Commissioner Burke went volcanic when he heard how Weecho had gone about it. 

“So the whole thing rides on this boozy swamp rat.” 

“I didn’t say boozy.” 

“You didn’t have to,” Burke said. 

“You don’t even know him.” 

“Jesus Christ.” 

“It was a judgement call. I wanted to come at it a different way.” 

“So you pick this guy?” 

“He’s right there. And there’s maybe more to him than you think. That we can use.”    

“You know what I think? I think you blew it.” 

They were at the pistol range in Alexey’s townhouse basement, getting Weecho started on some firearms training. Alexey himself was standing by the bar, not looking much happier than Burke. 

“You should have been more upfront about the money,” Alexey said. 

All Weecho had told him when he asked for the two-thousand dollars, Teddy Shongut’s retainer, was that he needed it for working cash. 

Burke, who’d come by for lunch and an update, looked like he wanted to use Weecho for a target. “Stunts like this were for when you did whatever you did on your own. There’s a lot more in play now, my friend, and ignoring the chain of command is not an option.”   

“I didn’t know there was a chain of command.” 

“You do now.” 

Burke took a deep breath like he was about to spell it out, held it when a voice spoke up from the stairs. 

“Alex?” 

They all turned. 

“Where would you like these?” 

A dark-haired young woman about Weecho’s age, maybe a little older, Mediterranean skin and eyes, was standing there with a platter of sandwiches. 

“Gentlemen,” Alexey said, “my niece, Dara Jaffe.” 

Dara gave them a smile that Weecho could see had the same high-voltage charm as her uncle’s (even Burke couldn’t help but smile back). Alexey had to nudge Weecho to make room for Dara to put the sandwiches on the bar. She was wearing tights and had long straight legs like a dancer, which it turned out she was. 

“Dara is here from Tel Aviv,” Alexey said, “on exchange with the American School of Ballet.” 

Dara left the tray of sandwiches and went over to the gun cabinet. 

“She’s also an excellent shot,” Alexy said. 

Dara took an automatic out of the cabinet, shoved a full clip into the butt, racked the slide like the gun was just another household appliance. She stepped over to the firing line, raised the pistol at the silhouette target that was lit on the wall, took half a second to aim with a two-handed grip, and Bam! Bam! Bam! 

Emptied the gun at the target, eight shots in one burst.  

Alexey retrieved the target on the cable and brought it over for Weecho and Burke to inspect. Dara had put every shot in an area the size of a lens cap dead center in the target’s face. 

“Weecho,” Alexey said, “meet your instructor.” 

                                                #          #          # 

Weecho hit it off with Dara right away, had the feeling that’s what happened with anybody who met her. They took their sandwiches over to a coffee table and chairs away from the men. 

“My uncle says you have some interesting sides to you.” She spoke, Weecho noticed, with the same slight accent Alexey did. “And that you have a way with a camera.” 

“From a man like your uncle, that gives me hope. Where did you learn to shoot like that?” 

Dara shrugged. “In Israel you grow up with it.” 

“There can’t be many eyes like yours there.” Hers were almost black, like his mother’s. “I mean for shooting.” 

“Thank you. Do you photograph dancers?” 

“I haven’t,” he said, “but I should.” And you’re here for more than just dance. 

“We can do it after we shoot. I have a barre upstairs.” 

“There’s a bar here” 

“Different kind. What dancers practice on.” 

“I know. I’m teasing.” 

And so it went. 

They never did get around to shooting, the pictures or the gun, because while they were eating Juna rang on Weecho’s cell. 

“Lynch is about to call Aramis,” Juna said. “He’s got the card you gave Shongut sitting on his desk.” 

So the old guy came through, quicker than Weecho would have thought. 

“Try to get Lynch’s attention on something else,” Weecho said. “Just for a little bit. I need time. Find something wrong with the dogs or something.” 

He clicked off and looked at the bar. 

“Excuse me,” he said to Alexey and Burke. “We need to talk.” 

                                                #          #          # 

They set up a command post in Alexey’s library upstairs. The room was a mix of old and new – dark paneling and oil paintings, dim rich light, tall windows looking out onto a garden, walls of books around a junior version of the layout Alexey had in his office, including a pro Mac and a big screen. Turned out Dara had computer chops as well.  

“If we could set up a feed from Aramis to here,” she said, “I might be able to hack into it myself.” 

“No time,” Weecho said. He could feel Burke’s eyes boring into his back, even after Shongut had come through. Time to pull the rabbit out of the hat. “But I told him to plant a blind password when he gets the laptop going again.” 

Dara liked that, gave him a smile. 

“What do you mean blind?” Burke said. 

Dara said, “So we can access the laptop ourselves, from any location, and nobody will know.”  

“Like being in the actual network,” Weecho said. “That’s the benefit of the laptop breaking down. Otherwise we wouldn’t have had the chance.”  

Burke’s only reaction was a grunt and a nod. Weecho could see that Alexey got it and was impressed. 

Then Weecho thought of something else. He called Aramis on his cell while he Skyped him on Alexey’s setup. 

“Hey, man,” Weecho said, “turn your Skype lens so we can see what you’re doing. And turn up your mic. But leave your monitor off and turn off your speakers.”  

Now they could see and hear whatever Aramis was doing with Lynch, but Lynch and Aramis couldn’t see or hear them. 

Weecho fiddled with the Mac and, click, there was Aramis on the screen, sitting in a wheelchair at his desk, computer components piled all over. Not that Aramis was handicapped. Weecho knew the wheelchair was his way of getting customers to come to him, so he didn’t have to leave his dump of an apartment. 

Weecho still had him on his cell. “When’s he due?” 

