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Brightman had had a thriller reader’s notion of a CIA safe house, a capacious but discreet redbrick Georgian mansion in the tony Virginia suburbs with landscaped property. Instead, the safe house where Arkady Galkin had several times met Geraldine Dempsey was a humble single-story ranch-style house in the woods of Cabin John, Maryland. White-painted clapboard, faded red shutters, a set of gray-painted concrete steps in front. The cedar shingle roof was stained from the trees overhanging it. A couple of white concrete planters in front, with flowers that looked ignored. The house was surrounded by forest: a cabin in the woods, at the end of a long dirt road. It was entirely private, no neighbors, no one to observe the comings and goings.

Galkin showed up nearly half an hour late wearing a blue blazer and a tie. He’d dressed up for the occasion, Paul noticed.

“You sure this is it?” Paul asked.

“Absolutely. Is rented house. Government always cheap.”

“How do you get in?”

“Is easy.” Galkin found a lockbox hanging from the porch railing, pushed four buttons, and popped it open. Inside was the key. All very low-tech.

“The CIA must trust you,” Paul said.

“Once they did.”

“They didn’t change the code.”

“I tell you, government bureaucracy same everywhere. Never change.” Galkin keyed open the front door lock, and the door came open, releasing a stuffy, mildewy odor. The house was rarely used, it seemed. But if Agent Trombley was as good as her word, the FBI had already been there earlier in the day, planting their clandestine recording devices. That was as far as they’d go. This entire meeting was Paul’s initiative and his alone; the FBI would cooperate if and only if he were successful. So he was on his own.

Inside the house’s cramped front room was beige wall-to-wall carpeting, a couple of red-upholstered lounge chairs, a big TV, cottage curtains. Down a little hallway off the living room was a bedroom and a bathroom.

An hour remained before Geraldine Dempsey had said she’d arrive at the safe house for an emergency consultation with Arkady Galkin. Paul looked around the small house, didn’t see any obvious evidence of recording devices—then again, would he really know what to look for in the first place? Still, he did his due diligence, opening cabinets, pulling back the fringed chenille coverlet in the bedroom. Nothing that he could see.

Paul’s plan was to get Geraldine Dempsey on tape, conversing with Galkin. Incriminating herself. The Phantom USB drive revealed her years-long relationship with her agent, Arkady Galkin, but it didn’t connect her to the FBI massacre, and that they needed.

Paul rehearsed potential scenarios with Galkin, who was surprisingly avid. Dempsey’s reluctance to meet—Galkin had had to cajole—had only confirmed that he’d been cut loose, that he was of no interest to the CIA any longer. This fact seemed to sharpen Galkin’s resolve into obsession.

When they heard a car pull up, Paul immediately secreted himself in the bedroom. But he positioned himself so that he could see out the slats in the bedroom’s venetian blinds, looking outside, at an angle so he wouldn’t be spotted, as had been the plan. Paul watched as Dempsey’s security guy entered the house, a tall, broad-shouldered man in a slightly oversize blazer that probably concealed a weapon. Paul had expected Dempsey to be accompanied by at least one officer from the CIA’s Security Protective Service. The man opened the front door and poked his head in perfunctorily, for a beat, before Dempsey entered. She was wearing a belted trench coat and carrying a large black leather handbag.

“Arkady Viktorovich,” she said in a booming voice. “You reached out using an emergency channel. This had better be a true emergency. You have disrupted a very busy day.”

“We need to talk,” Galkin said.

Paul had considered sitting on the bed in the very spare bedroom, but there was always the possibility that Dempsey would open the bedroom door just to check that there was no one else in the house. So he stood in the dank closet, through whose thin walls he could hear the conversation reasonably well.

“What exactly is going on, Arkady?” Dempsey asked, her voice slightly muffled. “Given that you no longer work for us.”

“Brightman,” he said. His voice was clearer, louder. “Paul Brightman is . . . at large. You must resolve this matter. He is threat to my family. He knows I used to work for you. If this gets out, Kremlin will come after me and my family and they will not rest until—”

A pause. “As long as your family stays on the base, you are protected.”

“Which makes us prisoners,” he said. “What life is this, after all I have done for you?”

“Phantom has been shut down. You know that full well.”

“And you freeze my assets. My money is my safety. Nearly twenty years, I give intelligence to CIA. I invest. Make fortune. Now I want my money back. At least some money.”

“You signed a waiver, years ago, agreeing to that stipulation. That money was never yours.”

“I will make deal.”

“That’s off the table. Your signature’s on the release. So if you’re done complaining and trying to make deals , I would like to get back to my office. I have plenty of real work to do.”

“If you release half billion dollars of my assets,” Galkin said, “I give you Brightman.”

“Brightman . . .” Dempsey paused. “That might be of interest. Tell me more.”

Suddenly, a blaring noise came on—the TV, a news report, a cacophony. Dempsey had switched it on, Paul figured, to mask whatever she and Galkin were saying. To defeat any concealed recorders. Meaning she knew about them or expected them. For another minute or two, he listened, tried to make out the conversation, but couldn’t.

He leaned over to retie his shoes. They were new and a little uncomfortable.

At that moment, without warning he heard the bedroom door abruptly swing open. “I know you’re in there, Brightman,” he heard the man say. “Step out with your hands up. Now .”

The closet door opened. There stood the security officer who’d accompanied Geraldine Dempsey, pointing a gun directly at him. The man was over six feet tall, in his late thirties, with a shaved head and a tightly clenched face full of premature wrinkles.

Behind him stood Geraldine Dempsey. Next to her stood Arkady Galkin.

