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By Root 1337 0

a facility for language and a near-photographic memory, he was sent to the elite Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. Jokingly referred to as the “American spy school,” the institute has long provided language instruction for all branches of the military, as well as other federal agencies, including the CIA. As part of its language course, students are immersed in the culture of their particular area of study. Britt, who entered during the peak of the Reagan defense buildup, was put into the Russian program and spent nearly a year living in a simulated Russian home, where the meals, the clothing he wore, even the matchbooks he used, were replicated from life in the Soviet Union. When he graduated, Britt was placed into a secretive branch of the Navy that involved monitoring Soviet communications. In his final years of service, he spent several months living at a Soviet missile base, where he served as a nuclear weapons monitor under provisions of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

Britt joined the Phoenix Police Department after leaving active-duty military service in 1994. An avid golfer, he jokes that he was drawn to Phoenix because “I wanted to be close to some of the best golf courses in the country.” In the nineties, the city had become a popular destination for former Mafia members relocating from the East Coast in the Witness Protection Program. Among them, Sammy “the Bull” Gravano used the federal program as cover to launch an Ecstasy-smuggling ring in alliance with a local white supremacist gang. The Phoenix Police Department’s organized crime unit launched a major operation against the burgeoning crime wave. Britt was assigned to the unit, but his superiors had special plans for him. Phoenix was undergoing an influx of tens of thousands of Russian immigrants, drawn by the seemingly boundless opportunities offered by the city, as well as the limitless sunshine. He was given the task of thwarting Russian mob influence among the city’s émigré community. While much of his job with the organized crime unit would entail hard police work, it also included, as Britt describes it, “the stuff I like, going to people’s homes and businesses, eating pickles and talking.”

Britt affects a relaxed bearing, favoring a work uniform of jeans and golf shirts. Compactly built, athletic, with an easy smile, he is the master of the soft approach. But when focused on a case, he speaks in a clipped, rapid-fire manner that reveals his almost unsettling ability to recall details. If you were a criminal, Britt would be the worst kind of cop—stealthy in his nerdy golf clothes, likable, extremely intelligent and armed with his freakish, near-photographic memory.

Britt started investigating the failed robbery at Peak Physique two days after the FedEx driver reported the incident to the police. His involvement was prompted by a phone call from a North Phoenix homemaker, Tina Swindle, who contacted the police department to report that her son Dusty had been recruited by a high school classmate to help rob the FedEx truck outside Peak Physique. Britt was assigned the interview with Swindle because she had indicated that Russians had been involved.

7. THE INFORMATION

BRITT DROVE TO THE SWINDLE HOME within hours of Tina’s call. Located on a quiet, suburban street of comfortable, two-story homes in North Phoenix, the Swindles’ house was distinguished by several beat-up vintage muscle cars in various states of disrepair in the front yard, some on jacks. Dusty, an eighteen-year-old senior at North Phoenix High, was a total gear-head, heavily into classic V-8 rides. He told Britt he had been working at a local tire shop on Saturday, September 22, when a friend, Sergei Guk, stopped by with a proposition.

Guk was a seventeen-year-old junior at North Phoenix High. Despite his deeply Russian-sounding name, Guk had lived in Phoenix for more than ten years with his family and was thoroughly assimilated. That day at the tire shop, Guk told Swindle he had an older Russian friend, Konstantin Simberg, who needed five or six strong guys