A Calculated Risk by Katherine Neville (best time to read books .txt) 📗

straight, Karp. I owe you nothing but a free lunch sometime—that is, if you pay for this one. I already know about all this. Kiwi told me himself.”

“Did you know, too, that Willingly’s going to be promoted? To Lawrence’s job. It shouldn’t be long now. As soon as Lawrence is bumped to the top.”

“Bumped to the top?” I repeated mindlessly.

I tried to be nonchalant, but I felt my jaw slackening. The top of what? Surely even the board members—limited though their imaginations might be—wouldn’t be naive enough to make an unscrupulous SOB like Lawrence president of the bank! That was electing the fox to preside over the chicken coop.

“Now you do owe me a favor,” he was saying smugly. “You can see that your days are numbered. You’ll be back in Willingly’s court again—and he will be offering the ball.”

“Serving the ball,” I corrected him, though he sure had his full court presses straight.

I was dead meat—finished—if Kiwi got his hands on me again. There was no use pretending with Karp; he probably knew more about my fate than I did at this point. With Kiwi in charge, I could kiss my theft, my bet, my job, and my ass good-bye.

“So just what is it you want?” I asked him. “You’d better ask now; it seems soon I won’t be in a position to do many favors.”

He leaned farther forward, and whispered in confidence, “You must get rid of her! She’s trying to ruin me! She wants my job, and everyone knows it. I’ll die of stomach ulcers if I have to wait until Willingly’s there to get rid of her for me. But I know she’ll listen to you. You can make her go.”

“You mean Pearl?” I asked, trying to suppress a laugh.

“Yes—the schwartze,” he hissed. “This is hardly a topic of amusement. She’s really gone mad—makes me fill out forms all day long, all the red tape—she follows me to the latrine! You know as well as I that nobody follows all those rules, we’d have time for nothing else! But if I fail to do even one thing, she’ll report me for it—she’s told me as much. I think she’s a spy!”

The veins on his nose were standing out now in excitement, and I recalled what Tavish had told me about the cocaine habit. But I remembered something else, too—his illicit traffic in computer systems.

“What could you possibly be doing that’s interesting enough to spy on?” I asked him sweetly.

“Don’t you think I know how you found out about Frankfurt in time to save yourself? How you ended up going to work directly for Lawrence? Don’t you think Willingly and I both know what you’re up to with that quality circle of yours? Trying to break into the passwords and test keys, too. You want to get at his wire transfer system—to prove his security’s the worst at the bank!”

Luckily, Karp was giving away more than he was getting! But this was awful news. It meant Kiwi was right on my heels and knew everything we were up to, though hopefully not why. Karp couldn’t have sniffed this out all by himself, not with all the coke he’d put up that nose of his.

I had to do something, at once.

“Peter-Paul,” I said nicely, “I’m not as close to Pearl as you seem to think, but it’s possible I might think of a way to entice her to leave your department. What would you say if I told you I knew a job she’d jump at in a minute?”

“I’d be forever grateful, Banks—your devoted slave.”

“I’ll do what I can,” I assured him, wondering how the hell I was going to pull this one off. “But if I succeed, you’ll have to stop plotting with Kiwi against me. Stop this war between our departments, at least until I finish this project. And you can’t have Tavish back till then, either—is that understood?”

“Absolutely,” he said with sincerity. “Tavish was the last thing on my mind.”

Stuff it up your deviated septum, I thought. But aloud, I said, “I trust you.”

Right after lunch, I hauled Tavish into my office. He was looking rather glum.

“I want you to slap tracers on all passwords that are accessing any of our programs or files,” I told him. “Somehow, Kiwi and Karp have learned what we’re up to, and that Pearl’s in on it, too. If they haven’t bribed someone on the quality team, they may actually be tracking our activities on the system itself.”

“At once,” Tavish agreed, “but first you should know that Kiwi’s been after me—he took me to lunch today.”

I stopped in my tracks. “Divide and conquer, it seems,” I told him. “I had lunch with your dear friend Karp. He wanted a favor—what did Kiwi want?”

“He offered me a job—offered is not the right word—he threatened me.”

“Threatened you?” I was flabbergasted. “What do you mean by that?”

“The moment that we succeed in violating a single system or file, Lawrence expects us to make a formal report on all our activities—then our group will be disbanded at once. Kiwi says I can come to work for him. The alternative is to go back to Karp.”

“Why not stay with me, on my next project?” I suggested, trying to calm him down.

“You aren’t going to have a next project,” he informed me. “They’ve really got their knickers in a twist; they plan to get rid of you for good this time—and Pearl along with you.”

Great. Those two bozos actually expected me to hand Pearl over to them as a parting gift. And clearly, Lawrence was behind it, too—what sleaze. Why did being a bastard seem a prerequisite for banking?

“As a matter of fact,” I told Tavish, “I do have another project up my sleeve. I told you about my wager with Dr. Zoltan Tor, but I never mentioned the stakes.”

“I wish I’d never heard of that dreadful bet,” said Tavish grimly, his hand on the door. “Who cares what the stakes are? They’re far