Page 126 of The Blonde Who Came in from the Cold
And then Zoe blushed and leaned against Sawyer’s side, but Merritt was already turning back to King.
“Everyone knows that the Cold War was the golden age of tradecraft. It’s no secret that the KGB’s main priority was infiltrating US intelligence organizations. What very few people know is that they did it. In fact, one of the KGB’s best agents got so close to the CIA’s station chief in Berlin that she married him.”
“No.” King was shaking his head.
“Your grandmother was a spy, Michael. She was a phenomenal operative. And she was Russian.”
“That’s a lie.”
Merritt laughed. “It is very much the truth. If you don’t believe me, we can get this developed.” She held up the ring. “It was hers, you know. She loaned it to me on a few occasions.”
“How do you know?” King demanded, but Merritt simply smiled.
“Because she told me—when she turned.”
“She was a double agent?” Alex had never heard King’s voice shake.
Merritt was too cold—too still. Like this was a conversation she’d rehearsed in her head a million times—lines in a play that had been running for too long and she wanted to go on autopilot, hit her marks, and wait for the curtain when she said—
“She was Nikolai.”
King looked like he wanted to hurl a chair through a window. He wanted to roll up in a ball on the floor. He wanted to scream, and he wanted to cry, and he looked like it might split him down the middle, he was so torn between the two ends of the spectrum.
“Is it...” His voice cracked.
“It’s why they killed her.” Merritt’s voice was flat and even. “The Russians.”
“So the note in the mailbox...”
She looked into the distance, like that was a question she’d asked herself a million times. “That was them saying goodbye.”
A heavy weight settled over the room. Merritt walked to the windows as if she could see all the way across the desert... across the ocean... across time. “She loved your grandfather, so she turned, Michael. She never gave Moscow a thing. In fact, she fed them a number of well-placed lies through the years. But I knew her picture would be on the ring. I knew it could come back to haunt her someday if it ever got into the hands of the wrong people.”
“Someone like Viktor Kozlov?” Alex guessed.
Merritt gave an approving grin. “Kozlov didn’t know what the ring was, precisely, but he knew it belonged to her. He knew he could use it to hurt her husband. And her son...” Merritt studied King. “And grandson.Kozlov wanted a double agent so badly, he could taste it. He would have used that information to blackmail your father, Michael. He was going to use it to blackmail you, andso I sent you to burn it.” Her voice was louder, stronger, when she snapped, “Why didn’t you burn it?”
“You’re right.” King was shaking his head. He looked tired and confused and resigned to some fate they couldn’t even name yet. “I wish I’d never laid eyes on the thing.”
Alex had never seen him look so furious—not at Merritt or Alex.But at himself. He looked like he could turn the ring to ashes with a glance. But that didn’t matter because Merritt was already triggering a tiny clasp and pulling out an even tinier roll of film that was so old and fragile it dissolved the moment she dropped it in the glass of bubbly.
For a moment, they all just stood there, watching Viktor Kozlov’s nuclear option melt away.
“So, wait... that’s it?” Zoe asked. “It’s over?”
“Yeah.” King studied Alex for a long time, a look on his face she couldn’t quite read. “I guess it is.” And then he turned around and walked away, and Alex stayed perfectly still for a long time, wondering what had just happened.
Chapter Seventy-Three
Alex
King was gone. Alex paced the hotel suite, watching day turn to not-quite-night as the sun dipped and the lights of the Strip came alive in neon glory.
“Where is he?” She turned to Sawyer.
“Walking it off.”
“Alex...” Zoe started, but trailed off when she saw her sister’s face as Alex headed for the door.
