“A couple. He’s upset, of course. But I wanted him up to speed.”
“If you say so,” said Roger, unconvinced. “I would have waited,” he added under his breath.
Derek considered each of them in turn as he looked around the room. Roger and Manmeet seemed tired already, but the resignation around getting to the bottom of the situation was clear on their faces. Lucy, on the other hand, simply looked annoyed. She had her arms across her chest again and was staring at an empty point somewhere on the carpet.
Derek stood up from behind his desk. “Right. Keep at it. We’ll get back together at eight o’clock tomorrow morning for another checkpoint. This has priority over everything else. Clear?”
“Clear.”
“Okay, thanks.”
Roger and Manmeet shuffled out of the office. Lucy started to follow but Derek reached out and grabbed her lightly by the elbow to slow her. “Lucy, can I have a word?”
Lucy looked surprised to be suddenly involved. She stepped aside to let the other two leave. When Derek turned to face her, she had an annoyed, grouchy look that clearly showed that she wanted to be on the other side of the door.
“What?” said Lucy impatiently.
Derek raised his eyebrow. He felt his fears confirmed about how engaged Lucy was so far. There was attitude all around. What was it with her? Derek was frustrated too, but he was at least able to keep his emotion in check. Getting all bent out of shape wasn’t going to help solve anything. They needed to work together.
He cleared his throat to mask his exasperation. “Easy with the tone, Lucy. We’re on the same side.”
Lucy blinked. There was a flash of what might have been embarrassment, but it was quickly replaced by a bland, businesslike expression. She folded her hands in front of her and stared intently at Derek, waiting for why he had asked her to linger behind.
“I need your help, Lucy,” Derek began. “I need all hands on deck to help figure out what’s going on and how to solve it. You’re our CIO and you know more about security and I/T infrastructure than anyone else here. I need you to help lead this effort. None of us can afford for you to be passive-aggressive.”
This time, Lucy’s eyebrows went up, as if what Derek said was an affront.
“I’m not being passive-aggressive, thank you very much,” she said haughtily. “But the fact is, you got us into this problem. You led us in, you can lead us out.”
“I don’t have your technical expertise.”
“And apparently you don’t think I have your business acumen,” she shot back sharply. “You didn’t listen to me before. Why should I think you’d value what I have to say now?”
“What did I not listen to?” said Derek, trying not to sound defensive.
“You never should have moved that player money onto our books. You shouldn’t have done it. Everything was perfectly fine with how this company was running before you came along and decided you had to make your mark somehow. You dabbled in something that was very risky, with no consideration for all the years of work that went into getting Netertainment to this point, no respect for all the people that have put their heart and soul into creating our company and making it great. You didn’t invest that time. You didn’t have the right to make a change like that. And now you want someone else to clean it up for you?”
Derek’s jaw dropped. The hostility continued to amaze. Now it sounded like she wasn’t going to help at all?
“Lucy,” he replied evenly, “do you think I got hired in here to come and steal your favorite toy just so that I could break it? This isn’t the playground at school, for God’s sake. This is a business. You have to take risks to succeed, and pulling across player funds to our balance sheet was, and is, a legitimate move to grow us financially—”
“You should have left things well enough alone,” Lucy interrupted loudly.
Derek paused. “I disagree, and so did Jim, our Board, and our investors.”
Lucy’s eyes narrowed, spewing venom.
“Look,” said Derek, taking a breath. “You don’t have to agree with or even like the choices that we made around where the money sits. It’s done. It’s done, and nothing will change that now. We’re in a situation now, though, where if we don’t identify how to recover a couple million bucks, we’re in a heap of trouble going forward. This can threaten everything. All that stuff you just said about the sweat equity you and others have put into Netertainment? It can all be gone. Poof. You don’t have to like how we got here, but we’re here, and there’s no changing that.
“You can be angry about it, Lucy, or you can do something about it. I need you to do something about it. I need your help.”
