That, at least, was a relief. “Thank you, Dr. Bell.”
Somewhere in his head, the words Dr. Bell had the same ring as saying Godfather.
“Your information made it easier to mop up that competition, so it benefited both of us. Tell me about your progress this week.”
Tristan slid his notes into view on another screen. The brevity of these meetings was one of the reasons why Colleen hadn’t caught him yet. “I am continuing to refine the new computer program that produced the Butorin information for us, Anti-Anonymity. With the next iteration, we will be able to not only follow persons of interest but tag anyone they associate with and gain information on them, too. There will be an algorithm in place to determine the likelihood of whether these people are members of an organization that we are concerned with or mere casual contacts. For instance, let’s say a person frequents a particular coffee shop and prefers a certain barista to make their coffee. With a few contacts, the barista will be tagged. However, if the barista doesn’t associate with anyone else of interest to us for a pre-determined amount of time, they will be dropped from the algorithm to a very low level of surveillance unless something changes. That should reduce the noise in the next iteration of the program.”
“Excellent.”
“In addition, the Brainiac serpent has been released and is arbitraging the futures market for your organization. It is both returning the difference to your bank accounts and creating false trails to account for those funds of yours with less than legal origins.”
Mary Varvara Bell smiled at him, pressing her full lips together. “Oh, that’s so nice, Tristan. I’m so glad you decided to come on board with us. You’re a valuable member of White Holdings, Inc.”
Tristan’s grieving heart pulled at the muscles of his chest like it had turned to lead. “It’s an honor to work with you, Dr. Bell.”
64
Plot Twist
Mary Varvara Bell tapped her mouse to close out the call with Tristan King. “That went well, don’t you think?”
Dr. Bell’s New York office was decorated with calculating decor, the white of snow and the glass of ice. Slashes of cold steel and the occasional lump of black leather, as dark as a frigid night, accented the wintry office that was staged to be a long walk from the door, past a conversation grouping, beyond bookshelves, to finally reach the desk where Mary Varvara Bell would have been staring at you during your entire march to stand before her.
Logan Bell glanced down at his aunt from where he stood beside her desk. “I told you Tristan King was the hacker you needed. I’m sure his programs will do great things for White Holdings, Inc.”
Dr. Mary Varvara Bell had the typical Bell family features that Logan had also inherited, thick dark hair and pale eyes, skin as frosty as snow in Siberia, and the haughty demeanor of those descended from nobility and trying to climb right back up to the top of the social heap.
She said, “White Holdings has exceeded our expectations with this venture. We obtained the primary objective, recruiting Tristan King to produce future projects for us in a mere two months, not three. Your notes about Tristan were invaluable in recruiting him.”
“I’m pleased to be of use.”
“And we also acquired both the Brainiac computer virus and the CurieCoin mint to legitimize our dark money, which will make our operation run so much more smoothly now that we can utilize our reserves. It’s like two bonus prizes.”
“It would seem so.”
His aunt smiled at him. “And who is next on our acquisition list?”
Logan didn’t smile back. “Micah Shine.”
65
Shine
Micah
Micah Shine had been traveling again.
This trip had taken him to London and the smaller city of Sandwich, England, where he’d been working on increasing the size of Shine Industries.
In a world where virtual goods seemed to be prized and non-tangible investments were coveted, Shine Industries still made things.
Things to create the digital world, but things, nevertheless.
But Micah had been gone for a month, and San Francisco was cooler in the early fall than when he left.
He stopped at the front desk of his building when he walked in, and the concierge handed him his mail. They’d sorted out the junk mail for him and he paid most of his bills electronically, so all that was left was a wedding invitation from an old Le Rosey friend and one odd-looking envelope with just his name written on the heavy, creamy stationary.
It didn’t even have his address on it. A courier must’ve dropped it off.
Micah waited until he’d gotten back into his penthouse apartment and ordered some dinner to be delivered before sliding a knife under the envelope’s flap to slice it open.
When he read it, his hands opened, and it dropped to the floor.
66
Stockholders
Tristan
A year later, Colleen Frost stood in front of GameShack’s annual shareholders’ meeting.
Tristan sat behind her on the dais with the board of directors, watching her. Tristan had arrived a few minutes after the rest of them because he’d stopped in the lobby of the conference center to pick up a caffè breve for himself and an oversweetened caramel macchiato with extra whipped cream, sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, for Colleen.
He’d had them write Princess on the cup.
And then picked it up, to the utter consternation of an older man with a face full of frown lines.
Even though Tristan King still owned a majority stake in GameShack, there were other shareholders. That meant that according to SEC regulations, they needed to hold an annual meeting.
Other than Tristan, Anjali, and Jian, many of the other stockholders were investors from the Sherwood Forest forum, including many of the moderators whom Colleen had gotten to know over the years.
The after-party was going to be spectacular. Colleen had been giggly before the seminar had started, meeting and greeting so many of her friends that she knew from moderating Sherwood Forest, although of course, she’d had to stop moderating and even posting there when she had gotten the job of CEO. Anything she said in public could be considered insider trading, so she’d retreated to group chats with her moderator buddies and other friends.
They’d also planned to go out with Anjali and Jian for supper as an after-after-party to celebrate Anjali and Jian’s six-month wedding anniversary that weekend.
Colleen’s speech was short but illuminating, according to the media. Mostly, it involved a series of jagged but upward-trending charts, showing revenue crossing over into profitability and the steadily increasing net worth of the company.
Before the stockholders meeting, there had been a few smear pieces in the media once it became known that CEO Colleen Frost was the girlfriend of GameShack’s majority owner. Many of them used the word nepotism.
Tristan had quietly sicced the Anonymity Plus program on those articles, and they’d fallen to the bottom of the sea of online media and drowned.