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His one-shoulder shrug is a master class on dismissal. “You could go on a phishing expedition. Send them an email with malware, a virus inside. If they open it, you can fry that machine. Maybe even take out their whole network. But if they have any brains at all, they’ll have a copy of the video someplace safe. On an air-gap machine. In off-site storage, at least.”
“But I can slow them down?”
“Not by much. And it might piss them off. End up with them distributing whatever it is a lot more widely. Which I assume is the exact result you don’t want.”
“Right.” As long as I’ve got him giving me the bad news, I ask another question and try not to sound like I’m begging. “Anything else? Any other way to take out these motherfuckers?”
“Short of a nuclear-grade electro-magnetic pulse to take out every computer on the Eastern seaboard? And even that won’t help if they’re storing the video outside the range. Servers on the west coast. Overseas.”
If I were a criminal drug-lord with six homes from Napa to Zermatt, I’m pretty sure I’d be stashing my blackmail material on multiple continents.
Fuck.
“So what wouldyoudo?” I ask.
“About a hypothetical video being distributed by a hypothetical enemy showing something that might hypothetically destroy me? I’d buy them off. Everyone has a price.”
My jaw tightens. “Let’s say the price is too high.”
Wolf’s eyebrows rise. “Then I’d attack the video. Say it’s a deep fake. Someone made it with AI, artificial intelligence. Or they pieced together other footage, something innocent but they make it look bad.”
There’s nothing innocent about the Herzogs’ recording.
But Wolf has a point. I can turn this into a public relations battle. I can say they’re the bad actors. They’re the ones spreading lies.
I picture the spray of blood from one end of my dining room table to the wall behind the credenza. That would be one hell of a fucking lie.
“Okay,” I say. “Thanks.”
“Let me know if you need an expert, someone who’ll stand up in court.”
“Yeah. I will.”
Wolf waits a beat, giving me a chance to ask more questions. I could tell him what the video is all about. Give him a heads-up that he’s implicated too, that the entire Diamond Fucking Ring has an interest in proving the Herzogs’ film a lie.
But it’s too early to drag him in. No reason to fuck up his life yet.
Down the road, he can hire the finest lawyer money can buy. Get his own neck out of the noose. Somehow.
When I don’t ask any more questions, don’t give him any more details, Wolf shakes out his cotton cloth and turns back to his new baby. “Quit wasting your time with shit you can’t control,” he says. “Get back to the racetrack. Finish it and then you can take out one of those cars you’re always bragging about. Burn off a little frustration.”
If it was only so simple.
But I laugh. And I ask him about the torque on the new motorcycle’s engine. And I pretend the answer’s interesting enough to keep me from thinking about how the Herzogs are going to take all of us down.
11
ALIX
* * *
I’m supposed to head up to New York for the Sotheby’s auction on Provençal landscapes. But the thought of sitting in the car all those hours, of interacting with buyers and sellers like everything in my life is normal, of taking mental and physical notes on the auctioneers’ technique, on the actual lots, on everything I still have to learn… I’m exhausted just thinking about it.
But if I’m staying home, I really should work. I should research the paintings in Herzog’s gallery and figure out if all of them are stolen. The Vermeer, of course, is famous. And the bright yellow and red poppies were almost certainly painted by Van Gogh and stolen from a Cairo museum in 2010. I have leads on a couple of others, but I need to find decent reproductions to be sure. And several works in Herzog’s gallery don’t resemble anything reported stolen online.
I’d rather curl up with my phone and watch soothing videos of working sheepdogs. Each little movie is a masterpiece of order and control. The shepherd blows a whistle or waves a hand, and the dog does exactly what it’s learned to do, from driving an entire herd across long distances to selecting a single ailing lamb and bringing it to the human who can save it. The dogs are equal, faithful partners and I could watch them forever.
Instead, I call Susan Richards. “Could you do me a favor?” I ask.
