Page 53 of The Oligarch's Daughter

More footsteps.

Then voices, faint at first. It was three in the morning: these weren’t hikers. As the voices grew steadily louder, Paul realized it was several people speaking in what he immediately recognized as Russian. Probably the two who’d come by his house and killed Alec Wood. The big, buff young bald guy and the gray-and-copper-haired Berzin. The two who were chasing him, maybe others as well.

He slowly sat up, his body tensing. He had seen Berzin’s thug shoot Alec, a police officer who wasn’t their target, point blank. They would do whatever it took to eliminate him. After five years, they had finally located him, and they would stop at nothing to get rid of him, Paul was quite certain.

He heard one of the men say, in English, “The nearest town . . .” At least, he thought that was what the man had said.

The other man replied, but Paul couldn’t make it out.

He was glad he’d taken precautions in building the fire and putting it out. From a few feet away, you couldn’t see any evidence of his ever having been here.

One of the men, probably Berzin, continued, saying something about “Grant Anderson.”

The other one: Something about “the forest.” Something about “running.”

Maybe they had determined that Paul was heading toward Lincoln. How else could they have come so close?

Then the voices grew steadily fainter.

They were passing by.

He waited, listened. Now he could barely hear them.

For another five minutes, Paul sat in the shelter his father had taught him to build, his heart clamoring. When he could no longer hear the two men, he carefully got up and pushed aside the branches, slid down from the boulders, and stepped onto the forest floor. In the distance, he saw the glint of a flashlight. They had walked close to him but hadn’t seen him, so they’d kept on moving through the woods.

It was too dark to walk through the trees without a flashlight, so he returned to the wolf’s den and decided to try to lie down a little longer, until the sun came up.

He tried to sleep, but his mind kept racing. He was haunted by an image, a still frame of Frederick Newman on the fishing boat at the moment the bullet struck his neck. The man had come to kill him, Paul knew, but, still, he’d never killed anyone before.

He wondered where Sarah was, whether she’d left Derryfield already. He hoped she had. If so, she was probably okay.

But what if she hadn’t left town yet and they’d gotten to her? He couldn’t allow himself to consider that possibility. It was too terrible to think about.

He wondered if she had called him on the burner phone whose number he’d given her. Maybe she’d left a message.

He took out the disposable cell phone and switched it on. There were no bars, no reception here. He wanted to call Sarah and check in with her, make sure she was okay.

He reminded himself that if he had no phone signal, neither did his pursuers.

But they might well have satellite phones. That was more than a possibility.

Soon, despite the churning thoughts and images, and a growling stomach, he fell asleep again.

He was awakened sometime later by a drop of water on his face, then another one, then a series of spatters coming in through the branches.Just what I need. It was still dark, but now it was raining.

34

He had left his Paul Brightman life behind. Everything he read on the dark web had told him that you must never look back. You have to assume that the world you’ve left behind is dead. People who can’t let go of the past will eventually get caught. Some people resort to drink and to making calls to loved ones they miss. Those are the ones who always get found out.

Grant Anderson, as Paul imagined him, had worked for years for a nonprofit in someplace like Uganda, never had credit cards before, never needed any. But what could hedo? What skills did he have?

To be blunt about it, not many. Paul Brightman could pick a stock or structure an investment, sure. But that wasn’t who Grant Anderson was. Grant Anderson worked with his hands, didn’t wear Armani suits or Hermès ties, didn’t fly business class. Had never been on a private plane.

Paul was going to have to live plainly and modestly. No more high-end restaurants or private cars. That life was done. He bought a prepaid MasterCard that he could use when he absolutely had to use a credit card. He found an ad on Craigslist for a boatbuilder’s assistant. The pay was bad, but at least he’d be paid in cash. The bureaucrats were relentless. If he filed taxes, his new identity would be unraveled, he’d be discovered, and the Russians would track him down.

He also had to be careful taking out a bank account in Grant’s name. No interest-bearing accounts. He had to make sure never to earn any interest, anything that would require an IRS 1099 form. That was going to be tricky.

But he could do it.

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