After staring down at his beer and mulling over what his friend was saying, Hughes looked back up at Tommy. “That’s three reasons, mate. Are you auditioning for a Monty Python revival?”
Tommy gave his friend a wink. “Well, you know what they say — nobody ever expects the Spanish Inquisition.”
After sharing a good laugh over that, Hughes asked Tommy if he’d mind meeting the boss.
Making a show of being excited, Tommy leaned over the table toward his friend. “Bruce Springsteen? You know him?”
“Sean Woodard, ya bloody gork. If we’re going to go poking around where we don’t belong, I’m going to need your help and his permission.”
“And I’m going to need to be compensated for my time and troubles. Be advised, I’m not a cheap date.”
“You never were, you wretched little taffy.”
After sharing another round of laugher, the two men finished their beers. While Hughes was signing the check for the drinks, a check he would never need to pay, Tommy did his best to keep from smirking. Not because he was on the verge of extending his stay in Vegas without having to spend a single quid of his own. Rather, the opportunity to use and rummage about the state-of-the-art systems Hughes relied on was too good to pass up. While Andy always made sure he kept the systems and software they used back in the UK up to speed, sometimes investing in what Tommy thought to be obscene amounts of money on them, Tommy had learned over the years you could always pick up a trick or two by taking a quick peek into someone else’s toy box.
Finished with the waiter, Hughes turned to Tommy. “Ready to go, mate?”
“I am, provided the price is right.”
Rolling his eyes, Hughes shook his head. “You bloody mercenaries.”
“Hello, Pot. This is Kettle. Send color, over,” Tommy fired back as they were sliding out of the booth.
“I’ll need to talk this over with the boss first, to find out just how eager he is to solve this mystery.”
“I’m here all week,” Tommy replied. “Just do me a favor and the next time you decide to sneak up behind me and ruin a perfect setup, leave the Joe Pesci character and his friends behind.”
3
An early morning call the next day from Hughes woke Tommy from a peaceful slumber, one brought on by a long but successful night in the card room of another casino. Informed by his friend to meet him in the lobby of the hotel, Tommy expected to be taken to a plush office inside the Martinique. Instead, Hughes drove out of town to an impressive walled estate set atop a ridge with a spectacular view of Las Vegas. “This is only the third time I’ve been up here,” Hughes explained while they were waiting for the massive driveway gates to open. “Sean Woodard prefers to run his little empire from here, away from the day-to-day bump and grind. He comes down from Mount Olympus only when he needs to prove to the media he’s not being held captive by the mob or some unscrupulous Mormon business manager.”
“With a setup like this, you can hardly blame him,” Tommy muttered more to himself as he took in the opulent oasis perched on the otherwise barren landscape that Woodard called home.
After being met at the door by a young, fair-haired woman wearing a simple white shirtdress, Tommy and Hughes were led to a shaded patio where Sean Woodard was seated at a table. Coming to his feet, he greeted the two men by flashing them his signature smile and offering Tommy his hand.
“Would you care to join me for breakfast?” he asked without waiting for Hughes to introduce Tommy, leading Tommy to assume the notorious casino owner not only knew who he was but probably every single detail about him a man like Woodard considered worth knowing.
Never having been shy when it came to accepting an invitation to enjoy free food, Tommy grinned. “A man would have to be a fool to say no.”
Though he’d already had breakfast, Jack Hughes also accepted Woodard’s offer, but for entirely different reasons. Like everyone else who was a part of Sean Woodard’s world, Hughes knew you didn’t say no to him, not if you wished to remain working in the gaming industry.
“I’ve been told you and Jack served together in the Queen’s Dragoon Guards,” Woodard declared by way of opening up a casual, seemingly friendly dialogue.
“That’s right,” Tommy replied as he took up the glass of mimosa offered him by a young brunette in a white shirtdress exactly like the one the girl at the front door had been wearing. “The Welsh Cavalry, and proud of it,” he declared as he lifted his glass as if in a toast, one Hughes readily joined in on.
Woodard naturally thought Tommy’s brash behavior was all show, a brazen display of bravado meant to make it clear he was not in the least bit intimidated by his surroundings or Woodard himself. Little did the casino owner, a man who measured another’s worth in terms of the value he could add to his business concerns, appreciate Tommy and Jack Hughes were toasting others, men they’d served with who had long ago been added to their regiment’s roll of honor.
“Jack tells me you have a novel theory to explain the odd betting habits a group of players use on our website,” Woodard ventured as the brunette, assisted by yet a third young woman in a white shirtdress, set out before them a number of plates and bowls containing various breakfast foods.
“It’s not a theory, Mr. Woodard,” Tommy countered with a self-assuredness that came naturally to him even as he was spearing a fat, juicy banger with his fork. “The need for various scumbags to pass messages back and forth via the Internet without folks like your NSA knowing what they’re about is causing them to come up with all sorts of ingenious methods of doing so. This isn’t new. There are more than a few people in the intelligence community who believe al-Qaeda planned the 9/11 attacks on eBay using encrypted messages hidden within digital photos.”
For the first time, something Tommy said caused Woodard to react. Glancing over at Hughes, he frowned.
“It can be done, Mr. Woodard,” Hughes intoned. “Like I always tell the vendors who claim the software or hardware they’re pimping is foolproof, there’s nothing in this world that’s foolproof, since fools are so ingenious. I believe Mr. Tyler is right. The people we’re dealing with are no fools.”
“So,” Woodard continued after taking a moment to enjoy a mouthful of scrambled egg whites and spinach. “What do we do, provided we need to do anything? So far, I’ve been told this group has done nothing wrong. Their credit is good, and they adhere to all the rules governing play on our site.”
“Like I told Jack, it’s not what they’re doing to you that’s important. It’s what they might be doing to someone else and the possible repercussions that your business concerns, not to mention your reputation, might suffer if it’s discovered they were using your website to plan a sequel to 9/11. It’ll be even worse if, in the course of running this to ground, it’s discovered the scumbags had help from someone inside your organization facilitating whatever it is they’re up to.”
Again, Woodard glanced over at Hughes, who responded by doing nothing more than closing his eyes and nodding, indicating he agreed with the concerns Tommy was expressing.
With a feigned casualness that was as transparent as his smile, Woodard paused to enjoy his breakfast while mulling something over in his head. “Given your background, I imagine you have a solution,” he finally ventured offhandedly.
“Of course I do. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be bothering you this early in the morning.”
“And this solution of yours, just how much will it cost me?” Woodard asked with a well-measured nonchalance.
Tommy was ready for this. Having seen through the opaque manner with which both his friend and Woodard had approached the matter at hand, he had done the math in his head, calculations that took into account the nature of the threat, the site in question, and, most importantly, the client. He also saw this as an opportunity to prove to Andy he was more than capable of handling a case like this all on his own and, if he managed to pull this off, give him something new he could use to badger Tinker Bell with. Taking up the glass of mimosa the brunette never allowed to go dry, Tommy locked eyes with Woodard. “Twenty-five hundred a day.”