Page 89 of The Oligarch's Daughter

“Right.”

“And when’s that supposed to happen?”

“You’re a member of the family now. You’ll have opportunities.”

“Easy for you to say. Am I supposed to keep this phone?”

The FBI man nodded. “It’s clean. No bugs.”

“If the . . . FSB can tap my iPhone, they can tap this one.”

“But they don’t know you have it, see. It’s called security through obscurity. Nothing is uncrackable anymore. Security is a dated concept. I mean, the only uncrackable safe is one that no one can find to crack.”

Paul nodded dubiously. He had to make sure to keep the two phones separate. Maybe one in his pocket, one in his suitcase. He didn’t want Tatyana discovering that he had two identical iPhones. “By the way, I had dinner with Tatyana’s mother last night.”

“I know,” Aaron said. “How’d that go?”

Paul nodded. “Galina Borisovna said something interesting about her ex.”

“Oh, yeah?” The man seemed to perk up.

“She said when he was a student at the Bauman Institute, he had an affair with one of his professors, who made him rich.”

“What does that mean, ‘made him rich’?”

“She was apparently a recruiter for the Kremlin.”

“You catch her name?”

“Ludmilla something.”

“Last name?”

Paul shook his head. He knew more but didn’t want to say. Knowledge was power. “Tatyana’s mother said Ludmilla even tried to talk Arkady out of marrying her.”

“Jesus, that’s the woman who recruited him for Mother Russia. Need her full name.”

“Sorry . . .”

“Would your wife know?”

“She doesn’t remember. Anyway, that was before she was born.”

“Find the name, if you can. Help us, and we help you. You know how this works. You want the Bureau’s protection, you gotta play ball.”

“Actually, I thought I was helping you by planting this fucking tracker,” Paul snapped. “Isn’t thatplaying ball?”

The man smiled. His smile seemed to crack the lunar surface of his face. “That’s playing ball, all right. But you’d better practice. Right now.” He handed Paul the briefcase. “You don’t want to strike out.”

59

On his way back to the hotel, Paul stopped at a Russian fast-food chain called Teremok and got a chicken Caesar blini. As he ate, he wondered how the hell he was going to get access to Galkin’s briefcase—alone. And what would happen if he got caught trying to insert the tracker? He looked around the restaurant, sensed that he was surrounded by Russians, not tourists. He didn’t know if he was being followed anymore and didn’t feel qualified to know for sure. He’d changed back into his own clothes at the FBI man’s apartment and looked like an American again.

At the hotel, he found their suite empty except for a maid cleaning the bathroom. Tatyana was gone, maybe still at lunch with her mother. He would have to explain to her where he’d gone, have to make up a story about how he wandered around Moscow as a tourist. He switched off the iPhone that the FBI had given him, then hid it in a pocket of his suitcase. He pulled out his own iPhone, saw that he had a few messages. One was from Arkady, inviting him to a “business dinner” at a nearby restaurant called Aragvi.

He called Tatyana.

“How’s your day going, sweetie?” he said when she answered.

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