“I’m suggesting that we have competition here. It’s all starting to add up. The Russian Mafia has been moving into the financial markets for years, anyplace they could find a toehold. We all know that. Then we have what are apparently Russian thugs pushing Carl around, threatening me, making sure we don’t do anything to get the SEC curious before we go live. The simple fact of the matter is that we’ve got a bunch of Russian programmers working for us, any one of whom could have tampered with the code, stuck in whatever routines they wanted. They’re smart enough to hide it well if they wanted to. That’s why we use them. They’re rather good at what they do.”

Stern’s voice was quieter now, more distant. Smythe could imagine him leaning back in his big chair, rubbing his chin as he talked. “Smythe, for once your candy-assed chirping is starting to make sense. That means you have to get rid of all the Russian programmers right away to make certain you purge the right one…or ones. Then get somebody on the job looking for the dirty stuff. If Goldman can find it, you got some propeller-head there who can, too. I’ve got the damage contained for the moment, but who knows what other bright-eyed bureaucrat might stumble onto this shit?”

“Hold on, Mark. Let’s not charge off half-cocked now. First, we don’t know how far along the changes are. They’re probably already finished, ready to go when we go online this week. If that’s the case, they can make a killing and be gone before we can track down the screwy routines. We won’t know who did it until they disappear with the loot. I suspect the market will be a shambles before we could get it debugged. Remember, we all take a bath if that happens. We need those programmers to fix it once we find it. Second, we don’t know what kind of horsepower is behind this scheme. If it is the Russian mob, we could be stepping into a hot, steaming pile of some very nasty shit.” Smythe was studying the web of lines on the broken coffee table as if they might form a map that could lead them out of the mess in which they now found themselves. Stern couldn’t see the slight smile on his face, but Andretti could. He was a wheeler-dealer, and he was moving in to close the sale. “There’s one more point, Mark. With the information your contact has provided us, we may just be able to gain an advantage. We may even be able to use that little ticking time bomb in OptiMarx to make the three of us even more magnificently rich. If it is one of the Russian programmers, he may have done us a rather wonderful favor.”