The DAWG Pound

The DAWG Pound

Where Russian spies go to be trained for the American life.

A NOVEL

By

David Day

By Author of Judge Brennan’s, The Floral Hill Murders and The Racetrack Murders.

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

©Copyright David Day 2026.

All rights reserved.

Any description of the characters and other descriptions in this book of real people and places are purely coincidental.

Special thanks to the following people:

William O’Brien, Retired NYPD Detective

Danny Benent, Retired Captain FPFD

I also want to say thank you to the following for putting up with me during the process of writing this book:

Detective Galvin (he is not a real detective)

Special Agent Hearne (he is not  special at all)

The Village of Floral Hill is a fictional Incorporated Village located next to any Big City.

Other Novels in the Kelli O’Brien series by David Day

Judge Brennan’s

The Floral Hill Murders

The Racetrack Murders

The DAWG Pound

Prologue

The Brothers

When the 41st President of the United Stated ejected more than half of the staff of the Russian contingent in the United States as spies, Alexi and Nicola Romonoff took exception to that Executive Order.  Alexi was married to a US citizen, Patricia Molorney.  Therefore, he was allowed to remain in the United States based upon his marital status. 

His brother was supposed to leave but filed a petition with the federal courts to remain while his case was adjudicated in Federal Courts.  He married a US citizen during the time that the case was being handled by the US court system and was ultimately granted a waiver from extradition.   Courtney Hall was his new wife, and  he was authorized to stay in the United States.  Courtney and Patricia were best friends from when they were children.  These were not marriages of convenience; these couples were in love.

The brothers and wives all moved to Floral Hill into a two family home.  Both brothers raised two children with their wives, each with a boy and a girl and now they were all the children in Floral Hill High School.  Go Setters, as in Irish Setters.  The Floral Hill Setters was the name of the team mascot.

When the phone call came to Alexi on his cell phone from his handler, Yuri Kasponoff, Alexi knew immediately what the ramifications were for the brothers, they were in trouble and they had no way out.   Yuri never called one of the brothers, it was the other way around.  Yuri was usually the recipient of the call. 

So when Alexi received the call to fulfill his and his brothers obligations to the Motherland, it took the wind out of his sails.  Being a spy was exciting and made you feel special at first.  It was exciting.  There were hopes and dreams of having special powers, fast cars and exotic locations to explore.   All that was exciting and an insatiable opportunity to explore.  But the brothers ran a landscaping business.  Business was good, but were no fast cars, special powers or exotic locations.  The cut the grass, trimmed the bushes and planted flowers.  Each year the would take a nice vacation, but that was about exotic as it was going to get.  But now that the call had come into Alexi, this whole thing had become a curse that the brothers would have to deal with really soon.

Yuri Kasponoff ran The DAWG POUND as it was known to the Russian elite.  The Romonoff brothers had trained at The DAWG Pound and  had accepted money from Mother Russia for years and now was the time for them to please Mother Russia.  They knew they had a job to do for Mother Russia, and they were about to find out in short order what their task entailed.  This, Alexi knew was not going to be pleasant nor appealing to anyone in his family circle.  He wanted to keep this task on the lowdown.  But he knew this day was coming, he just did not want it to be today. 

Alexi was hopeful that he would not be thrown in jail in the US for the rest of his life, but rather just sent back to Russia on his merry way with the rest of his family.  Neither case would come to turn to pass.  Both brothers had the knowledge that their wives had no  idea that they were backstage operatives for Mother Russia, better known as spies.  

They stayed connected with their handler from the Russia through burner phones and the fact that they were the handler’s landscapers helped.  They changed the cards in their burner phones every month to keep the authorities in the United States off their backs.  Their handler also lived in Floral Hill in a home that the Russian Elite and the Embassy knew as The DAWG Pound.  Yuri and his wife, taught Russians how to become Americans, and spy for Mother Russia.  This was a lucrative business once you established yourself as dependable to the homeland and the FSB. 

The brothers both had different secrets and assignments to deal with in the United States and they had to communicate that information to their handler.  Alexi was responsible for tracking seven  Diplomats from Europe, it helped that he cut all of their lawns.  He had developed relationships with his clients and had access to their homes, and when the clients were not home, access to their computers.

