Page 85 of Secret Weapon

“I don’t know exactly.”

“Aah-aah.”I made a game-show buzzer noise and reached for the syringe again.“Wrong answer.”

“Don’t!Some kind of code, okay?They just said to bring electronic shit.Phones, laptops, any flash drives or memory cards we could find.”

Now we were getting somewhere.

“And?Whatdidyou find?”

“There was only one laptop, and I think it belonged to the friend.They told us we had to try again.”

“And who is ‘they’?”

“A guy.”

“You’re gonna have to be more specific.”

“Some guy I did work for in the past.Fedor, he calls himself.”

“Fedor what?”

“Just Fedor.”

“And how did you come to work for Fedor?”

“He was with another guy I know, and he asked if I’d be interested in making some money.This was back in Moscow.But fuck, man, he doesn’t pay me enough to deal with you people.”

“How do you contact him?”

“By phone, but most of the time, he calls me.He changes his number every month.”

“When you took the laptop from Ottie’s room, who did you give it to?”

“A guy I never saw before.A courier.”

“You…” I pointed the syringe at the Mule.“Did you recognise him?”

“I wasn’t there.”

“You were still busy beating Ottie unconscious?”

I kept my tone light, but if we hadn’t been trying to get information, if I’d just run into this motherfucker alone in the forest one dark night, I’d have turned him into a vulture’s breakfast.

“All she had to do was tell me where the code was.”A huff.“Why do women have to be so stubborn?My ex-girlfriend, she was the same.”

This guy really was begging to get catheterised with a garden hose.

“Describe the courier,” I instructed Moscow.

“Brown hair.Young, maybe twenty?Ah, he was wearing a Dodgers cap.You know, the baseball team?”

“Height?Build?”

“He stayed in the car.Just rolled down the window, so I didn’t see anything but his face.”

So there was a vehicle.

“Tell me about the car.”

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