Page 121 of The Oligarch's Daughter

“Hisyacht? Why? What’s the occasion?”

“I don’t know. He does that sometimes. Invites you at the last minute.”

“Do we have to go?”

“You don’t want to? I love his yacht.”

I love his yacht.Who is this woman?Paul wondered. This woman who lived in the apartment of a struggling artist, who disdained displays of wealth, but who also now exulted in a ridiculously big Park Avenue apartment and her father’s yacht.

Which Tatyana was the real Tatyana?

“Then we’ll go,” he said.

79

The silver thumb drive labeled “??????” was still in his pocket. Tatyana had gone to bed. He waited until he was fairly sure she’d fallen asleep. Then he inserted the device into his laptop. A little icon popped up on the desktop. He clicked on it, and a window opened, filled with what looked like junk.

Zmo_7_^UqV/Vj[:_9Mp_;K\K!+o_’W9@%y_g{s~|w’$I

He stared at the characters for a while, trying to discern a pattern, but he didn’t see one. Maybe the thing was just unreadable. Too many years sitting in storage, the flash drive had decayed. He was about to eject it when he had an idea.

Perhaps he was being overly cautious, or just paranoid, but he wanted to save a copy of whatever was on this device before he handed it over to Special Agent Addison. Even if it was garbage. He went to the music-sharing website SoundCloud and logged in. There he found his old collection of mixtapes and music tracks from his college singing group and his garage band. The band wasn’t very good, he now realized, but playing together had been fun, and they always got an audience. A small audience. Mostly, they played for themselves.

He uploaded the thumb drive’s contents, renamed the file “Stairwaytoheaven.mp4,” and then burned the file onto a new thumb drive. Then he went into the bathroom to find a place to hide it. In the kitchen junk drawer, he found a screwdriver. Back in the bathroom, he unscrewed the backplate to one of the wall sconces, put the USB drive in there, and screwed the plate back on.

Then he texted Addison on Signal.

80

At work the next day, Chad stopped by Paul’s office around noon and asked if he wanted to pop out to grab a sandwich. This was so unusual a request—given the spread laid out for them every day, there was no reason to go out for lunch—that Paul immediately understood that Chad wanted to talk. He got up and walked out of the office with him, neither of them speaking. It wasn’t until they exited the lobby that Chad spoke.

“Dude, I’m scared shitless. They’ve been asking around about me. Like, am I a troublemaker.”

The two fell into silence. The sandwich take-out place, called Baguette, was halfway down the block. They joined a long line that looked like ten minutes of waiting. Chad said hello to a guy who was leaving with his sandwich; he was a pudgy, pasty-faced guy with black curly hair and steel-framed glasses and a nervous tic in his left eye. Paul vaguely recognized him as a new associate but couldn’t place the name. He looked around the line, behind them and in front of them. Both sets of people were couples he didn’t recognize engaged in conversation.

Chad looked uncomfortable talking about work with other people so near. The two of them discussed football until they got their sandwiches. Chad found an empty table—the take-out place had four or five small, round high-tops for customers.

“Have you seen the security guys Galkin uses?” Chad finally said.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Those thick-necked bodybuilding guys who love their weapons?”

“I have.”

“They’re ex-KGB or -FSB or -GRU. And I hear the Russian security services recruit sadists. I’ve heard they kill people with flamethrowers.”

“Great.” Was Chad trying to scare the shit out of him? Unfortunately, it was working. “You think one of those guys killed Larsen?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me at all,” Chad said.

Paul remembered Mr. Frost asking about Chad and his “dissatisfaction” with the firm, but decided not to tell Chad. He didn’t know whom to trust.

Paul turned to look out through the plate glass onto the street. Walking past was Andrei Berzin, Galkin’s security director. Berzin turned, peered in. He made eye contact with Paul.

Adrenaline coursed through him. Had Berzin seen him talking with Chad? Maybe so.

Maybe not.