Nicola was responsible for keeping track of several known spies that the FSB was concerned with that they were double agents.  Just like his brother, it was helpful that Nicola was aware of this and the brothers were able to provide them all with landscaping services.  They both reported back to Yuri about what information they had obtained independently.   With the access to the homes that the brothers had, it was not extremely hard to move about and get the photos and coping with the disk drive and their contents is what  that were needed by the FSB.  It was very lucrative work, but spy agencies do not put ads on-line or in the newspapers, they use handlers and recruiters to find their targets.  

The Romonoff brothers never discussed anything between each other about their assignments.  Better off that way,  if they ever got caught, one of them might survive to take care of the families they raised in the United States.  What a great country, this situation would never survive in Mother Russia, and neither brother wanted to get caught and be forced to go back to Russia. 

 In the United States it is illegal to for any United States Government agency to eavesdrop or harass on United States citizens without a search warrant.  The same is true in Great Britain.  But there is nothing illegal for Great Britian to eavesdrop on United States citizens and share some information with the United States from time to time.  And there was nothing illegal about the United States listening in on conversations in Great Britian and sharing that information.  Intelligence agencies just wrote it off as “sharing information”.  So, the United States intelligence services and the same services in Great Britain “share” information all the time.  It is a marriage of convenience.  And the intelligence agencies had local offices in each other’s countries to make the sharing easier.

“Kick it up the line and let someone who makes a hell of a lot more money than I do”, the  analyst on the phone in Manchester, England said to his counterparty in Washington.  Great Britain intercepted the call, but it would be days before any details would become exposed in the United States due to the protocols in place to ensure that no one was spying on one another, and that was  the agreement.  But this call was something that analyst did not see every day, it was about was about the death of a United States professor who was an antagonist of the current Russian regime, and this was happening in real time, right now.  This needed to be moved upstairs, and now.

 But there are distinct levels of access for certain data, such as financial data, personal data or credit information or plotting to overthrow the government.   Rules applied to each specific agency and they were documented.  These agencies and the agents that worked there were tasked with the responsibility of protecting their own nations first, but they needed to be careful with the data they reviewed.  But killing a professor at a major university in the United States sounded alarms in Great Britain.  It was someone in authority needed that needed to act and do something now and share this information with other agencies.  It was kicked up the line and wound up on the desk of the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Tom Scully.

The use of burner phones in the United States made the task of tracking the assailants or spies almost impossible.  Some in law enforcement wondered how this was legal, but the Telecommunications Act of 1995 made this all possible with the clause on local number portability.  That clause provided for two things, one, if you changed carriers, you could keep the existing phone number or you could buy new SIM cards and get a new number, and if you needed to use the number for a specific call, lose the card in the sewer and buy a new SIM card.   The US government could not track you if they did not know you existed. 

 The brothers had reasonable assurance from Yuri that they could not be tracked back if they followed protocol.  Change the card once per month or more often if needed and make sure you are hitting off different cell towers by moving around and changing locations.  In today’s world, you can find out what tower you are bouncing off by looking at the carrier’s map and changing your location as needed.  The spies were trained to do this task.

Chapter One

The Assignment

The assignment for the brothers on this venture from Mother Russia was to take a Russian national that vented against the Russian Oligarchy and make him disappear.  The person that they were going to eliminate  was a professor at a major US university that spoke harshly about all the problems in Russia, his homeland.  He also had a podcast in the United States, where he chose to become a thorn in the side of the current regime in Russia.  The target would be Professor Surgi Aguloff of Franklin University.  Aguloff lived in Floral Hill, a village in Franklin County.

Professor Surgi Aguloff was not quiet about how he felt about the government running his homeland.  His teaching were not in line what the Russian government was selling to its people, and that was problematic for the Russian government and its current ruler.  Aguloff riled up everyone about the current state of the war with Ukraine that had wiped out a generation of young men.  He also riled about the economic times, which were not great, and the Russian Government was telling the media in Russia and around the world that everything  this was fine and normal.  But the foreign sanctions against Russia were killing the Russian economy.  