There was an empty silence in Derek’s office. Lucy stood there glaring at him, arms folded across her chest again, her tattoos emblazoned on her bare skin as if presenting a mural of defiance. Finally, she straightened up and shrugged, looking to the side and trying to appear disinterested.
“Fine. Whatever.”
Derek stared at her for a long time. Ultimately he decided that from her, that was a win.
“Thank you.”
Without another word, Lucy turned and walked out of the office.
Jesus Christ. Derek wondered if it was too early to start drinking.
He went back around his desk and sat down. His head was starting to hurt. Derek put his elbows on his desk and massaged his temples. As he did so, his eyes fell on the photograph he kept from Iraq. Derek was off to the left; then there was Ricks, Martinez, Holly, Corley, and Jackson. The picture had been taken just before they had launched into major offensive operations with Phantom Fury. That had been a long time ago. But he still relieved it every night.
Derek had thought working with the local tribal leaders in Fallujah had been difficult. For every promise or commitment the Marines had made, two were broken by the Iraqis. It became clear in a very short period of time that the sheikhs were just jerking the U.S. around to get free supplies and had no intention of real cooperation. He desperately hoped that he was not facing a similar dynamic from his company’s CIO.
22
Bucharest, Romania.
The club was dark and loud. Electronic dance music from dueling DJs pumped out of hidden speakers while colored lasers and twirling search lights blanketed the cavernous room in an epileptic frenzy. The bar stretched along one of the walls from end to end and was manned by a crew of fit young men and women who were uniformly good-looking and all wearing black leather vests. Underneath a throng of pulsing club goers lay the dance floor, stretched over a large section of the floor space and bordered by pockets of sitting areas.
Krystian sat with his two companions at their reserved table near the far end of the dance area. Nicu, while short, was skinny like Krystian and was wearing his collection of gold chains over a black t-shirt. Costin, on the other hand, was tall and chubby and had on a black polo shirt that didn’t stay tucked into his jeans. Krystian himself was dressed in what he thought was much classier than either of them, wearing a dark gray, European-cut suit that was trim against his slender frame and a dark shirt that helped hide how flat his chest was. Six months ago, coming to a posh and expensive club like this on the edge of the Lipscani district would have been a distant fantasy. Now it was reality.
The three of them gazed longingly out onto the dance floor. It was a good spot for people watching, as the seating was up on a raised platform and there was a better view of the establishment as a whole. Krystian’s attention was focused on a group of four young women dancing with each other over near one of the DJ tables. One of the girls was just... beautiful. Krystian had been obsessed with her for the last hour and had watched her nonstop. She was average height, thin, wearing a tight red dress that made her curves really stand out as she moved, and had short, dark hair that hung like a mop in front of her eyes. She shook back and forth as she got lost in the music, dancing with her friends and with her arms held over her head.
Costin shook his head. “She’s
out of your league.”
“Nothing’s out of my league anymore,” replied Krystian. He stood up, smoothed his suit, and marched down to the dance floor.
He knew the girls must be getting tired—they had been out there thrashing for almost a dozen songs—and they looked it when he walked up to them. The girl in the red dress slowed down her moves in surprise as he marched into the middle of their little dance circle.
“Excuse me,” he said loudly enough to be heard over the music. He gestured over to his booth, making sure that the fifty-euro note that he was holding in his hand was plainly visible. “We were just about to order some more drinks and thought you looked a bit thirsty. Care to join us for a round on us?”
The girls looked at each other with a mix of curiosity and hesitation. You want us to hang out with you? their faces seemed to be saying. Krystian saw the eyes of the one in the red dress glance at the money. Good, he thought. After a second’s indecision, she broke into a coy smile.
“Sure, you’re buying, why not?”
“Great! I’m Krystian. Come over with us.”
