'You don't seem too upset that your ride is about to get erased.'
The blonde slipped on a natural-colored raw silk blouse, no bra under it, and buttoned it. She noticed the other woman's look. 'He likes to see my nipples,' she said. Then she shrugged. 'He's a mob guy. It's a risky business. I have a little put away, and I don't figure I'll have much trouble getting another honey. If it was good enough for Genaloni, there will be other mob guys who'll want a taste.'
The Selkie grinned. No sentimentality for this girl. She knew what she was and meant to make the most of it. The Selkie kind of liked that about Brigette, her being straight up and no bullshit.
'Somebody might blame you.'
'Why should they? I'll let them wire me with a stressbox and I'll tell them the truth. You stuck a gun in my face — what could I do?'
'I guess that means you'll tell them what I look like, too, right?'
There was a moment of hesitation as Brigette scanned that, tried to put some spin on it. Then she said, 'Yeah, I'll tell them. But that's a disguise, right?'
'What if they ask if it's a disguise?'
'I can get by that one.'
This was getting interesting. 'Really. How?'
Brigette pulled a microskirt up over her long legs, zipped it and tucked the blouse into it. 'Depends on how you ask the question. If they ask, ‘Do you think Ray's killer was wearing a disguise?' I can say, ‘No,' and it'll scan as truth.'
'Really?'
'Sure. Because I don't
The Selkie grinned. 'Why would you do that? Cover for me?'
'You could come back later and delete me if you think I ratted you out.'
Her logic was frail, but the Selkie didn't point that out. If Brigette did a good enough job ratting her out, the mob might find and kill Ray's assassin, and she wouldn't be around to threaten sweet Brigette's peace of mind.
Could she trust her? Uh-huh. Right. The Selkie had no doubt that her target's mistress would sing an entire opera when asked by those who wanted to hear it.
Brigette found a pair of silk stockings, bunched one into gathers, then slipped it onto her left foot and up her leg. The Selkie watched, intrigued by the woman's complete lack of modesty and emotion regarding the upcoming deletion.
Brigette caught the look. She smiled. 'You like women? I can show you a good time while we wait.'
The Selkie shook her head. 'Thanks. Not while I'm working.'
Ray's girl was a cool one, all right. The Selkie wouldn't want to be dangling over a cliff with sweet Brigette on the other end of the rope — not unless she had a wad of cash in her hand to bribe her to hang on to the lifeline.
Still, Brigette would be helpful. The Walther TPH.22 pistol the Selkie held was kind of a scaled-down version of James Bond's PPK. It was an excellent example of the gunmaker's art, the TPH, high-grade stainless steel, small and compact, very accurate. But the tiny.22 round was not a man-stopper out of a pistol unless it hit the central nervous system. A spine or brain shot was necessary for a certain kill. If, as Ray came up the walk, Brigette started screaming, a head shot would be difficult. Not impossible — she could make that shot with this piece out to twenty yards — but by that time, the TPH would be wearing the suppressor, to cut down on the firing noise. The barrel wasn't long enough to let the Stinger ammo achieve supersonic speed, and the suppressor would cut the velocity even more as it absorbed the exhaust gases with the sound. Unless you put the round into an eye, the target might survive. The skull was hard, bullets had been known to glance right off. And hitting an eye with the suppressor blocking the sights, well, that was iffy.
No, with a.22 handgun, you wanted to put the muzzle an inch or two from the back of the target's head, and pump three or four sound-suppressed rounds into the hindbrain while his bodyguards were sitting in their cars unaware. And be long gone before anybody came knocking.
She needed privacy to do this right. Brigette would get Genaloni into the house. Once the door was closed behind him, the Selkie would handle the rest.
The five o'clock meeting began an hour late. This was a small group — Michaels, Toni, Jay, Colonel Howard, and the new FBI computer liaison, Richardson — though the FBI guy couldn't stay long. From here on out, the information concerning this case was going to be NTK — need to know — only.
'All right,' Michaels said. 'You've all gotten the info-packet Jay put together. Any questions?'
Richardson said, 'Yes. Once you've done a verification that this… Plekhanov is for certain the programmer we want, how do we proceed?'
Michaels said, 'It is a little tricky. Ideally, we would contact the Chechen government and ask to have him extradited under the Net Criminal Agreement of 2004. This might not be a good idea. Jay, if you would?'
Jay nodded. 'Plekhanov probably has a standby security program for his most sensitive files. If the local police go barreling into his office or house and start tapping keys or pulling wires, chances are his system will lock itself up tighter than spandex before they figure out how to pull the plug. And even if not, his sensitive files are certain to be encrypted, 128s or maybe even 256s. He used to write the Russians' military ciphers. Without a key, it would take our SuperCray going full blast something like ten billion years to break the code. That's probably a little longer than we want to wait, so we can't get his system files without the key. If we don't get the files, we can't prove it's him, not enough for the legal guys to ask for indictments.'
'So, how do you do it?' Howard asked.
'The ideal way is to look over his shoulder while he's got his system lit. Either that, or get the key.'
'And that's only part of the problem,' Michaels said. 'Jay?'
'I've done a little background on this guy. Turns out he's got links to some pretty high government officials all over. He's done a lot of legitimate security work, for the Russians, the Indians, the Thais, the Australians, you name it. He's got money — a nice chunk on the legal books — talking a couple of million personal net, and no doubt a lot more illegal money stashed. That bank robbery in New Orleans probably wasn't his first.'
'So we have a rich guy with clout,' Toni said. 'And even if the Chechens were willing to nab him and hand him over, we can't nail him without evidence we can't get?'
'That pretty much sums it up,' Michaels said.
Howard said, 'If this guy is rich and powerful, why is he doing this? Why take the risk?'
Michaels nodded, glad to see his people were paying attention. 'There's the big question. What does he want?'
'
'Probably,' Michaels said. 'But I've been going over the information, and what it seems like to me is that he's driving at something specific. Some of the system crashes have been directly beneficial to him — Jay has the particulars — but some have not. Even if some of that is just blowing smoke to cover his trail, there seems to be a pattern. He's going someplace in particular. Before we try to grab him, it might be wise of us to see if we can figure out where that place is. He might have help, and it would be good for us to gather them all in.'
Before he could continue, the door to the conference room opened. Michaels's secretary stood there. She wasn't supposed to interrupt unless it was an emergency, and Michaels's first fear was that something had happened to his wife — ex-wife, dammit — or his daughter. But before he had more than a flash of panic, his secretary put that to rest:
'Commander, there is some news from New York you need to hear. It's about Ray Genaloni.'
33