Aguloff was at the top of the list of enemies of the Russian homeland to be eliminated.  Aguloff had aspirations to run for president of Russia on some future date, but today was not going to be that day, if the brothers were successful, Surgi would be dead by the end of the day.  The current regime did not want Surgi back in Russia, ever.  Surgi wanted changes and reforms to the oligarchy in Russia, and he was unwavering in his opposition to the current regime, and the Politburo corruption.

 At the same time the brothers were in Moscow training for the KGB when the Soviet Union fell and was signed off by Gorbachev in 1991, there was a Russian asset located in East Germany named Putin.  He worked for the KGB office and when East Germany fell and merged into West Germany, Vladimar Putin of the KGB headed back to Moscow to get new instructions.  By the time Vladimir Putin arrived back in Moscow, the KGB was the FSB. 

This was all new to Putin and everyone else in the KGB.  Putin spent his time rising through the ranks of the new FSB but continued to tell anyone that would listen that Mother Russia needed more assets in the United States and around the world.  Putin himself was successful in creating The DAWG Pound in the United States, and his friend, Yuri Kasponoff, who had an everyday command of the English language was named as its Director. 

Kasponoff was given the task of cultivating as many Russian assets as he could and turn them into citizens of the United States.  The Romonoff brothers came to the US to be spies and  they were assigned to The DAWG Pound for training.  The Russian government spent a lot of money cultivating spies for this program in the United States, including a lot of false identities. 

There were Russian people that were created out of children in the United States that had died young or at birth, and then the reappear with birth certificates and marriage certificates for their spouses.  They had drivers licences, voting records credit reports and credit cards.  This all through the courtesy of Yuri Kasponoff.  Yuri was good at this game, very good.  He had very good contacts in the United States.  But Yuri himself like to fly under the radar, so to speak.

Some of the recruits to The Dawg Pound were naturals, but others could not agree on the American names they should take while in the US.  Like they had a choice, Mother Russia was calling the shots.  And some of the arranged relationships just did not work out for the long term.  Just like any marriage, there would be friction, but if you were not committed to the relationship for the long haul, the relationship would not survive.

The protocol was the new trainees would come to the United States with diplomatic immunity.  They would be assigned to the Consulate in Glen Cove.  After a short while they disappeared into thin air and went to Floral Hill for their training under Yuri Kasponoff’s control.   The course ran generally for two years.  The fingerprints  and background information the Russian Government turned over to the United States Executive Office were fake or filled with enough falsities to make the unintelligible.  That meant the staff or the staff members had diplomatic immunity, and their original identities of the individuals were withheld from the United States and their credentials would allow them to disappear into the United States at any time.   

The older brother Nicola Romonoff was married to  Katrina Starksey in Russia.  They did finish their training at The DAWG Pound, but the marriage did not work out no matter how hard they tried.  They did not have any children because the marriage was brief after they finished The DAWG Pound, and there was not any love or affection in this contrived relationship. 

After they broke up, Katrina  finished Engineering school in the United States, and after a couple of years a went on to work for a giant energy firm in the United States.  She continues to be a spy for her homeland to this very day. 

Nicola runs a landscaping business and works as a landscaper in the United States.  He liked the physical nature of his work.  His brother, Alexi, was his partner in the landscaping business.  But they were aware of the drill, someday they would be called upon for a task for Mother Russia.

Alexi was married to Lucy.  They barely got out of The DAWG Pound.  These were arranged marriages in Russia, and the couple that the Russian Government put together were not exactly a perfect match.  They all tried to make them work, but sometimes the personalities involved in arranged marriages are just untenable in the long term.  That was the case with Alexi and Lucy, as well as Nicola and Katrina.

The Russian Government was always trying new ways to figure out  how they were matching couples and were trying to work on the personality disorders that some of their recruits come up with forcing couples to be couples.  The Russian Government did put time into the situation and had more success with The DAWG Pound as time went on for the training academy and the couples that trained at The DAWG Pound.

