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The office was empty. The lights were on; they always stayed on.

But Ivan Matlovsky was still at work, at a hot desk, used by different people, on the corridor outside Paul’s office.

Paul didn’t want any witnesses, so he went into his office and, every once in a while, glanced through the glass wall to see if Matlovsky was still there. Paul couldn’t log onto his own computer. As far as the office security system knew, he wasn’t there.

At eleven thirty, Matlovsky finally left. Paul remained in his office a few minutes longer, just to make sure Matlovsky hadn’t simply gone to the men’s room. After fifteen minutes, no Matlovsky.

Paul went to the break room to brew himself a cup of coffee. Carrying the cappuccino, blowing on it to cool it off some, he wandered around the floor. On the far side, he found Jake Larsen’s tiny office, thinking he might use Larsen’s work station, but of course the computer had been removed.

Nearby was Steve Gartner’s desk. No one was in sight. This looked perfect. He looked at his iPhone. Ten minutes after midnight.

He walked over to Gartner’s desk and sat down. Looked around, listened. He saw no one, heard nothing. He was as sure as he could be that the office was empty.

He took out the slip of paper on which he’d written Volodymyr’s login and password. The login was simply his Gmail address. The password was a long, unmemorizable string of numbers and letters, which somehow the IT guy had memorized.

The first few attempts, he mistyped some characters and got an error message. He typed the password in again more carefully this time. He was in.

He’d been in the online files a few times before, mostly to get old research on companies he was considering investing in. But now, with Vova’s universal admin permissions, he saw the whole filing system, color coded, areas of the system he had no access to as Paul Brightman.

The top-level folders had labels like “Legal,” “Finance,” “Operations,” “Human Resources,” and “Investments.” Within each folder, he saw, were subfolders—Financial Statements, Tax Documents, Expense Reports, and so on. He poked around for ten or fifteen minutes, looking for the files he wanted.

They were in the Legal folder. Within that, along with Litigation, Regulatory Compliance, and Contracts, was the subfolder he was interested in: Formation Documents.

These were the documents used to set up the firm. That was where he’d find what Addison wanted.

The Formation Documents folder had special-access privileges. Only Galkin, Frost, the CFO, and the general counsel could look at these.

And Vova.

Within this folder was a subfolder: Subscription Agreements. Paul knew this was where AGF kept files on the investors who’d put money in the fund.

This was where the gold ore was.

He glanced at the time on the computer screen.

1:05.

There were originally five investors, he saw at once.

Five very rich people, that meant, had put money into Galkin’s firm. Maybe they were oligarchs.

Of course, just because he had the folders on the five possible oligarchs didn’t mean he had their names. They would use shell companies. That was what oligarchs did. Not just oligarchs, but plenty of rich investors cloaked their identities in shell companies.

But Paul would get what he could. He would look—

Just then, he became aware of a clatter and mumbled voices and looked around with alarm.

It was a custodian with a vacuum cleaner strapped to his back, a middle-aged, slump-shouldered man with dusky skin.

“Hello,” Paul said.

“ Boa noite, senhor ,” the cleaner said.

He was the only cleaner in the office now, he was quite sure, but the custodian had likely seen employees working late before. It would not be good if someone saw that Paul was working at someone else’s computer. But the cleaner probably had no idea whose desk was whose.

This would not be one of his problems, he assured himself.

He went back to Gartner’s computer screen.

*

Seventeen years ago, five investors had put money into Galkin’s fund.

Five investors.

Paul looked in each folder, one by one. Looking for the names of the investors.

Instead, he found the names of shell companies and the banks they’d used.

Ocean Palm Holdings Ltd., Pacific Private Bank of Vanuatu

Windward Northern LLC, Partners Bank of St. Lucia

Duchy Investments Ltd., DBS Bank, Guernsey

All sketchy-sounding banks in sketchy jurisdictions. In other words, he knew nothing about where the money came from.

He opened his laptop, opened a new Word document, and typed in the names of the shell companies and their sketchy banks.

He totaled up the money each mysterious shell company had deposited into Arkady Galkin Finance LLC. It added up to $2.3 billion.

Then he had a brainstorm.

Within the Legal folder, he found another folder titled KYC, for “Know Your Client.” Or maybe it was “Know Your Customer.” A mandatory process ordered by the U.S. government shortly after the attacks of 9/11, KYC forced banks and financial institutions to verify that a client was really who he said he was. As Addison had pointed out, the government didn’t get to see the KYC documents. Not with a private equity firm. They were kept private.

Yes. There they were. For each depositor, there was a KYC document. A “Customer Information Form.”

He opened the first one, for Duchy Investments Ltd., and there was the information:

Full Name: Natasha I. Obolensky

Date of Birth: September 6, 1977

Nationality: Irish

On and on it went. All of Natasha Obolensky’s personal information, a copy of her Irish passport, etc. Natasha’s signature. Whoever she was.

And then one curious line:

Beneficial Ownership: Phantom.

So here was one of the investors: an Irish citizen with a Russian name. Bizarre. The whole thing sounded fake. A woman named Natasha Obolensky who had wired in $460 million.

Then he looked at the next KYC document, for Kent Ridge Ventures Ltd., sent in from Hermes Bank of Singapore.

Full Name: Natasha Obolensky

Date of Birth: September 6, 1977

Nationality: Irish

Four hundred seventy-five million dollars.

Beneficial Owner: Phantom.

Seventeen years ago, Natasha Obolensky had deposited $2.3 billion in five separate tranches over the course of five days.

Who the hell was Natasha Obolensky and where did she get $2.3 billion? And who or what was Phantom?

*

Paul copied the five KYC documents to a thumb drive. He blinked a few times. His eyes were dry and irritated. He pocketed the thumb drive, then signed Vova out from Steve Gartner’s computer, slipped his laptop into its carrying case, and got up.

