Page 156 of The Oligarch's Daughter

“Light dawns on Marblehead,” Horgan said with a peculiar smile. “Hired by a unit of the CIA. The Phantom unit. Dempsey hired a crew of ex-GRU goons, so it would point to Moscow. An old CIA trick. False-flagging.”

“The CIA hired Russians to kill FBI agents in New York?”

Horgan just looked at him with an odd, knowing smile on his face, nearly a smirk.

“Hold on—so, it wasn’tMoscowthat was behind the murder of those FBI agents, it was . . .us? It was the goddamned CIA? The CIA killed FBI agents? That’s incredible.”

“To be precise, not CIA. The Phantom unit. A special unit within CIA kept secret even from the spooks.”

“That massacre was officially sanctioned?”

Horgan nodded.

“I never saw that anywhere—never heard it was CIA.”

“That’s because the story was buried. Or it never came out. One thing my old agency is good at is keeping secrets.”

“The CIA . . .” Paul said. “I thought they don’t do that kind of thing anymore. Not for years. And even when they did . . . You’re talking about killing FBI agents?”

Horgan laughed dryly. “Well . . . not till Geraldine Dempsey was named to head the Phantom unit.”

“How could she—I mean, the director of the CIA must have known, right?”

“The goddamnedWhite Househad to approve it! That high up.”

“This is a huge story.”

“And of course it’s totally illegal. Violates CIA’s charter, U.S. laws. Man, I was expecting a front-page exposé. But not a single publisher in the U.S. would touch it. They couldn’t face the legal pressure. You know, when I first heard about this, I spoke out in-house. I was a good boy. I went through channels, I lodged complaints with the inspector general, and . . . crickets. They just reassigned me. So in a moment of frustration and weakness, I called aWashington Postreporter. And then she had me fired.”

“Who did?”

“Geraldine!”

“Couldn’t you just self-publish?”

“Doesn’t work that way. It’s still breaking the goddamned law. And I don’t have deep pockets. They were going to sue the shit out of me, shut me down, and I couldn’t afford to fight them.”

“And yet . . . you’re alive.”

“That wet work, that’s the past. Not since Phantom was shut down. New leadership forbids any kind of lethal action like that anymore. They say the Russians may do it, but we don’t. Besides, there’s too many eyes on me.”

“I don’t—” Paul faltered a moment. “I don’t get how Dempsey hasn’t been arrested by FBI for what she’s done.”

“Because nothing’s on paper. They don’t have her dead to rights. They don’t have proof. If you can get that, you’ll get an FBI arrest pronto, no problem.”

“She must have good contacts at the FBI,” Paul suggested. “Don’t you think?”

“Look, whenever she finds herself in a dangerous situation, she’s always accompanied by SPS officers, and they—”

“SPS officers?”

“Sorry. That’s the CIA’s Security Protective Service. Draws from cops or FBI. The best of them are former FBI SWAT officers. So she knows how capable FBI agents can be. She uses them.”

The dog got up and trotted over to Paul, nudging his knee. Then he sat down on top of his feet. Paul was careful not to shift his feet and antagonize the creature.

“Don’t worry about Brutus. He’s actually a big old softie,” Horgan said. “A sweetie.”

“Yeah, so I’ve seen.” Paul said. “So it wasn’t Russian government intelligence operatives doing the killings in the U.S. It was Russians hired by the U.S. To make itlooklike Moscow was doing them.”

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