Page 140 of The Oligarch's Daughter

“He knows I went into the firm’s files, both at the office and in the storage place upstate. He may have found out that I was doing some investigation on him in Moscow. He may—it’s possible, and good God, I hope not—they may have found the tracker in his suitcase and know it was me. They want me to come in, probably for questioning. And then I’m probably going to get hit by a car. Or die by poisoning.”

“Well, Paul, we can protect you,” Dempsey said. “As long as you remain a cooperating witness.”

He felt a wriggle of some reptilian fear. “What does that mean?”

“I think you have copies of the manifest from Galkin’s yacht on your phone. I’d like to see your phone, and I’d like to see you delete those photos. From the phone and from the cloud.”

Paul just looked at her, didn’t say anything.

“Same for any copies you have of files on Galkin. Those must be deleted as well.”

“Why?”

“I’m afraid this is a matter of national security. It’s a matter of compartmentation. We can’t have those files floating around the internet, unsecured.”

“They’re quite safe.”

“I’m sure you think so,” she said with a smile, her eyebrows tented again, the way you’d speak to someone who was mentally deficient. “But they’re not, and you need to hand them over or delete them right away.”

Paul hesitated a long time while he thought. Then he said, “I’m willing to do that if you can guarantee me Witness Protection, WITSEC. Call it a deal.”

She stared at him for a long moment.

Meanwhile, he examined the wooden tabletop, scratched and smudged. He examined the gray carpet, stained and grimy. There were fingerprints and smudges, too, on the glass walls.

He rewound Geraldine Dempsey’s line of questioning. She hadn’t seemed surprised by his conclusion that Galkin was underwritten by the Kremlin. In fact, nothing he told her had seemed to surprise her. And how did she know Rick Jacobson’s name? Also, she was obsessed with whether he’d made and kept copies of the Phantom flash drive and the other files and whether he’d told anyone about them.

Over the last week, he had thought quite a bit about how to disappear himself, but he kept getting stuck on one thing: if he changed his name and vanished, he would be leaving Tatyana behind. She loved him, Paul believed, as much as she could, but her primary loyalty was to her family. She wouldn’t leave with him.

But shouldn’t he make sure?

Should he ask her outright? The problem was, if he asked her to go away with him, she would immediately tell her father. Of that he was certain. He’d have to take off as soon as she told him no.

Geraldine Dempsey was looking at him, her mouth a straight line, unreadable. Then she smacked the table gently and stood up.

“I’ll see what we can do,” she said at last.

92

When he was on East Houston Street, he called Tatyana, wondering if she was out taking pictures. She picked up on the second ring. “Hi,” she said.

“Anything going on?” he asked.

“Going on?” she said lightly. “What do you mean?”

“Are you at home?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Are you there alone or . . . ?”

“Just me and little Pushok,” she said. “Why?”

“We’ll talk when I get back from work,” he said.

“But . . . Zhenya Frost called me to ask where you were. He said you didn’t come in.”

“I had some errands to run,” he said. “I’m on my way back into the office now.”