“I want to see my account. How much money is in it?”
Crane clicked and expanded a screen on one of his four monitors that showed Markov’s bank deposit account. “A hundred million and change in the bank. The rest is coming into the brokerage as soon as I close out the last holdings this morning.”
“A hundred!? Where’s the fucking rest?”
“In the goddamn brokerage account. For God’s sake take it easy. There’s a lot more to bring over. I warned you that there would be losses, but I’ve worked miracles here. Just relax, will you? I have to make these trades. The markets are open now.”
“I want to start moving it.”
“So log on and move it. I don’t give a shit. Just leave me alone.”
Markov bent over his laptop. He tried to get online. He couldn’t.
He barked, “What’s your Internet password?”
Crane was already clicking and scanning candlestick charts displaying values in one-minute intervals. The charts also showed moving average lines and blossoming Fibonacci radials.
“Aw for fuck’s sake, Leonard. Don’t you have it on that computer?”
“It’s not remembering it. Did you change it? What is it?”
Crane screamed, “Shit.” He clicked on another file. A screen opened on one of his monitors. Markov yelled at the mercenaries, “Get me a fucking table.”
Crane yelled back, “There’s a worktable in the back.”
Markov leaned closer to the screen, expecting to see the passwords, but all that appeared was a small screen asking for a password to unlock the encrypted screen. “What is the fucking password, Alan?”
“It’s in this file. But the file is encrypted. Hold on.”
The tension in the room had ratcheted up to a nearly unbearable level. Harris and Williams hustled to the back of the loft looking for the table. Markov loomed over Crane. Crane had to resist the urge to shove the fat, sweating, stinking man away from him with both hands.
Crane typed in the password that un-encrypted the page that displayed his passwords. It seemed to take forever. Finally, a screen opened on his monitor. It contained pages of passwords and IDs, all of them with complex series of upper-and lower-case letters, symbols, and numbers.
“Where is it?” demanded Markov.
Crane started scrolling through the pages. “God fucking dammit, I should be trading, not holding your fucking hand with this shit. There! There it is. And the Cayman passwords are above it. Everything is alphabetical.”
“I have those passwords.”
“Congratulations,” said Crane, as he immediately returned to his mouse and keyboard.
Markov leaned into the screen and started laboriously typing in the access password to Crane’s Internet connection on his laptop.
Crane tried to ignore everything. He opened trade tickets on his platform and started executing trades, routing each one to whatever exchange gave him the best price.
The two mercenaries came in carrying a heavy wooden table, much larger than Markov needed, but they set it up in front of him. It distracted and delayed him, making Markov even more frustrated. He placed the laptop on the table and continued typing in the router access number from Crane’s screen.
He entered it.
Nothing.
Markov yelled, “It’s not letting me in.”
Crane didn’t even look in his direction. He had calmed himself down, determined now not to deal with Markov. He told him, “You probably didn’t type it in right. It’s case sensitive. Do it carefully.”
Markov started muttering Russian curses. He retyped everything. Nothing.
He pulled out a small gun from the voluminous pocket of his sport coat, walked next to Crane, and held the pistol against Crane’s temple.
Crane flinched away from the gun. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I want my money.”
“You have it goddammit.” He pointed to the screen. “It’s in the account. I’m bringing the rest over as we speak. You want to lose millions because you won’t let me finish this?”
“Fucking shit. How much is in the account?”
Crane pointed at the screen. “Including what’s left to bring over, one-hundred and seventeen million.”
“What?!”
“And that’s better than you deserve. Your losses will be under sixteen percent. Sixteen fucking percent. That’s half the thirty-plus percent you should be eating by forcing me to close everything out like this.”
“There was one-hundred forty-eight million.”
“When I’m finished there should be about a hundred-twenty, maybe a bit more if we get lucky. And I’ll say it one last time, Leonard, that’s more than you fucking deserve, making me close out my trades.”
Markov snarled. “Why can’t I fucking get into the account? Did you change the passwords?”
“No!”
Crane stopped, leaned over to look at Markov’s laptop. He opened the control panel and told the computer to search for network connections. A series of connections appeared that were scattered around Crane’s building and the neighborhood, but not Crane’s.
“For fuck sake, you’re laptop isn’t finding my network. I don’t know what’s wrong. It’s your goddamn computer, not mine. And I’m not fucking rebooting my router now. Just watch my screens. When I’m done, sit down and use my computer to transfer the money wherever the fuck you want. It’s stupid to do it while everything is still coming in anyhow. Just relax for chrissake.”
Markov yelled, “I’m not leaving you the only one in control. I want to transfer a hundred right now.”
Crane had anticipated this. If he could pull off the next move, he could make everything work the way he and Olivia had planned.
“Hold on, hold on. I have to watch these positions. You want me to stop this and let you use my computer? Are you insane?”
Crane shifted the screens appearing on his four monitors. He consolidated the screen that showed Markov’s brokerage account, then brought up another showing the Cayman bank account, placing them next to each other so Markov could see them clearly.
“Here, just watch these, okay? As soon as I’m done, you can move all of it at once. All right?”