Crane yelled back, “There’s a worktable in the back.”

Markov leaned closer to the screen, expecting to see the passwords, but all that appeared was a small screen asking for a password to unlock the encrypted screen. “What is the fucking password, Alan?”

“It’s in this file. But the file is encrypted. Hold on.”

The tension in the room had ratcheted up to a nearly unbearable level. Harris and Williams hustled to the back of the loft looking for the table. Markov loomed over Crane. Crane had to resist the urge to shove the fat, sweating, stinking man away from him with both hands.

Crane typed in the password that un-encrypted the page that displayed his passwords. It seemed to take forever. Finally, a screen opened on his monitor. It contained pages of passwords and IDs, all of them with complex series of upper-and lower-case letters, symbols, and numbers.

“Where is it?” demanded Markov.

Crane started scrolling through the pages. “God fucking dammit, I should be trading, not holding your fucking hand with this shit. There! There it is. And the Cayman passwords are above it. Everything is alphabetical.”

“I have those passwords.”

“Congratulations,” said Crane, as he immediately returned to his mouse and keyboard.

Markov leaned into the screen and started laboriously typing in the access password to Crane’s Internet connection on his laptop.

Crane tried to ignore everything. He opened trade tickets on his platform and started executing trades, routing each one to whatever exchange gave him the best price.

The two mercenaries came in carrying a heavy wooden table, much larger than Markov needed, but they set it up in front of him. It distracted and delayed him, making Markov even more frustrated. He placed the laptop on the table and continued typing in the router access number from Crane’s screen.

He entered it.

Nothing.

Markov yelled, “It’s not letting me in.”

Crane didn’t even look in his direction. He had calmed himself down, determined now not to deal with Markov. He told him, “You probably didn’t type it in right. It’s case sensitive. Do it carefully.”

Markov started muttering Russian curses. He retyped everything. Nothing.

He pulled out a small gun from the voluminous pocket of his sport coat, walked next to Crane, and held the pistol against Crane’s temple.

Crane flinched away from the gun. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I want my money.”

“You have it goddammit.” He pointed to the screen. “It’s in the account. I’m bringing the rest over as we speak. You want to lose millions because you won’t let me finish this?”

“Fucking shit. How much is in the account?”

Crane pointed at the screen. “Including what’s left to bring over, one-hundred and seventeen million.”

“What?!”

“And that’s better than you deserve. Your losses will be under sixteen percent. Sixteen fucking percent. That’s half the thirty-plus percent you should be eating by forcing me to close everything out like this.”

“There was one-hundred forty-eight million.”

“When I’m finished there should be about a hundred-twenty, maybe a bit more if we get lucky. And I’ll say it one last time, Leonard, that’s more than you fucking deserve, making me close out my trades.”

Markov snarled. “Why can’t I fucking get into the account? Did you change the passwords?”

“No!”

Crane stopped, leaned over to look at Markov’s laptop. He opened the control panel and told the computer to search for network connections. A series of connections appeared that were scattered around Crane’s building and the neighborhood, but not Crane’s.

“For fuck sake, you’re laptop isn’t finding my network. I don’t know what’s wrong. It’s your goddamn computer, not mine. And I’m not fucking rebooting my router now. Just watch my screens. When I’m done, sit down and use my computer to transfer the money wherever the fuck you want. It’s stupid to do it while everything is still coming in anyhow. Just relax for chrissake.”

Markov yelled, “I’m not leaving you the only one in control. I want to transfer a hundred right now.”

Crane had anticipated this. If he could pull off the next move, he could make everything work the way he and Olivia had planned.

“Hold on, hold on. I have to watch these positions. You want me to stop this and let you use my computer? Are you insane?”

Crane shifted the screens appearing on his four monitors. He consolidated the screen that showed Markov’s brokerage account, then brought up another showing the Cayman bank account, placing them next to each other so Markov could see them clearly.

“Here, just watch these, okay? As soon as I’m done, you can move all of it at once. All right?”

Markov sat down, pulled his chair close to Crane, and kept the gun pointed at his head.

“You keep making that number bigger. I see anything happen I don’t like, you die.”

“Great. Do whatever the fuck you want.”

Crane felt the tremor in Markov’s hand moving the gun barrel pressed against his head.

Crane shut his eyes closed, squeezing them tight, exhaling once, hard, determined to focus.

Fuck! This is going to be close, thought Crane.

76

Manny and Beck had ended up at the same small wooden table in Manny’s downstairs kitchen where their first discussion about Olivia had taken place. It seemed like weeks ago, but it had only been four days.

“How bad you banged up, James?”

“It’s adding up. How about you?”

Manny pulled his left arm out of the sling the doctor had given him. He tried to lift his elbow above his shoulder. He winced and said, “It’s all right. I got a couple of hours sleep. Ate. You’re the one who’s been doin’ all the running around.” Manny raised his chin toward Beck. “What’d the doc say?”

“The doc said the cut on my back isn’t that deep. Sliced a few of the surface muscles. Says it’s going to hurt every time I pick something up for a while.”

“Knives.”

“I fucking hate knife wounds. Shitty, sneaky, dirty. You hardly feel ’em when they hit you, but they can cause a lot of damage.” Beck rotated his shoulder.

Manny nodded. “And the rest?”

“It’s not important now, Manny. We have other hurts to deal with.”

The old gangster shifted in his chair. He wasn’t done talking. If he knew what was coming, he didn’t give any hint. He wanted to recite for himself his discontents and perhaps delay Beck.

“You know what really got to me?”

“What?” asked Beck.

“The fact that I couldn’t kill those guys out there. You know. Few hours back.”

Beck waited, saying nothing.

“No, no…” Manny struggled for a word. “No finalidad to it, you know. Hoping the fire took ’em out. Or the cops. I don’t like the idea of them surviving so they can come back at me.”

“If killing them sent you back to prison, what good is it?”

Manny pointed to his head. “I get that here.” He pointed to his stomach. “But not here.”

Beck said, “I understand.”

Manny nodded. “Okay. Tell me again. You got Kolenka?”

“Devious, double-crossing old bastard, yeah, we got him. We were lucky. He was heading out of town. He won’t be sending any more of his people after us.”

Manny nodded. “You figure it was Kolenka’s guys out front here with the gasoline?”

Beck nodded. “And Markov’s Bosnians out back to shoot us down when we tried to escape the fire.”

Beck looked at his watch.

Manny asked, “What?”

“A couple of things. You know that guy in the cellar?”

“Yeah.”

“He told me the truth about how it was going to go down last night.”

“Good.”

“So before the attack, I let him go.”

Manny nodded. “If we didn’t make it, you didn’t want him to die down there.”

“That. And I wanted him to do something for us. We agreed on a price.”

“What’d you have him do?”