Page 126 of One Last Stand

She cocked her head. “What?”

He put his hand on the table, tapped it. Sighed. “Your mother thinks the Swans were her idea. But long before your mother was assigned to be a diplomat, I was recruited by the CIA.”

And just in case the world was really shifting, she put her hand on the arm of the sofa and gripped it. “You?—”

“Your mother doesn’t know.Shouldn’tknow. But long before she was assigned to Moscow station, I worked with a man named Pike Maguire.”

“You knew Hawkeye?”

“Yes. He had left the CIA but needed someone on the inside who could . . . let’s say, point business his direction. And frankly, sometimes I needed”—he took a breath—“extra-curricular help.”

“Dad. That means the Swans have been around?—”

“Since you were a child. About two years before the bus you and your sister were riding on was bombed.” His gaze hardened. “Did you ever wonder why all the other attacks were at tube stations and this random one hit a double-decker bus?”

“Not even once.”

“Right. It was supposed to look random. But that was the work of someone who has been working from the inside for decades. A group of people who believe that perhaps war is better than peace and that if they can move pawns, they can topple kings.”

“I don’t understand.”

“When the Cold War thawed, it meant problems for brokers of war, of course, and one of the biggest was a group in Russia?—”

“The Petrov Bratva.”

“Yes. Their leader, Arkady Petrov, was—and is—a general. Now a member of the Troika?—”

“The three-headed leadership under the president of Russia.”

“Indeed. And standing in the shadows of power. We believe he’s been trying for a decade to pull America back into a war, and over the past five years, he’s tried to assassinate our president, poison our country, and even nuke a small NATO-connected nation. And all with money they made in cryptocurrency mining in Abkhazia.”

“Where Tomas is from. I know his story.”

“Did you know that the Petrovs had built a massive crypto-mining operation there? They stole resources from the government to power their banks of computer mines. Last year, it was all dismantled in a raid.”

“Cutting off their money.”

“Yes.”

“Which is why they turned to Drago Petrov to get back the money I took.”

“Yes.” He drew in a breath. “And you were one of the pawns.”

“How?”

“Tomas. His backstory is real—the Petrovs killed his mother. And took his sister. He thinks they took her to work in the crypto mines. But when they purchased him, they offered him a different future, and when he saw how much they made . . . He was a boy from a village without running water or electricity, and suddenly he’s riding in Learjets and driving cigarette boats.”

“Dad. He’s the head of the Petrovs. He killed Drago.”

“I know.”

A beat. “When didyoudiscover this? Because I only just found out.”

“We had our suspicions, but he played the victim with us, so we weren’t sure. And then we caught him on surveillance last night accessing your account. He used his own thumbprint, his eye, and his blood to access the Petrov account.Drago’saccount. Then he transferred everything into his crypto wallet.”

She knew it, but still, his words were a knife. “It’s gone?”

“All of it.”

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