“You know,” I say, “because you already researched it.”

Silence.

Then Carlo says, “We researched you too.”

“I’m sure you did,” I say.

“You’re rich.”

“I am.”

“They also say you’ve gone crazy. They say you’re a weird recluse now.”

I spread my arms. “Do I look like a recluse?”

“So why do they say that?”

“I made it up.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because,” I say, “some bad people have been trying to kill me.”

“So you’ve been, what, hiding?”

“Something like that.”

“So why are you here now?”

“We’ve rescued one boy,” I say. “I need your help to rescue the other.”

That seemed to satisfy them.

“It shouldn’t be hard,” Carlo says. “To join the game you have to log in to our server.”

“This will give us his IP address.”

“Damn,” Carlo says, “he’s using a VPN.”

“Of course he would,” Renato replies, “but we can get around it with . . .”

They slip back into Italian, which is fine with me. I don’t speak tech-ese anyway. Their voices are loud and angry. They start cursing at each other. I hear the names of players on Roma and Lazio and I’m certain now that they are starting with the team-rival insults. That, Giuseppe warned me, was how they worked.

“The angrier they get,” he assures me, “the closer they are to getting you an answer.”

So I wait. They are trying, it seems, to keep up with both the game on their screens and finding the location of SHARK CRYPT I.

“You’re right,” Carlo says to me, still typing furiously. “It’s Fat Gandhi.”

“He’s trying to cover up,” Renato adds.

“Hide his identity now that we know his moves,” Carlo says.

They start screaming again in Italian. Ten minutes later, I hear a cheer. Giuseppe nods at me as a printer starts whirring. He heads over and picks up a sheet of paper. “The address,” Giuseppe says, handing it to me.

I look at it. The location is in the Netherlands.

“How much time do I have?”

Carlo takes that one. “If we try our best, we will be done in about two hours.”

I start for the door. “Then don’t try your best,” I tell him.

* * *

Myron pulled up to the aging split-level home.

He had been raised in this dwelling. Well, more than raised. He had lived here with his parents up until, well, recently. In fact, when his parents, Ellen and Al (“People call us El Al,” Mom would explain, “you know, like the Israeli airline?”), finally decided to sell the house and retire to Florida, Myron had purchased it from them.

In the old days, whenever Myron would be dropped off or pull into the driveway, his mother would run out the door and throw her arms around him as though he were a just-released hostage she hadn’t seen in five years. That was her way.

It had, of course, embarrassed him. And then—equally, of course—it pleased him to no end. When you’re young you don’t get how great it is to be loved unconditionally.