Page 139 of The Oligarch's Daughter

“No. It’s encrypted. It looks like garbage.”

“And you didn’t try to get it decrypted?”

“How the hell could I do that? That’s way beyond my skill set.”

“Now, tell me about how you found the secret files on your firm’s server.”

Paul told her about the night he hacked into AGF’s network using the IT guy’s credentials.

“Ingenious,” she said. “You’ve got more guts than you can hang on a fence.”

“Not really.”

“What did you learn from those documents?”

“That Galkin’s fortune all came from the Kremlin. That he’s secretly managing the Kremlin’s money.”

Her expression didn’t waver. Her features showed no surprise. “Did you keep a copy of those files?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. There wasn’t time.”

A long pause. “And did you tell your wife about what you found?”

“Tatyana? No way.”

“Or your friend Rick?”

“No.”

“Or any other friends?”

“No.”

“What did you learn on Galkin’s yacht?”

“I got the passenger list. The manifest. I gave that to Addison.”

“And I assume you made a copy of that, too.”

Paul didn’t answer her implied question. “Before we go any farther, let me ask you: does the CIA have a witness protection program?”

“Look, I like you,” Dempsey said. “So I’m not going to bullshit you. The Agency is one giant bureaucracy. It’s the worst bureaucracy in the entire U.S. government except for maybe the U.S. military. It’s like the Department of Motor Vehicles on steroids. As they say in the mother country”—and then she said something quickly in Russian that Paul didn’t get. Dempsey translated for him: “Anyone who served in the army doesn’t laugh at the circus.”

“What’s your point?”

“We have a resettlement program for intelligence defectors. But that’s not you. Alas. Why are you asking?”

“Because I think I’m next.”

“Because . . . ?”

“Because I’m a cooperating witness for the FBI.”

“But Galkin can’t possibly know that.”

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