Smythe held up his hand, stopping his chief technical officer in midsentence. His words were clipped, his precise British accent even more pronounced when he lectured. “Carl, just let me finish what I want to say. What I need for you to do is to understand that we…you and I…are sitting on a gold mine here. Neither the VCs nor the inventors have any idea what a mother lode we are about to dig into. They think we are going about building a better stock trading system.” Smythe rocked back and forth in his chair. “If we play our cards right, we won’t simply be able to retire to some South Sea island. Carl, we’ll be able to buy the damned island with our pocket change. The beauty of it is that we can do it without anyone having any idea what’s going on.” Smythe turned his chair a bit so he was now facing Andretti. The bright morning sun reflecting off the water and through the wall of glass gave his face a harsh, brittle look. “The two of us have to work together here, Carl. If we are going to pull this off, I can’t afford for you to go off on your own and plant little seeds of doubt. Do you understand, Carl?”

Andretti nodded but didn’t say anything. Smythe continued, his voice even lower now.

“Good. Now I need you to have a project status report ready for Stern this afternoon. Good numbers, all perfectly on schedule and on budget. Understand, Carl? Nothing for them to question at all. We’ll discuss the rest on the flight out. I want to see that special trading module you’re working on. Wheels up at six this evening. I’ll meet you at the Executive Aviation Terminal at Teterboro.”

Andretti nodded. “Got it. I’ll have the full report ready in a couple of hours.”

The big man stood, turned, gave Smythe a quick wink, and walked out of the office. He was all the way across the office suite, at his desk and behind closed doors before he allowed a slight smile to flit across his broad face.

He reached into his jacket pocket and turned off the tiny digital recorder. Another disk to lock away in his safe. Another bit of insurance just in case anything went wrong in this intricate, dangerous game in which he was involved.

He gritted his teeth. How dare that girlish Brit bastard talk to him like a truant schoolboy! If it weren’t for the great harvest he was about to reap from this whole thing, he would punch the son of a bitch in the face. Let him know who was doing all the work here. Remind him who deserved the lion’s share of what they were about to bring down.