The Oligarch's Daughter

Paul decides to make his way to a nearby road and hitchhike the final 12 miles into the town of Lincoln. Suddenly, he hears voices and sees two elderly men with creased skin and long beards. He wonders if they are survivalists and considers asking for help, but he decides that it’s too risky. He continues to walk and comes upon an old brick foundation. He realizes that he saw this same foundation yesterday and is walking in circles.

With great difficulty, Paul makes his way toward Lincoln. He finds a large stick to use as a cane and limps along. Once he makes it to the highway, he begins to hitchhike. A woman who seems friendly picks him up, and Paul is grateful to have found a ride.

In a flashback, Mr. Frost asks Paul to invest in a British company that’s bidding for an American defense contract. Paul finds it improbable that the American government would give a defense contract to a foreign company. However, he realizes that Mr. Frost and Arkady must have inside knowledge of the transaction.

Paul wonders if Tatyana knows about her father’s illegal business dealings and if she would even judge him for breaking the law if she did know. When he gets home, she tells him that she’s going to accompany him on his work trip to Moscow. When he shares the story of Larsen overdosing, she does not seem to care.

Paul gathers with Tatyana’s family for a Sunday dinner on the eve of his trip to Moscow. Arkady congratulates them on their marriage and offers to finance the renovation of their apartment and oversee the remodeling project. Reluctantly, Paul accepts. He has grown to love these family dinners, but he is increasingly sure that Arkady’s firm is not entirely ethical in its business dealings.

On the flight to Moscow, Tatyana is visibly excited. Arkady tells Paul about Moscow: It has emerged from the gray depths of its Soviet past. It is now a beautiful, opulent, modern European capital. Paul asks about the meetings they have set up there, and Arkady is hesitant to reveal the details. Paul begins to get a headache. He assumes that these headaches are caused by stress; they have been increasing in frequency and severity lately.

Days earlier, after Larsen’s supposed “suicide,” Paul purchased a burner phone. He used it to call Bernie and asked to be put in touch with Agent Addison. The two met, and Paul asked if Addison thought that oligarchs like Arkady arrange to have people killed. Addison told him that it happens all the time—it is standard fare. He explained that the FBI is investigating Arkady for racketeering, money laundering, and insider trading. Paul told him that he would provide information about insider trading in exchange for immunity for himself and Tatyana.

Paul is stunned by Moscow. It is indeed a beautiful, modern city. He meets Tatyana’s sleek, elegant mother, Galina. Unlike Polina, she is genuinely kind. Paul realizes that the meetings that he will be attending in Moscow are largely for show. The real business, which remains secret, is Arkady’s. Addison arranges for Paul to secretly meet up with one of his Russia-based colleagues.

Paul has dinner with Tatyana and Galina at Galina’s dacha, a country house on the outskirts of Moscow. Paul and Galina instantly hit it off, and Galina tells the story of Arkady’s rise to prominence during the post-Soviet transition to a capitalist economy. Russia privatized its once state-owned businesses. These businesses were sold to the highest bidder, and the highest bidders were always men with government connections. In this way, the individuals who had power during the Soviet period held onto their influence while also building wealth in the new economy. She mentions that one of Arkady’s teachers, whose first name was Ludmilla, had helped set him up with the right people; Galina cannot remember the teacher’s last name. Galina assumes that Ludmilla recruited Arkady to work clandestinely for the Kremlin.

Back at the hotel, Paul gets a call from one of Rick’s friends. He says that he is also in Moscow and wants to meet for a drink.

The man, Dick Foley, gets right to the point. He wants to know who Arkady has meetings with in Moscow. In exchange, he provides Paul with information about one of the companies that Arkady is looking to invest in. Paul tells Dick that he cannot help him because he does not trust him. They have one drink, and then Paul leaves.

Paul attends another pointless meeting and then heads to meet Addison’s contact. He stops in a Russian department store, where a woman bumps into him; immediately after, he finds that he has an iPhone in his pocket. It rings, and the voice tells him that he has a tail. It instructs him to head out the nearest exit and not hang up.

Paul takes a complicated path and hails a cab using an app that was pre-loaded onto the phone. He hopes that he has lost his tail, but in Russia, he realizes that he can never be too sure.

Paul finally meets Addison’s contact, who goes by the name Andrew. Andrew asks him to place a tracker in Arkady’s suitcase and tells him to keep the iPhone. Paul tells Andrew about Ludmilla, and Andrew asks him to get her last name: She was likely an important player in the Kremlin’s security service.

Paul calls Rick to ask about Dick Foley. Rick tells Paul that he does not know anyone by that name. Paul realizes that he has no idea who Rick really is or who he works for.

Paul attends a dinner with Arkady and a few of Arkady’s business contacts. After dinner, he pulls Arkady aside and tells him that he’d like to talk for a few minutes. Paul has to find a way to hide the tracker in Arkady’s briefcase, and Arkady is rarely without it.

Arkady asks Paul how he enjoyed GUM, the Russian store. Paul wonders if Arkady had him followed. Although he is nervous, Paul manages to find a moment when Arkady is in the restroom to hide the tracker in his briefcase. Arkady almost catches him, and Paul hopes that he is not suspicious.

