envelope that she had couriered herself from CIA headquarters in Langley.

Unwilling to wait for the doctors to make their rounds at the hospital in McLean, Conroy had begun greasing wheels and rattling cages right away in order to get Maggie approved for release. The moment everything had been signed off on, he'd had a helicopter airborne from Andrews.

All in all, it had taken less than an hour from his first phone call until Maggie had arrived at the secure presidential medical unit at Walter Reed. From that point forward, it was a matter of staffing and getting the conference room up and running.

Sitting in her hospital bed at the front of the room, she opened the envelope with more than a little zeal. It wasn't exactly child-on-Christmas-morning energy, but it was close. When a hunch in the intelligence game paid off, it was something worth being excited about.

Pulling out the large, glossy photos, she splayed them in front of herself. "I'll be damned," she said, looking at each one. "Hello, Balthazar, you beautiful, flaxen-haired bastard."

"Pleased?" the analyst asked.

"Beyond pleased. Where were these taken and how did you get them?"

"We've been watching Peshkov's mistress, Valentina Usova—monitoring her phone and email traffic. Turns out she's been communicating with a woman fifteen kilometers up the coast from Pushkin's palace, in a town called Dzhankhot. And what would you guess this woman does for a living?"

"Something with horses," said Maggie.

The analyst smiled. "Yep. Boards them. Trains them. Teaches people to ride them. Soup to nuts, she's the go-to person in the area for all things horsey."

"How'd you get the photos?"

We have an asset in St. Petersburg with a cousin farther up the Black Sea coast in Gelendzhik. Our guy made a call to his cousin, we Cash App'd some Bitcoin their way, and voila—several hours later, we've got calendar-quality portraits of Valentina's pride and joy, as well as his very expensive trailer, which the cousin found parked behind the barn."

"Well done," Maggie stated. " Very well done. Has Conroy seen these?"

"Not yet," the analyst replied.

"Well, you're going to brief him when he gets here and he'll make the call on whether or not these go to the DNI and on to the president. In the meantime, I want you to write up a full report. Do you have a laptop with you?"

The analyst patted her bag and nodded.

"We're using the first lady's suite for our overflow offices. Head over there and tell them I sent you. And once again, you did a great job."

Smiling, the analyst exited the conference room.

As soon as the young woman had left, Maggie began tapping the nearest photo with her index finger. "What's your game, Peshkov?" she asked aloud. "Are you really going to start World War Three, or do you have something else up your sleeve?"

Opening up her encrypted email system, she banged out a quick message for Holidae Hayes at the Oslo station. There was a question she needed answered.

Something had been bothering her and the more she thought about it, the more nervous she became.