“Surveillance can’t distinguish.” Keene’s mouth flattened. “The marriage certificate is legal. Moscow registry, Orthodox blessing. She signed voluntarily, according to every document we’ve obtained.”
“Voluntarily.” Delacroix let the word hang.
Keene opened the dossier and set it between them. Twenty pages. Eight jurisdictions. Evidence painting the Volkov Bratva as a network spanning three continents—arms through Rotterdam, money through Cyprus, trafficking routes from St. Petersburg to São Paulo.
“How fast can we freeze his assets?”
“Authorize the hearing this week, Treasury coordinates by January fifth.” Keene pulled up a financial web on the screen. “Every holding. Every safehouse. Every front from Moscow to Brussels.”
She paused. Her finger tapped one node, and the image zoomed to a building. Belgian architecture. Children in uniforms crossing a courtyard dusted with December frost.
“Including the boarding school in Ghent where the brother’s enrolled.”
Delacroix felt the bile rise in his throat. He set the cup down before his hand could shake.
She slid a second folder across the table. Inside: photograph of a boy. Fourteen, dark curls escaping a wool beanie, backpack over one shoulder. He was laughing at something outside the frame, all gangly limbs and the obliviousness of adolescence.
Mikhail Morozov. Mathematics prodigy. Currently residing at a private boarding school under scholarship funding that traced through three shell companies to Roman Volkov’s personal accounts.
“You want me to sign an order that potentially destroys a fourteen-year-old’s life.” Delacroix set down the photograph. “That’s the ask.”
“The ask is preventing deployment of a nerve agent that could kill thousands.” Keene’s voice didn’t waver. “MX-42. Synthetic opioid derivative. Forty times more potent than fentanyl, and it can be aerosolized for mass deployment.”
She pulled up crime scene photographs.
Prague. A theater. Six bodies arranged in seats with foam at their mouths and burst blood vessels painting their eyes red.
Marseille. A nightclub bathroom. Two bodies the coroner initially classified as overdoses until toxicology came back showing compounds that didn’t exist in any pharmaceutical database.
“Intelligence suggests Volkov’s chemist-bride synthesized the prototype.” Keene traced the molecular structure displayed beside the photographs. “Her doctoral thesis matches the chemical signature. The methodology is identical.”
Delacroix studied the Prague photograph. A woman in the third row, hand still curled around a playbill. She’d painted her nails pink that morning, believing she’d see the evening.
“And if we freeze assets, apply pressure—” He looked up. “We’re potentially signing a death warrant for a woman who might be a victim.”
“Yes.” Keene gathered the photographs. “But we’re also preventing mass deployment of a chemical weapon with no known antidote.”
She met his eyes.
“It’s ugly math. But it’s the only math we have.”
Delacroix looked at the projection still glowing on the wall. Roman Volkov’s hand at the small of his wife’s back. Her fingers curled against his sleeve.
“He’s protective of her.” Keene followed his gaze. “Excessively. He hasn’t let her out of arm’s reach in six weeks. Guards rotate around her position, not his. Every security protocol in that compound prioritizes her location over his own.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning he’s exposed.” Keene pointed to the thermal image. “He’s not guarding an asset, Senator. He’s guardinghis heart. And that makes him dangerous. It also makes him killable. And if we apply enough pressure—”
“He’ll crack.”
“Or he’ll burn everything down to protect her.” Keene’s jaw flexed once. “In my experience, men in his position don’t cut their losses. They destroy anyone who threatens what they’ve claimed.”
Delacroix initialed the motion. The pen felt heavier than any vote he’d cast in thirty years.
“Schedule the sanctions hearing. December twenty-eighth.”
“Understood.” Keene gathered files. “Full surveillance between now and January second?”