It was 2:26 in the morning.

The nearest security camera, he was fairly sure, was at the entrance/exit. He donned his face mask and his Yankees cap. When he got to the exit door, he badged out using the prox card the FBI had given him, while looking down at the floor.

As far as the office security system was concerned, Paul Brightman had left the building at 5:30 p.m. At a few minutes after 8 p.m., someone on the custodial staff had badged in, leaving at 2:30 a.m.

When he left the office, he pulled down his mask so he could breathe normally. On his way out of the building’s lobby, he saw someone entering from the street.

It was Volodymyr, his hair sticking up wildly, looking like he’d just gotten out of bed.

Paul pulled his mask up. Had Vova seen him or not?

He couldn’t be sure.

*

Paul got home at three in the morning.

Tatyana gave a sort of grunt-moan when he climbed into bed, then rolled over to give him room.

He had maybe four hours before he had to get ready for work, but he was unable to sleep. He flip-flopped in the bed, his mind playing and replaying the image of Vova entering the building.

Did he see me?

Vova had obviously been awakened by some kind of software alert. How much did that alert tell him?

*

His phone alarm got him up at seven. His eyelids felt like they were glued together. His head pounded. He rose from bed carefully, trying not to jar his thudding head.

He made coffee, which unfortunately involved grinding the beans—this was his own fault; he liked his coffee fresh—which woke Tatyana. She appeared beside him, kissed his cheek. “Did you get your presentation done?” she asked sweetly.

“I did. Sorry to wake you.” He held the glass carafe under the tap and filled it halfway, then slid it into the complicated coffeemaker.

“That’s okay. I want to catch some morning light. I talked to my papa last night.”

“Yeah?” He felt a jolt.

“Our apartment should be ready in a week or so. He says his crew is working full speed.”

“That’s great. It’s . . . Does he know we don’t want the décor to look like his town house? I mean, we agree, don’t we?”

She laughed, a sound high and lilting. “We’ve talked about it a million times. He knows we have a different aesthetic.”

He looked around at her apartment. “Do we have one? An aesthetic, I mean.”

“I like things simple and basic, and I think you do, too.”

“No gold fixtures.”

“Ha ha ha, very funny.”

“Have you seen it yet?”

“No,” she said, vaguely exasperated. “I asked, but he won’t let me. He wants it to be a surprise.”

*

Paul arrived at the office shortly before eight. He’d showered and tried to make himself look presentable, but the lack of sleep showed on his face, especially under his eyes. Margo wasn’t there yet; she normally came in at eight thirty.

The morning meeting took place in a glass-walled conference room with a long, coffin-shaped conference table made of dark hardwood. All the firm’s principals were in attendance, the twelve most important people in the company. When Paul got there, people were talking about the New York Giants game that weekend and some high-profile, over-the-top wedding in the Hamptons that a few of them were invited to. As soon as Eugene Frost arrived in the room and sat down at the head of the table, all conversation stopped. Mr. Frost was a buzzkill and ran a tight ship. Not like the morning meetings at Aquinnah, which were looser and leavened with schmoozing and joking.

Almost everybody was drinking coffee, and no one touched the breakfast pastries arrayed on the sideboard. Either they’d already had breakfast or they were watching their glycemic profile. Dunlap’s disease and all that.

Mr. Frost began the meeting right on time by clearing his throat.

“I have an important announcement,” he said somberly. “Our network was accessed last night in the ‘wee hours.’” He said “wee hours” with audible quotation marks. “We are currently conducting an investigation. We know a few things right now. We know that the attack was not done remotely. It was done locally. From within our offices.”

People were glancing around, murmuring. “Wow. Was anything taken?” someone said.

Paul tried not to show his terror.

“Can you tell who signed on?” asked Ivan Matlovsky.

“We know which computer was used. Our investigation is proceeding quickly, and we will find the intruder. If any of you knows anything, please consider it your urgent responsibility to notify me at once.” He paused. “And now to work.”

Then each principal gave an update on his area. There was some high-level stuff on the market in general. The meeting was over in an hour and a half.

As it came to a close, Mr. Frost turned to Paul. “May I speak to you a moment?”

Paul’s stomach went taut. “Of course.” He drew closer to Mr. Frost, smiled expectantly, concealing his panic.

“An interesting deal possibility has come in. From a friend of mine I saw at a Hamptons party yesterday. I’ll forward you the PowerPoint deck on them. I’d like you to take a look at it. It’s an online gambling company called FanStars.”

“Sure,” Paul said. Mr. Frost peeled away, walking quickly down the corridor.

*

When Paul returned to his office, his colleague Ethan Carswell knocked on his door, entered, and then closed the door behind him. He’d been at the meeting moments earlier.

“I overheard Frost mention FanStars,” he said.

“Yeah, he wants me to look into it. You know anything about them?”

Ethan glanced sideways, then at Paul. “I do. Because actually we looked into FanStars, some years back.”

“And?”

“We, you know . . . we passed on it.”

“When was this?” asked Paul.

“I don’t know, five or six years ago.”

“Before online gambling was legal.”

“In the U.S. anyway. Good ol’ puritan America. We did an exhaustive study of the gambling space. Looked really hard at a couple of deals.”

“But you passed on them?”

“Yeah.”

“Any particular reason why?”

He shrugged. “Legal exposure, probably. But I wasn’t point on the deal.”

“Thanks.”

Paul shook his head. Maybe it wasn’t so weird that Frost wanted to go back to this online gambling site after so many changes in the marketplace.

But Paul was obviously far more concerned about Frost’s announcement at the meeting, how they were investigating the network break-in. If they discovered it was him, he was fucked.

He took out his burner phone and texted Addison.