Tristan chuckled. “I’ve got to warn you, my yacht isn’t for sale. It floats on some excellent real estate. And I don’t own the plane. It’s leased.”
“We have heard you are particularly good at computer science.”
“Oh, my heck.” That was probably overdoing it. “I’m just a businessman. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Colleen appeared to have been taking notes, but when she turned her notepad toward him, her warm brown eyes were vacant, and the block letters on the pad read, ARE WE BEING KIDNAPPED?
Tristan turned his smile on her. “Oh, I don’t know yet. The deal’s still a maybe.”
She nodded and returned to not taking notes.
The Russian mobster continued as if he hadn’t heard what Tristan said. “You write interesting algorithms that are said to be loose on internet.”
Tristan hung his head with an aw-shucks grin. “I’m not a hacker, and I’m certainly not associated with anyone who writes malware. I wouldn’t know how to write a virus to save my life,” Tristan lied.
“Are you sure that you don’t know how to save your life?” Sergey asked, staring directly at him.
There was no need to answer.
Another man came in, short and rotund, and handed Sergey a sheet of paper.
Sergey glanced at it, looked up at Colleen, and then set the paper down. He continued talking to Tristan. “We don’t want you to write anything new for us. We realize new work would require long time. You have piece of intellectual property we would like to have access to, however. We do not need exclusive license. You can keep using it in way that you have been, in interesting manner that removes all references to you online and defeats facial recognition software.”
Shit. That algo was not common knowledge. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, do not blow smoke up my ass, Tristan King. You go to wedding of Prince of Monaco, and in pictures, you are the only person who is never, ever identified? That is some piece of software you have circulating.”
Tristan said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. No one cares who I am enough to identify me. I’m just a nobody.”
“Yes, well, we would like to be nobody like you. We only would ask that you do not sell anonymous algo to anybody else in our business. For this useful piece of software, we would then loan you money for your investment through this business institution. Money would be legitimate and would be easily accessible, not need any cleaning. And then we would forgive loan! You see how nicely that works.”
Tristan shifted in his throne of a chair. “So, who am I working with here? I have many business partners, and I need to make sure there is no overlap or a conflict of interest.”
“You are working with us now.”
“I need a name,” Tristan said.
Sergey waved his hands in the air like he was fanning himself. “We are a brotherhood, but many call us the Butorins, because that was the family of the first brother of the bratva.”
Yep, Russian mobsters. A bratva.
And the fucking Butorins at that.
Tristan had gone to school with some of the children of Russian mobsters. The Butorins were the most violent and corrupt. They’d always owned the newest gadgets and vacationed in the most exclusive places, even more so than the royals he’d known. “Sure sounds like you folks know what you want.”
The Russian chuckled. “You are interesting man, Tristan King. I think you have many skills we would be interested in, and we could continue to do business with you in future.”
That was a threat. No one stopped working for a Russian bratva.
Tristan continued grinning his big stupid grin. “Are we doing business together? I don’t remember signing anything.”
“Oh, we will have Ms. Botha draw up agreement so will all be legal. We like everything legal. We would not want to draw attention of anyone we shouldn’t.” And he winked at Tristan.
That fucker winked.
Tristan said, “Well, I don’t know about that, Sergey. I’ll need to have my lawyers take a look at it, too.”
“Your lawyers would not be interested in it. We will give you reference to good lawyers who will look it over and tell you what to think about it. All right!” Sergey clapped his hands. “It is very good that we have come to deal. I will have Ms. Botha draw up paperwork, and we will transfer money to your accounts as soon as contract is signed. If everything goes well, money will be in your account tomorrow morning. Money, I want to stress, is clean money, not anything you have to make clean. It has all good provenances. I will expect delivery of algorithm to website specified in contract.” Sergey winked at Tristan again. “There will be instructions at site for how to deliver algorithm.”
