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“Yeah, you should be worried, but nottoo,” Letty said. “We really do have you covered.”
“Would we be better off splitting up?” one of the coders asked.
“Have you ever evenwatcheda horror movie?” Cartwright asked, a little nerd-flavored sarcasm in her voice. “What happens when people split up?”
Letty jumped back in: “If you split up and try to run, we can’t cover all of you. We’re not sure this woman is even a scout. She was just odd. Out of place. If she was working with the Russians, then they had some way to track us, or some of us. We don’t know who. Could be any of you. And like I said... we can’t cover you all.”
Sovern: “Let’s sit tight. Go back to work, everybody.”
The work would continue through the afternoon, into the night.
“We got it going,” Sovern said, as they ate a room-service dinner later that day. “We’ll get into some of the central computers tonight or tomorrow morning.”
Shofly called Tom Boyadjian. “They’re on the eighth floor. I ran into one of the women you were talking about... young, early twenties, too young to be a fed, I think. On the other hand, I think she was carrying. I’m not sure, but she kept touching a pocket. Actually... I’m sorta sure.”
“What rooms?”
“I haven’t nailed that down, yet. I will.”
She didn’t mention the quarter-sized cameras, because she hadn’t seen them.
She did give Boyadjian a detailed description of Letty. When Boyadjian checked with Leigh Lawrence, who wasn’t in Nunavut but in Lake Arrowhead, and who was standing on a road, looking down at the smog that concealed San Bernardino, and who didn’t give a rat’s ass about ptarmigans of any kind, Lawrence said, “I remember those blue eyes. That’s one of them, for sure.”
After talking to Boyadjian, Shofly went to the restaurant and ordered and paid for six large pizzas with everything, “For my computer friends up on Eight.”
She wasn’t sure of the room number, she told the woman who took the order, and suggested that the kitchen could get that from the front desk; she didn’t have time, she was on her way to a blow-dry and was running late.
A half hour later, she saw a room service waiter push a cart with a stack of pizza boxes out of the kitchen and she squeezed into the elevator with him. He pushed a button for Eight.
“Are these for 804?” she asked. “I think that’s too many...”
The bellhop shook his head, glanced at a slip of paper: “822.”
When he got off at Eight, she stepped into the corridor andwatched him wheel the cart down to the left, then got back in the elevator and pushed the button for the lobby.
After talking to the hacks,Letty, Cartwright, Longstreet, Kaiser, and Bunker met again to talk about what to do. Working out their options, they decided that Letty would have to talk to Delores Nowak, even if Nowak was reluctant.
Letty called Nowak, who reallydidn’twant to talk. “I’ve got to tell you what we’re thinking,” Letty insisted.
They had three options, Letty said. The first was to move the hackers to a new location, which would take some time—a couple of hours, just to get packed up and out of the hotel. They weren’t even sure that they had to do that, weren’t absolutely sure that the woman was working with the Russians. The second option was to let whatever was going to happen, happen—but to call the FBI in, with a SWAT team set up behind the suite doors, to deal with the Russians, if they actually showed up. The third option was to stay put, with the people they had, and if the Russians showed up, to fight them.
Nowak said, “Let me call you back.”
As they waited, Bunker got pinged on her phone. She looked at the iPhone and said, “Uh-oh, we’ve got a guy who looks like he’s from room service, he’s pushing a cart toward us. Anybody order room service? And wait, our spy just stepped out of the elevator, behind him. She’s watching where he goes.”
Letty went to the door between the two suites and shouted, “Anybody order room service? Anybody?”
Nobody had.
Kaiser: “If he comes to our door, I’ll meet him. Everybody stayclose—Letty, Barbara, you go to whatever suite he doesn’t, and get ready to step into the hall as soon as he knocks. Jane, you stay behind me off to the door-opening side, you don’t want to be behind it in case I go down, you’ll have a shooting lane. Letty and Barbara, you’ll be at the other door, the one he doesn’t knock on, and you’ll step out before I open my door, scream if you see he has a gun and then jump back inside...”
Bunker: “He’s stopped at 822.”
Letty and Cartwright hurried to the door at 824 when they heard the knock at 822. Kaiser called, “Everybody ready?”
Whoever was in the hall knocked again, and Letty and Cartwright, guns in their hands, behind their hips, stepped out the door of 824 and looked down toward the waiter, who shook his head. Not you. With no scream, Kaiser opened his door and asked, “What?”
“Pizzas.”