Once divorced, Lucy and Alexi went their own ways.  The two of them were good Russian assets, so they continued to operate under their American names.  There was no animosity between the couples, they just all wanted someone different than the FSB had arranged.

Lucy became an executive at a major money center bank.  Lucy and her new Russian boyfriend, Peter, wound up going to jail in the United States for laundering monies from Russia.  And the only reason they got caught is because they involved too many people outside of the Russian circle and the word got around.  The person that exposed the scheme felt she was not getting enough off the top.  They were all sent back to Russia on the first plane once they got out of jail.  Not a fair way for it to end in the spy business, but Lucy and Peter now have lived a nice life in Moscow where they live under their given Russian names.

But on the other hand, there were plenty of successful assets to come out of Yuri and The DAWG Pound , and this is only a partial list, and some of the most successful graduates of The DAWG Pound.

Ø Francis and John Murphy living in Peoria, they specialized in farming information in the United States.

Ø Margaret and Peter Johnson are now living in Washington D.C., they specialize in the lobbying sector of the United States on K Street to get the Russian point of view across, in a subtle way.

Ø Robert and Carol Weston who are living in the San Francisco bay area, their focus was on Silicon Valley and the Tech sector.

Ø Anthony and Gina Racone living outside Houston.  They were focused on Aerospace and Natural Resources in the United States.

Ø Barbara and Al (Alexander) Cotrone living on Long Island.  Their specialty was the Defense Industry and how far it was along in the United States.

There are many more graduates of The DAWG Pound, but these are the most successful assets that Russia has developed, and they have completed every task that has been sent their way over the years.  The group above understood the tasks they were undertaking and bought into the process wholeheartedly.  They actually had children, like the Romonoff’s and cultivated the relationships the homeland needed for information on what the United States was doing and where it was going with its economy, military, and the other aspects of technological innovations, whether public or private. 

The families in the United States  were all extremely successful in their missions and Mother Russia was willing to keep the relationship going forward for the agents.  As a foreign Russian agent, it was never good to be called back to Moscow.  That meant spending you and your family’s end of life in Siberia.

Once a family team left The DAWG Pound, they would find themselves with a new handler, new code names, new dead drop locations.  But they were given this information before they even left Russia.  The family unit needed to become accustomed to change.  From now on the only thing that would remain the same is that things were going to change.  But for all this change, they were given a home and a monthly stipend that more than covered their expenses.  For each of the families, they were asked truly little about how they went about the extraction of data from their sources, data and pictures were what Moscow wanted.  Moscow did not need to know how the secret sauce was made, only that Moscow received the reports as required of its foreign agents in the United States.

The Romonoff brothers were just as successful, and because of their business interests and investments in the United States, they were able to move around quickly and get to the heart of the matter a lot faster than some of the other assets that the Russian Government had recruited and fostered in the United States.  They really did want to be Yuri’s go to guys. 

The Russian Government did not want to burn the successful spy brothers while they were being as successful as they were with providing information about American life and details on what the Americans they followed were up to at any given time.   But life is what happens while you make other plans.  Assignments were distributed based upon the strength of the assets involved. 

The Romonoff brothers did not recruit their wives to be part of the network,  but they were working on it, but they never got to the finish line with that task to Yuri’s consternation.  At some Point, the wives knew something was going on with their husbands, but Patricia and Courtney never spoke about it in detail.  Maybe a comment here or there over a glass of wine, but never a direct conversation that their husbands could be spies for the Russian government.

The recruitment of the Romonoff brothers wives was something that Yuri’s handler in Pearl River wanted Yuri to accomplish sooner rather than later.  The reason this was so imperative to Moscow is that the Russian government wanted to cultivate the next generation of spies in the United States for the Motherland.  If Moscow could accomplish this, the new generation of Russian spies would be buried so deep in the Americian society that no one could every find them, unless they screwed up.

In order to accomplish this, all parties needed to be on the same page.  Yuri’s job was to get them all on the same page.   To Moscow this was a no brainer.  But they may have just put in play the most important part of the playbook.  The Romonoff brothers were sick from the Plutonium, and they needed a solution to fix this set of events.

5.4