Paul heads to the university where Arkady studied and asks to see his yearbook. In it, he finds Ludmilla. He jots down her full name so that he can research her. He wants to find out who she is, how she helped Arkady, and what her possible connection is to the Kremlin and Russian state security services.

Paul finds Ludmilla’s number in the phone book and calls her. He gives her a false name and asks to speak with her about Arkady. She agrees to meet, and he heads to her apartment. Ludmilla is quite elderly and nearly blind. Paul is surprised to discover that she dislikes Arkady. She tells a similar story to Galina’s but adds that she was part of a Kremlin committee to identify enterprising, business-oriented men to take over what were once state businesses. The understanding was that these men would be free to make their own money but not necessarily their own decisions. Ludmilla characterizes the oligarchs as “marionettes” of the state and various other power brokers. She notes with bitterness that they all cast her aside once she was no longer useful. Suddenly, her phone rings. She tells Paul that it is the FSB, the state security bureau. They monitor her phone and home, and he was followed there. She urges him to leave immediately.

Paul hopes that the FSB has not identified him and does his best to evade detection on his way out. Not trusting the metro, he hastily hails a pirate cab.

Back at the hotel, Paul is jittery. He has his last dinner in Moscow with Tatyana and her mother and sees two suspicious men in the lobby—he hopes they are not FSB agents. As they are returning to their room, Arkady stops him and asks Paul why he visited his engineering school. Paul’s heart begins to pound when he realizes that Arkady had him followed. He claims that he was interested in the institute and its architecture, but he is sure that he hasn’t fooled Arkady. He wonders if Arkady also knows that he visited Ludmilla.

Back in the United States, Addison wants Paul to dig through Arkady’s financial information to figure out the source of his firm’s money. Because of the tracker that Paul slipped into Arkady’s briefcase, the FBI now has confirmation that Arkady is working with the Kremlin. The FBI investigation is picking up speed. Agents help Paul use a key grabber to steal one of his coworkers’ login information, and they provide Paul with a disguise so that he can slip past the building’s security cameras undetected for an in-person search.

Paul slips into the building using a fake badge and logs into one of the firm’s computers using his coworker’s login information. He finds that there were only five original investors in Arkady’s firm. One of them, an Irish national with a Russian name, donated billions over the years. This information means nothing to him yet, but it strikes him as suspicious.

As he is leaving, he sees the coworker whose login he used—an IT specialist—running into the building. The next morning, Paul is exhausted and nervous. Tatyana mentions speaking to her father on the phone, and Paul’s heart pounds: Arkady might know that he was working late. At the office, Mr. Frost tells everyone that someone broke in and accessed company files the night before. He says that they are investigating this.

Paul meets with Addison. He explains that he might have been caught, but Addison assures him that the trail will not lead back to Paul. Paul then tells Addison about the mysterious donor, and Addison tells him that this woman is actually a front for Moscow: Arkady is managing the Kremlin’s money. Paul shares that her name was associated with a company named Phantom, and Addison asks Paul to do more digging. Paul is reluctant and tries to back out, but Addison reminds him of what is at stake.

Paul learns about FanStar, another potential investment that he deems dubious. He discovers that Arkady’s firm almost invested in it six years ago but suddenly pulled out. There are files that concern this company, but they are stored in a facility upstate. Paul heads there to check them out.

Paul arrives at the facility. He learns that it might take more than an hour to retrieve the files, so he prepares to wait.

Paul locates the files that he was after. He learns that the last time the company considered this investment, it was associated with a man named Maxim Kagan. Maxim is an “SDN,” a specially designated national: In other words, he is a known foreign criminal. If Arkady’s firm invests in FanStar now and there are problems, Arkady could go to prison. Paul records all the information in the file. Then, he looks for a file on Phantom. He finds one and copies the information onto a thumb drive.

In the present day, the woman who picked up Paul introduces herself as Angela. Paul says that his name is Giles. Angela is a nurse and gives Paul an ice pack for his ankle. She drops him off at a motel in Lincoln, waiting to make sure that he is able to check in before leaving.

Paul sleeps for nine hours and then calls Sarah. She tells him that there was an article about Alec Wood’s death in the local paper and that Paul is a person of interest. She is clearly panicking, and he tells her to remain calm and not worry about him.

Paul buys new clothing and first-aid supplies. He stops by the local bank to pick up a flash drive that he’d stored in a safety deposit box. He sees a team of FBI agents near the bank but manages to evade them.

Paul heads back into the woods, hoping to lose the agents. Eventually, he is exhausted and has to sleep, and he wakes to the sound of voices. He again sees the long-bearded, grizzled men he saw a few days ago. They tell him that the FBI is in the forest and take him away with them.

The men who rescued Paul strike him as anti-society isolationists like his father. They ask him why he’s running from the FBI; Paul decides to trust them and tells the truth. He discovers that they are indeed men who have chosen to leave society. One of the men voices some strongly anti-government, anti-FBI views and introduces himself as Stephen Lucas. After hesitating, Paul introduces himself by his real name, Paul Brightman. Stephen smiles and says, “I thought so” (294).