his watch, the gesture ostentatious, playtime is over. “So. BONITAS”—a new NSA effort to crack Russian naval communications—“How is that one?”
* * *
Fifteen minutes later Irlov walked out. Brian stayed still. Rooted to the bed.
He was stuck with Irlov. He couldn’t kill Irlov.
But he could kill someone, couldn’t he?
36
First stop, Las Vegas.
Rebecca caught the early-morning United nonstop from Dulles to LAX, walked through Terminal 7 looking for a flight to McCarran. By ten thirty she was in a cab on Tropicana Avenue, headed for Silver State Gaming Consultants, the company that had bought Brian’s app.
Her ride stopped beside a two-story office building. Just down the block was the Pinball Hall of Fame. Only fitting. She was on tilt for sure. She handed the driver a twenty, stepped out. A check of state corporate records showed that Silver State Gaming had been in business for thirty years. Still, she wanted to see its offices for herself. Both to make sure it wasn’t a shell and see if she could pick up what the bureau liked to call “soft intel.”
* * *
In retrospect maybe she should have asked more questions when Brian sold the app. But the deal had come together fast, and the idea someone would pay Brian seven figures for a successful application hardly seemed crazy. She’d read about Candy Crush, how the company that made it was worth billions.
When Brian showed her the app, she could see why people would want to use it and casinos would advertise on it. It had lots of tips about games and even directed users to the quote-unquote hottest slot machines. The play games it offered could easily be turned into real-money versions if the federal government legalized Internet gambling. Like Hollywood, Brian said. Millions of scripts, but most of ’em suck. Write a good one, people notice.
Plus the download numbers, twenty-one thousand, had seemed solid to her at the time. Brian said even more important was how quickly they were going up, how much people used the app after they downloaded it, was it what developers called “sticky”? Truth is maybe I’d be better off waiting, but I don’t want this thing to take over my life, he said. Two million, not bad.
Even the fact the offer had come out of nowhere hadn’t bothered her as much as maybe it should have. She knew Brian had gone to that casino industry conference. And her focus had been elsewhere. She’d been investigating two congressional aides for helping a Russian bank evade sanctions—not exactly espionage, but close. An important case.
Later, she’d wondered once or twice when he’d found the time to write it. When she wandered down to the basement at night, he was usually watching ESPN or Hong Kong martial arts movies. Then again he’d won that NSA challenge. He was smarter than he liked to admit. Maybe smarter than she liked to admit. His problem had always been his attitude.
She could see now she’d felt ashamed for doubting him in so many ways. She assumed his secrecy about the app only proved how lousy their marriage had become. She dropped her usual skepticism, played cheerleader instead. Soon enough the deal was done. Brian hired a lawyer in Vegas to review the contract, flew out two more times. Then they were rich. Rich enough, anyway. A million, with another million the next year. She never even met anyone at Silver State Gaming. You can if you like but they’re pretty boring, Brian had said. Not worth the flight.
The contract did have one condition she found odd: A non-disclosure agreement. They weren’t supposed to tell anyone that Brian had written Twenty-One. Brian said Silver State Gaming didn’t want anyone to know that it hadn’t created the app itself.
But don’t you want credit, Rebecca said. Maybe you’d get more business.
Credit’s fine. Two million dollars is better.
Okay, but you’ll have to tell the NSA, and I have to tell the bureau. They’ll want to know where the money’s coming from.
I’ll make sure the non-disclosure section has an exemption for our jobs, Brian said. And he had. They disclosed the deal on their financial disclosures, and neither the bureau nor the NSA seemed to care much. She’d only had one lie detector test since the sale—the polygraph examiners were notoriously overbooked. The examiner hadn’t even asked about the money.
Otherwise, Rebecca had stuck to the non-disclosure agreement, which looked to her now like a way to help her forget the app. As in fact she had. She hadn’t