Krystian led the quartet of girls over to their couch. Nicu and Costin sat upright immediately and tried to appear better looking than they were, which was a losing battle from the start. Their new female companions didn’t look particularly happy as they were seated next to them. Krystian sat closest to the girl in the red dress her near the edge. He flagged down the waiter to whom he had slipped a twenty earlier in order to keep his attention.
“What do you want to drink?” he asked.
“A vodka and cranberry.”
He added a vodka martini for himself and a couple other drinks for the group before refocusing his attention completely on the girl in red. She was even more beautiful up close than from afar—red lips, olive skin and long eyelashes that framed her dark eyes. “So, what’s your name?”
“Valentina,” she replied loudly over the music. “You said you’re Krystian, right?”
“That’s right. You know, you can really dance. I’ve been watching you. You look great out there on the dance floor.”
“Thank you. Do you dance?”
Krystian paused. Did driving a keyboard and mouse in a fantasy computer game count? “No. I just watch. Do you come here often?”
“No, just once in a while—too expensive. But I love it here. This place plays the best music.”
“Really. What do you like to dance to?”
While conversing with women did not come naturally to Krystian, he was by his nature a meticulous planner who researched and orchestrated everything he possibly could. Those skills had helped him in hacking and scamming, and it helped him here as well. A Google search here. A chat room there. Smart questions and a little practice to get a sense of how to approach a conversation and make someone vested in it. He had condensed all of it into a preplanned playbook for how to maneuver a girl. For example, he knew he needed to ask open-ended questions to get Valentina talking. That would make her feel like he was a good listener since that’s what the Russian women’s magazine For Her said. He also made sure to opportunistically flash cash to the staff around their table, since a research paper published online from the University of Utah claimed that while men valued good looks in their search for a mate, women prioritized the ability of a man to be a provider. Krystian kept pulling Valentina along, questioning and listening.
A few minutes later and their drinks came. One of her friends, the one Nicu was trying to work, chugged hers down and stood up with one of her companion’s hands in hers. Clearly she wanted to ditch their company and head back out to the dance floor. Stupid bitch, thought Krystian. That was quite disruptive to where he was trying to take things.
“It’s too loud here,” shouted Krystian. “There’s a room in the back—let’s go there just for a minute, is that okay?”
Before she had a chance to really reply, Krystian stood up and led Valentina by the wrist down the three wide stairs next to the seating platform. The pair edged around the pulsing dance floor and ducked down a narrow corridor that ended in a closed door. The bouncer standing in front had a severe scowl on his face and his arms folded across his chest. Krystian nodded to the man like they were old friends and the bouncer stood deferentially aside, opening the door but simultaneously maintaining his frown. Valentina glanced back and forth between Krystian and the bouncer, maybe confused by where she was being taken, or possibly impressed at the clout that this boy clearly had at the club. Little did she know that Krystian had carefully arranged everything beforehand and had bought off the bouncer to get access to the club’s private rooms.
He closed the door behind them. The dance beat thumped dully through the walls but it was indeed much quieter, at least enough for a somewhat normal conversation to take place. They walked through a short hallway until coming to an open door on the left. Immediately they were in a smallish room with red-painted walls and a comfortable leather couch. A small coffee table was in the middle with bottles of assorted liquor and vodka.
“Oh, that’s much better,” Krystian commented. “It can get so loud out there.”
“What’s this place? I’ve never been back here,” asked Valentina.
“This is the VIP area. I have privileges here and can use rooms like this whenever I need to,” Krystian said lazily. “They do that for high rollers. It’s just a nice, quiet place to talk. Or... you know... do other things.”
Valentina stopped abruptly in the doorway as Krystian sat casually on the couch. “What other things?” she asked suspiciously.
Krystian reached slowly into his inside suit pocket and brought out a roll of cash. Carefully he peeled off a fifty-euro note and laid it onto the table.
“That depends on you, doesn’t it?”
There was dead silence except for the dance beat thumping dully through the walls. Krystian waited half a minute before putting another fifty on the table.
