Page 173 of The Oligarch's Daughter

When Shawn’s fingers appeared to locate the tiny, concealed recorder-transmitter taped to the small of Paul’s back, he stopped. “Shirt off,” he said.

Paul hesitated but knew he had no choice. When he’d removed his shirt, Dempsey said, “Turn around.” Paul turned, and Shawn ripped the device and its securing tape painfully off his lower back and handed the device to Dempsey.

“A transmitter, too?” she said. She shook her head. “The best-laid plans. Shawn, there’s probably a pen in his breast pocket. Could I have that, too, please?”

Shawn snatched the backup recording device, the pen clipped to Paul’s shirt pocket.

She seemed to miss nothing.

“How’s this working out for you, Paul?” Dempsey said acidly.

“I’d say everything is going exactly according to plan,” he replied.

“The hell you talking about?”

“You’re predictable,” Paul said to her, but explained no further. His plan was unfolding, if not in the way he’d anticipated.

“Outside,” Dempsey said.

Her security man pushed Paul out of the room, down the hall, and opened the front door.

“You want to talk,” Dempsey continued, “we’ll go for a walk in the woods. Leave this . . . soundstage. Both of you.” She waved her hand around dismissively at the house and all its concealed recording devices.

Paul knew what she intended to do to him, or have Shawn do to him, when he was outside of the house. He wasn’t able to keep his heart from jackhammering. Because now everything had to work right, or else.

As the three of them—Galkin, Dempsey, and Paul—descended the front steps, Dempsey began to speak. “So, Mr. Brightman—”

Paul interrupted her. “If anything happens to me, an email goes out at midnight tonight sending thedecryptedPhantom file to a carefully selected list of reporters and editors at theWall Street Journal, theWashington Post, theNew York Times, and a slew of networks and cable news outlets.”

To his surprise, Dempsey said nothing. They walked into the woods, which were so thick that the house disappeared almost immediately. Might Paul have neutralized her? Setting up a digital dead man’s switch these days was simple. He’d done as he’d said: composed a detailed email, set for a delayed auto-send. If he couldn’t get to his Gmail account and delete the scheduled email, it would automatically go out. Only he could stop it. Killing him was therefore a bad idea.

“But I can stop it going out,” he added. “Persuade me.”

“Persuade you?” Dempsey gave a twist of a smile, looked at Galkin. “Arkady, your former employee apparently doesn’t know about FISC.”

Arkady looked at her, at Paul. He didn’t look like he understood.

“FISC?” Paul said. Now they were walking along a narrow dirt path through the trees.

“The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Two hours ago, on my request—approved by the director of national intelligence, by the way—they ordered Google to comply with my request for access to your Gmail. Access granted, and your scheduled email has been deleted.”

Paul found himself blinking, speechless, as he contemplated the ramifications of this. Not just for his own safety: it meant that this conspiracy, this cover-up, went even higher than he’d anticipated.

“You see, Mr. Brightman, you’re facing ten years in prison. For what’s calledwillful retentionof national security information. So in case you were hoping to try to negotiate with me, don’t bother.”

Paul was silent. They continued walking.

“You want to know what you’re trying to sabotage? Only the most successful espionage initiative since World War Two. One of the most closely held secrets ever. A project at CIA so secret that it wasn’t even listed in the Agency’sclassifiedphone book. The most serious penetration of the Kremlin ever, do you understand?”

“To what end?” Paul said.

Dempsey sighed, shook her head at the futility. She shifted her handbag, which was hooked over one shoulder. Her words dripped with condescension. “As a young and perhaps overly ambitious CIA officer assigned to Moscow at the end of the last century, Paul, I recruited an equally ambitious young entrepreneur for a remarkable scheme. Made him a deal. We’ll make you rich, and in return, you’ll spy for us. You’ll be an oligarch weown. An oligarch who’d have direct access to the Kremlin, like all the other oligarchs. And I would be his case officer. At first, we channeled CIA money into his fund. But we made it back quickly. Arkady Galkin eventually became the most prized intelligence asset in U.S. history. A periscope into the Kremlin! We were instantly aware of everything the Russian leadership had decided. How do you think we knew so far in advance that Moscow was going to invade Ukraine? We were privy to all the twists and turns. We knew what they were going to do beforeanyoneelse in the world knew it. And a whole secret unit of the CIA grew up around him: Phantom. A small pod that brainstormed new modalities in espionage. Siloed from the rest of the agency. And the genius of the whole scheme? We didn’t need funding. It self-financed! So we didn’t need congressional oversight. And nowyouwant to make the detailspublic. Which would lay waste to decades worth ofinvaluableintelligence. And one more thing. To reveal Arkady’s role in betraying the Kremlin would be to get his entire family killed. You want to do that to Tatyana? Are you really that coldblooded, to put them all under a death sentence?”

“He’s protected,” Paul said. “He’s living on a goddamned naval base.”

His thoughts spun furiously. He had a few more cards to play, but he had to time them exactly right.

Dempsey continued. “Remember that story in the news about the Russian mercenary who’d led a coup against the Kremlin—and whose plane exploded in the air north of Moscow a few weeks later? When it comes to disloyalty, the big man in Moscow doesn’t screw around. So you can be sure your ex-wife and her father, among many others, would be obliterated if this information became public. They will find him, I promise you that. This does not end well for you, Paul. The fact is, your old boss Galkin is useless to us now. He began to believe his press clippings. Like Pinocchio, he began to imagine he was a real boy. Thought he was a real genius investor. I mean, look at his returns, right? Out of the kindness of our hearts, we’re letting him and his family live on a naval base, protected from the machinations of the GRU. As best we can, anyway. And no, Arkady, you’re not getting half a billion dollars back. You’re not getting a cent. It’s not your money. Never was.”