“Mr. Brightman,” Dempsey said, registering no surprise. “There you are. This is an unexpected pleasure. We have much to talk about.”

“Like how you hired Russians to murder FBI employees who were about to discover your mole?”

“What in the world are you talking about, Brightman? You sound unhinged.” She turned to the bald man, smiling exultantly. “Shawn? Please pat this fellow down.” In a muttering aside, she added, “Let’s make sure our conversation is between us only.”

The security guard stepped forward, pistol clutched in his right hand and still aimed at Paul. Thrusting his left hand out, he patted Paul down, starting at his shoulders and working down his torso, back, and sides. He felt the reverse side of Paul’s belt, searched his pockets, ran his hands down the backs and sides of Paul’s legs. Triumphantly, he produced Paul’s burner phone. He showed it to Dempsey, who shrugged. “Take it,” she said.

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 the decrypted Phantom file to a carefully selected list of reporters and editors at the Wall Street Journal , the Washington Post , the New 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 called willful retention of 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’s classified phone 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 we own . 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 before anyone else 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 now you want to make the details public . Which would lay waste to decades worth of invaluable intelligence. 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.”

Now Paul turned to Galkin, whose face was flushed. The former oligarch looked enraged. “You see, she’s not your ally anymore,” Paul said. “She’s your enemy. She could put you and your whole family in peril. You really want to leave your fate in her hands? It’s like you said, a puppet is free as long as he loves his strings! This is your chance to cut your strings .”

Paul looked at Dempsey, trying to gauge her reaction, then noticed, in his peripheral vision, a quick, dark furtive movement.

Galkin had pulled out a gun and was pointing it directly at Geraldine Dempsey. His case officer. His control. Where had Galkin gotten a weapon? He hadn’t said anything about it.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Dempsey snapped. Paul could see the whites of her eyes in the twilight. She didn’t know what her former asset might do now. “Put that down before you get yourself shot.”

On cue, Shawn, the security agent, obediently raised his own weapon and leveled it at Galkin, and for a moment, there seemed to be a standoff. The man was doing his job, protecting his charge.

Galkin’s gun wavered a bit in his grip. He was pointing it at Dempsey, then at Shawn. Back and forth, his expression fierce, perhaps a little frightened, too.

Paul recalled Agent Trombley’s words: That’s the CIA’s Security Protective Service . . . former FBI SWAT agents . Maybe Shawn, too, was ex-FBI, he thought. Odds were he was.

So Paul tried again to provoke Dempsey. “How can you live with yourself?” he said to her. “You hired thugs to take out FBI agents. These were colleagues of yours, fighting the good fight, and you had them killed! How could you do that?”

Shawn, pointing his gun at Galkin, seemed to be listening.

“Oh, please,” Dempsey said. “Spare me your nauseating self-righteousness. Yes, five years ago we had to cauterize a well-intentioned but potentially disastrous inquiry. And because the Phantom project survived, we were able to gain invaluable, policy-shaping intelligence. My colleagues and I send operatives into harm’s way all the time. We never do it lightly. But you can’t protect this country from danger without accepting danger. The men and women who volunteer to be this nation’s sentinels accept that reality. In this case, the termination of this unit was an utterly tragic decision—and an utterly necessary one.”

Shawn looked at Geraldine Dempsey, lowered his gun, his eyes narrowing. “Madam, what did you say?”

Dempsey’s face flashed with annoyance. But had something just changed in the dynamic between her and her security guard? Galkin continued leveling his gun, now only at Dempsey.

Paul looked at the security officer, and their eyes locked. “Yeah,” Paul said to him. “Extremists like her always imagine they’re in the right. But as soon as human beings, good people, are considered pawns, we’ve lost our way.”

“Shawn, I’m under attack here. Do your job—take them both down,” Dempsey commanded.

The security officer shook his head ever so slightly.

Furiously, Dempsey shouted, “Shawn, take them down ! And you, Galkin—do you think your family is ever going to be safe? I will cut you all off altogether! You will have no protection whatsoever!”

Paul was deafened by an explosion.

But it wasn’t Shawn who had fired. It was Arkady Galkin. He looked stunned at what he’d just done. “I am not puppet!” he shouted.

Geraldine Dempsey’s body twisted and collapsed to the ground, her handbag dropping a few feet away. “ God! ” she cried out, scrabbling at the earth.

Dempsey appeared to have been shot in the thigh. Galkin raised his gun again and pointed it at her.

Another ear-splitting explosion.

Arkady Galkin’s chest had turned into a terrible bloodied mess. His gun dropped beside him as he crumpled to the ground. Shawn had taken him down.

Galkin was moaning. Paul turned. His former father-in-law was clearly in agony but hadn’t yet died. He gasped, his mouth opening and closing like a fish’s, and then Paul realized that Galkin was trying to say something, looking at Paul the whole time.

Suddenly a squad of FBI agents burst through the trees. A couple of them grabbed Geraldine Dempsey and handcuffed her. She was protesting loudly, indignantly. At the same time, though, she was seriously wounded, so she was placed on a folding stretcher, squawking.

Paul turned and knelt where Galkin lay dying, saw the grotesque slick red mess that was the oligarch’s chest, nearly heard the faint words, barely audible, the whisper low and crackling. Rivulets of blood streaming from the corner of his mouth. He was trying desperately to tell Paul something.

Paul leaned down, his ear close to Galkin’s head, straining to listen. But the oligarch’s mouth had stopped moving. The mouth had gone slack, and it was pretty evident that he was dead. Paul couldn’t help but think he looked at peace.