“Wallace? What the hell are you doing here?” Frank asked, getting up from behind his desk.
“Sit down, Frank. We need to have a talk.”
“Who the hell do you think you are, barging into my office and telling me what to do?” he bellowed.
“Do what he says, Frank,” Deputy Director Forrester said, coming in right behind us.
“Chuck, what the hell is this?”
“It’s the day of reckoning,” I said. “You lied to your superiors for financial gain.”
“You knew Deputy Director Forrester’s main directive was to break up the Oligarchy and you used that directive to sneak your agenda in under the wire,” Tess said.
“You knew Ilya Petrakov and Sasha Fedya weren’t dealing in stolen World War II art, but if you could convince the brass they were, then you couldoperate in Russia with full war-time immunity, especially after the killings of two young field officers.”
“What are you talking about?” Frank asked.
“You gave false intel to the Deputy Director, convincing him to send Officer St. Marks to work undercover in Russia, where you planned to expose her, setting in motion her execution. You thought you were sending a lamb directly into the slaughterhouse. That she’d last a few weeks, Fedya would make her, and you’d have your martyr. But you underestimated our girl, Tess. Even though she didn’t find Fedya’s so called ‘connection’ to the Nazi plunder, because it didn’t exist, she found favor with Sasha and was successfully making her way deeper into the Petrakov organization than any operative before her.”
“So what do you do next?” Tess asked. “You send in an even greener greenhorn, thinking he’d surely screw the pooch. And just to make sure, you tipped off Sasha about the forged Matisse painting. Soon, you’d have the flags of two dead officers to wave around. But just like before, you underestimated your agent.”
Frank scoffed, but Tess raised her hand to shut him up.
“You could then use our deaths as fuel to wage a full-on attack on the Petrakovs. Keeping the Deputy Director busy while you appropriated Sasha Fedya’s private collection,” Tess said.
“This was never about stolen World War II artwork or even taking down the Petrakovs. For you,this was all about taking ownership of that collection, before the US government could take inventory of its contents. And you could only do that if the artwork was seized in a covert military action,” I said.
“Then,” Tess said. “Once you had the collection all to yourself, you could cherry pick some of the most valuable pieces and sell them via the very channels Sasha Fedya set up.”
“This is preposterous. You couldn’t possibly have any proof of any of this,” Frank growled.
“I recorded every conversation we had, Frank,” Deputy Director Forrester said. “You lied to me. A DOJ investigation has already been launched, and your own words will damn you. Plus, we have the testimony of Sasha Fedya himself.”
Two soldiers then entered the room, seized Frank Graves and placed him in handcuffs.
The investigation that followed uncovered three more financial scams being run by Frank Graves under the guise of official CIA operations. One of them going back as far as twelve years ago. Sasha Fedya was read in as an official CIA asset and was invaluable in the covert war Deputy Director Forrester launched against the Petrakovs. Within two years, their criminal empire was in tatters, Zivon Petrakov was in our custody, and a large portion of the artwork in Sasha’s private collection had been returned to their rightful owners.
Both Tess and I received commendations, and Tess was awarded her second Intelligence Commendation Medal. I got one too, but of course Tess liked to remind me that she hadtwo. Officer James Hartwas also given the honor, as was Ambassador George Korman, who received aciviliancertificate of merit, but according to him, the whole thing made him feel like an operative all over again. I was more than proud of our rag-tag team and look back at the time with a strange fondness.
For Tess and I, however, our biggest feat of bravery was still yet to come.
Cameron
“I’M SO NERVOUS,” Tess hissed, wiping her hands on her jeans.
I grinned, pulling a T-shirt over my head. “Why are you nervous?”
She raised an eyebrow. “You’re joking, right?”
“Baby, it’s my brothers, and a very feisty, friendly, and totally lovable baby sister. They are gonna love you.”
“How can they love me when you’re only dropping the knowledge of me on them today?”
“Hatch has known about you for weeks.”
She rolled her eyes. “From the little I’ve gleaned about your family dynamic, he sounds like the easy going one.”
I let out a snort. “You’vegleanedthat, have you?”
