and went through it with a black marker, obliterating any mention of their real names and their player names.
At five to nine she was at the boardroom door. She pulled at the cuffs of her crisp white Brooks Brothers shirt and then absentmindedly fiddled with her gold crucifix pendant. A thin young man wearing a Western shirt and jeans opened the door. “Could you wait a minute?” he asked.
She stood outside for fifteen minutes, listening as an active discussion went on inside the room. She thought she heard the word river, and then the door opened. The same young man poked his head out. “You can come in now.”
She walked in and saw two men sitting at a round table. The man she recognized as Chief Francis was leaning back in his chair, his feet up on the table, displaying his cowboy boots. The other man was big and broad and had arms as thick as Ava’s thighs. The two men stood and looked at her with disinterest.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Francis said, extending his right hand as his left reached back to adjust his braid. “This is a busy time for us. I’m Chief Ronald Francis. This is Martin,” he said, pointing at the young man who had let her in. “And Harold,” he went on, motioning to the large man.
“Thank you for seeing me,” Ava said as Martin’s warm brown eyes caught hers. She waited to be asked to sit. When no one spoke, she sat down, opened her Chanel purse, and took out her Moleskine notebook, along with the envelope that contained Maynard’s and Hunter’s data.
“I wasn’t expecting a presentation,” Francis said. He resumed his seat, put his feet back on the table, and motioned for Martin and Harold to sit down.
“My name is Ava Lee and I’m an accountant,” she said. “I’m here on behalf of perhaps the largest multinational company in the Philippines, and one of the largest in Asia.”
“I thought you said you were Hong Kong-based.”
“I work for a Hong Kong firm that’s been hired by the Filipino company. I was brought on to look into a rather substantial fraud case that may indirectly involve your band,” she said.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“The River.”
Francis’s look of disinterest evaporated, and she found herself the subject of a prolonged and menacing stare. “This is crap,” he said. He looked at Harold as he said to Ava, “This meeting is over.”
Ava didn’t move. “Chief Francis, if you can give me about ten minutes of your time, I think we can work together at resolving what is basically a business issue that my people would like handled as discreetly as possible.”
“This meeting is over,” he repeated and nodded at Harold, who stood up and reached for Ava. He grabbed her by the left bicep, and when she didn’t immediately respond to his touch, he increased the pressure and yanked her to her feet.
Francis was turning away when Ava’s right hand shot out and connected with the elbow of Harold’s extended arm. He spun around when the man screamed and staggered backwards, his arm dangling uselessly by his side.
“I’m sorry, I can’t stand being mauled,” Ava said. “All I want is a ten-minute discussion. If you want me to leave after we’ve had it, I will do so without any fuss.”
Harold collapsed into a chair, his face contorted and blooming with pain. “What did you do to him?” Francis asked.
“He has a particularly sensitive nerve in his elbow. He’ll be okay in about thirty minutes.”
He stared at her again. She didn’t flinch. “Who are you?” he said.
“Someone you need to talk to.”
Francis took his feet off the table and motioned to Martin. “Martin, despite his age, is one of my senior financial people. He’s also the most computer literate of us.”
“So we can talk?”
“I’m listening, but I’m not sure for how long. We’ve been briefed already.”
“You’ve already been told about the problem?”
“Obviously.”
“By whom?”
“Some people from The River.”
“I don’t know what they told you, but our position is that someone seems to have breached the security of the software attached to The River’s poker program and manipulated it to cheat other players.”
“It isn’t our software. We just administer it for them,” Francis said quickly.
Martin interceded. “Ms. Lee, to follow up on what the Chief said, I got a call from one of the techies at The River a little while ago, and he told me they suspected there had been a breach. He said they had identified what they thought was the problem and that they would have it corrected. He made it sound like something quite minor.”
“Then why were you discussing the situation so intently while I was outside? I couldn’t help overhearing how concerned you all seemed.”
“That was me being paranoid,” Francis said.
“About what?”
“We license and regulate online gambling. We have a trust to maintain. People are sending their money into cyberspace with only our assurance that it’s safe and secure and that any gaming they do is above board. Anything that undermines that trust is of the ultimate importance to me.”
“As it should be.”
“I called Jeremy Ashton at The River after Martin told me about his talk with the techie. He assured me it was just a glitch that they had caught and fixed. He said that some of the players were grumbling but they were handling the problem, and we shouldn’t talk to them if they approached us. He said it was mainly a public relations issue and that they were on top of it.”
“So why were you still talking about it this morning?”
Francis stared at her. Again Ava met his gaze. His eyes were dark brown, so dark that the lack of contrast made his irises look abnormally large.
“I can understand your reasons for wanting to keep this quiet. What you need to understand is that we have our own reasons for wanting exactly the same thing.”
She sensed Martin squirming in his chair and turned to him. “Did you do some investigating on your own?” He looked at Francis.
“Tell us what you know,” Francis said to Ava.
“No,” she said. “We need to have an agreement first.”
“You want to drag lawyers into this?” he asked.
“Of course not.”
“Then what?”
Ava opened the envelope and placed the copies of Maynard’s and Hunter’s work in front of her. “We hired two experts, mathematicians from MIT and Stanford. We had them analyze high-stakes play on The River’s website for the past six months. The raw data was provided by some of the players involved. These are their reports. In their minds, the numbers are statistically anomalous.”
Francis looked to Martin. “Chief, that means the numbers are bullshit — they don’t make any sense,” Martin said.
“Would you give us those reports?” Francis said.
“Yes, that could be arranged.”
“Martin, how long would it take our people to do their own examination of the data and to cross-reference everything?” he asked.
“To do it properly, it could take months.”
“I don’t have months,” Ava interrupted.
“Then why give us the reports?” Francis said.
“I want to trade.”
Francis leaned back, balancing his chair on its rear legs. His pulled at his braid again. “What do we have that you need?”
“The real names of a handful of players who were involved in the high-stakes action.”
