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They needed to solidify their standing with the four brigadiers who had already pledged loyalty to Lyon, three before the wedding and one after it had taken place. This was how he would take command: one leader at a time, until those who refused to pledge their fealty were in the minority.
“Is there anything you need?” Alek asked.
“No.” Lyon had been preparing for this moment for almost two decades.
“I’m going to make sure the conference room is ready,” Alek said. “I’ll let you know when everyone is here.”
He closed the door behind him, cocooning Lyon in the silence of the office. Movement on the first security camera caught his eye, and he watched as David Chaban, one of the four men invited to the morning’s meeting, pressed the buzzer.
To anyone who didn’t know better, Chaban was a middle-aged man with thinning hair and a paunch that strained his shirt. But Lyon had done his homework, and he knew Chaban had been trained by the SVR, the name of Russia’s intelligence service before it had morphed (yet again) into the FSB.
Chaban had been young at the time, but that kind of training never left the psyche. He’d been in America for nearly twenty years now, but Lyon was sure he’d be an asset to his new organization. His talents had been wasted as a brigadier. He would have been better used as a member of the Two Spies, which was the position Lyon would promise him in return for his loyalty.
By the time Alek arrived to let Chaban into the building — only Alek and Lyon had the passcode for the building — Stefan Hale had arrived. Lyon watched as Alek greeted them both, then followed their progress on three more of the security cameras positioned inside the warehouse.
The other two men arrived shortly thereafter: Rupert Orlov, about Lyon’s age and angling for more income to support his large family, and Oleg Sokolov, almost as young as Stefan, whose overriding ambition was for money and power.
That had been one of the most important of Lyon’s tasks over the years: to ferret out the men who were valuable and whose needs weren’t being met, to identify those needs, to find a way to meet them in the new organization.
Everybody wanted something. Lyon had made it his business to find out what these men wanted, to open his wallet and show them their greatest desire, waiting in exchange for their loyalty.
A knock sounded on the door and Alek stuck his head in the office. “Everyone’s here.”
Lyon stood. “Then let’s begin.”
