The Garden of Betrayal - Lee Vance [26]
Kate had been spending a few hours a week at the main midtown library, on Forty-second and Fifth, working on her senior English project.
“Nothing yet,” I said, simultaneously thumb-typing sorry can’t today stay warm love xox to Kate. “Is there some kind of news out?”
“The French and the Russians issued a joint statement announcing that they’re going to work together to catch the terrorists. Your phone’s been ringing off the hook. Everybody wants to know what you think.”
It figured. The NATO allies, led by the United States, had issued a communiqué overnight, condemning the Nord Stream attack but urging Russia to exercise restraint. The Russians had responded predictably, suggesting that NATO piss up a rope and pointing out that the United States hadn’t exercised restraint when it invaded Afghanistan after 9/11, or when it mustered up a transparently flimsy “coalition of the willing” to take out Saddam. Confronted with an opportunity to knife the United States and suck up to Russia—where French companies were bidding on a number of enormous oil and gas construction projects—the Palais de l’Élysée had also responded predictably. The irritating thing was that Bush had so tainted us internationally that we’d ceded the moral high ground. It hurt not to feel superior to the French.
“All right. I’ll read through the news and then try to get something out ASAP. Do me a favor and get in touch with Rashid, please. Tell him I’d like to meet with him in person—tomorrow morning, if possible.” I turned toward my door and then spun on my heel. “You don’t know how to get data off an iPod, do you?”
“An iPod?” Amy asked, looking confused.
“Yeah.” I took it out of my pocket and showed it to her.
“No idea. You want me to call Frick and Frack?”
Frick and Frack were tech support for the floor, a pair of chubby, balding fifty-year-olds with identical ratty ponytails who’d worked for the National Security Agency before joining Cobra. Walter had been a demon on security ever since a guerrilla financial Web site hacked his positions and published them. He’d been short a bunch of illiquid biotechs, and his competitors had squeezed him mercilessly. Frick and Frack—actually Fred Ricker and Frank Ackerman—had been hired shortly after the debacle to implement new security protocols.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Theresa” had made me a little paranoid about security myself. I didn’t want anyone to see the data she’d given to me until I’d decided when—and whether—to release it. I thought for a moment, trying to figure out who else might be able to help.
“Do me a favor?” I said to Amy.
“What’s that?”
“Find a Japanese take-out menu and order in a bunch of tuna rolls and some green tea.”
• • •
I’d just finished an e-mail suggesting that my clients buy French oil services companies and short the German and English when Kate showed up. She was wearing blue jeans and a navy peacoat over an ivory Shetland sweater, and her nose was red with cold. I pressed the send key and got to my feet.
“Hey,” I said, leaning over my desk to give her a kiss. “You have the cable?”
She pulled a hard plastic clamshell container from her coat pocket and held it out of reach.
“You have my sushi?”
“Amy ordered. It should be here any minute.”
“Excellent.” She stripped off fleece gloves, lifted a pair of scissors from my desk, and set to work on the package. “This is a seriously high-rent district. I had to pay twenty-nine ninety-five for a stupid piece of wire. That’s almost thirty-three bucks with tax.”
I took three tens and three singles from my wallet and laid them in front of her.
“So, how do we do this?”
“Simple,” she said, setting down the scissors and deftly extracting the cable from the mutilated plastic. “Give me the iPod.”
I handed it to her, and she snorted derisively, flipping the unit over to study the microscopic printing on the back.
“Second- or third-generation,” she said, fitting one end of the cable to an attachment point on the bottom. “At