“Any minute. Be cool.” 

Easy for him to say, Weecho thought. Except he knew it wasn’t. Aramis was the one on the hot seat. 

                                                #          #          # 

They lost sight of Aramis when he wheeled over to open the door for Lynch. Could just hear them introducing themselves over the sound of heavy metal that Aramis played while he worked. When Aramis came back into view, Lynch was following him with the laptop, taking in the pigsty surroundings, watching his step like his shoes might slip in something nasty.    

Lynch was wearing the same shades and ball cap he’d had on in the crash pictures, the ones Weecho had shown to Alexey and Burke. And when he turned toward the Skype, there was the soul patch.     

Aramis wheeled himself up to the desk and held out his hand for the laptop. Lynch looked at the hand, looked like he might be having second thoughts. Then he turned the laptop over to Aramis and Aramis powered it on, bobbed to the music while it booted. Or tried to boot. 

He plugged a flash drive into the laptop’s USB port, Weecho knowing the drive was primed with Aramis’s dark and invasive software.     

Ten minutes later, Aramis was still bobbing, tapping keys and trying to work one of his programs, trying to get the laptop to respond. 

Weecho watching him, starting to think, could he really fix whatever it was? Was it beyond retrieving?        

Behind him, Commissioner Burke was getting antsy. 

“He could be putting one of our people’s taps in there if we’d done this right.” 

Thanks, Comish. You’d be sitting around with your shwanz in your hand if I hadn’t done what I did.      

On the screen, Lynch was getting antsy himself. He stood watching over Aramis’s shoulder, looking more and more irritated, probably the music. (Weecho knew that Aramis’s personal hygiene could take its toll as well.) Finally, Lynch reached across to Aramis’s iPod and turned down the volume. 

“How much longer?” 

“You’ve got a backup firewall here we’re dealing with.” 

“Meaning what?” 

“Meaning I’m working fast as I can.”   

Lynch not liking Aramis’s tone, his face tightening.  

Weecho was reaching for one of the cookies he’d brought up from lunch when he heard the breakthrough. 

“There you go,” Aramis said. 

The group around the Mac leaned in to the screen while Lynch on the Skype bent forward. 

“Looks like you did it,” he said, nodding, relaxing. 

Weecho couldn’t see the laptop screen but it looked like Lynch was seeing what he wanted. 

Alexey leaned in next to Weecho. “Too bad we don’t have a Skype behind him.” 

They’d had Dara set the equipment up to record whatever showed on the Mac’s screen, along with what was coming through the speakers.     

Lynch reached to the keyboard and held down one of the keys to scroll, squinting at the laptop screen, eyes following whatever was going by. He spotted something and scrolled back. Tapped out a quick email. Then took out his cell and tapped in a number he read from the screen. 

“Mr. Yoon?” he said, reaching back over and shutting off the music. 

God bless Aramis: He did a subtle little something with his desk mic so that in the library they could pick up the other end of the conversation. Dara reached in and turned up the volume. 

“Speaking,” the phone voice said. 

“I just sent you an email,” Lynch said. “Can you check it on your phone? I’m testing something.”  

A moment, then Yoon’s voice: “It says, testing, testing.” 

“Thank you, I just wanted to be sure. I’ll call again later and we’ll talk.” 

Lynch broke the connection, took an envelope out of his jacket and tossed it onto Aramis’s desk. “Good work.” 

“Happy to serve,” Aramis said. 

“Same password?” 

“That, or if you want I can change it.” 

Weecho hoping in the library that Aramis had stuck in a password for them. 

Lynch closed the laptop and tucked it under his arm. “The same one’s fine. I can let myself out.” 

He started to turn away, hesitated when something offscreen caught his eye, then kept going to the door. 

Aramis waited for the door to shut, opened the envelope and counted the bills inside. 

In the library, Alexey straightened up from the computer and turned to Burke. 

“Our first Weecho dividend,” Alexey said. 

Weecho lowering his eyes, playing it up. 

Burke ignoring the comment. “Speaking of Yoon, did you get anything more from Tel Aviv?” 

“Nothing current,” Alexey said, “but a bit of history that was interesting: They said there was actually talk at the time that he’d helped engineer bin Laden out of Tora Bora.” 

Burke lifted an eyebrow. 

Alexey shrugged. “Think of the payoffs he’d have missed if they’d killed bin Laden back then instead of when they did.” 

While the two men were talking, Weecho bit into another cookie, watching Dara who was still watching the screen. The more he looked at her, backlit by hazy light from the library windows, the more he felt himself being pulled in. Who wouldn’t be? But knew she was a no-fly zone for the likes of him. 

“How old is Aramis?” she said. 

“About our age.” Weecho not sure now how old Dara was, the way she was able to handle things.    

“And he lives alone, crippled?” 

Weecho explained how he wasn’t really. 

Dara seemed to have mixed feelings about that, frowned a little at Aramis. 

“Look,” she said, pointing at the screen. “Somebody just knocked.” 

They watched Aramis wheel his chair around and disappear from the screen, going to answer the door. 

And Weecho knew in that instant what had caught Lynch’s eye just before he left. 

“Lynch knows! He’s going to kill him!” 

Weecho lunged for the computer to turn on the mic and warn Aramis. 

Burke grabbed his arms from behind and pulled him away. 

Weecho yelled, “Lynch saw the other computer was on. He knows he was watched.” 

It didn’t matter that Burke held him back. Because Aramis still had his speakers turned off. Nobody on that end could hear Weecho. 

They all watched the screen as the picture with nobody in it wobbled – Lynch shutting down Aramis’s computer, careful to stay out of sight. 

Then the screen went dead.