THE LULLABY KEY : THE FALL
CHAPTER 44: The Russian Asset
Pike was taken to a secure location in Texas, where he was interrogated by a joint task force of FBI and CIA agents who had been vetted by Zero. Lena watched through a one-way mirror.
He didn’t break easily. He had been trained to resist interrogation. He had been tortured before. He knew how to lie, how to deflect, how to survive.
But Lena had something he didn’t have.
Time.
And evidence.
She played him the audio recording of the Vice President ordering her mother’s murder. She played him the video of the President meeting with Marchetti’s hologram. She showed him photographs of the tunnel of bones, the trophies, the bodies.
Pike’s face remained impassive.
But his eyes betrayed him.
“I want a deal,” he said finally.
“A deal?”
“Immunity. Witness protection. A new identity. In exchange for everything I know.”
Lena looked at the agents behind her. They nodded.
“Talk.”
Pike talked.
For six hours, he talked.
He named names. Dozens of them. Politicians. Judges. Military officers. Journalists. All of them on Marchetti’s payroll. All of them complicit in murder, bribery, and corruption.
And then he named the Russian asset.
A United States senator. A man who had been feeding classified information to the Kremlin for fifteen years.
The same senator who had smirked at Lena during the hearing.
James Harrington.
Lena’s blood boiled.
“Harrington is a traitor?”
“Harrington is a traitor, a murderer, and a coward. He’s been working for Marchetti since the 1990s. When Marchetti decided to align with Russian interests, Harrington followed. He’s sold every secret he’s ever heard. And he’s killed anyone who got close to exposing him.”
Lena turned to the agents. “Arrest him.”
“We can’t. He has diplomatic immunity. He’s the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.”
“Then strip him of his immunity. Charge him with treason. Do whatever it takes.”
The agents exchanged glances.
“We’ll try,” one of them said. “But it won’t be easy.”
“I don’t care if it’s easy. I care if it’s right.”
Lena walked out of the interrogation room.
She found Marcus in the hallway.
“Harrington,” she said. “It’s been Harrington all along.”
Marcus nodded. “I know. I’ve suspected for years. He’s the one who protected the nineteen-year-old girl’s rapist. He’s the one who made sure the case was buried.”
Lena’s fists clenched. “Then we bury him.”
They flew to Washington that night.
Harrington was arrested at dawn, in his Georgetown townhouse, still wearing his pajamas.
The same way the Vice President had been arrested.
Lena watched on television.
The news anchors called it “the biggest political scandal in American history.”
Lena called it justice.