He didn’t know what this girl did for a living, but there was a lot of money in front of him now, especially for an average Romanian working an average job. There were cheaper ways to get what he was looking for, of course, but he had the cash. Plenty of cash. And the other ways didn’t look nearly as beautiful as this girl. He watched her breathe, her breasts rising and falling underneath her dress, the sweat still glistening in the dim light, though whether from dancing or discomfort, there was no telling.
“I’m no prostitute,” Valentina said, finally breaking the stillness between them.
Her voice sounded offended, but she was still standing there completely still. Her body was facing him rather than being turned sideways, her legs still spread in a normal stance. She didn’t seem to be acting like she was going to run away. In fact, based on what Krystian had read in his research, her body language suggested that this was going to work out. Perhaps this wasn’t about morals as much as price. Or pride.
“No,” Krystian agreed. He wanted to placate her. “Of course you’re not. You don’t do that. Neither do I. That would belittle the both of us.”
Krystian paused while he poured himself a shot of vodka from one of the bottles on the table. “All I’m suggesting is a little fun. That’s all. And it doesn’t hurt when the fun has a little financial kicker, does it?”
Valentina’s eyes flicked down to the bills on the table, then back to his. Krystian pulled out a third bill and placed it on the table. Then he tucked his roll of cash back into his jacket. One-fifty, his final offer.
There was a buzzing in Krystian’s pocket. His cell phone was ringing. He quickly shoved in his hand to make sure it was silenced.
“I—I don’t think...” said Valentina in a halting, uncertain voice. Her beautiful eyes were locked on the cash on the table.
“Thirty minutes,” Krystian replied quickly. “Thirty minutes for a hundred and fifty euros. There’s a lot you could probably do with that money, right? Some jewelry, a new dress maybe? Shoes? For fifteen minutes?”
The look of torture that crep
t onto Valentina’s face was incredible to watch. It made her such a knock-out. Her dark eyes were flicking back and forth with uncertainty. She seemed like she was torn between walking up to him and storming out of the back room. Krystian thought from her behavior that she must really need, or want, the money.
Suddenly, Valentina straightened up and her eyes narrowed.
“Three hundred,” she said.
Three hundred? That was too much. Or was it? Maybe that thing she wanted to buy, whatever it was, cost that much. Was it greed? She was starting at him now, studying him instead of vice versa. Three hundred was a lot. But she was so, so pretty. Her eyes, her curves, her mouth....
Suppressing a smile, he reached into his coat pocket one last time and put the remainder of the necessary cash on the table.
Valentina’s whole demeanor changed. She was all business now. She walked forward and quickly took the money, then fumbled around with where to put it until she finally settled on tucking it between her breasts. Then she took a wide stance right in front of Krystian’s knees, her feet shoulder-width apart, her hands on her hips. She looked down at him with what could be best described as grim resignation.
“What do you want me to do?”
She was so perfect.
“Dance for me. Tease me a little.”
Valentina hesitated, inscrutable. Slowly, she slipped off her shoes. She walked around to the side of the table and put them down on the couch, quickly pulling the cash back out and tucking the roll into one of the open toes. Next, as if reaching for some liquid reassurance, she turned over a glass on the little table and poured herself a vodka. Krystian watched spellbound as she downed the shot with a single gulp. Valentina put down the glass and slowly walked back over to where he was sitting.
Krystian’s phone buzzed again. He hit End Call without looking.
She closed her eyes. Her body started to sway to the distant thumping from the dance floor. As she traced the outline of her hips with her fingers she seemed to let herself fall into the moment. Her hands moved up to her chest and her head rolled back. Then her arms were above her head. Her hair flowed across her face. Krystian watched her hips rock rhythmically to the beat as she transformed into that amazing creature he had been watching in the main club room, seductive and perfect.
Armchair Safari (A Cybercrime Technothriller) Page 23