A Calculated Risk, Katherine Neville [english novels for students txt] 📗

too high for me. I’ll wind up in prison, or deported as an undesirable alien, and all because I tried to do something as noble and honorable as robbing a bank!”

“You can drop out of this anytime you like,” I assured him. “But I still have a bet, which amounts to this: If Tor loses, he’ll get me back that job at the Fed that Kiwi blackballed me for. But if I lose, I must work a year directly for Dr. Tor.”

“Work for Dr. Tor?” Tavish brightened. “That’d hardly seem to me like losing a bet. If I could even meet him—shake his hand, talk to him awhile—I’d feel I’d died and gone to heaven. I’ve been wanting to ask, since you know him so well, whether one day that might be arranged.”

“I can tell you the very day,” I assured him. “It will be the day you get out there and crack that goddamned code.”

At five, Pearl was in my office, pacing like a panther.

“So then what did he say?” she fumed.

“He asked me to get rid of you—find you another job.”

“Where?”

“In Siberia—why should he care? He said you drove him crazy filling out forms, that you even followed him to the men’s room!”

“That’s a blatant lie!” she cried. “Maybe I’ve waited outside the men’s room once or twice.…”

“You have to lay off.” I laughed. “I agreed to get you away from Karp, and I must. It’s only for a little while, but I can’t afford to risk Karp’s hysteria—my time’s running short. If we don’t get into that system tonight, I’ve lost the bet, and Tor will guess it at once. Maybe I’d still be able to move some money around—show up a few Karps and Kiwis, as I’d first imagined. But the whole bank’s breathing down my neck now. It won’t take long for them to figure out the rest—and when they do, I’d better be able to trump their ace, or clean up and get out of town.”

“Tonight?” said Pearl. “Honey, I can’t believe this. It’s been a few weeks—a month at most. Somehow, till this moment, it seemed like a game to me. But you’re really going to do it—aren’t you?”

“You bet,” I told her, then winced at my choice of words.

It was this stupid, bloody bet that, in less than a month, had plunged me into the mess I was in now. How had Tor managed all this, in one short day in New York? A month ago, I was the highest woman executive at the biggest bank in the world. I’d spent a lifetime learning banking, I had a twelve-year track record in technology, and the promise of an even more successful career ahead.

By midnight tonight I’d either be robbing a bank or on a plane to New York to sign myself up for what seemed eternal bondage. All thanks to Tor, who’d fanned my spark of revenge into an international vendetta. Good Lord, didn’t I ever learn?

Just then, there was a soft tap at my office door. The lights were off beyond the glass—as they had been since three, when the bank shut down for the holiday.

Pearl and I peered at the shadowy form hovering outside.

“What should we say I’m doing here, if it’s Karp?” asked Pearl in hushed voice.

“We’re discussing your new job,” I whispered back.

She got up and opened the door. Tavish stood there, his arms filled with computer printout. He stalked across the room and spilled the massive pile onto my desk. Even looking at it from upside down, I knew what it was, and my heart skipped a beat.

“We’ve broken the test-key encryption, madame,” he said. “We’ll set up those bank accounts now. I believe we can expect some major deposits coming into them tonight.”

“Kismet,” I said with a grin as Pearl and I slapped hands.

I only hoped we weren’t going to be too late.

I phoned the florist and ordered the flowers—all white—lilies, chrysanthemums, narcissus, baby’s breath, white lilacs, and branches of cherry—a month’s supply. The florist was floored.

I rarely asked people to my home, because it was my own escape, the cloudlike region where I went to decompress. But on this evening, I decided it would be comfier for Pearl and Tavish and me to be here than to stay in a darkened data center eating cold pizza—probably safer, too, from the standpoint of possible detection.

I called the liquor store, too, and ordered the chilled champagne—and the Szechuan deli, where I selected by phone all the specials on Mr. Hsu’s daily list.

Arriving home, I saw that the doorman had already left the wine, in its crate of dry ice, outside my door. Mr. Hsu was sitting there beside the stacked flower boxes, on the top step.

“Madame True,” he said, rising to greet me. “I bring these foods because I am on my way home just now.”

“Mr. Hsu, will you stay for a glass of champagne?” I asked, hauling the flowers inside as he followed with boxes of food.

“No, I must return home, my wife is expecting me. But I wish to know one thing before I depart—how many persons will you expect to dine with you this evening?”

“Two others. Why do you ask?”

“It is just as I told my wife: Madame True always orders for thirty—even if there are only three. My wife did not believe me, foolish woman. One day when you come to my restaurant, you must explain to her your philosophy. It is very American.”

“You mean, better to have too much than too little?” I said.

“Yes. I like this American philosophy very much. One day, it will make me a very rich man.”

I didn’t explain to Mr. Hsu that all computer types are compulsive “leftover” junkies, but left him to bask in his capitalist dream. Mr. Hsu helped me carry the champagne crate inside, then took his leave.

I barely had time to open and arrange the flowers, put away the champagne, pop the food into dishes to warm in the oven, and