“Septimus…aren’t they like the Masons or something like that?”

Art shrugged. “I guess. They say they go way back before Mesopotamia, but really, who’s going to buy that? Anyway, what interests me about their brokerage house is that it’s tres conservative. They deal mostly in Spiders. But back in February, early in the month, they began quietly buying puts in the tech sector—lots of puts: Twitter, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Snapchat, anything that relied on the Internet.”

He stopped and his gaze bore into Hari as he let that sink in.

Hari knew immediately where he was going.

Back in February, a mystery camorra launched violent assaults on the Internet’s infrastructure. The attacks were coordinated with the emergence of the so-called Jihadi virus that ran wild across the globe, creating a botnet that crashed the worldwide system.

If Art was to be believed, just before the crash this Sedam brokerage had switched from safe and sane SPDRs to puts on Internet stocks…option bets that those stocks would go down. And of course, they did, following the Internet into the abyss. The net remained thoroughly trashed for days, followed by a week or two of limping improvement. The experts were still crunching the numbers, but the resulting financial loss was estimated at somewhere between one hundred and two hundred billion dollars. Now, three months later, things were back to some semblance of order, but the crash had caused global chaos.

Coincidence?

“That can only mean they knew the crash was coming,” she said.

Art’s expression was grim as he nodded. “’Twould seem so.”

Did he just say ’twould?

“So with all those Internet stocks in the toilet, this Sedam place cleaned up.”

“Really cleaned up.”

Donny arrived with the coffee then, adding, “Sort of like all the puts bought on United and American Airlines before the 9/11 attack.”

Hari had heard stories about that, but didn’t know if they were true or not.

She sipped her much-needed coffee—excellent.

“Donny,” she said, “if Art ever lets you go, you can come work for me—just so you can make coffee.”

“Deal!” Donny said.

“Really?” Art looked offended.

Donny grinned. “But she’s so much better looking than you, Art.”

Hari took that as a compliment, but looking at Art, she wasn’t so sure.

“Okay,” she said, “I’m guessing you want to look into those options, but why do you want me doing the looking?”

Art frowned. “Sorry?”

“Lots of forensic accountants around. Why me?”

“Oh, that was Donny.”

Well, now, this was interesting.

Donny reddened a bit and fumbled out, “Yeah, well, I asked around and someone said, ‘Get Tate. Tate is great.’”

This guy couldn’t lie to save his life. Something going on here, but Art didn’t seem a part of it. All Donny…

Hari decided to play along for now, see if she could suss out Donny’s game.

“‘Tate is Great,’” she said. “Has a nice ring to it.” To Art: “What are you hoping to gain from my looking into those options?”