The curiosity gnawed at her.
8
BUTNER, NORTH CAROLINA
It was midafternoon, under a clear blue sky, when a silver Mercedes-Benz SL Roadster, the top down, pulled into a visitor’s parking lot inside Federal Correctional Complex, Butner. Brenda Verbeck stepped from the vehicle, headed toward one of four prisons within the FCC — Butner Low, a low-security facility considered by many to be the crown jewel of the federal prison system, where white-collar criminals vied for placement.
After Brenda presented her ID to the Front Entrance Officer, who verified she was on the approved visitor list, she was escorted to the visiting room, where she sat at a table awaiting her brother’s arrival. Although Dan Snyder had been handed an extraordinarily harsh sentence as far as Brenda was concerned, he had hit the inmate lottery by being assigned to Butner’s low-security lockup. With a look and feel of a college campus instead of a prison, Butner Low was a popular request by nonviolent criminals such as Bernie Madoff, convicted for perpetrating the largest Ponzi scheme in history.
While she waited for her brother, she examined the Spartan room, filled only with several metal tables and chairs, plus a few snack and drink vending machines. Dan finally arrived, presenting an uncharacteristic image. Instead of a fifty-thousand-dollar bespoke Desmond Merrion suit, he wore institutional-issued clothing: khaki pants and shirt with matching black belt and boots. After a long hug, Brenda and her brother sat opposite each other at a table.
Their initial conversation covered the expected topics of how Dan was handling his incarceration and what his daily routine comprised: up at 6 a.m., followed by eight hours of work each day at various tasks that included groundskeeper, food service employee, and commissary worker. The revelation that Dan was actually paid for his work — fifty cents an hour — generated a shared laugh between Brenda and her billionaire brother.
The conversation eventually turned from personal to professional matters.
“How are you and the company doing?” Dan asked.
Following his conviction, Brenda had taken over as CEO of Snyder Industries.
“I’m getting the hang of things, and we’re doing well. Surprisingly, orders and profits are up. It seems the adage of There’s no such thing as bad publicity holds true.”
Dan smiled sadly and lowered his eyes to the table.
Brenda reached across and placed her hand on his.
“You didn’t deserve this. The president could have intervened, but he threw both of us under the bus. Now that he’s president, he no longer needs us. There’s no loyalty these days. It’s all about what can you do for me now?”
Dan nodded glumly, then looked back up. There must have been something in her eyes or tone of voice, because Dan picked up on it.
“What are you planning?”
She leaned toward him. “Revenge.”
“How so?”
“The man you contracted to ship the centrifuges to Iran — what’s your assessment? Competent or not?”
“Quite competent. That the centrifuges didn’t reach their destination wasn’t his fault. It was mine.”
One of Dan’s communications with his Iranian contact had been intercepted by American electronic surveillance in the Persian Gulf, which had culminated in the U.S. Navy sinking the merchant ship carrying the centrifuges as it approached the Iranian port.
“Do you recall the contact information for this man?”
Dan nodded.
Brenda pulled a pen and notepad from her purse and pushed it across the table.
Her brother hesitated a moment, then scribbled the requested information.
After Brenda slipped the pen and pad back into her purse, she smiled.
“The president will pay for what he’s done to us.”
9
LANHAM, MARYLAND
Seated at a desk in his hotel room a block from the Capital Beltway carving its way through Maryland and Virginia, Lonnie Mixell perused the encrypted employment offers on his laptop computer, deciding which task seemed most interesting. After the agreed-to fee for the assassination of America’s secretary of defense had been deposited into one of his accounts, Mixell’s thoughts had turned to his former best friends Jake Harrison, who had betrayed him, sending him to prison for eight years, and Christine O’Connor, who had sided with Harrison against him.
Harrison was next on Mixell’s personal to-do list, but he had disappeared after his wife’s funeral. Although Mixell was confident that he would eventually locate Harrison, he would need something else to keep him occupied in the meantime.
Mixell was about to respond to an offer when a new encrypted message arrived.
I’m looking for a man who goes by Mitch Larson.
“Who’s asking?”
A friend of Dan Snyder.
Mixell contemplated who had contacted him, and it didn’t take long to reach a conclusion.
It was Dan’s sister, Brenda Verbeck. While surveilling her during his previous assignment, Mixell had wondered if she would be a suitable replacement for Trish, whom Harrison had killed during their confrontation six months ago. He had to admit that Brenda was a tantalizing candidate: beautiful, conniving, and ruthless. And very rich. That she was married hadn’t prevented her from engaging in a recent affair, plus her husband could always be removed from the equation if necessary.
He typed a response. “Hello, Brenda.”
Hello, Mitch. Or whatever name you’re going by now.
“Mitch is fine. How can I help?”
There’s a delicate task I want you to accomplish.
“Which is…?”
Meet me in person. Nothing in writing.
“Fee?”
One hundred million.
Mixell’s hands froze over the laptop keyboard. Although he was occasionally paid eight-figure sums, he had encountered a nine-figure fee only once before.
“I assume the desired task is not only delicate, but difficult?”
Very.
“Where and when do you want to meet?”
When can you make it to Baltimore?
“Tomorrow.”
An address appeared on the laptop screen, plus a time. 6 p.m.?
“I’ll be there.”
10
NOVOSHAKHTINSK, RUSSIA
Under the cover of darkness, a column of mechanized vehicles sped down Highway E50 toward the Russia — Ukraine border. In the passenger seat of a GAZ Tigr all-terrain infantry vehicle, Major General Alexei Sokolov, commanding Russia’s 2nd Guards Motor Rifle Division, peered at the wooded landscape ahead through night vision goggles. Behind him, stretched out on the highway, was a regiment of T-90 main battle tanks and fifteen thousand infantry troops divided into two more regiments: one aboard BTR-90 armored personnel carriers and a second aboard BMP-3 infantry combat vehicles, sometimes referred to as light tanks. As Sokolov’s division approached its destination, he wondered whether its unusual repositioning was simply political posturing, or the precursor to an imminent invasion.
The 2nd Guards Motor Rifle Division was one of the most famous and decorated formations in the Russian military, having seen extensive combat during World War II and also played prominent roles in two of the major political crises in recent Soviet and Russian history. In 1991, during the hard-line coup attempt against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, one of the division’s tank units surrounding the Russian parliament building had switched sides, opposing the coup. It was atop one of the division’s tanks that Boris Yeltsin had delivered his rousing speech, condemning the traitorous attempt to depose Gorbachev.