Page 101 of The Oligarch's Daughter

“Midnight or after, I bet.”

“You’re kidding!” she said with a pout. “I’ll be asleep!”

“I know,dushen’kaya. I’ll be quiet.”

“Does my father know how hard you work?”

*

In the morning meeting, Paul took notice of what his colleagues were wearing. Mostly button-down shirts and quilted navy vests and khakis, with various types of sneakers, leather or not.

He left work around five thirty, earlier than usual, telling Margo he had some errands to run. He made it to the Orvis store on Fifth Avenue just in time. The Adidas flagship store, a few blocks away on Fifth, was open later. At J.Crew, after buying a pair of chinos, he changed clothes in the dressing room.

To kill time, he browsed at the Barnes and Noble and then stopped at a pizza place for a slice, but he didn’t have an appetite. He was too tense. The time dragged by. He picked up a Yankees cap at a tourist shop on Sixth Avenue, then walked around aimlessly, hoping he wouldn’t run into anyone he knew. This was Manhattan, where you could go for weeks without bumping into anyone, but then run into an old friend from high school when you least wanted to.

Finally, at a few minutes before nine, he returned to the office. His colleagues worked late, many of them, but usually by eight, eight thirty, the office was nearly deserted.

Wearing his brand-new quilted Orvis vest and his brand-new Stan Smiths and his brand-new Yankees cap, he entered, looking down at his feet, his face turned away from the security camera. His outfit could have belonged to anyone in the firm. He was wearing a Covid face mask, too, so there was very little face to identify. He waved the RFID card Addison had given him at the reader.

As far as the system knew, a custodian had just badged in. But if anyone bothered to look at the video feed, they wouldn’t see a face.

67

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.

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