“Aw. You were gonna kidnap her and ask Gabriel Ice for ransom money? Let me just roll on the floor here a minute, you guys. You want to tell them, Tallis, or should I?”
“Uh-oh,” go the gorillas in unison.
“You didn’t hear, I guess. Gabe and I are about to get into a really horrible divorce. At the moment my ex-to-be is trying to delete me, my existence, from the Internet. I don’t think he’ll even spring for gas money, guys, sorry.”
“Govno,” in harmony.
“Unless he’s really the one who hired you, to get me out of the way.”
“Fucking Gabriel Ice,” Grisha indignant, “is oligarch scum, thief, murderer.”
“So far, nichego,” Misha cheerfully, “but he’s also working for U.S. secret police, which makes us sworn enemies forever—we have oath, older than vory, older than gulag, never help cops.”
“Penalty for violation,” Misha adds, “is death. Not just what they’ll do to you. Death in spirit, you understand.”
“She’s nervous,” Maxine hastily, “she means no disrespect.”
“How much did you think he was gonna pay?” Tallis still wants to know.
An amused exchange in Russian that Maxine imagines going something like “Fucking American women only care about price they bring on market? Nation of whores.”
“More like Austin Powers,” Misha explains— “telling Ice, ‘Oh, behave!’”
“‘Shagadelic!’” cries Grisha. They high-five.
“We have something to do tonight,” Misha continues, “and holding Mrs. Ice was only supposed to be for insurance, in case somebody gets cute.”
“Looks like it ain’t gonna work,” sez Maxine.
“Sorry,” sez Tallis. “Can we get out now?”
By this point they are off the Cross County and onto the Thruway, just passing the fake barn and silo of Stew Leonard, a legendary figure in the history of point-of-sale fraud, heading for what Otis used to call the Chimpan Zee Bridge.
“What’s the hurry? Pleasant social evening. Some conversation. Chillax, ladies.” There’s champagne in the fridge. Grisha breaks out El Productos stuffed with weed and lights up, and soon secondhand effects begin to occur. On the sound system, the boys have arranged a hip-hop- plus-Russian eighties nostalgia mix, including DDT’s road anthem “Ty Nye Odin” (You Are Not Alone) and the soulful ballad “Veter.”
“Where are we going, then?” Tallis sullenly flirtatious, as if hoping this will develop into an orgy.
“Upstate. Hashslingrz has secret server farm up in mountains, right?”
“Adirondack Mountains, Lake Heatsink—are you really planning to take us all the way up there?”
“Yeah,” sez Maxine, “something of a drive, ain’t it?”
“Maybe you won’t have to go all the way there,” Grisha fondling his Bizon menacingly.
“He’s being dickhead,” Misha explains. “Years in Vladimirski Tsentral, learned nothing. We have to meet this guy Yuri in Poughkeepsie, we can let you off there at train station.”
“You want to get to the server,” Tallis bringing out her Filofax and finding a blank page, “I can draw you boys a map.”
Grisha narrowing his eyes, “We don’t need to shoot you or nothing?”
“Oh you wouldn’t really shoot me with that big, mean gun?” Withholding eye contact till around “big.”
“Map would be nice,” Misha trying to sound like the good torpedo.
“Gabe took me up there once. Deep underground caves near the lake. Very like vertical, many levels, floor numbers on the elevator all had minus signs. The property itself used to be a summer camp, Camp… some Indian name, Ten Watts, Iroquois, something…”
“Camp Tewattsirokwas,” Maxine just refrains from screaming in recognition.
“That’s it.”
“Mohawk for ‘firefly.’ At least that’s what they told us.”
“You went to camp there, oh my God?”
“Oh your God what, Tallis, somebody had to.” Camp Tewattsirokwas was the brainchild of a Trotskyite couple, the Gimelmans from Cedarhurst, begun back at the time of the Schachtman unpleasantness amid epical all-night screaming matches and not much quieter by the time Maxine got there, the standard poison-ivy facility you found back then all through the mountains of New York State. Cafeteria food, color wars, canoes on the lake, singing “Marching to Astoria,” “Zum Gali Gali,” dance parties—aaahhh! Wesley Epstein!
Counselors at Camp Tewattsirokwas delighted in creeeping kids out with local legends about Lake Heatsink—how from ancient times the Indians avoided the place, in terror of what lived in its depths, cloak-shaped rays of glowing ultraviolet, giant albino eels that could get around on land as well as through water, with demonic faces that spoke to you in Iroquois of the horrors that awaited you should you dip so much as a toe…
“Make her stop,” Grisha shivering, “she’s scaring me.”
“No wonder Gabe seemed to fit right in,” figures Tallis. Ice apparently chose Lake Heatsink because it’s deeper and colder than anything else in the Adirondacks. Maxine flashes back to his spiel at the Geeks’ Cotillion, northward migration to fjordsides, to subarctic lakes, where the unnatural flows of heat generated by server equipment can begin to corrupt the last patches of innocence on the planet.
Onto the sound system comes Nelly singing “Ride Wit Me.” As the Thruway unreels toward and around the speeding ZiL a sorrowful winterscape of little farms, frozen fields, trees that look like they’ll never bear leaves again, Misha and Grisha start bouncing up and down and chiming in on “Hey! Must be the money!”
“Don’t mean to seem nosy,” of course not Maxine, “but I gather you’re not going up there just to drop in and hang out by the snack machine.”
Another exchange in jailhouse Russian. Suspicious glances. In some neglected area of her brain, Maxine understands how easily yenta activities can turn dangerous, but this doesn’t keep her from a little lobe probe here. “Is it true what I hear,” adopting Elaine’s murderous perkiness, “that server farms, no matter how carefully hidden, are all sitting ducks, because they put out an infrared signature that a heat-seeking missile can read?”
“Missiles? Sorry.”
“No missiles tonight. Small-scale experiment only.”
They stop for gas, Misha and Grisha take Maxine around to the back of the ZiL, open the trunk. Something long, cylindrical, flanges with bolts, projections that look electrical… “Nice, which end are you supposed to inhale out of— Oh, shit, wait, I know what this is! I saw this in Reg’s movie! it’s one of those vircators, isn’t it, what are you guys—let me guess, you’re gonna hit that server farm with an EM pulse?”
“Shh-shh,” cautions Misha.
“Only ten-percent power,” Grisha assures her.
“Twenty maybe.”
“Experiment.”
“You shouldn’t be showing me this,” Maxine thinking, on the one hand nonnuclear means minor league, while on the other, don’t rule out that they’re insane also.
“Igor says trust you.”
“Anybody asks, I didn’t see this, good with whatever fellas, nichego, hashslingrz in my opinion, they’re way overdue for a little inconvenience.”
“Po khuy,” Grisha beams, “Ice’s server is toast.”
Of course Maxine sees attitude like this all the time, blind confidence, sure disaster for the other guy, somehow it never works out. Oh, this trip does not bode well. No orgies tonight, no hostage situation, God help them all, it’s a nerd exploit, a journey far from the comforts of screenside, out into the middle of an increasingly arctic night right up in the enemy’s face.
Back on the Thruway, Grisha replacing Misha behind the wheel now, “They’ve got to have pretty tight security up there,” Maxine as if it’s just occurred to her, “how are you planning to get past it?”