Page 151 of The Oligarch's Daughter

Paul knew it wasn’t quite true that Gillette was retired. He continued to serve as an emeritus advisor to presidents. He didn’t fly to Washington, D.C. They called him in Lenox.

Noreen entered the study bearing a tray holding two full cocktail glasses. The ambassador preferred his martini in a highball glass.

Paul took the Scotch and thanked Noreen.

Then he told the ambassador his story.

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The old man’s eyes looked haunted. “You’re asking why the FBI is after you,” he said. “I couldn’t tell you. I’m out of the swim.”

“You know the FBI.”

“Yes, yes, but . . . Look, taking someone’s Social Security number, as you did, is identity theft, and that’s either a misdemeanor or a felony, depending on where you live, where it’s prosecuted. It’s a wobbler. And it’s never going to require a field team to bring you in. If what you’re telling me is accurate, and there was a team waiting to grab you in New Hampshire, that doesn’t sound right. That’s way too overblown an operation for identity theft. And you’re not a fugitive from justice. When I was director, I never would have approved an arrest in your case. No, there’s obviously something else going on.”

“Like what?”

“It might well be your connection to a Russian oligarch and your subsequent disappearance.”

It also might be that I’m wanted for murder, Paul thought.For the murder of a man who came to kill me.

“Look,” Paul began again, “five years ago, I found an entire FBI office massacred byRussianagents. Probably to protect an oligarch. Now it looks like the FBI is afterme! I want to know what the hell is going on. I mean, I suppose I could turn myself in, but not before knowing what they want me for.”

“Well, I don’t have the slightest . . .”

“Can you make some phone calls?”

“I suppose I could, yes.”

The fire crackled much like the one in the woods the night before, but this was much bigger, and the flames painted Gillette’s face in shades of orange. The room smelled, comfortingly, of woodsmoke. Like a badly needed fire on a cold night in the wilderness.

“Does the name ‘Phantom’ mean anything to you?” Paul said.

The ambassador shook his head. “Besides what it usually means, no. Not that I can recall.”

Paul was disappointed but he persisted. “That thumb drive I just showed you—what doyouthink’s on it?” A few minutes ago, he’d plugged the drive into the ambassador’s computer, showed him the junk that came up on the screen, explained where he’d found it.

“You’re asking for a guess.”

“Correct.”

Gillette smiled. “Obviously, I have no idea. I’m not very tech savvy, as you might imagine. But I have a hypothesis. You know how the Mafia always keeps ledgers detailing whom they’ve paid off and how much?”

“You think it may be financial records of who Arkady Galkin owns and how much he’s paid them?”

“Perhaps. That would be useful as kompromat—that’s Russian for ‘compromising information used to blackmail or control people.’”

“I know.” It was getting hot sitting in front of the fire, and Paul felt a rivulet of perspiration course down his neck and then his back.

“Which is how Galkin controls people. My hypothesis is that this thumb drive you have—is that what you called that thing, a ‘thumb drive’?—holds evidence that Galkin has paid off high-ranking agents in the FBI. Names of FBI special agents or directors he has on his payroll. In his pocket. Bank account numbers. And somebody wants it back. Someone whose name may be in those files.”

“And the corruption may extend farther than the FBI?” Paul said. “Other intelligence agencies, maybe?”

“Quite possibly. Why not? CIA officers can be corrupted just as easily as FBI agents.”

“And politicians?”

“Absolutely. Just as the oligarchs have done in England.”

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